The term
neo-Nazism refers to any post-
World War II social or political movement
seeking to revive
Nazism, or some variant
that echoes core aspects of Nazism.The term can also refer to the
ideology of those movements.
Austria
Immediately after the Allies liberated
Austria
in 1945, the anti-Nazi parties - Social Democratic Party
(SPÖ), Austrian People's
Party (ÖVP) and Communist
Party (KPÖ) - passed legislation to overcome the effects of
Nazi rule. A law passed on May 8, 1945, banned the
Nazi Party (NSDAP) and Nazi activities.
The
denazification program
designed to purge the state apparatus and society of Nazi followers
was not successful, mainly because of the size of the problem and
the bureaucratic shortcomings of the program. This failure was
reflected primarily in the fact that ex-members and sympathizers of
the NSDAP did not change their beliefs. Over 500,000 registered
Nazis were allowed to vote in the 1949 general election. A
considerable number of ex-Nazis were integrated into the SPÖ and
the ÖVP, and several concessions were made to appease them, such as
suppression of the history of the
Nazizeit (literally
'Nazi Time'); a fall-off in the prosecutions of Nazi war criminals;
and the reinstatement of Nazi civil servants, teachers, professors,
lawyers and police officers.
In the 1949 Austrian elections, ex-Nazis in the
Verband der Unabhängigen (VdU)
put up candidates and won seats, and the Austrian right wing went
through a process of growth. The withdrawal of Allied troops from
Austria in 1955 encouraged the consolidation of right-wing groups,
ranging from neo-Nazis to moderate Pan-Germans. The VdU split in
1955, but re-formed itself one year later as the
Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
The first
leaders of the FPÖ were former Nazis, such as Anton Reinthaller,
who had been a government minister in the Nazi era, and Friedrich Peter, who had been a Schutzstaffel
(SS) officer. The Austrian public saw itself
confronted with the organized right for the first time in 1959,
during the Schiller Celebrations, when Pan-German youth, sport and
cultural organizations took to the streets. The FPÖ's students'
organization
RFS and its graduate equivalent
Freiheitliche Akademikerverbände (FAV) attained considerable
influence within student and university bodies.
1960s and later
In the
1960s, right-wing extremists, along with German Kameraden,
gained notoriety by involvement in terrorist acts in the Italian
province of Bolzano-Bozen .
Prominent among these was Norbert Burger, the ex-RFS leader and
subsequent chairman of the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei
(NDP). The influence that the extreme right had gained in the
universities became dramatically apparent five years later, during
the
Borodajkewycz Affair. Hundreds of students
demonstrated in favor of the anti-semitic university professor
Borodajkewycz, and were involved in street battles– in the course
of which
Ernst Kirchweger, a former
concentration camp inmate, was beaten to death.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Friedrich Peter, Chairman of the FPÖ,
started establishing his party within the democratic party system–
leading up to the entry of the FPÖ into a coalition government with
the
Socialists in 1983.
This development led
to the formation of a group around Norbert Burger (condemned in
absentia by an Italian court for terrorist offenses in Bolzano
), which
split from the FPÖ in 1966 and set up the NDP. In contrast
to its German counterpart of the same name, the Austrian NDP found
little resonance in an electorate moving to the left in the late
1960s.
In
1972, Kurt Waldheim, a Wehrmacht officer and SA
member
during the Nazi regime, was elected United Nations Secretary
General. Waldheim's election had caused anger among some
people who had lost relatives in the
Holocaust, as well as anti-UN groups who theorized
the UN was supportive of totalitarian ideologies.
The volume "Rechtsextremismus in Österreich seit 1945" ("Right-wing
Extremism in Austria since 1945"), issued by DÖW in 1979, listed
nearly 50 active extreme right-wing organizations in Austria. Their
influence waned gradually, partly due to
liberalization
programs in secondary schools and universities that emphasized
Austrian identity and democratic traditions. Votes for the RFS in
student elections fell from 30% in the 1960s to 2% in 1987. In the
1995 elections for the student representative body Österreichische
Hochschülerschaft, the RFS got 4% of the vote. The FPÖ won 22% of
the votes at the General Election in the same year.
