"POLICING" THE SCENE

Although the presence of fencewalkers and racist skinheads was opposed by anti-racist skinheads, the lack of organizational structure and information-sharing made it difficult to do much about it prior to the resurrection of SHARP in Montréal,. Ovide recalls that "you'd end up finding out something two months after something that most people knew about someone. So, it's hard to do something about it, confront someone about it." For him, two of the major benefits that came with SHARP was the improvement in how information on fencewalkers was disseminated among anti-racist skinheads and how the presence of an active SHARP chapter put the fencewalkers on notice that they were no longer welcome within the skinhead subculture. Both benefits allowed SHARP to "police" the skinhead and punk subcultures. Ovide describes SHARP's policing role as follows:

After SHARP, you know, as soon as we find out that someone's been with Nazis, he's kicked out. There's no way he's tolerated in the scene. Because when we find out, everybody knows. And we decided together that. Some people who are not in SHARP will maybe say, well, you know, complain about it, but we can tell everyone why we did it. And everybody supports it, and it goes over. Totally. And it's accepted.

How do you go about kicking someone out of the scene?

Kick his ass! (laughter) Or just get the word out that you're going to do it. That works, usually. Unless he was really hanging out with Nazis, like definitely known for a fact, then he'll get it. But if it's more wishy-washy, he'll get warned.

Ovide's explanation is illustrative of how SHARP expanded their policing role from removing racists from the Montréal skinhead and punk subcultures to removing those how associate with racists as well.

If deviance functions in part to demonstrate the boundaries of behaviour conducive to community membership and involvement, racism and associating with racists are two traits that transgress the boundaries of the skinhead subculture in Montréal. SHARP's ritualized excommunication of, firstly, racists and, secondly, those who socialize with racists, serves both to separate the deviants from the convention-maintaining majority in the subculture and to define the subculture's very boundaries. Moreover, by ritually separating racists and their associates from the skinhead subculture and the punk subculture within which SHARP is itself embedded, SHARP members are attempting to work toward resolving the problem of identification stemming from the similarity of racist and anti-racist factional homologies.

SHARP's policing role soon expanded even further, to include the forced exclusion of people critical of SHARP from Montréal's skinhead subculture. But this expansion of the policing role increases the likelihood that not everyone will agree or accept the targetting of a given individual by SHARP. Not unexpectedly, this expansion has led to an increasing level of animosity and hostility directed towards SHARP from other skinhead factions, who may contest or resent SHARP's self-appointed policing role and their decisions about who are the deviants to be ritually expelled from the skinhead and punk communities. Charles, an anti-racist skinhead not affiliated with SHARP, bitterly recounted how a SHARP member attacked a friend at a party for allegedly "talking shit about SHARP." And Ovide admits that "It's kind of touchy in the scene to start fights. Because you have to do it with a certain diplomacy, and people have to know why you're doing it, and if it's a good reason."

Have you guys run into that before, where you've kicked somebody out of the scene and other people, not in SHARP, have kind of protested about it?

Well, there's this guy right now, I don't know if he's hangs out with Nazis, but he's been totally dissing SHARP left right and centre, for no reason. And, on the internet, of all things. Saying, "SHARP bitch" this and blah blah blah. And having the pretension to think that we'd accept him in SHARP, even though he's a two-watt bulb. The guy is total fencewalker material.

So, we figure it out. And naturally, we never did anything to this guy. And he even wanted to be in SHARP before. He also hangs out with Celeste, who's a total fencewalker. I think he was going out with her or something.

So anyways, the message is out that he can't show up anymore. Anywhere. And some people are like, "oh, he's not that much of a threat," and just try to convince us not to. But, we're right. We have the proof and everybody knows about it, that he's dissing us and all this crap. So, even if they complain, what are they going to do? They know we're right.

In this case, Ovide justified SHARP's actions by explaining that he "probably would've gone over to the Nazis sooner or later anyway. So it's better to get rid of him right now." Linking the expansion of targets for policing to the original targets of policing may work as a justification within SHARP, but it remained controversial and a point of contention with other skinhead factions who appeared to harbour growing resentment towards SHARP for this. It was therefore unsurprising when Darice revealed growing animosity coming from the trad skinheads. "For us, it's starting to be (mutually hostile), because you can only hear so much shit that's been said behind your back, and read print-outs of what's been said on IRC about how SHARPs do this and SHARPs are so bad and whatever, and then you'll go to the bar and they'll be just sweet as pie. But maybe, again, they're concerned for their physical well-being, I don't know."

Like armed agents of the state who enforce the laws of the land, the policing role adopted by SHARP members is only effective because of the actual or implied violence with which they are able to carry out this role. And like official police, SHARP members attempt to legitimize their use of force by emphasizing and perhaps exagerating the level of consensus and agreement with their policing actions. A final similarity SHARP shares with the official police is the level of resentment and hostility directed towards them by some members of the community who may disagree with the decision to target a particular individual for expulsion from the community, or who may dispute the legitimacy of their claim to the policing role.