From my understanding punk always had a neo Nazi faction correct?
Absolutely, and it was roughly balanced between the Nazi skins and their opponents for a good period of time, if anything skewed in favor of the White racialists. Skinheads were almost always regarded as White racists though there was also left wing skins known as "sharps" (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice). Antifa was around and other far left scum, but for the most part skinhead bands held a lot of concerts with few encountering any problems, just as politically the Populist Party, which I was the head of, rarely encountered serious conflicts with the far left. If you've seen "American History X" the music gatherings were kind of like the fictionalized concert in that movie.
The best known bands were based both in the U.S. and England. England was where Skrewdriver, fronted by Ian Stewart, originated along with others such as Brutal Attack and No Remorse. They would often cross the pond and play in the U.S. at concerts attended by a few hundred attendees, while Bound for Glory and other North American bands like Berserkr would likewise journey to the UK and play. It was all very low budget and the band members were working class toughs, battle hardened and always ready to fight. Sadly Ian Stewart died in a car crash in 1993 and that was a heavy blow to the scene but not a fatal one.
As is usually the case, the skinhead music scene here in America grew in large part thanks to the efforts of one man, in this case George Burdi, a young Canadian who early on went by the name George Eric Hawthorne. Berserkr was Burdi's band and it was the most musically accomplished of all of them, especially their second CD, can't think of the name of it right now. More importantly, Burdi founded Resistance Records, which was incorporated in Michigan and run by he and some American comrades. They put out a professionally produced magazine for several years called Resistance and promoted and sold White Power music through it and other means.
At some point in the mid-1990s, Resistance Records was raided by Michigan authorities on the pretext of not paying Michigan state sales tax. Even though it was a dynamic movement it was, as always with the right wing, greatly underfunded compared to the establishment and the bottomless well of funds it could draw from. The amount owed wasn't much but the authorities had come down on them with the threat of more to come.
I don't know all the details as I wasn't close to Burdi and others, but whether it was the raid and/or other factors, Burdi, the founding father and prime mover, decided to get out and Resistance Records was then sold to the National Alliance, founded and run by William Pierce. Burdi never explicitly denounced the "movement" but the last I read about him he had an Indian girlfriend (from India) and was playing mainstream type music, so he did sell out but not to the extreme some have over the years.
Resistance Records was still doing relatively well under that arrangement as Pierce through patient effort over many years had built up the National Alliance to several thousand paid members, vetted for quality, and was able to sell a lot of Resistance Records CDs, but in 2002 he contracted cancer and died within a few weeks. As Pierce died so quickly and didn't name a successor, a very very vicious battle erupted over control of the National Alliance following his death. Eric Gliebe ended up in control, but those who had lost out never accepted him and he was attacked mercilessly. Gliebe had been an amateur boxer who fought under the name "The Aryan Barbarian."
I knew Gliebe and he had helped me set up a Populist Party meeting in Cleveland where he then lived and I never had any problems with him only positive things to say, but I was never an NA member and had no dog in what was an incredibly vicious fight fought mainly through the internet in its early days. Gliebe ended up marrying a former Playboy playmate and among the complaints against him were that he was more interested in partying than continuing the NA as set up by William Pierce. From several thousand members the NA was reduced to a hundred or so after years of non-stop attacks and lawsuits. Eventually Will Williams ended up as the head of the NA, and he's someone I met and have known for many years as a man of integrity and he helped rebuild the National Alliance a great deal from its nadir, though Will is now well into his 70s and I'm not on top of where things stand with that organization today.
While the National Alliance was declining into irrelevance during the many years of infighting, it sold Resistance Records to Willis Carto, reportedly for a quarter million dollars. As with just about everything he touched, Carto quickly ruined what was left of Resistance Records and what it stood for. As an aside, Carto and I were bitter enemies for years as he tried to destroy the Populist Party after I led it to become the fourth largest political party in the country after the two monopoly parties and the Libertarian Party. Carto was a secretive and very divisive figure in the far right for half a century and he had quite the enemies list, Mark Weber and I being atop it in this century, but I also have friends who are Carto defenders which is why I won't go into any more details and besides it's irrelevant to the greater point that Resistance Records and the White Power music scene died once Carto bought what was left of it.
I believe there are still some outlets selling White Power music but sadly it's a shell of what it once was.
An example of Resistance magazine:
Ian Stewart of Skrewdriver (1957-1993), no one to trifle with:
