Neo-Nazism comprises the post–
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate
Nazi ideology
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and
racial supremacy (often
white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
), attack racial and ethnic minorities (often
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
and
Islamophobia
Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism.
The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia'' ...
), and in some cases to create a
fascist state
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and th ...
.
Neo-Nazism is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including antisemitism,
ultranationalism
Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its sp ...
,
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
,
xenophobia
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
,
ableism
Ableism (; also known as ablism, disablism (British English), anapirophobia, anapirism, and disability discrimination) is discrimination and social prejudice against people with Disability, disabilities or who are perceived to be disabled. Ableis ...
,
homophobia
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...
,
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
, and creating a "
Fourth Reich
The Fourth Reich (german: Viertes Reich) is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has also been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas, as well as pejoratively of pol ...
".
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
is common in neo-Nazi circles.
Neo-Nazis regularly display
Nazi symbols
The 20th-century German Nazi Party made extensive use of graphic symbols, especially the ''Swastika#Use in Nazism, swastika'', notably in the form of the swastika flag, which became the co-national flag of Nazi Germany in 1933, and the sole na ...
and express admiration for
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and other Nazi leaders. In some European and Latin American countries, laws prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, antisemitic, or homophobic views. Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries (especially
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
) in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism.
Definition
The term neo-Nazism describes any post-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
militant, social or political movements seeking to revive the ideology of
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
in whole or in part.
The term 'neo-Nazism' can also refer to the ideology of these movements, which may borrow elements from Nazi doctrine, including
ultranationalism
Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its sp ...
,
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
, racism,
ableism
Ableism (; also known as ablism, disablism (British English), anapirophobia, anapirism, and disability discrimination) is discrimination and social prejudice against people with Disability, disabilities or who are perceived to be disabled. Ableis ...
,
xenophobia
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
,
homophobia
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...
,
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
, up to initiating the
Fourth Reich
The Fourth Reich (german: Viertes Reich) is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has also been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas, as well as pejoratively of pol ...
.
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
is a common feature, as is the incorporation of
Nazi symbols
The 20th-century German Nazi Party made extensive use of graphic symbols, especially the ''Swastika#Use in Nazism, swastika'', notably in the form of the swastika flag, which became the co-national flag of Nazi Germany in 1933, and the sole na ...
and admiration of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
.
Neo-Nazism is considered a particular form of
far-right politics
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
and right-wing extremism.
Hyperborean racial doctrine
Neo-Nazi writers have posited a spiritual, esoteric doctrine of
race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
, which moves beyond the primarily
Darwinian
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that ...
-inspired materialist
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
popular mainly in the
Anglosphere
The Anglosphere is a group of English-speaking world, English-speaking nations that share historical and cultural ties with England, and which today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in d ...
during the 20th century. Figures influential in the development of neo-Nazi racism, such as
Miguel Serrano
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 – 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he lat ...
and
Julius Evola
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly ...
(writers who are described by critics of Nazism such as the
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
as influential within what it presents as parts of "the bizarre fringes of National Socialism, past and present"),
claim that the
Hyperborean
In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans ( grc, Ὑπερβόρε(ι)οι, ; la, Hyperborei) were a mythical people who lived in the far northern part of the known world. Their name appears to derive from the Greek , "beyond Boreas" (the God of ...
ancestors of the
Aryans
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ...
were in the distant past, far higher beings than their current state, having suffered from "involution" due to mixing with the "Telluric" peoples; supposed creations of the
Demiurge
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge () is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term ''demiurge''. Al ...
. Within this theory, if the "Aryans" are to return to the
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
of the distant past, they need to awaken the memory of the blood. An
extraterrestrial origin of the Hyperboreans is often claimed. These theories draw influence from
Gnosticism
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people ...
and
Tantrism
Tantra (; sa, तन्त्र, lit=loom, weave, warp) are the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed on the Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term ''tantra'', in the Indian ...
, building on the work of the
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...
