Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

634 • SKINHEADSembraced 70,000 people in more than 30 nations. By 2000 the sameorganization found that the overall numbers of skinheads worldwidehad not increased but that the skinhead movement had spread to a totalof 33 countries. The report found that while the various skinheadgroups are not linked by an overt organizational structure, the predominantnumber of them share a preference for neo-Nazi ideologyand subscribe to neo-Nazi literature they call “skinzines.” Althoughthe Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented that Ku KluxKlan groups had declined from 186 to 140 in the period 1995–1996, italso spotted a rise in racist skinhead groups from 30 to 37 in the sameperiod. By 2000 the SPLC estimated there were 40 racist skinheadgroups in the United States. A number of incidents seem to supportthe fear that the skinhead movement will pose a significant risk ofviolence and domestic terror. In 1996 German skinheads numbered6,400, an increase of 200 over the previous year, according to figuresissued by Germany’s Office for the Defense of the Constitution.Among the many acts committed by skinheads, some have stoodout: On 23 July 1994 eight German skinheads rioted at the Buchenwaldconcentration camp memorial, chanting Nazi slogans, stoningvisitors, and threatening to burn alive a memorial supervisor. Threeof these youths were sentenced to short or suspended jail sentences inOctober 1994. On 10 May 1995 French police arrested five skinheadsin connection with the murder of a Moroccan, whom they had throwninto the Seine River where he drowned in the course of a May DayNational Front march in Paris.Active skinhead groups that are organized and politically violentinclude the Hammerskin Nation, which claimed to have up to 21chapters across the United States as well as affiliated chapters inAustralia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands,New Zealand, Spain, and Switzerland; the Fourth Reich Skinheads,which has been dormant in recent years, though its active membershave joined other skinhead and white supremacist groups: and theAmerican Front, which has multiple branches within California aswell as branches in Arkansas, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania,and Washington State.The Hammerskins have been involved in several attacks on membersof minority groups: In the summer of 1988 the first Hammerskingroup, which had formed in Dallas, Texas, originally known as theConfederate Hammerskins, harassed and attacked minority group