Skinheads in Italy – in pictures

Rome is the home of SPQR skinheads, named after the city’s motto – Senatus Populusque Romanus, or the Senate and People of Rome. Paolo Marchetti photographed the SPQR skinheads for a project called Fever: The Awakening of European Fascism. “I spent time up close with members of the Italian extreme right in order to understand why they are afraid,” he says. “Why they feel the need to gather together in a herd, and why they need an enemy.” →

Armando smokes a Cuban cigar in his flat near Rome, June 2010
Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

The skinheads’ mixture of fear and rage is, Marchetti believes, “a frantic search for identity – racial, cultural, religious, national and sexual. Taking these pictures gave me the opportunity to investigate their rage. In the era of globalisation, there are those who scream to the world, ‘I exist. I exist and I am not the product of your corporations. I exist because I belong to a people, a religion and a race.’” →

Young Italian skinheads on the coast of Lazio in August 2010. Each year, they come together to celebrate the start of summer, dressed in Hawaiian style Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

At a concert in Rome, the band belts out heavy rock music and the singer screams the lyrics, “Grazie a Dio che sono bianco!” (“Thank God I’m white!”) The crowd, with shaven heads gleaming, goes wild. In unison, the skinheads salute the band with the fascist outstretched arm salute. Being “Aryan” and preserving a white racial identity are the cornerstones of their movement; some skinheads wear a “9%” badge, a reference to their obsession with the percentage of the world population that is white. →

A Nazi rock concert in Rome in May 2013 Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

Roman skinheads are proud of their history – both the Roman empire and the more recent Italian fascist regime. Their badge incorporates an image of the Colosseum and instead of a handshake they use the ancient Roman gladiatorial “arm-shake”, hand to elbow. Their tattoos feature the Fasces symbol, portraits of Mussolini, swastikas and the Celtic cross, appropriated from Christianity as the image of racial identity. These symbols written on the skin provide a badge of belonging. →

Armando camping with his dog – his tattoo reads Jedem das Seine ("To each his own"), words from the gate at Buchenwald concentration camp Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

“Immigration has amplified the germs of racial intolerance among young people in most of Europe," Marchetti says. Germany has criminalised neo-Nazi groups and outlawed the wearing of swastikas, but Nazi rock concerts continue to take place clandestinely and many skinheads congregate inside the National Democratic party. In Italy, the founder of Forza Nuova has had meetings with the leaders of other European far-right parties, including the BNP and Greece's Golden Dawn. In Hungary, the radical nationalist Jobbik party recently won 18% of the vote. The May European elections may have given the far right a chink of hope that they have a place in Europe. →

Helsinki, Finland: Bern and Franziska usually spend their evenings in this pub Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

In 30 years, the skinhead phenomenon has gone from being a noisy and visible, but marginal, UK working-class youth subculture to constituting a significant element in the global far right. And heavy rock – Oi! music, White Noise or Nazi rock – has followed its spread. As Marchetti points out, the economic recession has provided a perfect breeding ground for the fascist movement's racist and classist ideologies. "Rage is growing rapidly in societies affected by the banking dictatorship… with antisemitism, a strong intolerance of the gay community and a growing hatred of immigrants.” →

Dancing and fighting at a Nazi rock concert in Padova, July 2009 Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

The SPQR skinheads’ HQ is a disused school in Guidonia, a new town founded by Mussolini’s regime just north of Rome, where Marchetti photographed the group working out and playing music. The strong bonds between members are the key attraction for potential recruits, who are overwhelmingly young, white, working-class men who feel alienated from western, capitalist, multicultural society. There is an all-consuming macho cult, in which physical fitness and prowess are highly valued. →

Armando organises training sessions and boxing matches in his garage near Rome Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

Matteo holds a torch during a march in Rome, December 2009 Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

Italian skinheads on the way to a concert in southern Italy, December 2010 Photograph: Paolo Marchetti

A demonstrator voices his anger during a march against the Berlusconi government organised by the far-right Forza Nuova party in Rome, January 2010

• For more details, go to paolomarchetti.org Photograph: Paolo Marchetti