In the 1980s, in the
province of Carinthia
, border issues with Slovenia
– and
disagreements over the rights of Carinthia's Slovenian minority–
were used to orchestrate support for the far
right organization Kärntner
Heimatdienst.
Belgium
A Belgian neo-Nazi organization,
Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw
(Blood, Land, Honour and Faithfulness), was created in 2004 after
splitting from the international network (
Blood and Honour). The group rose to public
prominence in September 2006, after 17 members (including 11
soldiers) were arrested under the December 2003
anti-terrorist laws and laws
against
racism,
anti-semitism and
negationism.
According to Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx and Interior Minister
Patrick Dewael, the suspects (11 of
whom were members of the military) were preparing terrorist attacks
in order to "destabilize" Belgium
.
According to journalist Manuel Abramowicz, of the
Resistances
network, the ultras of the radical right have always had as its aim
to "infiltrate the state mechanisms," including the army in the
1970s and the 1980s, through
Westland
New Post and the
Front de la Jeunesse.
A police
operation, which mobilized 150 agents, searched five military
barracks (in Leopoldsburg
near the Dutch border: Kleine-Brogel, Peer
, Brussels
(Royal military school) and Zedelgem
– as well as 18 private addresses in Flanders. They found weapons, munitions,
explosives, and a homemade bomb large enough to make "a car
explode." The leading suspect, B.T., was organizing the trafficking
of weapons, and was developing international links, in particular
with the Dutch far right movement De Nationale Alliantie.
Chile
Neo-Nazis
in Chile
derive their
ideology from the writings of Nicolás Palacios, or in some cases
follow an orthodox Nazi school influenced by Miguel Serrano and German Nazis that fled
into Chile after WWII. The former approach elevates the
Chilean
mestizo in status since, according
to Palacios' writings, the Chilean is a mix of two bellicose master
races: the
Visigoths of Spain and the
Mapuche of Chile.
Old school Nazism is more common among descendants of German or
other European immigrants in Southern Chile.
Common
targets of Nazi hate crimes in Chile include Peruvians
, Bolivians, Gypsies, homosexuals and
prostitutes.
The Chilean Race
Palacios
traces then the origins of the Spanish component of the "Chilean
race" to the coast of the Baltic Sea
, specifically to Götaland in Sweden
, one of the
supposed homelands of the Goths. As Palacios explains, at most 10% of the
Visigoths mixed with the native Iberians of Spain, while the rest
remained racially pure. The
conquest
of Chile and the
War of Arauco
that followed for many years attracted adventurous Spaniards of
martial lineage to Chile, thus giving Chile an overwhelming amount
of Visigoth heritage and blood, in contrast to other more
prosperous Spanish colonies where "merchant peoples" dominated.
These Spaniards of supposed Visigoth ancestry would have mingled
with native Mapuches, producing the common Chilean
Roto. According to Palacios, about 25,000
Goths arrived to Chile during the first five
generations after the
initial
conquest in the 1540s and 1550s.
Further, Palacios goes on to claim that both the blonde and the
bronze coloured Chilean mestizo share a "moral physonomy", and that
both think and reason in an identical way. This similarity he
states can be found on early Spanish literature about Chile, among
them the
epic poem La Araucana, where Mapuches are frequently
compared to the barbaric Germanic tribes that fought the
Roman Empire. Palacios denies that the "Chilean
roto" would be racially a "Latin", and said the
Chilean has nothing "Latin" except the language and the surname.
Palacios finds in alcoholism also a similarity with the
Germanic peoples of
Northern Europe.
Palacios warns against immigration from
Southern Europe and claims on medical
grounds that
Mestizos derived from South
Europeans lack "cerebral control" and that they are thus a social
load. He also states that there is no possibility for the Latin
race to produce a "
Miguel
Cervantes" or "
Michelangelo" in
Chile or elsewhere. because the Latin race in the 20th century is
very different from that in the
Renaissance.
