Why are skinheads bald? Skinhead style elements in the collections of leading fashion houses

Perhaps you have met groups of young people with shaved heads, in identical black jeans and collarless camouflage jackets, in high army boots, with the flag of the slave Confederation sewn on the sleeve? These are skinheads, or, in other words, skinheads. They call themselves the short word "skins". Now almost no one writes about them, but among the teenagers of big cities they are already a legend.

The first skinheads appeared in England in 1968. Current followers would be surprised to know that their predecessors got along well with mulattoes and blacks. The fact is that the skins appeared as a working, not a racial subculture, directed against both the official culture and in defiance of many alternative movements. For example, they considered rockers "fake" because they were a storm of roads only on weekends, and on weekdays they worked hard in the office. Whom the skinheads did not like was the “Pakis” (Pakistani). And not as foreigners, but as merchants. And the Negroes and Arabs, who worked with skinheads in the same factories, were their own guys for them.

Skinheads of the “first wave” got along well with mulattoes and blacks

The first skinheads were not skinheads in the literal sense of the word, it was just that their short haircuts with sideburns contrasted with the then fashionable long hair. The style of clothing was not “militarist”, but proletarian: coarse-wool jackets or short coats with a leather yoke, coarse trousers with an “eternal arrow”, a long, knee-length zoot jacket and heavy, durable high boots of construction workers and dock workers. The first skinheads did not have followers, and by 1973, when the guys grew up and started families, the movement came to naught.

Skinheads of the “first wave”, 60s of the XX century

Skinheads were revived in the late 70s, when the government of Margaret Thatcher liquidated entire sectors of the economy, which led to an unprecedented increase in unemployment and unrest in the so-called depressed regions. The new skins were no longer a working aristocracy, but a declassed environment, brought up not on relaxed reggae, but on aggressive punk rock. These guys beat all the immigrants indiscriminately because they "took their jobs." Neo-Nazi ideologists worked with the new skinheads. Skin clubs sprang up, the slogan "Keep Britain white!" was heard for the first time.

"Keep Britain white!" - the slogan of the skinheads of the "second wave"

Here skinheads of the “first wave” got out of their apartments, furious that their movement was being associated with the Nazis. Fights between "old" and "new" skinheads took on the character of street riots (especially in Glasgow). The result of these clashes was the emergence of two skin movements - on the one hand, Nazi skins ("new"), on the other - "red skins", "red skins" ("old"). Outwardly, red skins differed only in stripes with portraits of Lenin, Mandela, Che Guevara and sometimes red laces in boots. They have become widespread in England, France, Poland, Spain. Nazi skins took root in Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Canada, the USA, and later in France, Denmark, and Belgium.

Hoxton Tom McCourt, bassist for The 4-Skins, 1977

In Europe, Germany has become an outpost of the Nazi Skin movement

In America, there were groups of white skinheads, black skinheads, Puerto Rican skinheads, Jewish skinheads, Latin American skinheads. In Germany, the Nazi Skins became famous not only for beating guest workers (foreign workers, mainly Turks and Kurds), but also for their murders. At the same time, the judges, who were more afraid of the "Red Terror", showed a rare favor to the skinheads (in the 80s in Germany, skinheads were only convicted once for the murder of the Turk Ramazan Avsi in the summer of 1986).

Skinheads, meanwhile, turned into a political force: they smashed anti-fascists, dealt with trade unions. The authorities realized who they were dealing with when, in 1987, in Lindau, skinheads attacked Christian believers during a church holiday in St. Stephen's Cathedral (the city authorities refused to provide a municipal hall for a convention of skinheads). The Vatican intervened, the skinheads were pressed by the police.

Skinheads appeared in Russia in the early 90s

But the Berlin Wall soon collapsed, and the ranks of the skinheads swelled with Germans from East Germany, where unemployment and despair reigned among the youth. German neo-fascists began to be considered all over the world as “specialists” in working with youth, and Germany in the 90s was infamous for setting fire to immigrant hostels.

After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, skinheads appeared in Poland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria and Russia.

Recently, more and more often we hear about skinheads. They are talked about on TV screens, described in newspapers and magazines. And in such a huge amount of information it is very difficult to understand, to find a real answer to the question "skinheads - who are they?". Are they dangerous to society? What are their main ones Let's try to answer these questions together today.

What is a subculture

Representatives of a certain youth subculture are teenagers who dress in a peculiar way, listen to certain music, and have their own jargon. They have their own pattern of behavior. They always arise spontaneously and, most often, they try to oppose themselves to the older generation.

Representatives of subcultures are far from always aggressive, cruel, etc. The fact is that with a closer acquaintance with serious publications and books about skinheads, there is an understanding that the picture drawn in our imagination by the media representatives is very far from reality.

Skinheads - a subculture that arose spontaneously

The very word "skinhead" came to us from the English language. Translated, it means "bald head" ("skin head"). At first, Western youth became interested in this direction. Over time, teenagers from other countries also joined the movement, as a result, it spread throughout the world. Already in the sixties of the last century, everyone knew Subculture continues to exist to this day. It is worth noting that the subculture, as such, is neither an ideological nor a political organization. Only in rare cases can it be associated with any movement or party.

Russian skinheads

Today, this subculture is very popular in our country. Skinheads first appeared in Russia in 1991. They were students of Moscow technical schools and vocational schools, teenagers living in the capital and Leningrad.

Are Russian skinheads different from Western ones? Who is it? Ordinary youth united spontaneously? Not really. Despite the fact that in our country the economic crisis was even worse than in England after the war, the skinhead movement in Russia did not appear naturally. Our teenagers were greatly influenced by Western mass culture. This just explains that the offspring of ordinary locksmiths and electricians sported suspenders and dockers' boots from England.

Russian skinheads are somewhat different. The Western-influenced subculture has them shouting about their people and country in foreign languages, waving American Confederate and German flags. True, this is done by representatives of one of the subspecies of this subculture - bonheads.

