Skin's Best Friend

Photo by the author

The quest for a good, legal weapon has been of paramount importance to Berlin’s neo-Nazi skins since, like, forever. Guns? Knives? No way—those will land you in the clink faster than you can say gesundheit, especially if you’ve got a bald, gleaming pate. Some skins are catching on lately to an obvious solution. Just look down there at the end of that leash—it’s a four-legged coiled bear trap with no remorse and plenty of bloodlust. And—in its time off—it’s super for cuddling with. We caught up with a few bona fide German Nazi skins to chat about their pooches. VICE: Are you guys a gang? Nazi: We are a group of friends and familiars trying to defend our interests and ourselves. We meet, we talk, we drink, and we shit just as you do. We go out together, as you might do with your friends. Call it gang if you want. You have to be protected. Protected from what? People who want to fuck you over. We make sure nobody fucks with us. We are organized. You have to know everything that happens around you. What kind of dogs you have? Pit bulls, of course. They’re easy to get, easy to teach, and real fuckers when you need them to be. A good pit bull will bite you so hard that he might fuck up your arm forever—without killing you. And the cops don’t assume you have these dogs for this purpose? They can assume what they want. A dog attack can be out of your control as an owner, which makes you less culpable than a gun or knife owner. How did you settle on dogs to protect you? The people dealing with real shit have always been protected by dogs. Even Nazis had dogs to attack people. Even the police have dogs. The hood is getting harder. Some months ago we had a huge fight with some idiots trying to sell drugs in the wrong place. Of course the usual shit was involved: sticks and good kicks. Nobody wants to kill anybody. But it’s good to scare people. One of our dogs got one of those guys on his leg. He was bleeding all over and they all ran away. They never came back. But if I have a gun, I can just shoot your dogs. Then what? Then you better shoot us all, because we’re gonna get into serious shit. Basically, if you want to scare me, I’m fine with it as long as I started it. But if you want to kill me, then you better kill me. GUNTER GLASS