College professor Randy Blazak believes he may be one of the few people who moved to Portland because of the city's "skinhead problem."



Blazak, a Georgia native, has spent the past two decades tracking the white supremacist movement in Oregon. The criminologist teaches courses about prisons, hate crimes and hate groups at the University of Oregon. He chairs the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crime and recently launched a podcast about privilege.



Portlanders have heightened awareness to local hate crimes and white supremacist groups after an extremist threatened two teenage girls, one in a hijab, before police say he stabbed three men.



But white supremacy groups have a long history in the region, Blazak said. He spoke with The Oregonian/OregonLive about how white supremacists groups have changed. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.





How did you start studying Oregon's white nationalist groups?





I grew up in a Klan town outside of Atlanta. I was a part of the Mod revival. I had a Vespa scooter and a parka. The racist skinheads stole my Vespa scooter in 1986 and set it on fire. I said, 'I know how to get you back. I will spend the rest of my life studying you.'



I was with a group of skinheads in 1988 in Orlando, Fla., doing my masters work. I spent 13 months living with a group of skinheads, trying to understand this new phenomena. We were all watching TV together when this story came out about a group of Portland skinheads killing Mulugeta Seraw. The Orlando guys, they were all thrilled. They saw this as the turning of the tide. They saw it as a great heroic moment. I'm sure there are people who feel the same now about Jeremy Christian.



I came out here in '95 because this was 'Skinhead City.'





Was it what you expected when you arrived?



It was really between two groups in '95. The East Side White Pride, the group responsible for the Seraw killing, had dissipated. It wasn't until '96 when (violent, neo-Nazi skinhead group) Volksfront started. I got here in a gap to see the new group rising.



I get yelled at all the time for not saying racist skinheads. Real skinheads are against racism.



The skinheads started in England in the 1960s, as a working class, anti-hippie thing. A lot of the style came from Jamaican kids. It's incredibly ironic that it became associated with racism. What happened in the late '60s in England is there was a wave of immigration from Pakistan and the economy started to crumble. There was a split in the skinhead movement.



By the time it came to the U.S. in 1980s, it was just really the racist skinheads that showed up.





How have the groups changed since you first started studying them?



I've been talking a lot about alt-right lately. The alt-right are the bastard stepchildren of the skinheads of the '90s. The Antifa are the bastard children of the anti-racist skinheads. It's a new chapter of an old feud.



The big shift has been the role that the Internet has played. It used to be a physical place where you had a meeting. The Volksfront had regular bars they would hang out in in Southeast Portland. The anti-racist skinheads would have meetings.



We had a couple of small groups who were connected to neo-Nazi ideology. But the alt-right creates this space on Reddit and fourchan, even on Twitter, to express their positions to recruit other people and advance their ideology online.



They completely disappeared off the streets. All of a sudden, my little skinheads, the people I'm charged to keep track of, were just gone gone gone.



With the Trump campaign, they've come back on the streets.





Does that shift toward online make your work easier or harder?



It's easier from a research perspective because I can do it on my laptop, hang out on the discussion groups and see what the chatter is. But it's harder to see the scope of the phenomenon. How many are just lurking? These groups could all be people like me who are just curious.



You really don't get a sense of how big it is. In a strange way, these pro free speech rallies have been helpful for me to see who is committed enough to come out.





How would you describe the presence of white supremacists in Portland? Is it any different here than it is in other cities?



The nature of Portland is we foster those at the margins. This is 'Keep Portland Weird' political science version. We like the people who aren't identified with mainstream business as usual life, whether that's in music or fashion or politics. We have a lot of anarchists in the city. We also have a healthy dose of extremist libertarians.



There is this celebration of the people at the margins. Sometimes, we get the people we don't like at the fringe, as well as those we do like.



What is interesting about Jeremy Christian is how many people of color were not surprised. It's a violent manifestation of the things that happen every day in Portland, the gentrification of people of color right out of the city.



This is just the latest chapter of Oregon as white man's land. It goes back before the formation of the state. The Oregon Land Donation Act was for white settlers only. There are different manifestations of that, whether it's the Constitution in 1895, or the dominance of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s or the skinheads in the 1980s or gentrification in the 2000s.





In a 2010 paper, you noted that "today's white inmate is tomorrow's racist terrorist." What can you tell me about Oregon's white prison gangs?



Whites who go to prison and are suddenly in the numerical minority will often find protection in prison gangs. Whether they are racist or not, it is a rational decision to join a racist prison gang. It's a way of securing things you need, like goods from the commissary, contraband including drugs. Protection from sexual assault is a big one for white guys who come in and aren't cliqued up.



The prison yard is a very contested territory. If I'm in a group with a little more power, I might have access to the sunny part of the exercise yard.



But you don't do that without having to pay a fee. If they are going to protect you on the inside, you are going to have to join them completely. Blood in, blood out. That means getting those tattoos on your body, carrying out marching orders to pay back your prison debt.



Not only had Jeremy Christian been incarcerated for a good period of time, but the people who knew him said he was a different person when he came out. There is often this prison radicalization that happens. There is a parallel thing that happens with Islam in prison.



There's a definite possibility that that at least played a role in this transformation. The popular thing is saying he is an Odininst. That comes from Norse mythology, a form of paganism that has been co-opted by white supremacists.



It is true, he is all over the map. People say he was a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the only positive thing he said about Bernie Sanders was that he hated Hillary Clinton. He had some pretty pro-Nazi things on his Facebook page.



He is not a settled mind. He's an equal opportunity hater. He's a spinning whirling dervish who was lashing out in the world and he found a good place to do that in the alt-right.





What happens when people leave prison?



The membership follows you on the outside. The assumption is there's a good chance you're going to go back to prison. If you don't do your dirt on the outside, when you go back in, it's going to be violent.



It's possible for people to leave, but you have to move far away. That is sometimes impossible if you're on parole. I've worked with guys who have escaped that world and found themselves back in prison and had to explain why they weren't loyal soldiers on the outside.





What does the future look like in terms of white supremacists group in Portland?



There's a lot of fear in the moment. There's a growing awareness, which is a good thing, that we do have this history here. But there also should be a balanced awareness about how much incredible work is being done in the community, including by the mayor's office and Portland Police.



Institutions are changing from the inside. I'm the last person in the world that says human resource ladies are giving us hope in the world, but they are a reflection of how much institutional change has happened. Every HR department has an equity and diversity department now.



It's easy to be really frightened and feel like we are slipping backwards in time, but as a sociologist, I can tell you the measures about how we're doing are incredibly encouraging. Young are are more likely to have friends of different races. We're much less segregated in our social lives than we were.



We're not there yet, but we are definitely better than we were.