Skin directions

Like any other, this youth subculture has several directions. Skinheads are different. There are red skins that have their own website and even have their own magazine called Blasted Sky. A separate direction is anti-fascist skins. Representatives of this movement even guarded the concerts of rap artists, who are considered their sworn enemies by neo-Nazis. Such an event is called skin security.

However, very little is said about the various directions of this subculture to almost anyone. TV announcers, journalists, publicists, everyone who likes to discuss the topic of fascism, neo-Nazism and racism, prefer not to mention that there are anti-fascist skins. Therefore, in Russia (and in the West too), bonheads are the most famous.

Bonheads in Russia

So, everyone knows skinheads. Who are they and why are they being talked about in all the media? The whole demeanor and style of their life is copied from Western models. They dress and look at life the same as their Western counterparts, listen to the same music and prioritize the same values ​​in life. However, there is still a difference. Skinheads (bonheads) in Russia refer to the Aryan nations not only the American Anglo-Saxon white people and European peoples, but also the Slavic peoples (primarily Russians).

It should be noted that Russian skinheads are seriously mistaken. The subculture in Europe is different from ours. In other countries, skinheads do not at all agree that Russians can be attributed to the Aryan nation. After all, we are “racially inferior” to them.

However, both Western and Russian bonheads are under the tutelage of other, "adult" organizations. They are skillfully controlled by representatives of the ultra-right and neo-Nazi movements.

Appearance

Every subculture has its own external differences. Skinheads, who are sometimes scared away, just follow certain traditions. This is how, by their standards, a real skin should look like:

1. A real Aryan with blond hair, a straight thin nose and gray eyes. Of course, there may be slight deviations from the main type. For example, the eyes can be light brown or blue, or the hair is slightly darker than light blond. However, the general background must be preserved.
2. The head must be completely shaved or cut very short. Their hairstyles are not like the hairstyles of bandits or policemen. The skinhead has the same length of hair all over the head. Bangs, strands, etc. are not allowed. The main purpose of such a hairstyle is to prevent the enemy from grabbing your hair in a fight.
3. Almost 100% of skinheads have a lean physique. It is simply impossible to meet a representative of this subculture who is obese.
4. Wear only functional clothing. First of all, skinheads are recognized by army high boots. Preference is given to the famous "Grinders". Such shoes serve as a kind of weapon. Sometimes they wear but more often they prefer black skinny jeans tucked up to their boots. The belts have heavy buckles. Some guys wear suspenders. The jackets are black, made of slippery fabric, without a collar.
5. You will never see baubles, chains on the neck, piercings on a skinhead. Even if a guy puts on a swastika pendant, you should know that this is not a real representative of the skinhead subculture. In this form, he is no longer a fighter. Not to mention, it's hard to get into a fight when your ears, lips, nose, etc. are pierced.
6. A real skinhead doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and will never use drugs. Meanwhile, skinheads often adorn bare skulls and whiskey with aggressive tattoos.

These are the main signs of a representative of this subculture. Something may vary, but in small, insignificant details.

Their actions are condemned by society around the world. They are feared and despised, called "democracy killers" and "Nazi bastards." They are tried and imprisoned for the murders. Many programs have been made about them and countless books have been written. Skinheads - who are they? Let's try to understand in detail.

The history of skinheads

First of all, let's make one point. Skinheads are a subculture. Yes, yes, the same subculture as the punk movement, goths, emo and so on. But do not confuse "skins" with everyone else. The skinhead subculture is radically different from any other music-influenced culture. It all started, of course, in England, in good old London. Which is not surprising - the calm and arrogant English are famous for their ability to found wild and violent youth movements. Maybe they just got tired of being stiff and cold? Who knows. But it is not important. So, the skinhead movement (skinheads, leather heads - English) started in the 60s of the twentieth century in poor working-class neighborhoods. And it came from the very popular movement of mods (modernist, or, as they were also called, dudes), the movement of teddy boys (and in Russian gopniks) and football hooligans. They wore heavy construction boots, heavy docker jackets - donks, army T-shirts and jeans with suspenders. Doesn't it remind you of anything? Quite right, the clothing style of the modern skin was formed at the dawn of the movement. It was the typical clothing of a London hard worker who earned his bread by hard physical labor. The shaved head, the classic hallmark of the skin, served as protection against excess dirt and dust accumulating on the docks, as well as harmful insects such as lice. In general, the heads were often not shaved, but only trimmed under the “hedgehog”. The nickname "skinhead" in those days was insulting, humiliating, as hard workers were called.

The first skins respected (!) blacks and mulattoes. Not surprisingly, there were many immigrants among the workers of that time. Skins and visitors from Jamaica had common views, listened to the same music, in particular reggae and ska. The current of football hooligans had a very great influence on the skin movement. In many ways, it was to him that the skins were due to bomber jackets, which made it easy to slip out of the hands of an opponent during a street brawl, a shaved head, thanks to which it was impossible to grab a bully by the hair. Of course, the skin youth had a lot of trouble with the police. Tellingly, both boys and girls participated in the movement. It would not be superfluous to note that, like all football fans, skinheads liked to spend time in the pub over a glass of foam.

But time passes, people grow up, and the first wave of skins by the beginning of the 70s began to wane. The skinheads began to start families and slowly forget about their former violent way of life. However, nothing goes unnoticed, and now England is already exploding with a wave of wild and aggressive music - punk rock. This style was ideally suited to working-class youth who were looking for harder music for their movement. Street punk appeared - a great solution for skins, which, with the light hand of one English newspaper scribbler, was given the name "Oi!". The style was different from punk - it was classic guitar riffs overlaid on a distinctly audible bass guitar and drums line. The choruses were like the screams of the fans in the stands (hello hooligans!). With the music came additions to clothing - skins of the second wave began to wear army t-shirts more often. All this was alien to the old skins who grumbled at the youth of the 70s for their music and clothes. At that time, among the skinheads of the first wave, there was a slogan "stay loyal to the 69th." It is believed that it was in 1969 that the peak of the popularity of the skinhead movement occurred. So, the English youth began to get more and more interested in punk music, and the working class got its own movement. Since the skins already had their own musical style and clothing style, their views turned to politics. Many skinheads began to support the struggle of the right-wing parties, merging with British neo-fascism, while others defended the ideas of the left, promoting the working class and the ideas of communism. Basically, the left was first-wave skins who opposed racism. There were also apolitical groups that preferred their own subcultural politics.

