American Nazi Party

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The American Nazi Party (ANP) was founded by George Lincoln Rockwell with the goal of reviving Nazism in the United States of America and was headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Initially called the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), Rockwell reorganized and renamed it the American Nazi Party in 1960 to attract maximum media attention. The party was based largely upon the ideals and policies of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP in Germany during the Third Reich but maintained allegiance to the Constitutional principles of the U.S.'s Founding Fathers. It also added a platform of Holocaust denial.

The WUFENS headquarters was first located in a residence on Williamsburg Road in Arlington. Rockwell later relocated ANP headquarters to a house at 928 North Randolph Street (now a hotel and office building site). Rockwell and some party members also established a "Stormtrooper Barracks" in a farmhouse in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington at what is now the Upton Hill Regional Park, the tallest hill in the county. After Rockwell's death, the headquarters was moved 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. Visible from busy Wilson Boulevard this site is often misidentifed as Rockwell's headquarters when in fact it was the succesor organization's last physical address in Arlington (now a coffeehouse) [1].

In 1967 Rockwell was assassinated by John Patler, a disgruntled ex-party member. The organization had been renamed the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) several months before Rockwell's assassination. Matt Koehl became Rockwell's successor.[2][3]

The American Nazi Party published racist cartoon books portraying white men fighting and defending white school children allegedly oppressed by African-Americans (who were caricatured as being ignorant and violent). "Send Them Back to Africa" was a common theme. ANP members stood in the parking lots of local Junior High & High School parking lots handing out these cartoons to young students, Thomas Jefferson Junior High School (now Thomas Jefferson Middle School) in particular.[citation needed]

In 1970, NSWPP member Frank Collin, broke away from the group and founded the National Socialist Party of America, which became famous due to an attempt to march through Skokie, Illinois, a community with a large Jewish population that included numerous survivors of the Holocaust. The event was dramatized in the television film Skokie and is mocked in the film The Blues Brothers. Collin's aim was to lead demonstrations in Chicago's Marquette Park area, and he targeted Skokie in an attempt to gain access to Marquette Park without posting a large insurance bond. In 1979, Collin was convicted and sent to prison on charges of child molestation .[4]

On November 3, 1979, in what became known as the Greensboro massacre, five protestors at an anti-Klan march in Greensboro, North Carolina, were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The victims were members of the Communist Workers Party, which had been seeking to organize mainly black industrial workers in the area and confronting local white supremacists.[5] At the time of the shooting the ATF had an undercover agent within the Party, and one of the Klansmen present at the shooting was a police informant. None of the killers were ever convicted.

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[edit] Similar groups

The American Nazi Party mantle has been taken up by several small, often one-man, organizations, including James Burford's in Chicago and John Bishop's in Iowa .[6]

A new group claiming the name American Nazi Party has been founded, and according to its website, "is a Political-Educational Association, dedicated to the 14 Words". The organization states that it is "committed to bringing American National Socialism, first created and embodied by our late Commander George Lincoln Rockwell, out of the past Phase One activities which at the time served their purpose well, and into the 21st century."

The National Socialist Movement uses a similar name, America's Nazi Party.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502676.html Washington Post - "It's Just Nazi Same Place" - Gene Weingarten
  2. ^ American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party by Frederick J. Simonelli, (University of Illinois Press, 1999, hardcover: ISBN 0-252-02285-8)
  3. ^ Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party by William H. Schmaltz, (Brassey's Inc., 1999, hardcover: ISBN 1-57488-171-X, paperback: ISBN 1-57488-262-7).
  4. ^ “Hate Groups, Racial Tension and Ethnoviolence in an Integrating Chicago Neighborhood 1976-1988,” by Chip Berlet; in Betty A. Dobratz, Lisa K. Walder, and Timothy Buzzell, eds., Research in Political Sociology, Vol.9: The Politics of Social Inequality, 2001, pp. 117–163.
  5. ^ Mark Hand (2004-11-18). "The Greensboro Massacre". Press Action.
  6. ^ Kaplan, Jeffrey. Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Rowman Altamira. pp. 3. ISBN 0742503402. 

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