Croatia
Neo-Nazis
in Croatia
base their ideology on the writings of Ante Starčević and Ante Pavelić. Genocide and Gross Human
Rights Violations by Kurt Jonassohn, Karin Solveig Björnson
Transaction Publishers 1998, page 279
To further legitimize the claim that Croats constituted a distinct
nation, entitled to their own state, Starcevic revived archaic
usages and invented new words to artificially separate a Croatian
literary language from the common Serbo-Croatian linguistic stock.
It is interesting to note that Starcevic's ideas were later
advocated by Ante Pavelic and the Ustashi
At the end of
World War II, many of
Pavelić's
Ustaše members fled to
the West, where they found sanctuary
and continued their
political and
terrorist activities (which were tolerated because
of
Cold War hostilities). The resurgence of
the Ustaše movement in post-war Croatia is partly due to
significant financial support of the
Croatian Democratic Union by
Ustaše emigrants.
To many of their modern supporters, the
Ustaše are considered victims of the historically disputed Bleiburg massacre, and the late president
Franjo Tuđman even proposed to
rebury Ustaše members together with victims of the Jasenovac
concentration camp
, as a sign of national reconciliation.Homeland
Calling: exile patriotism and the Balkan wars by Paul Hockenos,
Cornell University Press 2003 Page 28
"Bleiburg" became a charge symbol for the alleged 'Serbo-Communist'
campaign to exterminate the Croat nationPower and Persuasion:
Ideology and Rhetoric in Communist Yugoslavia, 1944-1953 by Carol
S. Lilly Westview Press 2001 Page 109
The first books about the alleged Bleibirg massacre appeared after
1990 - based only on memoirsVideo, War and the Diasporic
Imagination by Dona Kolar-Panov, Routledge 1997 Page 116
The story of Bleiburg was to fill the newspapers and to get
considerable media attention in Croatia, and some of the media
campaign reached Australia, but most of the members of the audience
were not sure about 'what really happened' mainly because the
'after war death camps' and their victims inhabited the blurry
space between myth and realityThe Formation of Croatian National
Identity: A Centuries-old Dream by Alex J. Bellamy, Manchester
University Press 2003 Page 71
The crisis was resolved when Tudjman
'discovered' that among the bones already at Jasenovac were some
returned from Bleiburg after the war, so no bodies needed to be
exhumed and moved
Croatian Serbs felt insulted by that proposal.
Jonathan Levy, one of
the lawyers representing plaintiffs in a 1999 lawsuit against the
Vatican
Bank
(Institute for Religious Works), the Franciscan order, and the Croatian Liberation
Movement (the Ustaše), the National Bank of Switzerland
and others, said: "Many are still terrified of the
Ustashe, the Serbs particularly.
Unlike
the Nazi Party, the Ustashe still exist and
have a party headquarters in Zagreb
."
In 1999,
Zagreb
's Square
of the Victims of Fascism was renamed The Square of The
Great Men of Croatia, provoking widespread criticism of
Croatia's attitude toward the Holocaust. In 2000, city council renamed
the square to
Square of the Victims of Fascism again. Many
streets in Croatia were renamed after the prominent Ustaše figure
Mile Budak, which provoked outrage
amongst the Serbian minority. Since 2002, there has been a reversal
of this development, and streets with the name of Mile Budak or
other persons connected with the Ustaše movement are few or
non-existent.
A plaque in Slunj
with the
inscription "Croatian Knight Jure
Francetić" was erected to commemorate Francetić, the notorious
Ustaše leader of the Black Legion.The plaque remained there for
four years, until it was removed by the authorities.
There have been instances of
hate
speech, such as the phrase
Srbe na
vrbe! (meaning "hang Serbs on the
willow
trees!"). An Orthodox church was
spray-paint with pro-Ustaše graffiti in 2004.
Police have sped up responses to the appearance of extreme
right wing graffiti and other hate-based
vandalism.