The impetus for the development of the Nazi skinhead movement, that is, the skins as they look now, was the transition of the punk band Skrewdriver from street punk directly to skinhead music. It was the first street punk band to publicly declare their neo-Nazi views. They opposed communism and sympathized with the National Front. By the end of the 70s, the right-wing movement intensified, and a racist skinhead appeared on the streets of London. It needed to be seen! All the media sounded the alarm, the English society, not yet recovering from the Second World War, looked with horror at any skinhead, seeing him as a fascist. The misconception about the "racist" nature of each skin was reinforced by the National Front and the Skrewdriver group. Politicians skillfully watered the skins with the terms fascism and racism. Such actions had a result - skinheads began to be treated extremely negatively.

Finally, by the mid-1990s, a third wave of skinheads was being formed. 17-18 - summer punks shave off their mohawks and join the ranks of skins. Old skinhead ideas are being revived and classic skinhead groups are being formed in most countries of Europe and the West. Now it's basically a mixture of classic football hooligans and hardcore punk skins. In Russia, unfortunately, 99 percent of skinheads are supporters of neo-Nazi views. Modern Russian society firmly believes that any skinhead is a racist.

The history of skinheads

Skinhead clothing style

How to single out a representative of a particular subculture in a crowd? Of course, according to his (her) clothes. Skinheads are no exception. Their paraphernalia and clothes differ from the general fashion, and, for the most part, are unified. Consider the general appearance of a modern skin. Let's confine ourselves to Russian skinheads as the trend most familiar to us - the look of the Russian skin is almost the same as the Western one, the difference is only in the Nazi symbols used by our skins.

So, clothes. The "uniform" of skinheads is taken from the very origins of the movement, namely from the London port workers. These are heavy boots, camouflage pants and T-shirts. The classic look of the skin is a black “bomber” (wide heavy jacket), blue or black jeans with rolled up trousers, suspenders and black “boots”. Naturally shaved head. The ideal shoes for the skin are the so-called “grinders” (Grinders boots). However, they are not cheap, so they are mainly limited to military shoes. Laces are a separate issue in the skin's outfit. By the color of the laces, you can determine its belonging to a particular movement group. For example, white laces are worn by those who killed or participated in the murder of a “non-Russian” person, red laces are worn by antifa, and brown laces are worn by neo-Nazis. You can, of course, wear shoelaces of any color without belonging to one group or another, but in this case, it is better not to catch the eye of skins that honor traditions. In general, skinhead clothing is very practical - it helps to protect yourself in a fight and significantly makes the blows heavier. Attributes serve the same purpose - metal chains, carbines, and so on. Some skins like German cross patches, swastikas and the like. True, they are used very rarely, because in this case the skin becomes an easy prey for the police, revealing its ultra-right views.

Many skinheads love tattoos. They are usually applied to covered parts of the body that are not visible under a jacket on the street, since it is easy to spot a supporter of the movement from them. The theme of the tattoo is mostly monotonous - these are political far-right slogans, swastika symbols, German and Celtic crosses, images of the skins themselves in various poses, various inscriptions like “Skinhead”, “White Power”, “Working class”, “National Front” and so on. . For such tattoos, skinheads are often harassed and abused by law enforcement agencies, as they directly scream about Nazi beliefs, so some prefer to apply less obvious images like pagan gods, weapons, animals, and so on. Letter ciphers are often pricked, for example, "88", "14/88", "18". Here the number indicates the serial number of the letter in the Latin alphabet, that is, 88 - Heil Hitler, 18 - Adolf Hitler. 14 is not a letter cipher, these are 14 words of the motto of the White Struggle, formulated by one of the ideologists of the skinhead movement, David Lane, who has been in a closed American prison for life: “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” (“we must protect the present of our people and the future of our white children”). Often there are double runes in lightning "zig" (SS), rune "otal" and other runic combinations.

Such is the style of the modern skinhead. Of course, you should not assume that it is typical for everyone - many skins today dress like most ordinary people, since it is more difficult to identify them that way. Authentic Skin clothing is a tribute to the traditions of the movement.

Skinhead clothing style

Skinhead ideology

Here we come to the main point. The ideology of the skinhead movement. Since the propaganda of Nazi skinheads and the ideology of racial superiority have done their job, it is difficult to find the ideology of true, "classic" skins on the Internet today. Let's try to correct this shortcoming and open the reader's eyes to the true state of things. For convenience, we will divide the skin movement into three main trends - classic skinheads, Nazi skinheads and red skinheads.

Go. Classic skinheads. They stood at the origins of the entire movement, therefore they are honored veterans. Their ideology is the opposition of the simple working class to the bourgeoisie, the opposition of young people to their parents. This is a rebuff of power over the poor and parental prohibitions. This is pride for simple hard workers and hatred for the rich. Classic skins are apolitical. They drink beer and love football, a nod to the football hooligans who have had a major impact on the current. Not a single classic skinhead can do without a good fight - again, the influence of hooligans is noticeable. Actually, nothing more can be said about this trend. They love ska music, reggae, Oi! and so on.

Nazi skins. And here there is something to stop at: racist skinheads are the scourge of modern society. They constantly arrange fights, beatings of foreign citizens, protests. They are arrested, convicted, imprisoned, but they remain true to their ideals. The idea is simple - the superiority of the white race and the cleansing of the country from alien elements. Taking advantage of popular hostility towards foreigners, skinheads often recruit an impressive number of young people into their ranks. In Russia, the Nazi skinhead movement is outrageously popular. Recently, things have come to the point that foreigners are simply afraid to be in the country and prefer to live where the problem of Nazism is not so acute. On the one hand, the ideology of the Nazis seems cruel and inhumane. The actions of skins find a huge resonance in modern society - they are hated, despised, trying to catch and punish them. Killing people is certainly not the best thing to do. On the other hand, it is impossible not to notice that the actions of skinheads have had an effect - foreigners do not feel as free in the country as before. Objectively, we can say that skinheads are a way to protect society from overly insolent immigrants. True, it is a pity that the killings of blacks and other citizens are often unjustified and do not bear the nature of retribution, which could be explained. Shares of Russian skins are usually an attack on innocent black students, entrepreneurs and so on.