. Within this racist theory, Jews are held up as the antithesis of nobility, purity and beauty.
Ecology and environmentalism
Neo-Nazism generally aligns itself with a
blood and soil variation of environmentalism, which has themes in common with
deep ecology
Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.
Deep ecolo ...
, the
organic movement
The organic movement broadly refers to the organizations and individuals involved worldwide in the promotion of organic food and other organic products. It started during the first half of the 20th century, when modern large-scale agricultural pr ...
and
animal protectionism
Animal protectionism is a position within animal rights theory that favors incremental change in pursuit of non-human animal interests. It is contrasted with abolitionism, the position that human beings have no moral right to use animals, and ought ...
. This tendency, sometimes called "
ecofascism
Ecofascism is a term which is used to describe individuals and groups which combines environmentalism with fascist viewpoints and tactics. Originally, the term "Ecofascist" was considered an academic term for a hypothetical type of government ...
", was represented in the original German Nazism by
Richard Walther Darré who was the
Reichsminister of Food
This article lists Federal Ministers of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of Germany and the equivalents of this office which preceded it.
German Reich (1919–1945)
, -
! colspan="8", Weimarer Republik (1919–1933)
, -
...
from 1933 until 1942.
History
Germany and Austria, 1945–1950s
Following the defeat of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, the political ideology of the ruling party, Nazism, was in complete disarray. The final leader of the
National Socialist German Workers' Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
(NSDAP) was
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
. He died on 2 May 1945 during the
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.
After the Vistula– ...
, but the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
did not reveal his death to the rest of the world, and his ultimate fate remained a mystery for many years.
Conspiracy theories emerged about Hitler himself, that he had secretly survived the war and fled to South America or elsewhere.
The
Allied Control Council
The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority (german: Alliierter Kontrollrat) and also referred to as the Four Powers (), was the governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany and Allied-occupied Austria after the end of Wo ...
officially dissolved the NSDAP on 10 October 1945, marking the end of "Old" Nazism. A process of
denazification
Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...
began, and the
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945 ...
took place, where many major leaders and ideologues were condemned to death by October 1946, others committed suicide.
![Otto Ernst Remer portrait](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Otto_Ernst_Remer_portrait.JPG)
In both the East and West, surviving ex-party members and military veterans assimilated to the new reality and had no interest in constructing a "neo-Nazism". However, during the
1949 West German elections a number of Nazi advocates such as
Fritz Rössler had infiltrated the national conservative ''
Deutsche Rechtspartei
The German Right Party (german: Deutsche Rechtspartei, DRP) was a far-right political party that emerged in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany after the Second World War.
Also known as the ''Deutsche Konservative Partei - Deutsche Recht ...
'', which had 5 members elected. Rössler and others left to found the more radical
Socialist Reich Party
The Socialist Reich Party (german: Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands) was a West German political party founded in the aftermath of World War II in 1949 as an openly neo-Nazi-oriented splinter from the national conservative German Right Par ...
(SRP) under
Otto Ernst Remer
Otto Ernst Remer (18 August 1912 – 4 October 1997) was a German ''Wehrmacht'' officer in World War II who played a major role in stopping the 20 July plot in 1944 against Adolf Hitler. In his later years he became a politician and far right act ...
. At the onset of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, the SRP favoured the Soviet Union over the United States.
In
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, national independence had been restored, and the explicitly criminalised the NSDAP and any attempt at restoration.
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
adopted a similar law to target parties it defined as anti-constitutional; Article 21 Paragraph 2 in the
Basic Law, banning the SRP in 1952 for being opposed to
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...
.
As a consequence, some members of the nascent movement of German neo-Nazism joined the of which
Hans-Ulrich Rudel
Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II and a post-war neo-Nazi activist.
The most decorated German pilot of the war and the only recipient of the Knight's Cross with G ...
was the most prominent figure. Younger members founded the modelled after the
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
. The stood for elections from 1953 until 1961 fetching around 1% of the vote each time. Rudel befriended French-born
Savitri Devi
Savitri Devi Mukherji (born Maximiani Julia Portas, ; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in I ...
