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.
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Headquarters
The WUFENS headquarters was first located in a residence on Williamsburg Road in Arlington, but was later relocated as the 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 relocated 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 this site is often misidentified as Rockwell's headquarters when in fact it was the successor organization's last physical address in Arlington (now a coffeehouse) [1].
Assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell
On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was killed by John Patler, a former party member whom Rockwell had ejected from the party for allegedly trying to introduce Marxist doctrine into the party's platforms. While leaving the Econowash laundromat at the Dominion Hills Shopping Center in Arlington, Virginia, two bullets entered his car through his windshield, striking Rockwell in the head and chest. His car slowly rolled backwards to a stop and Rockwell staggered out of the front passenger side door of the car, and then collapsed face up on the pavement. [2]
A previous assassination attempt was made on Rockwell on June 28, 1967. Returning from shopping, he drove into the party headquarters driveway on Wilson Boulevard and found it blocked by a felled tree and brush. Rockwell assumed that it was another prank by local teens. As a young boy 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 would-be assassin. On June 30, Rockwell petitioned the Arlington County Circuit Court for a gun permit; no action was ever taken on his request.
Activities
The American Nazi Party published racist cartoon books portraying white men fighting and defending white school children allegedly oppressed by Blacks (who were 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]
Factions
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 .[3]
Greensboro Massacre
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.[4] 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.[5] In a 1985 civil lawsuit the survivors won a $350,000 judgement against the city, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators.[6]
References
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502676.html Washington Post - "It's Just Nazi Same Place" - Gene Weingarten
- ^ "American "Nazi" Shot Dead". http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/25/newsid_3031000/3031928.stm. Retrieved 2009-08-07.
- ^ “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.
- ^ Mark Hand (2004-11-18). "The Greensboro Massacre". Press Action.
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10392-2005Mar5.html Seeking Closure on 'Greensboro Massacre'
- ^ "Civil Convictions In Greensboro". New York Times. June 9, 1985. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/09/weekinreview/the-nation-civil-convictions-in-greensboro.html. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
External links
- Official website of the revived ANP
- Official website of the National Socialist Movement (This group is different from the revived ANP, but sometimes does co-use the same or similar name)
See also
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