#neoNazis #history #SanFrancisco #HaightStreet #BoundTogether

"It happened here: When the American Front marched on Haight Street

(. . .)

On May 1, 1988, the traditional socialist holiday of May Day, skinheads held a White Workers March on Haight Street. Rather than being an invasion of outside agitators, this gathering was homegrown: The American Front, the group that organized the march, was formed in San Francisco as an explicitly white supremacist outgrowth of a violent but not outwardly racist skinhead group called SF Skins.

Bob 'Blitz' Heick (also known as Nazi Bob), was the founder of American Front. He favored a high-and-tight military-style ‘do to match his skinny ties, epauletted shortsleeve workshirts, and black boots with white laces, his affiliations right in your face.

In 1988, Heick was a 20-year-old SF native who’d attended Herbert Hoover Middle School. He lived in an Arts and Crafts-style house at 312 Parnassus St. on the border of Cole Valley, and had already made a name for himself as a violent street punk. In 1985, he and his affiliates kicked in the window of Bound Together, the anarchist bookstore at 1369 Haight St., taking credit for it with a flyer signed 'American Front.'

Three years later, the American Front was stomping its way down Haight Street with about fifty Nazi skinheads, a mix of provocation and performance art. According to reports in the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee newsletter, they were heckled, one person wearing a 'homemade ‘Fuck White Power’ T-shirt.'

(. . .)

In 1989, Heick tried to organize an 'Aryan Woodstock' event in Napa County that barely got off the ground. He left the Bay Area around 1990 and has mostly laid low, occasionally releasing music under the name Robert X. Patriot. If he has thoughts on the world he helped create, he hasn’t put them on record."

https://sf.gazetteer.co/it-happened-here-when-the-american-front-marched-on-haight-street

#neoNazis #history #SanFrancisco #HaightStreet #BoundTogether

"It happened here: When the American Front marched on Haight Street

(. . .)

On May 1, 1988, the traditional socialist holiday of May Day, skinheads held a White Workers March on Haight Street. Rather than being an invasion of outside agitators, this gathering was homegrown: The American Front, the group that organized the march, was formed in San Francisco as an explicitly white supremacist outgrowth of a violent but not outwardly racist skinhead group called SF Skins.

Bob 'Blitz' Heick (also known as Nazi Bob), was the founder of American Front. He favored a high-and-tight military-style ‘do to match his skinny ties, epauletted shortsleeve workshirts, and black boots with white laces, his affiliations right in your face.

In 1988, Heick was a 20-year-old SF native who’d attended Herbert Hoover Middle School. He lived in an Arts and Crafts-style house at 312 Parnassus St. on the border of Cole Valley, and had already made a name for himself as a violent street punk. In 1985, he and his affiliates kicked in the window of Bound Together, the anarchist bookstore at 1369 Haight St., taking credit for it with a flyer signed 'American Front.'

Three years later, the American Front was stomping its way down Haight Street with about fifty Nazi skinheads, a mix of provocation and performance art. According to reports in the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee newsletter, they were heckled, one person wearing a 'homemade ‘Fuck White Power’ T-shirt.'

(. . .)

In 1989, Heick tried to organize an 'Aryan Woodstock' event in Napa County that barely got off the ground. He left the Bay Area around 1990 and has mostly laid low, occasionally releasing music under the name Robert X. Patriot. If he has thoughts on the world he helped create, he hasn’t put them on record."

https://sf.gazetteer.co/it-happened-here-when-the-american-front-marched-on-haight-street