Skinhead culture originated in the UK in the 1960s from the merging of two groups: the middle-class Mods and the Jamaican Rude Boys. The culture was originally multiracial and working-class, but in the 1970s, it declined due to negative media portrayal. It re-emerged in the late 1970s with elements of neo-Nazi extremism. Today, skinhead groups are politically diverse, and fascist groups have been marginalized by more moderate groups. The physical appearance of skinheads does not reveal their beliefs and values, which are complex and varied.
“Skinhead” is usually a derogatory term referring to a young person, usually a white male, who has a shaved head and who holds white supremacist and racist views. As such, it is an oversimplification of a social group that does not fully explore the complexity of issues involving skinhead distinctions from contemporary values. As with any subculture, stereotypes are based on an element of truth that must be sought to separate conjecture from fact.
The origin of the term skinhead can be traced back to the 1960s in the UK. The social group arose from two other important social groups of the time period. The first were the Mods, short for modernists, who were a group of middle-class youth formed in the late 1950s in England. The second influence came from the Jamaican subculture, whose followers were known as the Rude Boys.
Mods were interested in fashion, motorcycles and ethnic music. They followed rock music from British bands from the Liverpool and River Mersey areas, and foreign music from African-American and Jamaican cultures. The Mods began to split into two groups in the 1960s when the hard Mods, who were working-class youth, could not afford a more lavish lifestyle. Hard Mods shaved their heads and wore jeans and work boots to mimic the working class men of the period. This set them apart from traditional Mod followers, as well as young people involved in the hippie movement.
The Jamaican Rude Boys brought reggae music to England and lived in working class neighborhoods along London’s docks and East End. This brought them into close contact with the Hard Mods. Both groups began to share behaviour, slang language and a common interest in dance styles.
Skinhead culture emerged from commonalities in these groups as a multiracial working class subculture of the time. They shared with the hippie movement a dislike of all government authorities, and their ranks grew in popularity until the early 1970s. The movement then began to decline due to negative media portrayal of their effect on society.
Reemerging in popularity in the late 1970s, the culture took on elements of neo-Nazi extremism that hadn’t existed in its original incarnation. Growing in number, it has spread all over the world. Today, skinhead groups are politically diverse – from far right to far left. Different segments of the culture are also apolitical, not interested in politics at all, which was the nature of the original skinhead movement.
Far-right versions of the culture split from Jamaicans as racist themes became mainstream, and instead found stronger ties to the 1980s punk movement. Fascist groups began actively recruiting skinhead sympathizers into their organizations, leading to violence against non-racist skinhead groups as well as moderate non-whites and punks. Organizations such as SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) arose in response to violence in the late 1980s in the United States and soon spread to Europe.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, fascist skinhead organizations have been marginalized in society by the efforts of more moderate groups to suppress their activities. Overall, skinhead culture is diverse and encompasses a range of political and social views that are not readily apparent. In fact, meeting someone who professes to be a skinhead on the street reveals very little about the individual’s beliefs and values. While physical appearance has remained largely unchanged over the decades, what individual skinheads represent is as conflicted and complex as any other subset of modern industrialized culture.
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