by Fred Rosen
Those skins who live with their families often do so under tense conditions. Parents like the Freemans rarely approve of their skinhead children’s views or way of life. Those skins that live among their own do so in communal homes and apartments.
As Seth explained to Bryan what it meant to be a skinhead, Bryan became attracted to the skinhead Nazi ideology, which essentially offers alienated youth self-esteem through the degradation of others.
The more Dennis and Brenda tried to get Bryan to conform, giving the message that he was not good enough, the angrier Bryan got and the more he wanted to take out his anger on somebody. The skins’ glorification of violence provides a sense of power; the pack mentality provides a sense of security lacking in the family.
Skinheads in America pattern their dress on the original British model: combat boots or Doc Martens, thin suspenders, and bomber jackets. They wear their hair close cropped. Some American skins are drug users, and most, like Bryan and David, are heavy beer drinkers. Drinking binges often precede hunts for purported “enemies.”
The politics of hate do not provide for exclusivity. Skinheads march in Klan demonstrations. For instance, at a January 1993 march in Pulaski, Tennessee (the birthplace of the KKK), about a hundred skinheads marched with the KKK, shouting anti-Jewish and white supremacist slogans.
Skins tend to be young, but as they reach their mid-twenties, some outgrow their group and join the KKK. Skinheads have also linked up with such old-line hate groups as the Aryan Nations, the Church of the Creator, and White Aryan Resistance (WAR). These older groups refer to the skins as their “front line warriors.”
The Aryan Nations has for years hosted youth gatherings at its rural Idaho compound. These events, usually held in April to coincide with Hitler’s birthday, have attracted numerous skinheads. They meet to drink beer, spout Nazi slogans, and hear white supremacist rock bands in concert. Popular bands include Bound for Glory, Christian Identity Skins, and Odin’s Law, a Canadian group.
As targets, skinheads usually seek out the “mud” people, those who are not “pure” white. Jews in particular are looked at as being “mud” people. This follows Hitler’s ideology that made Jews the scapegoats for every calamity that ever fell upon mankind’s collective head. Today, skins take the same view.
The skins’ hatred also extends to blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and others of nonwhite blood. What all these groups have in common is that they are the enemy of the skins, who are united in their desire to wipe them off the face of the Earth and finish the job Hitler started.
American skins have repeatedly acted out their racial warrior fantasies in acts of exceptional violence. In August 1990, about the same time the Freeman brothers’ rebellion against their parents began, in Houston, Texas, two eighteen-year-old skinheads stomped a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese boy to death. The last words of the victim, who had emigrated to the United States were: “God forgive me for coming to this country. I am so sorry.”
In June 1991, as David Freeman got more and more into alcohol and drug use, three 16-year-old members of the Confederate Hammerskins killed a black man in a drive-by shotgun slaying as the man sat in the back of a truck with two white friends.
Skinheads belonging to the Aryan National Front (AND) were responsible for two separate killings of homeless black men in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 24, 1991, a Christmas Eve when David and Bryan Freeman sat home, their anger burning inside them that the next day, their parents would not allow them to celebrate Christmas.
In July 1993, while David Freeman was in the Paradise School for Boys, eight people were arrested by federal authorities and charged with a variety of conspiracy offenses in connection with a plan to incite a race war by, among other things, bombing an African American church, sending a letter bomb to a rabbi, and assassinating several well-known African American figures.
Among those involved in the latter plan were members of the Fourth Reich skinheads group. American skinheads do not confine themselves to ethnic hatred. They have been held responsible for several murders and countless assaults based on their hatred of homosexuals. Fatal skinhead attacks on gays have occurred in New York City; San Diego; St. Louis; Salem, Oregon; and Reno.
Skins have killed their non-racist counterparts in gang brawls, as well as unprovoked attacks. In August 1990, a fight between racist and non-racist skinhead factions in the parking lot of a Sacramento club resulted in the stabbing death of a SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) member.
