ADL: Skinhead Activity Rises in US & Around the Globe

With much of the daily national media spotlight focused on the current elections, the state of the US economy and the details of Brittney Spears' bizarre personal life I really haven't seen that much television, radio or print media coverage concerning the February 7, 2008 report issued by the Anti-Defamation League that warns of a rise in neo-Nazi/racist skinhead activity in every state in America.

The report cites at least 110 newly formed skinhead groups which have taken advantage of frustrated, disenfranchised white youth who are easily sucked into the flurry of racist skinhead Websites around which much of this activity centers.

Lack of jobs with benefits, stagnant wages for working & middle class citizens, fear of immigration and a rapidly changing culture in America are just some of the factors contributing to this rise in hate crimes. The report notes there have been at least 83 reported criminal incidents over the past several years, including 17 involving murder, attempted murder and manslaughter.

Case in point: In January, 2008 29 year-old Thomas Verducci was charged with shooting 30 year-old Jose Corona in the head in a Vallejo, California bar in January 2007. Verducci is an alleged member of the Family Affiliated Irish Mafia (FAIM) a loosely organized skinhead group based in northern California near the San Francisco area.

Websites like the ADL's Skinhead Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) Intelligence Project offer some of the most extensive analysis of hate crimes and groups who espouse racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-government and anti-gay ideologies and agendas.

The only way these groups and their activities are going to move beyond a blip on the media radar is through exposure of, and dialog about these groups and their violent anti-American activities. It affects our culturegeist and it's not just happening in some isolated working class community in California, or Florida, or New Jersey - it's happening right now where you live.

That's not the America the founders envisioned, it's not the America hundreds of thousands of Americans have died defending and certainly not the America that is going to move forward into the 21st century.