Nazi skins are divided into two groups - these are ordinary skins and ideological leaders. The first, respectively, participate in brawls and actions, play an executive role. The latter deal with the political side of the issue, promote the ideas of Nazism in society, plan actions, and so on. Their sphere is the struggle for power in the country. Theoretically, the victory of such leaders in the political arena should mean a peaceful, political settlement of the issue of the growing number of immigrants. Agree, patriotism is not alien to any of us, and we don’t want to wake up one fine day in a country that is no longer our own. Many skinheads follow the straight edge (straight edge from English - “clear line”, abbreviated as sXe), that is, they lead a healthy lifestyle. Such behavior, of course, ennobles the skin, so plentifully watered with mud by modern media and politicians. However, how to treat the nationalists is a moot point, in their movement there are both positive and negative sides. The decision must be made by everyone for himself.

And finally, antifa. Red skins, redskins, as they are also called. For every action there is a reaction, as Uncle Newton used to say. Supporters of the red movement oppose racial prejudice and promote left-wing views - communism, class struggle, "factories for workers" and so on. There are two antifa movements: S.H.A.R.P. (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice) and R.A.S.H. (Red and Anarchist SkinHeads). In addition to the "left" views, antifa have another feature. They hate skins and carry out actions aimed at suppressing them. Fights between skinheads and antifa are not uncommon today. And again, the controversial question is how to treat anti-fascists to a modern person. On the one hand, opposition to racial killings is, of course, good. On the other hand, fighting with the methods of the enemy is meaningless. It can be said that antifa create as many problems as skinheads create. Moreover, the struggle of the Redskins is similar to the opening of a "second front" during the Second World War - late and ineffective. Skinheads have time to fight off antifa attacks and plan their own racist actions. The fight against illegal activities should be carried out by law enforcement agencies, and not by a group of young people who are as aggressive as the Nazis.

These are the directions of skin movement. There are a huge number of nuances in them, and you can argue on each issue indefinitely.

Skinhead ideology

Conclusion

A swastika on the sleeve, a shaved skull, impressive berets, a black bomber jacket and a menacing look. Skinhead? As we now understand, a stereotype. The skinhead movement initially promoted concepts that were directly opposite to modern Nazis. Nevertheless, the Nazi skinheads took place as an independent movement and acquired their own music and views, laid down by each subculture. The question of their attitude is, of course, debatable. But their actions are undeniably illegal and unethical. It is possible that the skins will change the method of fighting against alien elements in the near future. As for Russia, modern society for the most part expresses a negative attitude towards Russian skinheads. That does not prevent them from carrying out their actions to destroy and humiliate the "non-white" races with virtually impunity.

And now that you have read this article, I will ask you to answer one question. So, what do you think now, so who are skinheads: neo-Nazis, or an ordinary teenage subculture?

The media often uses the word "skinheads", and in the vast majority of cases it carries a negative connotation. Let's not allow ourselves superficial judgments and figure out who they are, and why in the minds of the British the skinhead is still more often dressed in Crombie or Harrington than in the usual bomber jacket.

As we said in a previous article (see), in the sixties, the youth of Great Britain was captivated by the image of fashion - a young esthete, hedonist and dandy.

In the second half of the decade, several ways of developing this image were outlined. The world of music was captured by a wave of psychedelia, and fashion could not stand aside. Parties became a real kaleidoscope of surreal patterns and bright colors. A completely different style was developed for themselves by young people who became known as “hard mods” (English “hard mods”). It was simpler, more practical and contrasted strongly with the images of Bohemia.

It cannot be argued that this was a deliberate opposition to fashion. The differences between hard-modes and representatives of the “golden youth” and creative intelligentsia were natural: the difference at the level of the social environment led to a divergence in tastes and outlook on life. However, by the end of the 60s, it became more noticeable within the subculture itself. Those mods that rampaged during the famous pogroms in the south of Great Britain in the mid-60s can be safely considered hard mods. They loved to fight, were engaged in theft and robbery, carried edged weapons and often united in real gangs. They were young people born after the war.

The adolescence of this generation came at a time when the difficulties of the war and post-war years were left behind: it was possible to live without thinking only about how to feed yourself and restore the country. The fashion revolution of the sixties, aimed at teenagers, began. Everyone wanted to keep up with the times. A lot of music, clubs and stylish clothes appeared around, and all this could become yours - if only there was money!

The British economy, gaining momentum, provided jobs, making it possible to honestly save up for a stylish suit and a motor scooter. It was possible to go an easier way - crime in all its manifestations helped to get money for new clothes, drugs and trips to the most fashionable clubs in the city. On Friday night, the mods acted like playboys, pop idols and high society people, but the day came and many of them had to go back to work or look for illegal money.

“They called me a hard mod… the media seized on the pogrom story [the famous clash of mods with rockers in the south of England in 1964] and described the mods as a crazy mob of drug addicts prone to violence and unrest. Of course, there was a grain of truth in the nonsense that the newspapers scribbled. Among the mods were those who went to Brighton, Margaret and other cities only to arrange complete chaos there. I must confess I was one of them.

Reputation was everything. I started carrying a weapon (an axe) with me and was ready to use it if necessary ... Appearance was very important - everyone around was literally required to wear a woolen suit"

John Leo Waters

British hard fashion late 60s, London

The fact is that, despite the desire for elitism, the origins of the fashion movement largely lay in the working environment. The poor and disadvantaged areas of south London were home to many mods and ordinary teenagers who soaked up urban culture with their age.