Then, in August 1992, two neo-Nazi skinheads stabbed and bludgeoned to death a seventeen-year-old non-racist skinhead of mixed Asian and white background in Olympia, Washington. The boy’s only crime was that he was not “pure” white.
When times are slow and there are no “mud” people around to assault, or any other skin gangs to rumble with, or when their courage has not peaked enough for physical conflict, skins turn their attention to the dead—they attack the graves of Jews.
A skin and two accomplices were charged with the April 23, 1993, desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Revere, Massachusetts. In addition to overturning a hundred tombstones and spray-painting swastikas, the skins scrawled a birthday salute to Hitler on a nearby wall. The three were sentenced to two years in prison.
Other Jewish institutions have also been attacked by skinheads.
On March 20, 1994, two skins shot several rounds from a high-powered semi-automatic rifle into the stained glass windows of a Eugene, Oregon, synagogue. The shooters were eventually sentenced to terms of 54 and 57 months.
Seth Monroe answered Bryan’s questions about the American skinhead movement. If skinheads are bound by loose alliances in various parts of the country, how would skins in Pennsylvania, for example, keep contact and maintain ties with their brethren in Oregon?
Over the years, that problem was initially solved by a number of publications that all skins had access to. They were crudely made magazines. Some only ran for a few issues.
Some of the more popular skinhead magazines in the 1990s include Blood and Honor, out of Long Beach, California; National Socialist Skinhead, published in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Iron Will and Skinhead Power from North Carolina; and The Berserker, of Levittown, New York, though this is more a newsletter than a full-fledged magazine.
The “zines” focused on skinhead music that carries the message of hate to a larger audience, but racist commentary is included throughout each issue in editorials and interviews. Typical of the views espoused in these interviews are those of members of the band Das Reich:
“We must expose the Zionist-controlled media and institutions to the rest of the white ‘sheep’ in America … we would like to salute all the white stormtroopers that are fighting daily for our struggle.”
In the ’90s, the skins took to using a more immediate way of keeping contact: the Internet. There are numerous skinhead sites on the Web where skins can keep in touch with each other, whether they are in Maine or Mobile. These Internet hate groups are not composed of beer-guzzling, potbellied, illiterate morons. They are a highly motivated, intelligent group of people who make hate their life’s preoccupation.
Stormfront is an example of a skins’ home page.
“Stormfront is a resource for those courageous men and women fighting to preserve their white Western culture ideals and freedom of speech and association, a forum for planning strategies and forming political and social groups to ensure victory,” claims the first paragraph of Stormfront’s home page.
Articles featured in one edition of Stormfront included, “OKC Bombing and America’s Future” by William Pierce; “What Is Racism?” by Thomas Jackson; and “Racial Realities: My Indian Odyssey” by David Duke.
David Duke is the former presidential candidate, former Klansman, and Louisiana state legislator known for his white supremacist views.
In Stormfront’s online library annex are “archived articles of interest to white nationalists,” and “a collection of (hate) graphics and symbols” that rea
ders can easily access for their own use.
These are well-thought-out racist messages designed to attract the disenfranchised, like Bryan Freeman, in much the same way that Hitler’s philosophy of national socialism did in 1930s Germany.
In addition to actual articles, there’s a section called “Internet Mailing Lists.” Included are the “Stormfront Mailing List,” which is “a moderated discussion forum for white nationalists,” and “Canadian Patriots Network,” which includes “current events of interest to Patriots in the Great White North.”
For those who are more aggressive and want to interact, there are “Newsgroups of Interest to White Nationalists,” where Net browsers can talk online, live, to those of like-minded views. And, like any business that wants to leave its customers satisfied, Stormfront has a list of “Dial-In Bulletin Board Systems”—one can dial into specific bulletin boards broken down regionally, including Chicago’s “Cyberspace Minutemen,” Portland’s “Banished BBS (Bulletin Board System),” which specializes in Holocaust revisionist material, and “Digital Freedom, Canada’s Newest White Nationalist Board.”