, who was a proponent of
Esoteric Nazism
Esoteric Nazism, also known as Esoteric Fascism, refers to a range of mystical interpretations and adaptations of Nazism. After the Second World War, esoteric interpretations of the Third Reich were adapted into new religious movements of white na ...
. In the 1950s she wrote a number of books, such as ''
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...
'' (1958), which concerns prominent
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
sites, and ''
The Lightning and the Sun
''The Lightning and the Sun'' is a 1958 book by Savitri Devi Mukherji, in which the author outlines her philosophy of history along with her critique of the modern world. The book is known for the author's claim that Adolf Hitler was an avatar ...
'' (1958), in which she claims that Adolf Hitler was an avatar of the God
Vishnu
Vishnu ( ; , ), also known as Narayana and Hari, is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Vaishnavism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism.
Vishnu is known as "The Preserver" within t ...
. She was not alone in this reorientation of Nazism towards its
Thulean-roots; the , founded by former SS member Wilhelm Kusserow, attempted to promote a new
paganism
Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christianity, early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions ot ...
.
In the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
(East Germany) a former member of
SA,
Wilhelm Adam
Wilhelm Adam (28 March 1893 – 24 November 1978) was an officer in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. Following the German surrender after the Battle of Stalingrad, he became a member of the National Committee for a Free German ...
, founded the
National Democratic Party of Germany
The National Democratic Party of Germany (german: Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands or NPD) is a far-right Neo-Nazi and ultranationalist political party in Germany.
The party was founded in 1964 as successor to the German Reich Part ...
. It reached out to those attracted by the Nazi Party before 1945 and provide them with a political outlet, so that they would not be tempted to support the far-right again or turn to the anti-communist Western Allies.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
wanted to use them to create a new pro-Soviet and anti-Western strain in German politics.
According to top Soviet diplomat Vladimir Semyonov, Stalin even suggested that they could be allowed to continue publishing their own newspaper,
Völkischer Beobachter
The ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (; "'' Völkisch'' Observer") was the newspaper of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 25 December 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from 8 February 1923. For twenty-four years it formed part of the official pub ...
.
While in Austria, former SS member Wilhelm Lang founded an esoteric group known as the
Vienna Lodge; he popularised
Nazism and occultism
The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popu ...
such as the
Black Sun and ideas of Third Reich survival colonies below the polar ice caps.
![Otto Strasser crop2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Otto_Strasser_crop2.jpg)
With the onset of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, the allied forces had lost interest in prosecuting anyone as part of the denazification.
In the mid-1950s this new political environment allowed
Otto Strasser
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (also german: link=no, Straßer, see ß; 10 September 1897 – 27 August 1974) was a German politician and an early member of the Nazi Party. Otto Strasser, together with his brother Gregor Strasser, was a lead ...
, an NS activist on the left of the NSDAP, who had founded the
Black Front
The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists (German: ''Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionärer Nationalsozialisten'', KGRNS), more commonly known as the Black Front (german: Schwarze Front), was a political group formed by Otto Strasser in ...
to return from exile. In 1956, Strasser founded the
German Social Union as a Black Front successor, promoting a
Strasserite
Strasserism (german: Strasserismus or ''Straßerismus'') is a strand of Nazism calling for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of the ideology, espousing economic antisemitism above other antisemitic forms, to achieve a national ...
"nationalist and socialist" policy, which dissolved in 1962 due to lack of support. Other Third Reich associated groups were the
HIAG
HIAG (german: Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS, lit=Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members) was a lobby group and a denialist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking Waffen ...
and
Stille Hilfe
Die Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte (English: "Silent assistance for prisoners of war and interned persons"), abbreviated ''Stille Hilfe'', is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive SS members, similar to the ...
dedicated to advancing the interests of
Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
veterans and rehabilitating them into the new democratic society. However, they did not claim to be attempting to restore Nazism, instead working with the
social democrats
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
and
Christian democrats
__NOTOC__
Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social ...