Brixton, one such area, included a large Jamaican diaspora. A declining economy, a wave of crime, a hurricane that devastated the east of Jamaica in 1944, and the promise of jobs from the British government attracted immigrants from the Caribbean to London. The sharp influx of foreigners from a distant land played a major role in the transformation of hard mods into skinheads. In 1962, the former British colony gained independence, but such a large-scale political event could not but have negative consequences for the population. Many Jamaicans continued to emigrate to the former metropolis.

At the new location, Jamaican youth introduced their London peers to their culture. The island had its own subculture: rude boys are literally “rough guys”, but in Jamaican English they are rather “tough”, “severe”. Rudboys were from the working class and often showed violence towards each other and those around them. Their life was not easy, because they often grew up in the most disadvantaged areas of Kingston, the capital of not the most peaceful country. Like many young people, all the more daring and often involved in crime, rudboys strove to dress brand-new: suits, tight ties, trilby hats and “pork pie”. Perhaps this style was inspired by jazz musicians in the United States. Roodboys preferred the freshest and most modern local music: ska, and later rocksteady.

Ska is a musical genre that originated in Jamaica at the turn of the fifties and sixties. The combination of American rhythm and blues with the Caribbean styles of mento and calypso resulted in a completely new and very distinctive sound.

In the second half of the sixties, ska music evolved into rocksteady. Compared to its predecessor, this style features a slower tempo, syncopated bass, and the use of small bands with electric bass guitar (early ska bands were large ensembles and mostly used double bass). The most important ska bands and performers were and remain Toots and The Maytals, The Skatalites, Bob Marley and the Wailers (the leader of the latter became one of the most recognizable musicians in history), The Upsetters (the group of the famous producer Lee "Scratch" Perry), Derrick Morgan , Max Romeo, Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker and many others.

So, on the wave of emigration, the youth culture of Jamaica came to the shores of Foggy Albion. It is not surprising that due to their close age, love for music and the desire to look interesting, the English guys began to adopt the style of ore fighting. The Mods have traditionally been fond of American soul and rhythm and blues, but also quite interested in Jamaican music. A huge merit in this belongs to the English label Melodisc Records, founded in 1949 and releasing Afro-Caribbean music. The company began recording Jamaican musicians in London and, building on the success of these recordings, founded the Blue Beat Records division. It specialized in ska and rocksteady music, beloved by oreboys, mods, and later by skinheads.

One of the brightest musicians with whom the label collaborated was Prince Buster, a man who made a huge contribution to the formation of ska and the popularization of the genre in the UK.

The youth of south London attended clubs designed for Jamaicans called "ska bars" with great interest, learned to dance ska and adopted elements of style. Records of African-American and Caribbean music sold like hot cakes in stores.

Thus, when mods began to gravitate towards psychedelic music in the late sixties, south London mods already had a special connection with Jamaican music, and the hard mods did not follow the bohemians. Indigenous Londoners and immigrants, hard fashion and rude boi merged into a subculture that came to be called skinheads (English - “skinheads”). The name of the subculture is made up of two words: "skin" - "skin" and "head" - "head". There is a version that this word was taken from the lexicon of American infantrymen.

“… Fashion and music changed. The clubs started playing strange music like The Byrds and Jimi Hendrix, and the mods had no choice but to go to Jamaican clubs - only they did not stop playing black music. So mods went to ska clubs and adopted the style of rudboys, but since they weren't black they couldn't call themselves that, so they borrowed the word "skinheads", which was the name given to USMC recruits who had their heads shaved when they went to army. In the Marine Corps, only officers called a recruit "skinhead", like: "Hey, you skinhead, come here!" So originally the skinhead style was a white variant of the rudboy style."

Dick Coomes

These people moved further and further away from the refinement of mods, and after a few decades, the connection between the two subcultures was barely traced. But let us dwell in more detail on the skinheads of the first generation, the so-called traditional skinheads (Traditional Skinheads).

What did they look like? In addition to the usual for mods (English “Sta-Prest”), which kept their shape perfectly, a few more no less practical elements were added: jeans, suspenders and heavy work boots. Haircuts have become shorter and simpler. Some, in the fashion of the ore battles or out of the practicality of the workers, shaved almost bald. Skinheads wore mohair, favored by mods and hard mods, but with a slightly elongated cut, and plaid button-down shirts, the collar of which was fixed with buttons.

The classic and famous bomber jacket MA-1, which later became an icon of the image of the subculture and, in fact, its synonym, enjoyed great popularity. Jackets have not disappeared from the wardrobe of hard mod skinheads. Among the outerwear, the windbreaker was also a success - a cotton semi-sports bomber jacket with fringing stripes on the collar, sleeves and elasticated bottom, as well as a British dockers work jacket.

A curious detail was the manner in which the trousers were rolled up. Lightly at first to show the boots, then harder to show off the colored socks taken from the ore fighting style. According to the memoirs of those years, once the organizers of the concert gave the famous reggae singer Desmond Dekker a suit, and he asked to shorten his trousers by fifteen centimeters. In imitation of their idol, teenagers began to roll up their trousers. Not to mention the fact that, to a certain extent, Mr. Dekker also contributed to the fashion for short haircuts among the future skinheads who admired him.

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Recently, both from TV screens and from the pages of newspapers and magazines, a lot has been said about “skinheads” (we put this word in quotation marks, since the real subculture of skinheads is very different from their image that is imposed by the media). Moreover, from the stories of journalists, more aimed at inciting emotions than at a truthful and detailed explanation, it is difficult to understand: who are they, how many of them are there, what real danger do they pose to society? Meanwhile, the skinhead subculture has been quite well studied by Russian and foreign scientists - psychologists, culturologists, sociologists, political scientists (only the opinions of these specialists are not covered in the electronic media and are not known to the general public). There are many detailed studies of this kind on the Internet. Let's name at least the work of M.V. Vershinin "Youth subcultures: skinheads ”, which contains a detailed story about the history and current stage of development of the skin movement. Having familiarized yourself with them, you never tire of being surprised: how far is the image of skinheads that the media create from reality and you involuntarily ask the sacramental question: who benefits from this?