But actions speak louder than words, or e-mail, and skins look at members of their own who are charged with hate crimes as prisoners of war.
Among these so-called prisoners of war are David Lane and Gary Yarbrough. Both are currently serving long sentences for their role in the neo-Nazi terrorist group The Order. Matthew Hayhow, a skinhead, is serving twenty-five years for armed robbery.
Resistance Records, the major producer of skinhead or hate rock music in America, with its home in Detroit, puts out a magazine that focuses on skin music in the United States and Canada. It claims circulation of “12,000 and growing.” They have a site on the Internet through which skins may mail order their favorite Resistance Records releases.
The Resistance Records site is a masterwork of marketing. You can listen to excerpts of songs from some of the top hate rock bands, order records, or just relax with a cup of coffee and get into the hate rock movement. White Power music has become so popular that MTV has already done a special on hate rock. Even kids who are not skinheads or white supremacists listen to the music because it deals with the alienation many in their generation feel.
Bound for Glory is perhaps the most influential American skinhead band. Led by Ed Wolbank, director of the neo-Nazi Northern Hammer Skins in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the band has recorded for Resistance Records and the German Rock-O-Rama label and has toured in Europe with Skrewdriver.
A member of the band summarized the underlying message behind their music: “All of our music has a racial theme and that is 100 percent white.”
Detroit, that hotbed of skinhead activism, boasts an active music scene. Two local bands, Max Resist and the Hooligans and Rival, performed frequently at the Westside Clubhouse in Detroit, where Bryan met Frank at the New Year’s Eve concert. The Clubhouse also served as the hangout for the Detroit skinhead gang the West Side Boot Boys.
Out-of-state bands also frequently played at the Clubhouse. Among those advertised to appear in a tribute concert to the slain Joe Rowan were Bound for Glory, Centurian, the Voice, Aggravated Assault, and Shamrock. A recent flier, however, announced the closing of the West Side Clubhouse, allegedly for reasons of “security;” it claimed that alternative venues would be found for future concerts.
But Bryan Freeman lived in Pennsylvania, and as he slowly learned from Seth about the skinhead movement, he discovered that Pennsylvania is also a hotbed of skinhead activity.
Across the state in Pittsburgh, skinhead activity is largely limited to the Oakland area of the city.
Two skinheads, Steven Stanley and Francis Mercuri, were arrested in July 1991 at an apartment where police found an assortment of loaded weapons, bomb-making instructions, a Nazi flag, and photographs of Adolf Hitler.
Mercuri was placed under arrest as a fugitive and extradited to Florida, where he was convicted in connection with an attack on a Jewish teenager. Stanley pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension of Mercuri.
Pittsburgh’s skins are linked to a Pennsylvania hate group alliance called the Pennsylvania Aryan Independence Network (PAIN). There is also something of a skinhead club and record scene in the city itself. But it was across the state in eastern Pennsylvania, in Bryan Freeman’s home area, that considerable skinhead activity occurred.
In Shamokin, Pennsylvania, just miles from Allentown, eleven skins were arrested in April 1993 and charged with ethnic intimidation, riot, and disorderly conduct. Five of the eleven were juveniles. The arrests came about as a result of a confrontation with state troopers. The skins had for several weeks been terrorizing the downtown area of Shamokin.
In East Stroudsberg, about thirty miles from Allentown, a homeless white man asked for a ride from two neo-Nazi skins. They were charged in his stabbing death in July 1992. East Stroudsberg police classified the killing as a “hate crime.”
In January 1992, a group of fifteen to twenty skins appeared in front of Upper Darby High School shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” and thrusting their arms out in the Nazi salute. Two adults and twelve juveniles were arrested. One adult pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy and assault and received a year’s probation. A judge dismissed charges against the other because the prosecution failed to establish that he had participated in the attack. The twelve juveniles were convicted of assault in juvenile court. Because they are juveniles, their records were sealed.
