I don't know how it was in Europe, but I remember by the 1990s in the US there were media portrayals of "skinheads" as a totally American and totally white power thing, with absolutely no recognition or memory of a non-racist UK subculture from a few decades earlier. It was before the internet made it easy to look up that it existed in another context, some TV show talking about "skinheads" could define the term for millions.
The neonazi invasion happened around when both tended to show up in the same discussions. More people know about punks than skinheads, so I used one to give context to the other. The recent movie about the late '90s punk scene, Bomb City, even had a skinhead with an anti-Nazi jacket.