.
Many bureaucrats who served under the Third Reich continued to serve in German administration after the war. According to the
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
, many of the more than 90,000 Nazi war criminals recorded in German files were serving in positions of prominence under Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the fir ...
.
Not until the 1960s were the former concentration camp personnel prosecuted by
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
in the
Belzec trial
The Belzec trial (german: Belzec-Prozess, pl, proces Bełżec) in the mid-1960s was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members of Bełżec extermination camp. The trial was held at the 1st Munich District Court (''Landgericht München I'') and ...
,
Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as ''der Auschwitz-Prozess'', or ''der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess,'' (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants unde ...
,
Treblinka trials
The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. Held at Düsseldorf in West Germany, they were the two judicial trials in a series of similar war crime trials held during the early 1960s, such as the Je ...
,
Chełmno trials
The Chełmno trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personnel, held in Poland and in Germany following World War II. The cases were decided almost twenty years apart. The first judicial trial of t ...
, and the
Sobibór trial
The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-1 ...
.
However, the government had passed laws prohibiting Nazis from publicly expressing their beliefs.
"Universal National Socialism", 1950s–1970s
Neo-Nazism found expression outside of Germany, including in countries who fought against the Third Reich during the Second World War, and sometimes adopted
pan-European
Pan-European can refer to:
* Pan-European identity
* Pan-European corridors
** Pan-European Corridor X
** Pan-European Corridor Xa
* Pan European Game Information
* Pan-European Institute
* Pan-European nationalism
* Pan-European Oil Pipeline
...
or "universal" characteristics, beyond the parameters of
German nationalism
German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one na ...
. The two main tendencies, with differing styles and even worldviews, were the followers of the American
Francis Parker Yockey
Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960) was an American fascist and pan-Europeanist ideologue. A lawyer, he is known for his neo- Spenglerian book '' Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics'', published in 1948 u ...
, who was fundamentally
anti-American
Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment) is prejudice, fear, or hatred of the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general.
Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centr ...
and advocated for a
pan-European nationalism
European nationalism (sometimes called pan-European nationalism) is a form of nationalism based on a pan-European identity. It is considered minor since the National Party of Europe disintegrated in the 1970s.
History
The former British Union ...
, and those of
George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American far-right political activist and founder of the American Nazi Party. He later became a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs, st ...
, an
American conservative
Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative ...
.
[Some of the fascistic old-guard from the pre-war ultra-nationalist movements were more skeptical of the benefits of the Rockwell-Jordan uniform scene. ]Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
of the Union Movement
The Union Movement (UM) was a far-right political party founded in the United Kingdom by Oswald Mosley. Before the Second World War, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had wanted to concentrate trade within the British Empire, but the Uni ...
described Jordan as, "a midget trying to walk in the boots of giants." Meanwhile, Yockeyism leaned more to the left than the "official" fascistic Pan-Europeanism of those which would become the European Social Movement
The European Social Movement (German: ''Europäische soziale Bewegung'', ESB) was a neo-fascist Europe-wide alliance set up in 1951 to promote pan-European nationalism.
History
The ESB had its origins in the emergence of the Italian Social Move ...
. The latter associated with Mosley, Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche (1 October 1907 – 30 July 1998) was a French art critic and journalist, better known as one of the leading exponents of neo-fascism in post–World War II Europe. Bardèche was also the brother-in-law of the collaborationist ...
and others upheld a strictly "neither East, nor West", third position in regards to Soviet and American power.
Yockey, a neo-Spenglerian author, had written ''
Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics'' (1949) dedicated to "the hero of the twentieth century" (namely, Adolf Hitler) and founded the
European Liberation Front. He was interested more in the destiny of Europe; to this end, he advocated a
National Bolshevik
National Bolshevism (russian: национал-большевизм, natsional-bol'shevizm, german: Nationalbolschewismus), whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks (russian: национал-большевики, natsional-bol'sheviki ...