A month later, a brawl erupted at a benefit concert in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Skinheads shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” were set upon by the crowd.
In Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, forty to fifty active skinheads are known to law enforcement authorities. In addition, there are some fifteen to twenty skinheads active in York County, including an Eastern Hammer Skins gang in Stewartstown. Another active group is the United White Skinheads, located in Wayne.
The Skins were all over the place.
ELEVEN
In his rehab facility, Bryan Freeman listened intently as Seth Monroe inculcated him with skinhead rhetoric. It was a complete revelation.
Suddenly, Bryan’s mind was alive with a philosophy of life that made his hate into a positive force, a hate that would free him from the bonds of his parents and religion, hate that he could channel into violence against minorities, who he believed were really responsible for his problems and those of society.
A mother and father can expect their teenager to rebel and decorate his room with posters of rock stars, pictures of gorgeous models, and other accoutrements of adolescence. But in the Freeman house, the eldest boy took the interior decorating of his room to new levels.
Swastikas appeared on walls, pictures of Hitler, photos of white supremacist rock bands on the Resistance Records label. The sounds of Bound for Glory, Rahowa, Nordic Thunder, and other white power bands filled the house. One day Bryan was your average teenager, and the next he was the indoctrinated member of a Hitler youth group.
“We have to get rid of the ‘mud’ people,” Bryan told his brother, David. “Jews and the Zionist conspiracy and the niggers are responsible for all our problems,” Bryan said to Benny.
Like the stormtroopers, there is a uniform for today’s skinheads, and Bryan quickly adopted it after his release from rehab. Dennis and Brenda could only watch in disbelief as Bryan shaved his head, bought Doc Martens, wore a cool leather jacket, and began spouting racial invective.
His parents protested his new found conversion. Elders from the Kingdom Hall showed up on more than one occasion to try to get Bryan back into the fold. They preached the doctrine of Jehovah. Unless Bryan repented his sinful ways, he would be destroyed on Armageddon Day with all the disbelievers. He just laughed, in the same way his idol once had at the world.
Dennis continued to withdraw from his parental responsibilities, leaving the discipline of his children to Brenda. To her credit, Brenda tried setting boundaries: There would be no smoking or drinking
in the house. There would be curfews, and keeping up with studies at school.
In record time, Bryan broke as many of the rules as he could.
Bryan was determined to be a full-fledged skinhead, and that meant tattooing. He found Brandon Johnson, a tattoo artist with a storefront in the central part of Allentown. Brandon created fine skin art. Over the next few years, Bryan became Brandon’s regular customer, and the tattooist indelibly printed on Bryan’s skin the images of Nazi Germany that had traumatized generations from Hitler’s rise to the present.
Bryan also began an extended weightlifting program. The boy who had once delivered God’s words vanished forever, replaced by a menacing, hulking youth who deified Hitler, a teenager devoted to the survival of the white race and the destruction of the Jews, blacks, and “mud” people.
Bryan had finally found someone who accepted him. In Hitler, he found his surrogate father.
Where Dennis was weak, Adolph was strong. Hitler was someone who had triumphed over the adversities in his life by channeling hate into something constructive: no less than the destruction of anyone who was different. It was a philosophy with broad appeal, that stood the test of time.
Now, fifty years later, after Hitler had died ignominiously in a bunker, his legacy was the hate in Bryan Freeman’s heart; hate that was born from rigid parents, hate born from a religion that demanded he stay an outsider, hate born from kids looking at him funny because he didn’t have a birthday or Christmas dinner, hate born from too many tears and too little acceptance. But now, he was accepted in the white Aryan brotherhood of man.
Anyone who stood in his way—anyone—would be wiped out in the path of destruction he would cut. It apparently did not take long for David to ally himself with his brother against his parents and younger brother Erik and accept the skinheads as his one true family. He came from the same home as his brother, and he had the same background. He felt the same way toward his parents.
