The Anti-Defamation League is warning of a “significant and troubling resurgence” of racist skinhead activity, with a growing presence in New Jersey, according to Etzion Neuer, the organization’s regional director.

Announcing the launch of an on-line Racist Skinhead Project, an ADL report listed 10 groups that, along with “unaffiliated racist skinhead criminal activity,” are currently operating in the state as part of “a truly international racist skinhead community” linked together by “the global reach of the Internet.”

“We often find that folks in New Jersey will say that racism is not prevalent in their state, that we’re in a ‘blue state’ with a lot of liberals. But this report shatters that myth,” said Neuer in a Feb. 7 interview with NJJN, hours after the ADL’s national office issued its report.

The ADL leader declined to quantify the population of the racist movement, which he described as “70 percent male.”

“We simply don’t know the exact number,” Neuer said. “These groups tend to have a lot of turnover. A group may have a set number of people for a year and then expand, or within a year or two it may become inactive.”

Yet, Neuer said, there was “an alarming sense of heightened activity” among the skinhead racists, interjecting quickly that not all such activities are against the law.

“There are concerts and other racist events, and they are all protected free speech,” he said. “But at the same time, such protected activity is cause for concern and alarm, because where we see pockets of activity there is a sense of potential danger.”

Neuer cited the case of Jacob Robida, an 18-year-old resident of New Bedford, Mass., who walked into a gay bar there on Feb. 4 and began attacking patrons with a hatchet and a handgun. He left three people injured before fleeing south, killing a friend and an Arkansas police officer. He was then shot and killed by police.

Investigators reportedly found neo-Nazi literature as well as anti-Jewish, anti-gay, and anti-black posters in his home.

The ADL’s Racist Skinhead Project tracks activity by state and region. The ADL report identifies 110 racist skinhead groups in America, most of which, it says, came into being during the past five years. It also notes that these groups often have short half-lives, forming, dividing, and changing frequently.

Overall, racist skinheads — whose organizations, the report says, are at best loosely organized — have been involved in 83 criminal incidents over the last few years, ranging from minor crimes to 17 incidents that led to charges of murder, attempted murder, or manslaughter.

Among those states being cited as having large, powerful, or growing racist skinhead groups are New Jersey, California, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Oregon, and Washington.

According to Neuer, the rise of small, localized skinhead groups follows the disbanding of larger organizations such as National Alliance and the World Church of the Creator.

Neuer said people in New Jersey face a “complex question: ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

“This is the dark and putrid side of a counterculture,” he said. “ADL believes a child is not born hating, but ultimately the key to challenging these attitudes comes by inoculating against them. I wish it were as easy as a one-time painful shot that could be used as a vaccine, but it isn’t. Can we state definitively that every racist skinhead comes from a home that was replete with racism? No. But we do know that it’s not in the water.”

According to Neuer, “Many of the groups have members with violent histories. Not every act they perform is part of their affiliation, but we see this as an affinity between membership in racist skinhead groups and a propensity for violence.”

He said the ADL compiled information on the skinheads “from a variety of sources, most of which are available to the general public.” Staffers at the watchdog agency’s national headquarters in New York pay close attention to racist publications and Web sites and “simply monitor activity that goes on.”

He said the targets “predictably are most minorities — with Jews, blacks, Latinos, gays, immigrants, and almost any non-white groups.”

Many members are recruited in prisons, which Neuer called “one of the most important training grounds, not just for racist skinheads but for many gangs and extremist groups. I’ve talked to law enforcement people who have worked in the prisons, and they have shared with me the terrible problem of racist groups within the prison system of New Jersey.”

Other experts said the ADL report should be placed in perspective. Kenneth Stern, a specialist in anti-Semitism and extremism at the American Jewish Committee, agrees that racist skinheads continue to pose a problem in the United States.

Nevertheless, he said, the increase in the number of groups “is not necessarily a trouble sign.” If a big group splits into several smaller ones, he said, there has been no net gain for the movement.

In any case, Stern said, “compared to what we’re seeing in Europe, the skinhead problem here is very, very mild to say the least.”