|
THE SKINHEADS MOVEMENT
The year is 1968. On the beaches of Britain and in the London districts, rockers, mods and sons of the small bourgeois meet in dangerous fights. As the rockers are total racists, the mods listen to music like Ska and voluntarily form a band to combine with the "Rudi boys" – the young black people from Jamaica from the workers part of the town. For pity they not win much time in the fights and their expensive clothes are torn to rags. So the mods start dressing in a much simple style – rough trousers, jackets without collars and weighty shoes with steel toes. They shave their heads like the commandos, because the enemy can’t grab their hair in the fight and at the same time to be different from the other bands. But there is no time for them and they can’t form a strong organization. The weave "Flayer paler" destroy everything on her way. We wait until the year 1977 and the coming of the punk, for the resurrection of the skinhead. The punks with their colored clothes and funny hair-styles want to be as ugly as the towns they live in. The fast rhythm of their music provokes a lot of people and fights between the different classes of break out. Anyway, everybody knows that this movement hasn’t got a chance for success. Getting back to skins, along comes a new music style, faster and more wild, called "Oi" (short type of "Hey you" – the word which precedes the fight). Different from the punks, which shows that they are anti-racists and they are politically in the left, the new skins show that they are apolitical. Soccer, beer and fight – that is their life. Now they are not interested in the Ska – they listen only to Oi music. In 1989 the movement comes in Bulgaria. The first band plays at "Popa" (place in the center of Sofia town), and then goes to the region of NDK (National palace of culture). Many of them are fans of football club CSKA Sofia. They start fighting with the other, and have no formal movements. They fight fans of other teams and everyone with longer hair. The Sofian skins just want to clean the town from this which they don’t like. "We want to play our music and to make our own territory. There is nothing political in this". In this time the things in Great Britain have changed. In 1981 one music group connected with the National Front comes onto the stage. That was "Skrewdriver." The singer Ian Stuart doesn’t hide his National Socialist ideas and uses propaganda in his songs (like "My free country"). Here comes the split. The skin lovers of the Oi music can not reject the band Skrewdriver. The skins which reject the politics lose their positions very fast and they disappear quickly, because the neo-nationalists skins have a very good organization. Then Ian Stuart creates the magazine "Blood and Honour," which was the "voice of anti-Communist rock." The magazine leaves England very fast, comes in Europe and becomes a bible of the skins around the world. Inside the magazine there is much propaganda of anti-jews and emigrants. In London a club is formed, which is called the name of the magazine. There the skins meet, discuss and organize themselves. Now they wear Nazi badges on the lapel of their bombers (pilot jackets from green to black nylon taken from the army). The machine works – the skins are Nazis. In Bulgaria the skins quickly go trough all stages and become racists and neo-Nazis. At the beginning the bands had troubles. The police and the prisons had a bad effect. But now the place is free for the new Ian Stuart’s generation. At this time the band from the region of NDK becomes very famous. The guys are students, workers and soccer hooligans. The cleaning of the region starts. In 1992 the first victims are the Arabians, which work with heroine (not touched by the police?). The region gets a bad name and even was put on the maps of the foreigners as a dangerous region which must be avoided. The students’ protest against Communism helps the first skinhead actions. They start to attack over Communists meetings and the police. One skin said: "That was not a political organization – we hide from the law.". Here comes the first propaganda: "We must finish with the biggest evil - Jews! Tremble Jews the real Bulgarians hate you." Everything is decorated with the Nazi cross. The first fights against foreigners start. On "the blue cafe" one Arabian is killed with knives from band skins. In the town Rousse one man is arrested for Nazi propaganda. In Sofia the Synagogue and the Jews graveyards are desecrated. In Pleven one gypsy is killed with steel pipe and the criminal is arrested. Club of the Communists party was broken, but there is no lawsuit. The police start with actions, arrests and interrogations. There was section "Anti skins" in the 1st RPU (regional police office) in Sofia. The tensions rose very much. To carry on in the skinhead movement there is a need for money and because of this the band started working as security on the punk and metal concerts. In 1995 there was a big concert of the band "Hipodil" and there (from the words of one skinhead) some of the punks have very bad memories. Because in Bulgaria there wasn’t skinhead bands and so the skins go to metal concerts and there they fight with punks and metalists (at the concerts of Sodom, Skorpions, Accept, Tankard, Kreator in Bulgaria). At a concert of "Rek dolls" the vocalist of the band is hit by an empty bottle and they are down from the stage. After that accident many skins were stopped by the police for going to concerts. After a few times there were new protests. The skins start to protect workers and people damaged by ethnic conflicts. All this activism got the interest of the right side of the government. The leader of the Christian-democratic organization Gelemenov is the first man, who try to get the skins in his organization. He couldn’t do it, because our skins don’t want to be in an organization with a new "Fuhrer," which nobody knows. Next comes years of progress in the movement. Three-four new bands plus this from NDK cut the capitol of Bulgaria in parts. Soon the strongest band (the one from the NDK region) become leaders of the skinhead movement in Bulgaria. After one football match the band fights with punks, but there one of the skins was wounded by a knife from a punk of Jewish origin; after which he hid from the law. From this time through now there is a real odium between punks and skins. In the most of the fights the punks lose. After the try of Gelemenov, the skins formed their own new organization called the "Right Democratic Movement." The new leader tried to create small groups of skins. He tried military training, but here comes a foul. The skins didn’t want to be soldiers and don’t want to execute commands. This movement model failed. In the time of the matches from the world championships in 1994, the band from NDK started creating confusions and fights. After the match between Bulgaria and Germany the band fought with German fans. The skins are the kings of the street now. In Pleven, Plovdiv, Gabrovo, Biala Slatina, Kazanlak and many other town come new and new bands all the time. But how much are they? The statistic shows that in this time the skins were 500 people. In 1995-1996 skinheads became very famous in Sofia and province clubs and skinhead groups were formed. For pity this causes a war between some skinheads from different groups. Because of this some of them start searching for a new place for meetings. This is BNRP (Bulgarian National Radicals). BNRP uses these young sympathizers to create meetings and parades. The skinheads split the club with the other people in it (most of them old people). The two groups are not very receptive. A part of the club became a shop where alcohol was for sale. One of the older sympathizers said: "At most of the time they make noise and drink... Late in the night we couldn’t count the empty bottles. One time they even try to fight with some of our members." One skinhead answered: "It’s true that we made parties, but we pay for everything which is broken and we clean up. These stupid old people only want to make confrontations.". August 1997 on the "Death festival Bourgas" there was about 50-60 skinheads, come mainly from the province for the concert of the first Bulgarian Oi! Band – "Sram and Pozor." Before the concert the skins fight with groups of punks and the result is that none of the punks go to the concert. When the police stopped the skinheads to get their arsenal they found sticks, chains, boxes and even one axe... About in the same time in town Rousee there is a comrade which is caught by the police for distributing anti-Jew propaganda. The magazines called him "The Bulgarian Fuhrer." The police get many propaganda materials from his home and he was arrested fast. This is an alarm signal for the police. After this some skinheads are seen in the attack against the Communist actor Asen Kisimov. The skins fight with the niggers in the districts of Sofia "Studentski grad.". They create a riot at the football stadiums. At last the police start dishing out serious measures. There were many arrests and judgments. Without some of their powerful figures the skinheads split and went to the stadiums again. Without the matches they don’t have anywhere to meet and everything will be lost. A large part of them leave BNRP. As I said before the large portion of Bulgarian skinheads are fans of football club CSKA Sofia. They make organization called "CSKA SS Front.". There skinheads met big football hooligans. Surprisingly, this organization was very active, especially at the matches with Atletico (Madrid), Pirin (Blagoevgrad) and Belasitza (Petrich). Chief of the national fan club of CSKA comes Ducheto, fully supported by the skinheads. For him "the hooligans are bunt movement close to the skinheads." It seems he is very right. From social look the movements are the same: students and young people without work... The difference is that the skins have their own ideology: "Before everything must be the nationalism.". The movement skinheads continue to progress rapidly. The count of the police is 800 skins in the country (500 of them in Sofia). They make terror in every place they are. In the center of Sofia a group of skins from "Nadejda" compel a group of Gypsies to jump from the third floor and one of them die. At the first tattoo festival there were many beaten punks. One of them was paralyzed by a hit in the back. The Bulgarian skins start making connections with comrades in Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland and England and start traveling around Europe for some gigs and concerts. The words, behavior and the appearance of the skinheads make people scared. So the skins start having troubles. After the desecration of the jewish graveyard the police suspect the skins, but they couldn’t prove this and some Gypsies get the punishment. On every 20th of April in continuation of many years the center of Sofia and Jewish synagogue gets some swastika crosses and are spray painted. Many of the older skinheads work as security guards and start equipping themselves with weapons. Some of them get dogs like Pitbulls and Bullterriers to fight on the street. But the bands are finished – everybody is in organized groups. The primary scene of fights are the football terrain. At the match of the Bulgarian national team with England, the Bulgarian skins beat many English hooligans. At that time nobody thought it could happen, because the English fans were the "bad hools." The most striking situation is the match – Athletico (Madrid). The head delegate of UEFA was horrified by the riots at the stadium by the skinheads (by the way the police has the primary guilt for all this). After some big accidents the clubs start meetings with their fans and they get the problem serious attention. Some of the skins become security for the matches. From this time the matches go about normal. With this the skinheads show that they can do more than create riots. At this time we think that the skinheads count in Bulgaria is maybe more than 1000 people - and we are rising more and more with every month! 88!
|
||
|
www.bhbulgaria.com |
||