During some protests in Croatia, supporters of
Ante Gotovina and other suspected
war criminals have carried
nationalist symbols and pictures of Ante
Pavelić.In 2003, an attempt was made to amend the Croatian
penal code by adding articles prohibiting the
public display of Nazi symbols, the propagation of Nazi ideology,
historical revisionism and
holocaust denial. However, this
attempt was prevented by the Croatian
constitutional court in the same year.In 2005,
the Croatian government made a move toward the Nazi-era law
interpretation and practice, by granting to the Croatian parliament
the exclusive right to interpret and authenticate the law.An
amendment was added in 2006 to prohibit any type of
hate crime based on factors such as
race,
color,
gender,
sexual orientation,
religion or
national origin.
In 2007,
Austrian
authorities launched a criminal investigation into
the widespread display of Ustaše symbols
at the May 12 gathering of Croatian nationalists in Bleiburg
, Austria.
Thompson, a popular
Croatian singer, has sung "
Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara"
in his concerts.
That song glorifies the Ustaše and their
genocide of the Serbs His May 17, 2007
concert in Zagreb
was attended
by 60000 people, many of them wearing Ustaše uniforms. Some
gave Ustaše salutes, and shouted the Ustaše slogan "Za dom spremni"
(For home[land] ready) en-masse.
This event prompted the Jerusalem
office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
to publicly address a protest to the Croatian
president, Stjepan
Mesić.
Estonia
There
have been alleged neo-Nazi activities in Estonia
. In November 2006, the government passed a
law banning the display of
Nazi
symbols.
In 2006,
Roman Ilin, a Jewish theatre director from
St.
Petersburg, Russia
, was attacked by neo-Nazis when returning from an
underground tunnel after a rehearsal. Ilin subsequently
accused Estonian police of indifference after filing the incident.
When a
dark-skinned French
student was
attacked in Tartu
, the head of
an association of foreign students claimed the attack as
characteristic of a wave of neo-Nazi violence. However an
Estonian police official stated that there were only a few cases
involving foreign students over the previous two years
The
United Nations
Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur's Report of 2008 noted
that non-governmental organizations devoted to human rights as well
as community representatives had pointed out that neo-Nazi groups
are currently active in Estonia–particularly in Tartu–and have
perpetrated acts of violence against non-European minorities.
Neo-Nazi groups in Estonia and neighboring Latvia have carried out
re-enactments of events set during World War II and have staged
parades celebrating the Nazi units of the Baltic states, which
fought against the forces of the Soviet Union in the Second World
War.
Efraim Zuroff
of the United States-based Simon Wiesenthal Center
commented on some of the attendees: "dozens of
foreign neo-Nazis clearly [demonstrated] the danger that they will
encourage the rebirth of fascism and racist
extremism."
Parliamentary bodies of the member states of the Eurasia
geopolitical group–formed by the majority of the former Soviet
republics now acting together as the
Commonwealth of Independent
States– passed a 2007 resolution expressing their collective
"deep concern over the neo-Nazi sentiments in Estonia."
France
Neo-Nazi organizations in France are outlawed yet there are a
significant number of individuals or groups which could be
qualified as Neo-Nazi. On the other hand, legal far-right groups
are numerous, including the
Bloc
identitaire, created by former members of
Christian Bouchet's
Unité Radicale group. Close to
national bolshevism and
Third Position ideologies,
Unité
Radicale was dissolved in 2002 following
Maxime Brunerie's assassination attempt on
July 14, 2002 against then President
Jacques Chirac. Christian Bouchet had
previously been a member of
Nouvelle Résistance (NR), an
off-shoot of
Troisième
Voie (Third Way) which described itself as "
nationalist revolutionary."
Although the NR opposed at first the "
national conservatives" of
Jean-Marie Le Pen's
National Front, it finally changed
strategy, advocating as slogan "Less Leftism! More Fascism! " The
NR was also a successor to
Jean-François Thiriart's
Jeune Europe Neo-Nazi
Europeanist movement of the 1960s, which had
participated to the
National
Party of Europe, along with
Oswald
Mosley's
Union Movement,
Otto Strasser and others.
