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American Nazi Party
Political party in the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The American Nazi Party (ANP) is an American neo-Nazi political party founded by George Lincoln Rockwell in 1959. In Rockwell's time, it was headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It was renamed the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) in 1967. Rockwell was murdered by former ANP member John Patler later that year. Following Rockwell's murder, the organization appointed Rockwell's second in command, Deputy Commander Matt Koehl as the new leader.
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The NSWPP, now under Koehl's command, was subject to ideological disagreements between members in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to several members being kicked out and forming their own groups. Koehl renamed the NSWPP the New Order in 1983, which came with a shift in the organization towards esoteric neo-Nazism. After Koehl's death in 2014, a long-time member and officer of the New Order, Martin Kerr, assumed leadership.
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History
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In October 1959, George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party,[1] and its headquarters became 928 North Randolph Street in Arlington, which also became Rockwell's home.[2] Under Rockwell, the party embraced Nazi uniforms and iconography.[3]
After several years of living in impoverished conditions, Rockwell began to experience some financial success with paid speaking engagements at universities where he was invited to express his controversial views as exercises in free speech. This prompted him to end the rancorous "Phase One" party tactics and begin "Phase Two", a plan to recast the group as a legitimate political party by toning down the verbal and written attacks against non-whites, replacing the party rallying cry of "Sieg Heil!" with "White Power!", limiting public display of the swastika, and entering candidates in local elections.[4][5][3]
Rockwell and some party members also established a "Stormtrooper Barracks" in an old mansion owned by the widow of Willis Kern[6] in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington at what is now the Upton Hill Regional Park. After Rockwell's murder, the headquarters was moved again to one side of a duplex brick and concrete storefront at 2507 North Franklin Road which featured a swastika prominently mounted above the front door. This site was visible from busy Wilson Boulevard. Today, the Franklin Road address is often misidentified as Rockwell's headquarters when in fact it was the successor organization's last physical address in Arlington (now a coffeehouse).[7][8][9]
The years 1965 and 1967 were possibly the height of Rockwell's profile.[4] He was interviewed by Playboy magazine, an event that stirred controversy within the ranks.[4] At the time Rockwell had about 500 followers.[3]
Name change and party reform
On January 1, 1967, the group underwent several changes. Rockwell changed the name of the American Nazi Party to the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP), changed the logo to a stylized eagle, and replaced their slogan of Sieg Heil with White Power, all in an effort to Americanize the organization and increase its appeal.[10] This alienated some hard-line members. The new name was a "conscious imitation" of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Rockwell wanted a more "ecumenical" approach and felt that the swastika banner was impeding organizational growth. Rockwell was killed on August 25, 1967, before he could implement party reforms.[3] Matt Koehl, a purist Neo-Nazi, succeeded Rockwell as the new leader and this ended the American Nazi Party. Thereafter, the members engaged in internecine disputes, and they were either expelled by Koehl or they resigned. After the murder of Rockwell, the party dissipated and ad hoc organizations usurped the American Nazi Party logo. Those included James Burford in Chicago and John Bishop in Iowa.[4]
In 1962, ANP member Roy James was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $25 for punching Martin Luther King Jr., after pleading guilty to charge of assault and battery and disorderly conduct. King had not wanted to press charges, but Birmingham Judge Charles H. Brown insisted on trying James, calling the incident an "uncalled for, unprovoked assault."[11] As of 1967, the group had about 500 members.[3]
Assassination of Rockwell
An assassination attempt was made on Rockwell on June 28, 1967. As Rockwell returned from shopping, he drove into the long driveway of the "Stormtrooper Barracks" located in Arlington's Dominion Hills subdivision and found it blocked by a fallen tree and brush. Rockwell assumed that it was another prank by local teens. As a party member cleared the obstruction, two shots were fired at Rockwell from behind one of the swastika-embossed brick driveway pillars. One of the shots ricocheted off the car, right next to his head. Leaping from the car, Rockwell pursued the gunman. On June 30, Rockwell petitioned the Arlington County Circuit Court for a gun permit; no action was ever taken on his request.[12]
On August 25, 1967, as Rockwell left the Econowash laundromat at the Dominion Hills Shopping Center, a former follower named John Patler shot Rockwell from the roof of the building. Patler fired two bullets into Rockwell's car through the windshield. One missed, the other hit his chest and ruptured his heart. His car rolled backward to a stop and Rockwell staggered out of the front passenger side door of the car, stood briefly while pointing upward at the strip mall's rooftop where the shots had come from and then collapsed on the pavement. He was pronounced dead at the scene.[6][13][14]