Who are skinheads?

Skinheads (from the English words skin head - literally: bald head) - a direction in the Western, and then international youth subculture, which arose in the 60s of the twentieth century and still exists. It should be immediately noted that youth subcultures are not political or even ideological organizations, although sometimes they are associated with individual parties and movements. A subculture is a kind of lifestyle that involves certain behaviors: style of clothing, music, hairstyles, own jargon, incomprehensible to others. Subcultures arise spontaneously and, as a rule, oppose themselves to the world of adults. Examples of subcultures other than skinheads are hippies, punks, rappers (fans of music in the RAP style (“rhythmic American poetry”), “metalheads” (fans of the musical style “heavy metal”), etc.)

The skinhead movement had several stages, each of which was characterized by its own specifics. Initially, skinheads were called the movement of young people who came from working-class neighborhoods, who themselves worked in the docks or factories, or even knocked on the thresholds of labor exchanges (the post-war economic crisis in England regularly supplied more and more young people to the skinhead movement). Unlike other youth spontaneous movements - for example, dudes, they did not seek to imitate the clothes and manners of the youth of the bourgeois classes. On the contrary, skinheads cultivated a kind of "proletarian pride", trying to emphasize that they are the children of factory, factory and port workers. Hence the short hairstyle - it is unsafe for workers to wear long hair, it can be pulled into the machine, mandatory suspenders and boots - like the English dockers, a passion for the "proletarian drink" beer - while the "majors" or "hippies" preferred strong alcohol, marijuana and chemical drugs, the cult of "proletarian sports - primarily football (skinheads became famous for brawls after football matches). The biggest freedom that skinheads allowed themselves was short skirts with their girlfriends (skin girls), also simply and neatly dressed and short-haired. The first skinheads listened to American rhythm and blues music, then to reggae music that came from Jamaica. This already shows that initially the skinheads did not have the slightest racial prejudice, because both of them are the music of the “colored”. Moreover, in the ranks of the skinheads of the 60s there were many guys and girls with black skin!

The then skins were mostly apolitical. If they showed interest in political ideologies, then, rather, in the left, as befits the representatives of the proletarian youth. So, among them, a tattoo with a crucifix was popular, under which there was an inscription: "He was crucified by the capitalists." Those of the skins who nevertheless participated in politics preferred the Labor Party as a workers' party.

In the 70s comes the second wave of the skin movement. The clothes change a little: now they are jeans and an American pilots jacket, musical fashion - punk comes to the place of reggae, music in the style of "Oil". But most importantly, the politicization of the movement begins, it splits into the right, with which today all skinheads are usually identified (and quite erroneously!) and the left. The birth of right-wing or brown skins was the result of increased propaganda among street youth by English far-right illegal parties - primarily the National Front and the British National Socialist Party. Neo-Nazis from such skins began to form street fighters of neo-fascist parties for fights with communists and anarchists and for attacks on “colored people”. It was these “new skinheads” who began to apply tattoos in the form of a swastika or a Celtic cross, use Nazi greetings, racist and anti-Semitic slogans. Since by their actions - beatings and murders of blacks and Asians, they attracted the most attention of the media, the layman took them for skinheads as such.

The left wing of skinheads, the so-called “red skins” (redskins), was noticed much less and is noticed a little later. With a similar appearance - a paramilitary uniform, a short haircut, they profess anarcho-communist views. Their slogan is "skinheads against racism and capitalism". They often have brawls with brown skins and not always in favor of the browns. Red skins are also involved in the anti-globalization movement, its street fighters fought on the barricades in Seattle, in Genoa, in Davos. The demands of the red skins - the cessation of the predatory exploitation of the countries of the Third World by the countries " golden billion ” as a minimum and world socialist revolution as a maximum. Naturally, not only people with white skin color can join red skinheads. Red skins consider themselves - and not without reason - the true successors of the skinhead movement of the 60s, as they see in it an expression of the energy and worldview of the proletarian youth. They perceive "brown skins" as marginal groups that do not have the right to appropriate the name and external attributes of skinheads.

Close to red skins are SHARP skins (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice - “skinheads against racial prejudice”), a movement that arose in New York in the 80s. Not being anarcho-communists, they also oppose racism, for the equality of all peoples.

It should be noted that the classic, apolitical skinheads, “bison” of the 60s and their young supporters also did not recognize the ultra-right and began to call them nothing more than “bonheads” (“bone heads”, or in a free translation - “dumb-headed”, “ mindless"). Specialists in youth subcultures also believe that there is nothing in common between bonheads and skinheads, except for some elements of clothing (for example, for youth subcultures, favorite music is the most important attribute, but bonheads and skinheads listen to different music: bonheads - heavy metal, skinheads - reggae or Oil -punk). Therefore, it is not accidental that specialists conclude that bonheads are an artificially formed and alien direction in the skinhead movement, while real skinheads, as befits a youth subculture, arose spontaneously (M. Vershinin). By the way, among specialists, the concept of “skinhead” is usually applied to this entire youth subculture, and those who are called “skinheads” by the media, that is, neo-Nazis are called bonheads.

In Russia, skinheads appeared in 1991, among the students of the capital's vocational schools and technical schools, in general, the youth of the "dormitory areas" of Moscow and Leningrad. Unlike the West, our skin movement did not arise quite naturally (although there was also an economic crisis similar to the one that erupted in England after the war, or even worse), but under the influence of Western mass culture. That is why the children of Moscow and St. Petersburg turners and locksmiths wear boots and braces of English dockers, and not caps and overalls, like their fathers. If they shout something about Russia and Russians, then more often in English, waving either the German flag or the flag of the American Confederates (of course, they mean bonheads). All areas of skins are also represented in Russia. There are red skins (they even publish their own magazine - "Exploded Sky" and have a website on the Internet - "redskins.ru ”), there are anti-fascist skins (who have repeatedly organized skin security - a kind of Skin protection of concerts of rappers - the eternal enemies of neo-Nazis). But few people know about them. The official television of the Russian Federation, as well as in the West, which verbally opposes racism and neo-Nazism, diligently hushed up the existence of anti-fascist skinheads and, in fact, “PR” bonheads with its stories ...