Germany
In Germany immediately after
World War
II,
Allied forces and the
new German government attempted to prevent the creation of new Nazi
movements through a process known as
denazification. The West German government
had passed strict laws prohibiting Nazis from publicly expressing
their beliefs as well as barring them from the political process.
Displaying the
swastika was an offense
punishable by up to one year imprisonment. There was little overt
neo-Nazi activity in Europe until the 1960s. However, some former
Nazis retained their political beliefs, and passed them down to new
generations.
After
German reunification in the
1990s, neo-Nazi groups gained more followers, mostly among
disaffected teenagers in the former East Germany
. Many were new groups that arose amidst the
economic collapse and high unemployment in the former East Germany.
They have
also had an aversion to people from Slavic countries (especially
Poland
) and people
of other national backgrounds who moved from the former West Germany
into the former German
Democratic Republic
after Germany was reunited. Much of their
ideology was similar to
Strasserism.
Activities
German
neo-Nazis have attacked accommodations for refugees and migrant workers in Hoyerswerda
(September 17-September 22, 1991); Rostock
-Lichtenhagen (August 23-August 27, 1992); and
Schwedt
, Eberswalde
, Eisenhüttenstadt
, Elsterwerda
(October 1991), and
painted graffiti on 9 Polish-owned cars in Löcknitz
(13 January 2008). Neo-Nazis were
involved in the murders of three Turkish girls in a November 23,
1992 arson attack in Mölln
, in which nine other people were injured.
A
May 29, 1993
arson attack
by far right
skinheads on the house of a Turkish
family in Solingen
resulted in the deaths of two women and three
girls, as well as in severe injuries for seven other people.
This, and similar incidents preceded demonstrations in many German
cities involving hundreds of thousands of people protesting against
far right violence. These protests
precipitated massive neo-Nazi counter-demonstrations and violent
clashes between neo-Nazis and
anti-fascist. Statistics show that in 1991,
there were 849 hate crimes, and in 1992 there were 1,485 (with a
significant concentration in the eastern
Bundesländer). After 1992, the numbers
went down, although they have risen sharply in subsequent years. In
4 decades of the former East Germany, 17 people have been murdered
by far right groups.
Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neo-Nazis started
holding demonstrations on the anniversary of the
Bombing of Dresden in World
War II. In 2009,
Junge Landsmannschaft
Ostdeutschland, which is supported by the
NPD, organized the march. There were 6,000 Neo-Nazis,
met by tens of thousands of anti-Nazis and several thousand
police.
Legal issues
German
law forbids the production of pro-Nazi materials, so when such
items are procured they are smuggled into the country mostly from
the United
States
, Scandinavia, the
Czech
Republic
, Hungary
, and Italy
.
Neo-Nazi
rock bands such as
Landser have been outlawed in Germany, yet
bootleg copies of their albums
printed in the US and other countries are still sold in the
country.
German
neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on Internet servers in the US and
Canada
, and use
other terms for Nazi ideas and symbols. They also invent new
symbols reminiscent of the
swastika and
adopt other symbols used by the Nazis, such as the sun disc,
sun wheel, hooked cross, wolf's cross,
wolf's hook,
black sun, and dark star.
A trial
was held before the Federal
Constitutional Court of Germany
over the prohibition of the National Democratic
Party , which had been accused of being a partly neo-Nazism
accepting party. In the course of the trial, it was
discovered that some high-ranking party members worked as
informants for the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz
. The trial was temporarily suspended, and
then rejected by the court because of the unclear influence of
informants within the NPD.
In 2004,
NPD received 9.1% of the vote in the parliamentary elections for
Saxony
, thus
earning the right to seat state parliament
members. The other parties refused to enter
discussions with the NPD.
In the 2006 parliamentary elections for
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
, the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and six seats in
the state
parliament. NPD leader Udo
Voigt is currently on trial for racial incitement and defamation for remarks made about German
footballer Patrick Owoyomela,
whose mother is Nigerian
.
