George Lincoln Rockwell

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Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
—George Santayana, The Life of Reason
...a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth.
—Rod Serling[1]

George Lincoln Rockwell was an American Nazi sympathizer and holocaust denier who is best known for founding the American Nazi Party (originally the "World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists"), later known as the "National Socialist White People's Party"[2]) in 1959. Prior to entering politics, Rockwell, a WW2 and Korean War Navy veteran, had worked as a commercial illustrator, sign painter, magazine publisher, and advertising copywriter and sales agent. Though Rockwell is often credited with heavily influencing many of today's neo-nazis, to the point of being responsible for coining their favorite phrase "White Power", he was largely considered a joke back in the day. For instance, when he ran as a write-in candidate for president in 1964 he received a measly 212 votes, whereas today's "American Freedom Party", a modern neo-fascist political party, managed to get over ten times that in 2012.[3] At its height during his leadership, his group had no more than an estimated 100 dues-paying members. In a recently declassified monograph, the FBI called him "an egocentric and a chronic failure who created the shabby, small-time enterprise which he named the American Nazi Party in order to abate his tormenting ambitions to achieve fame."[4] The same report stated that at times, the Party's headquarters often had their utilities shut off due to non-payment of bills, and that his self-professed "Stormtroopers" often subsisted on beans, canned hash, and even cat food. Rockwell even earned a mocking reference in Bob Dylan's satirical ballad Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues ("I know for a fact that he hates Commies, 'cause he picketed the movie Exodus.")

However he was more influential when it came to his attempts to counter the Civil Rights Movement, organizing several counter demonstrations, partly under the delusion that Martin Luther King was part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine America.[5] He also lent support to the Ku Klux Klan during this era, but that may have ultimately hurt their image more than it helped it, since even the Dixiecrats didn't care for Nazis.

Oddly enough Rockwell expressed admiration for both Elijah Mohammed (the founder of the Nation of Islam) and Malcolm X, declaring Mohammed to be the "Black Man's Hitler". Though Mohammed invited Rockwell to speak at a Nation of Islam rally Malcolm X didn't receive him so kindly, threatening him with "physical retaliation" if Rockwell harmed MLK or any other member of the black community.[6]

Rockwell's skills in advertising were used to help promote his Nazi cause, with professionally designed hate literature, often the work of Rockwell himself, that promoted the party's philosophy, which includes some the earliest accounts of Holocaust denial. Party propaganda material included books and pamphlets by Rockwell, and a number of 45 RPM singles on the "Hatenanny" label, including records by Odis Cochran and the Three Bigots, sold through mail order and at party functions[7].

During the height of his popularity, Rockwell gave an interview for Playboy magazine in 1966,[8] and had an extensive speaking tour at American colleges, where he was invited to speak about his extremist views[9], and was earning an estimated $2,000 a week.

Rockwell was assassinated in his car by a former member of his group in 1967, who shot Rockwell twice with a model 1896 Mauser pistol, a gun used by the Nazis during WW2 as well as by Soviet commissars and chekists,[10] in the parking lot of a laundromat.[11] When his father, ex-vaudeville performer George Lovejoy "Doc" Rockwell, discovered his son had been killed he said, "I am not surprised at all. I've expected it for quite some time." This probably means the apple fell far from the tree.

Rockwell's right-hand man, Matthais "Matt" Koehl (1935-2014)[12], took over the organization after Rockwell's death, though infighting between wannabe leaders of the "party" would lead to several splinter groups breaking off from the original, temporarily weakening the organization of Nazis in America until onetime Rockwell associate William Luther Pierce picked up the baton with his National Alliance later in the '70s. Rockwell himself is still beloved by neo-Nazis[13] [14] and his writings are still read by the prospective Stormtroopers of today.[15]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. From the introduction to "He's Alive", a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone (Season 4, Episode 4), most likely inspired by Rockwell
  2. Seriously, it was.
  3. 2703 votes, in case you were curious
  4. FBI Monograph: American Nazi Party (1965)
  5. White Power, Rockwell. Chapter 4
  6. http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/tel_rock.htm
  7. If you can stomach listening to a crudely written, performed, and recorded song with openly racist lyrics, you can hear Cochran's music here
  8. 1966 Playboy interview of George Lincoln Rockwell
  9. After the 1966 interview with Playboy, writer Rod Serling, creator of the TV series The Twilight Zone, wrote a congratulatory letter praising the magazine for exposing his hatred. His letter can be read here.
  10. The Cheka was the forerunner of the KGB founded during the Russian Revolution. The "Bolo" Mauser and long black leather coat were signature paraphernalia of the chekists.
  11. Murderpedia: Biography of John Palter, Rockwell's assassin
  12. Southern Poverty Law Center; Longtime Neo-Nazi Matthias “Matt” Koehl Dies
  13. See his fans on YouTube. Or don't, if you don't want to lose hope in humanity
  14. "George Lincoln Rockwell: National Socialist Pioneer" - Gushing pro-Nazi documentary made by Rockwell supporters.
  15. His books White Power and This Time the World, as well as his essays and a long-form poem entitled The Fable of the Ducks and the Hens, can be read on a number of places on-line...if you can tolerate Rockwell's seething hatred and egomania.
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