Koehl's succession and ideological divisions
Rockwell's second in command, Deputy Commander Matt Koehl, a staunch Hitlerist, assumed the leadership role after a council agreed that he should retain command. In 1968, Koehl moved the party to a new headquarters on 2507 North Franklin Road, clearly visible from Arlington's main thoroughfare, Wilson Boulevard.[15] In 1969, NSWPP William Luther Pierce and Joseph Tommasi founded the National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) as a youth wing of the American Nazi Party, aiming for it to appeal to White college students.[16] In 1970, David Duke joined the NSLF youth wing (through mail order).[17]
Koehl's leadership style resulted in many members leaving the group or being kicked out.[18] The party began to experience ideological divisions among its followers as it entered the 1970s.[19] Some members of the NSWPP chose to support William Luther Pierce, who was kicked out by Koehl,[20] and formed the National Alliance in 1974.[19] Others went with Joseph Tommasi, who was abruptly kicked out of the group for unclear reasons by Koehl in 1973.[21][22] Tommasi founded the National Socialist Liberation Front in 1974, using the same name as the NSWPP's youth wing, but in effect an entirely new group.[18][23] The new NSLF was a highly militant splinter of the NSWPP that attracted its most radical members; members were linked to several violent attacks.[24]
On November 3, 1979, some members of the NSWPP and a Ku Klux Klan group attacked a Communist Workers' Party protest march in Greensboro, North Carolina. The group of neo-Nazis and Klansmen shot and killed five marchers. Forty Klansmen and neo-Nazis were involved in the shootings with sixteen Klansmen and neo-Nazis being arrested. The six strongest cases were brought to trial first, but the two criminal trials resulted in the acquittal of the defendants by all-white juries. However, in a 1985 civil lawsuit, the survivors won a $350,000 judgment against the city, the Klansmen, and the neo-Nazis after they were all found guilty of violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. The shootings became known as the "Greensboro Massacre."[25]
In 1982 the Internal Revenue Service took action to foreclose on the group's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.[26] The site of the party headquarters, 928 North Randolph Street in Ballston, Virginia, is now a hotel and office building. After Rockwell's death, his successor Matt Koehl relocated the headquarters to 2507 North Franklin Road in Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia.[27] The small building, often misidentified today as Rockwell's former headquarters became The Java Shack.[28][29]
New Order
Koehl's NSWPP changed its name to New Order on January 1, 1983, on the grounds that the people in the area "are not people looking to join revolutionary organizations", saying that it was moving to an area in the Midwest which it would not reveal for security reasons.[30] This was announced by Martin Kerr, the leader at the Franklin Road headquarters.[31] Due to recruitment issues along with financial and legal trouble, Koehl was forced to relocate the group's headquarters from the DC area, eventually finding his way to scattered locations in Wisconsin and Michigan.[32] The name change reflected the group's neo-Nazi mysticism and it was still known by that name in 2010.[31]
The organization briefly attracted the media's attention in October 1983, when it held a private meeting at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia.[33] New Order's Chief of Staff, Martin Kerr, claims that the group is no longer a white supremacist group and focuses on advocating "in favor of [white] people, not against other races or ethnicities...we consider the white people of the world to be a gigantic family of racial brothers and sisters, united by ties of common ancestry and common heritage. Being for our own family does not mean that we hate other families." The SPLC still classifies them as neo-Nazis and as a "hate group."[34][35][36] After Koehl's death in 2014, Kerr assumed leadership and maintains the New Order website and organization.[32]
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Organization
The ANP published several periodicals, run on a subscription, which it used to connect with the party's various sympathizers. The sympathizers sometimes became members or followers of the group.[37] Its first perdiodical, the National Socialist Bulletin, was founded in May 1960; it was a small periodical, 15 pages long for each issue. It published eight issues, before it was succeeded by The Stormtrooper Magazine.[37] They also ran The Rockwell Report, starting in 1961; the Report, unlike the Bulletin, was a full size magazine.[38]
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Namesake organizations
Since the late 1960s, there have been a number of small groups that have used the name "American Nazi Party."
- Perhaps the first was led by James Warner and Allen Vincent and it consisted of members of the California branch of the NSWPP.[39] This group announced its existence on January 1, 1968. In 1982 James Burford formed another "American Nazi Party" from disaffected branches of the National Socialist Party of America.[40] This Chicago-based group remained in existence until at least 1994.[41][42][4]
- A small American Nazi Party, operating out of Davenport, Iowa, under the leadership of John Robert Bishop, maintained a presence until its eventual decline in 1985.[43][4][44]
- A former member of the original American Nazi Party, Rocky Suhayda, founded his own organization using the American Nazi Party name and has been active since at least 2008.[45]
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