Other neo-Nazi groups that have been active in Germany and have
attracted government attention include the
Volkssozialistische
Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit (which was banned in
1982), the
Action
Front of National Socialists/National Activists (banned in
1983), the
Nationalist Front
(banned in 1992), the
Free
German Workers' Party of
Michael
Kühnen and
Friedhelm Busse, the
German Alternative,
National Offensive, and the
Homeland-Faithful German
Youth, which was banned in late March 2009). German Interior
Minister
Wolfgang Schäuble
condemned the Homeland-Faithful German Youth, accusing it of
teaching children that anti-immigrant racism and
anti-Semitism were acceptable.
Homeland-Faithful German Youth claimed that it was centred
primarily on "environment, community and homeland", but has been
argued to have NPD links.)
Greece
The most notable Greek neo-Nazi political organization is
Chrysi Avyi. Twelve Greek neo-Nazis participated
as volunteers in the
Yugoslav wars in
Bosnia, aiding the Serbian Army in capturing the town of
Srebrenica.
Israel
Israel
has seen a
surge of neo-Nazi activity in the past decade, linked to the
arrival of over 1.2 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union
– a substantial proportion of whom do not identify
as Jews, even though they have some Jewish ancestry.
In August
2007, Israeli police broke up a cell in Petah Tikva
made up of eight young immigrants from the former
Soviet Union, which had been attacking religious Jews, foreign
workers and gays, and which had been vandalizing synagogues with Nazi images.
The Soviet Union-born neo-Nazis are reported to operate in cities
across Israel, and have been described as having little connection
to Jewish heritage, and of being influenced by the rise of
neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Widely publicized arrests
have led to a call to reform the
Law of
Return to permit the revocation of Israeli citizenship for– and
the subsequent deportation of– neo-Nazis.
Russia
The
post-Soviet
era has
seen the rise of a variety of extreme nationalist movements in Russia
, some of
which are openly neo-fascist or
neo-Nazi. Neo-Nazi groups in Russia are characterized by
racism,
anti-Semitism,
Islamophobia and extreme
xenophobia towards people from Asia.
Their ideology centers on defending Russian national identity
against what they perceive as a takeover by minority groups such as
Jews,
Caucasians, Asians and Muslims.
Dark-skinned Russians are often subjected to racial abuse,
regardless of religious affiliation. Their ideology has become
epitomized in the slogan "
Russia for
the Russians", a catchphrase also adopted by less extreme
factions. Russian neo-Nazis have generally not outlined discernible
economic programs. They have openly admired and imitated the German
Nazis and
Adolf Hitler.
The most prominent organization,
Russian National Union, led by
Alexander Barkashov, adopted a
three-ray
Swastika as its emblem (the
German Nazi swastika can be thought of consisting of two rays; the
Z shaped segments). Nikolai Kuryanovich, an open admirer
of Hitler who wishes to expel all Asian immigrants and limit
immigration to educated whites, attempted to run for president, but
had his candidacy dismissed.
Social roots
The
collapse of the Soviet
economic
system in the early 1990s caused great economic and social
problems, including widespread unemployment and poverty. Several
far
right paramilitary organizations
were able to tap into popular discontent, particularly among the
marginalized, lesser educated, and habitually unemployed youth. Of
the three major age groups– youths, adults, and the elderly– youths
may have been hit the hardest. The elderly suffered due to
inadequate (or unpaid) pensions, but they found effective political
representation in the
Communists, and
generally had their concerns addressed through better budget
allocations. Adults, although often suffering financially and
psychologically due to job losses, were generally able to find new
sources of income. Moreover, Soviet-era indoctrination into the
ideals of
egalitarianism predisposed
most adults against the message of right-wing extremists. Younger
Russians were much less likely to have such inclinations.
Activities
Russian neo-Nazis have made it an explicit goal to take over the
country by force, and have put serious effort into preparing for
this.
Paramilitary organizations
operating under the guise of sports clubs have trained their
members in squad tactics and weapons handling. They have stockpiled
and used weapons, often illegally. Reputedly, many were interested
in
martial arts and unarmed combat, and
have organized realistic
hand to
hand combat classes.