Clothes, attitudes, favorite music of Russian skinheads - all this repeats Western patterns. The only difference is that Russian bonheads consider as Aryan nations not only the peoples of foreign Europe and the Anglo-Saxon white population of the United States, but also the Slavs and, in particular, Russians (alas, they do not know that their Western "brothers in race" absolutely disagree with such conclusions and refer to to the Slavs as "racially inferior"). Just like in the West, Russian bonheads are “patronized” by “adult” ultra-right organizations like the People’s National Party of Ivanov-Sukharevsky, trying to turn them into their attack aircraft. Naturally, some bonheads join the ranks of ultra-right organizations, but the bon-movement as such remains a fairly autonomous entity.

Russian skinheads in general and bonheads in particular do not have a single organization. They are a collection of disparate and unrelated groups (on average, 10-15 people each), which do not always and everywhere trade in beatings and murders, often the case is limited to drinking beer and listening to hard rock and just as easily disintegrate as arise. True, in November 2002 in the capital, bonheads tried to hold a Russian congress, timed to coincide with the birthday of the cult figure of Western brown skins, Ian Stewart (400 people arrived at the congress), but this attempt was stopped by the police. The number of bonheads in Russia is generally small. According to 2003 data, there were 15,000 of them throughout Russia, about 5,000 in Moscow with a population of 7 million, and about 3,000 in St. exceeds 20,000 in Russia). As a rule, we have bonheads students of high schools, vocational schools, less often - universities. The vast majority are the so-called "pioneers", street fighters who are not very sophisticated in ideology and are good only for drinking beer, listening to rock, wandering the streets and putting up fights. Without the ideologists of the movement, they do not pose a great danger, because by itself their ardor can easily dissipate and the movement will fall apart. There are no more than a few hundred ideologists and leaders of bonheads. There are no more than a hundred of them in Moscow. They publish samizdat magazines (Under Zero, Street Fighter (Moscow), Russian Fist (St. Petersburg)), make Internet sites, prepare and distribute training manuals on street fights. The titles are indicative: “Hooligan style of hand-to-hand combat”, “Use what is at hand”, “Fight as it is”, as well as quotes from them: “... Razor strikes along their trajectory resemble sliding punches .... ... eyes, forehead skin (bleeds heavily - blinds), neck, large arteries of the arms and legs, stomach .... ... the muscles of the peritoneum, often covered with a thick layer of fat, break through with a powerful circular blow ... ... there are no invulnerable places for a razor ... ... but it heals slowly, unlike wounds inflicted by a blunt weapon ... ".

It should also be noted that bonheads are mainly grouped in two capitals - Moscow and St. Petersburg (about 90% of brown skins are located there). They carry out their actions regularly, but against the background of general criminal statistics, the crimes they commit are, as they say, a drop in the ocean (which, of course, does not negate the need for moral condemnation of each such act, especially since for relatives and friends of the victims, these statistics are weak). comfort). This can be seen, for example, according to the website Polit.Ru (“Radical nationalism in Russia and opposition to it in 2005 (annual report of the information and analytical center “Sova”)”) For the whole of 2005, bonheads (which anti-fascist analysts incorrectly call skinheads) there were 366 beatings resulting in injuries and 28 murders. At the same time, according to electronic media (“article “Criminal Russia ” on the website of the Perm branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation), according to the report of Prosecutor General Ustinov on the level of crime in the country, in 2005 about 30,000 murders were committed in the Russian Federation (it should be noted that in reality there were, of course, more: according to electronic media, less than half are registered crimes). So, out of 30,000 murders committed in the Russian Federation in 2005 (according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which are clearly underestimated), only 28 were committed by "skinheads" (according to human rights activists, who, on the contrary, are interested in overestimating the "degree" of extremism). This is about one thousandth of a percent - a value that sociologists usually do not take into account due to its statistical insignificance (it is included in the so-called "error percentage"). Nevertheless, this thousandth of a percent is constantly in the field of view of the media, while all other crimes are not only hushed up, but no one particularly “PR” them.

Skinheads in the distorted media mirror

So the reality is that:

- skinheads are heterogeneous and include completely apolitical, anti-fascist, and even anarcho-communist groups;

- skinheads are a youth subculture and, by definition, cannot coincide with criminal gangs. The concept of subculture is broader, as already mentioned, it implies a way of life (it may seem that the very facts of beating Africans and Asians by at least some skinheads refute this thesis, but this is not so. To clarify, we can give the following example: the hippie subculture does not exclude and even welcomes the use of soft drugs (primarily marijuana. Naturally, some of the hippies are therefore involved in the sale of marijuana and are therefore associated with the drug mafia. But this does not at all follow that the drug mafia and the hippie movement are actually the same);

- skinheads are not a political party, although there are their contacts with ultra-right parties and movements ("Slavic Union", "National People's Party"). Party membership implies only ideological agreement. A member of the RNE, for example, can be both a folk music lover and a rock lover, as long as he shares the ideas of Russian nationalism. For bonheads, as for all youth groups, music is the main distinguishing principle. A bonhead can't be a bonhead if he doesn't listen to hard rock. In addition, the party arises artificially, at the will of its creators, the skin movement arises spontaneously, from groups of idle working or unemployed youth;

- bonheads have nothing to do with Russian traditional culture and traditional Russian nationalism at all (unlike, for example, Black Hundredswho, indeed, are trying to revive the Russian national movement of a century ago). Russian skinheads in general and bonheads in particular are the product of transplanting phenomena of Western mass culture onto our soil (just like rappers, rastamans, Hare Krishnas, Mormons, etc.). If it were not for the fall of the Iron Curtain, the guys from the Moscow and St. Petersburg outskirts would not have watched Fight Club, they would not have heard black metal, and there would be no skinheads in Russia. This is evidenced by their very appearance, copied from Western bonheads, the way they call themselves nicknames in English or German (Hans, Martin, etc.), a set of their favorite rock bands, mostly German and English-speaking, and finally, dislike to blacks in a country where there have never been areas with a black population and tension between whites and blacks has no social roots;

- bonheads are scattered, small in number, grouped mainly in the capitals, the crimes committed by them make up a tiny percentage of the total number of the same crimes committed for other, non-ideological reasons.

