George Lincoln Rockwell
Acting
1918-03-09
George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American neo-Nazi activist and politician who founded the American Nazi Party (ANP) and became one of the most notorious white supremacists in the United States until his assassination in 1967. While Rockwell remains obscure to the American public and never achieved political power, he remains an influence on far-right extremism. Born in Bloomington, Illinois, to two vaudeville performers, Rockwell briefly studied philosophy at Brown University before dropping out to join the Navy. He trained as a pilot and served in World War II in the European and Pacific theaters, as well as the Korean War in non-combat roles, achieving the rank of Commander. Rockwell's politics grew more radical and vocal in the 1950s, and he was honorably discharged due to his views in 1960. He founded the American Nazi Party in 1959 in Arlington, Virginia, using high-profile media stunts to increase its notoriety as a step to power. This did not work, and despite their notoriety Rockwell remained politically fringe. Rockwell coined the expression White Power, which was also the title of his posthumously published political manifesto. In early 1967, Rockwell renamed the ANP the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) as part of an effort to broaden the party's white supremacist vision. On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was assassinated in Arlington by John Patler, a former member of the ANP whom Rockwell had expelled. Rockwell was succeeded as leader by his second-in-command Matt Koehl, whose leadership was controversial; following Rockwell's death, the group effectively dissolved, splintering into numerous different neo-Nazi organizations; Koehl eventually renamed the organization the New Order and turned it into an esoteric neo-Nazi religious group, while another NSWPP member, William Luther Pierce, left Koehl's movement and founded the National Alliance. In politics, Rockwell regularly praised Adolf Hitler, denied the Holocaust, and believed that Martin Luther King Jr. was a tool for Jewish communists desiring to rule the white community. He blamed the civil rights movement on Jews and viewed most of them as traitors. He viewed black people as a primitive race and supported the resettlement of all African Americans in a new African state to be funded by the U.S. government. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Lincoln Rockwell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