On August 15, 2007, Russian authorities arrested a student for
allegedly posting a video on the Internet which appears to show two
Muslim, migrant workers being beheaded in front of a red and black
Swastika flag. Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of a Moscow-based
center that monitors hate crime in Russia, said, "It looks like
this is the real thing. The killing is genuine...There are similar
videos from the Chechen war. But this is the first time the killing
appears to have been done intentionally." A Russian neo-Nazi group
called the
Russian
National Socialist Party claimed responsibility for the
murders.
Serbia
Although neo-Nazism in Germany mostly focuses on racial and
political intolerance, neo-Nazism in Serbia is mostly based on
national and religious factors.
Nacionalni
stroj (National Alignment), a neo-Nazi organization from the
Vojvodina
region, orchestrated several incidents in 2005. Charges were laid against 18 of the
leading members in late 2005, and each of them faced up to eight
years in prison.
United States
There are a number of small neo-Nazi groups in the United States
today. The earliest example of this ideological tendency can be
traced back to the 1920s and the formation of a domestic U.S.
Nazi Party. This organization merged with
Free Society of Teutonia to
form the
German-American Bund.
The German-American Bund and similar groups achieved limited
popularity in the 1930s (at one point staging a rally with over
20,000 people), but rapidly faded with the onset of
World War II. The groups either disbanded or
were dismantled by force of law (such as the 1942 sedition trial)
during the war period. After the war, new organizations formed,
with varying degrees of support for Nazi principles.
The
National States'
Rights Party, founded in
1958 by
Edward Reed Fields and
J. B. Stoner countered racial integration in the
American South with Nazi-inspired publications and iconography. The
American Nazi Party founded by
George Lincoln Rockwell in
1959 achieved high-profile coverage in the
press through their public demonstrations.
Organizations which report upon American neo-Nazi activities
include the
Anti-Defamation
League and
Southern
Poverty Law Center. While a small minority of American
neo-Nazis draw public attention, most operate
underground, so they can recruit,
organize and raise funds without interference or harassment. The
American correctional system houses many
white supremacist and neo-Nazi prison gangs,
and often white prisoners join those gangs for protection.
The
First
Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees
freedom of speech, which allows political
organizations great latitude in expressing Nazi, racist, and
anti-Semitic views. A First Amendment landmark was the "
Skokie
Affair", in which neo-Nazis threatened to march in a
predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago. The march never took place
in Skokie, but the court ruling allowed the neo-Nazis to stage a
series of demonstrations in the Chicago area. In addition to
targeting
Jews and
African Americans, neo-Nazi groups are
known to harass and attack
Asian
Americans,
Latinos,
Arab Americans,
Native Americans,
homosexuals,
Catholics, and people with different
political or religious opinions. American neo-Nazi groups often
operate websites, occasionally stage public demonstrations, and
maintain ties to groups in Europe and elsewhere.
Members of
The Order were
convicted of crimes such as racketeering, conspiracy, violating
civil rights and sedition.
Matthew
F. Hale of the
Creativity Movement was imprisoned for
soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
Aryan Nations lost a $6.2 million dollar
lawsuit after Aryan Nations members opened fire on a passing
vehicle. Aryan Nations has since lost its headquarters and
paramilitary training grounds, and has split into three separate
organizations.
Neo-Nazi organizations
Africa
Asia
Europe
Sweden
United Kingdom
North America
Oceania
South America
International
Neo-Nazi bands
See also
Notes
Bibliography
Primary sources
- Imperium
by Francis Parker Yockey
(using the pen name Ulick Varange, 1947, ISBN 0-911038-10-8)
- The Lightning and the
Sun by Savitri Devi, (1958
(written 1948-56; ISBN 0-937944-14-9)
- White Power by George Lincoln Rockwell (1967; John
McLaughlin, 1996, ISBN 0-9656492-8-8)
- This Time The World by George Lincoln Rockwell (1961;
Liberty Bell Publications,
2004, ISBN 1-59364-014-5)
- National Socialism:
Vanguard of the Future, Selected Writings of Colin Jordan (ISBN 87-87063-40-9)
- Merrie England– 2000 by Colin
Jordan
- The Turner Diaries
by William Pierce (under the
pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), novel (1978, ISBN 1-56980-086-3)
.