The media paint us a completely different image of "skinheads":

- Skinheads are presented exclusively as neo-fascists of the most primitive sort. All kinds of reports on TV news programs depict drunken teenagers stupidly yelling Nazi slogans and insults against non-whites, all this is presented by journalists as “skinhead hangouts”. Some journalists agree that "skinheads" can be dressed in any way, and not necessarily in "bombers" and army boots and may not even be shaved (!), Thus, skinheads are identified with any nationalist hooligans and are generally taken out for the framework of youth subcultures (!). At the same time, the author of these lines has never heard TV journalists mention the existence of red skinheads or anti-fascist skinheads. There is either blatant lack of professionalism or a deliberate suppression of facts;

- The media does not distinguish between members of radical nationalist parties and the skinhead movement. So, in early April 2006, when anti-skinhead propaganda reached its climax on TV, the NTV channel broadcast a story about the admission of Ivanov-Sukharevsky to the organization. Despite the fact that the young people were dressed in neat shirts and trousers, reminiscent of the NSDAP uniform, it was assumed that the viewer was skinheads (although the only thing that resembled them was short hairstyles);

Skinheads are portrayed as a formidable and extremely dangerous force for society. Statistics on murders carried out by bonheads or just neo-Nazi militants are not given, dry figures are replaced by emotional stories about the brutality of the beatings. The number of "skinheads" voiced by TV and radio journalists is several times higher than the figures that we find on the Internet, in the official reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the works of specialists in youth subcultures, and even in the reports of human rights activists.

From all this, the perfect correctness of M. Vershinin is obvious, who argued that the media, with perseverance worthy of better use, create a political bogey out of the skinhead movement - a heterogeneous, small, imitative and purely teenage phenomenon.

We would only add to this that such a media policy not only misleads society, but also contributes to the quantitative growth of such "skinheads" as they are portrayed by the media. By describing the atrocities of skins, the media, hypocritically declaring themselves "fighters against fascism", form such an image of a skinhead that it turns out to be the most attractive for teenagers, to whom the "adult world" turns not its most pleasant and best side. "Skinheads" are portrayed as strong, courageous, invincible and elusive, they can beat anyone and not be afraid of retribution, even if they are arrested by the police, they supposedly get off with a "light fright". As for the condemnation of the inhumanity and xenophobia of the “skins”, these are the terms of the “adult”, alien world, moreover, proclaimed by liberal journalists, defenders of the regime that did not bring the workers and their children little good. So, the result of the fight against skinheads in the liberal media is imitative actions on the part of young people who learn about everything from television programs. Previously, they were just "gopniks", drinking beer in the stairwells, fighting among themselves, now, having watched NTV and ORT programs about skinheads, they "play skinheads" - the way they are presented in the media (about the suspenders of English dockers and Oil-punk they didn't even hear it). Sometimes these "games" end in blood. Journalists get the desired sensation, with even greater enthusiasm they take up exposing skinheads, and everything repeats ...

3. Who benefits from it?

The question of Roman law: “seek who benefits” in this case is more than appropriate. Obviously, both in Russia and abroad, there are powerful political forces that are interested in fanning the myth of pernicious Russian nationalism, and in creating such a small and manageable, but very noisy and odious phenomenon. We will not claim that these forces are directly "ordering" journalists for false and provocative stories about "skinheads". Most likely, here we are not dealing with external, repressive censorship, as in Soviet times, but with the internal self-censorship of journalists - media workers know in advance what their new owners want and try to please them, creating more and more new ideological myths. But be that as it may, without the support of a certain segment of society and the political elite, such large-scale operations to manipulate public consciousness, and even with the use of central SM, are not carried out.

It is easy to outline a short list: who benefits from inflating the topic of Russian nationalism:

Further, these are our Russian radical liberals, who are also not averse to speculating on the topic of “Russian fascism”. After all, firstly, this is in the interests of their masters from the West and coincides with their own calls for the destruction of the Russian Federation as the last stronghold of the empire. In addition, this coincides with their spiritual impulse to pour mud on Russians as often as possible, because our liberals are almost without exception completely irrational and notorious Russophobes. Finally, this looks like a blow to President Putin, who, allegedly, cannot cope with the threat of "Russian fascism."

The hysteria around “Russian nationalism” also only plays into the hands of domestic Russian nationalists and separatists, since their dream is to separate its national regions from Russia. And for this, the demonization of Russians in the eyes of the inhabitants of the national regions is very, very necessary, which is served by provocative stories about skinheads in the liberal media (all the more so, the bond between separatists from the outskirts and liberals in Moscow was formed back in the days of the first Chechen campaign, in which Kovalev and Kiselev and comrades acted as "information support" for Dudaev and Basaev).

And, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, it is also beneficial for the Putin regime. Of course, like any state, it is not interested in gangs of neo-Nazi teenagers “rocking” the social order, but it is interested in creating such a feeling among the townsfolk. The more the townsfolk will appreciate Putin and his "edinorosov", which, although not perfect, are still better than fascist lawlessness.

Thus, no matter how you look at it, inflating the propaganda performance about skinheads is only beneficial for everyone. Naturally, with the exception of the people of Russia. But the above-named players of the political "chessboard" do not care about the people.

Vakhitov R. With all the richness of feelings and emotions that a person has to experience in relation to his neighbor, there are not so many ways to manifest them. On the other hand, some of them include [...] Read carefully: In the economics section, quotations 1,3,6,7 - 2000, the rest - 2012. In the "politics" section, quotes 2,3,5,8 - 2000 and 2001, the rest - 2012. In the miscellaneous section […]

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