Anarchist historian Spencer Beswick looks back on the intersection of queerness and anarchism within the past 40 years. Anarchists grappled with the intersection of queerness and anarchism as part of a broader transformation of the US anarchist movement in the 1980s-1990s. Against gay assimilationism on one side and class reductionism on the other, radicals began...
Anarchist historian Spencer Beswick looks back on the intersection of queerness and anarchism within the past 40 years.
Skinheads were not originally associated with racism, it was a working-class counterculture movement. In fact it was quite diverse in its influences. I would argue it still is.
Only later did a far-right subset emerge and unfortunately that is what people associate with the term “skinheads” because they caused the most trouble.
It’s a shame that is what ended up sticking then, and that the terminology couldn’t have been associated with something better. In my mind, it’s impossible to think of them in any other context. That is the default definition that I have.
It’s what fascist racists do. They co-opt and appropriate everything. The Nazis pretended to be socialist, the Klu Klux Klan just copy pasted bits and pieces of various different European cultures, heck even country had some edge and humanity to it, until it got homogenised by yee olde nationalism.
Skinheads need to come back if you ask me. Same clothes, same haircut, same culture, just as a “fuck you” to whatever status quo you live by. People pretending they’re so different, when really everybody is the same.
Yes, you are missing something kinda important.
Skinheads were not originally associated with racism, it was a working-class counterculture movement. In fact it was quite diverse in its influences. I would argue it still is.
Only later did a far-right subset emerge and unfortunately that is what people associate with the term “skinheads” because they caused the most trouble.
Thanks for the explanation.
It’s a shame that is what ended up sticking then, and that the terminology couldn’t have been associated with something better. In my mind, it’s impossible to think of them in any other context. That is the default definition that I have.
It’s what fascist racists do. They co-opt and appropriate everything. The Nazis pretended to be socialist, the Klu Klux Klan just copy pasted bits and pieces of various different European cultures, heck even country had some edge and humanity to it, until it got homogenised by yee olde nationalism.
Skinheads need to come back if you ask me. Same clothes, same haircut, same culture, just as a “fuck you” to whatever status quo you live by. People pretending they’re so different, when really everybody is the same.
That was the point to begin with.