- Siege: The Collected Writings
of James Mason
edited and introduced by Michael
M. Jenkins (Storm Books,
1992) or introduced by Ryan Schuster (Black Sun Publications, ISBN
0-9724408-0-1)
- Hunter by William Pierce (under the pseudonym
Andrew Macdonald), novel (National Vanguard Books, 1984, ISBN
0-937944-09-2)
- Faith of the Future by Matt
Koehl (New Order; Rev
edition, 1995, ISBN 0-9648533-0-2)
- Serpent's Walk by
Randolph D. Calverhall (pseudonym),
novel (National Vanguard Books, 1991, ISBN
0-937944-05-X)
- The Nexus
periodical edited by Kerry Bolton
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of David Lane by David Lane, foreword by Ron
McVan, preface by Katja Lane (Fourteen
Word Press, 1999, ISBN 0-9678123-2-1)
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Books
Academic surveys
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by Martin A. Lee, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997, ISBN
0-316-51959-6)
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by Roger Griffin (1995, ISBN
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Tauber
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Philip Rees, (1991, ISBN
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Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and
Neo-Nazism by Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke (1998, ISBN 0-8147-3111-2 and ISBN
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Francis Parker Yockey and the
Postwar Fascist International by Kevin
Coogan, (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1998, ISBN
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Party by William H. Schmaltz (Potomac Books, 2000, ISBN
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Thurlow (Olympic Marketing Corp, 1987, ISBN 0-631-13618-5)
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Survey by Angelo Del Boca and Mario Giovana (Pantheon Books,
1st American edition, 1969)
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by Clifford L Linedecker (A & W Pub, 1982, ISBN
0-89479-100-1)
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Underground by Kevin Flynn
and Gary Gerhardt (Signet Book; Reprint edition, 1995, ISBN
0-451-16786-4)
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in the United States by Betty A. Dobratz with Stephanie L.
Shanks-Meile (hardcover, Twayne Publishers, 1997, ISBN
0-8057-3865-7); a.k.a. The White Separatist Movement in the
United States: White Power White Pride (paperback, Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8018-6537-9)
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White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right by
Jeffrey Kaplan (Rowman
& Littlefield Pub Inc, 2000, ISBN 0-7425-0340-2)
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Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New
White Culture by James Ridgeway
(Thunder's Mouth Press; 2nd edition, 1995, ISBN 1-56025-100-X)
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Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in
America by Elinor Langer (Metropolitan Books, 2003, ISBN
0-8050-5098-1)
- The Racist Mind: Portraits
of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen by Raphael S. Ezekiel
(Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition, 1996, ISBN
0-14-023449-7)
- Black Sun:
Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
(2001, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4)
- Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist
Eastern Europe by Paul Hockenos (Routledge; Reprint edition,
1994, ISBN 0-415-91058-7)
- The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today by
Geoff Harris, (Edinburgh
University Press; New edition, 1994, ISBN 0-7486-0466-9)
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Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (Longman Publishing
Group; 2nd edition, 1995, ISBN 0-582-23881-1)
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Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis by Herbert
Kitschelt (University of Michigan Press; Reprint edition, 1997,
ISBN 0-472-08441-0)
- Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the
Extreme Right in Western Europe edited by Martin Schain,
Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st
edition, 2002, ISBN 0-312-29593-6)
- The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of
White Nationalist William Pierce by Robert S. Griffin (Authorhouse, 2001, ISBN
0-7596-0933-0)
- Nation and Race: The
Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture by Jeffrey Kaplan,
Tore Bjorgo (Northeastern University Press, 1998, ISBN
1-55553-331-0)
- Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White
Separatism by Mattias Gardell (Duke University Press, 2003,
ISBN 0-8223-3071-7)
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affairs) by J. Walter Jones, Clarendon (1939)
- Hearst, Ernest, Chip Berlet, and Jack Porter. “Neo-Nazism.”
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik.
Vol. 15. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 74-82. 22
vols. Thomson Gale.
External links