-esque
red-brown alliance
Shades of brown can be produced by combining red, yellow, and black pigments, or by a combination of orange and black—illustrated in the color box. The RGB color model, that generates all colors on computer and television screens, makes brown ...
against
American culture
The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western, and European origin, yet its influences includes the cultures of Asian American, African American, Latin American, and Native American peoples and their cultures. The U ...
and influenced 1960s figures such as SS-veteran
Jean-François Thiriart
Jean-François Thiriart (22 March 1922, Brussels – 23 November 1992), often known as Jean Thiriart, was a Belgian political theorist.
Coming from a left-wing background, during the Second World War he was a collaborator with the Nazi Third Rei ...
. Yockey was also fond of
Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism ( ar, القومية العربية, al-Qawmīya al-ʿArabīya) is a nationalist ideology that asserts the Arabs are a nation and promotes the unity of Arab people, celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language an ...
, in particular
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein, . (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian politician who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-re ...
, and saw
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
's
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
as a positive, visiting officials there. Yockey's views impressed Otto Ernst Remer and the radical traditionalist philosopher
Julius Evola
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly ...
. He was constantly hounded by the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
and was eventually arrested in 1960, before committing suicide. Domestically, Yockey's biggest sympathisers were the
National Renaissance Party, including
James H. Madole,
H. Keith Thompson and
Eustace Mullins
Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr. (March 9, 1923 – February 2, 2010) was an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, propagandist, Holocaust denier, and writer. A disciple of the poet Ezra Pound,
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
...
( of
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
) and the
Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby was a far-right think tank and lobby group founded in 1958 by Willis Carto. Carto was known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, white nationalism, and Holocaust denial.
The organization produced a daily five-mi ...
of
Willis Carto
Willis Allison Carto (July 17, 1926 – October 26, 2015) was an American far-right political activist. He described himself as a Jeffersonian and a populist, but was primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and ...
.
Rockwell, an American conservative, was first politicised in the
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
and anti-
racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity ...
movements before becoming anti-Jewish. In response to his opponents calling him a "Nazi", he theatrically appropriated the aesthetic elements of the NSDAP, to "own" the intended insult. In 1959, Rockwell founded the
American Nazi Party
The American Nazi Party (ANP) is an American far-right and neo-Nazi political party founded by George Lincoln Rockwell and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The organization was originally named the World Union of Free Enterprise National ...
and instructed his members to dress in imitation
SA-style brown shirts, while flying the flag of the Third Reich. In contrast to Yockey, he was pro-American and cooperated with FBI requests, despite the party being targeted by
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
due to the mistaken belief that they were agents of Nasser's Egypt during a brief intelligence "brown scare".
[While the intelligence claims in regards to the Rockwell's American costume group proved unfounded, a number of actual German Nazis did relocate to the Middle East, some converted to Islam and changed their names; particularly Egypt and Syria. This includes ]Johann von Leers
Omar Amin (born Johann Jakob von Leers; 25 January 19025 March 1965) was an ''Alter Kämpfer'' and an honorary ''Sturmbannführer'' in the ''Waffen-SS'' in Nazi Germany, where he was also a professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics. He was on ...
, Alois Brunner
Alois Brunner (8 April 1912 – December 2001) was an Austrian (SS) SS-Hauptsturmführer who played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, ...
, Aribert Heim
Aribert Ferdinand Heim (28 June 191410 August 1992), also known as Dr. Death and Butcher of Mauthausen, was an Austrian ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) doctor. During World War II, he served at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, killin ...
, Franz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl (; 26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian-born police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander in Nazi German ...
, Gerhard Mertins
Gerhard Mertins (30 December 1919 – 19 March 1993) was a German paratrooper, post-war arms dealer and German Intelligence operative. In 1943, he participated in the Gran Sasso raid rescuing Benito Mussolini from prison.
According to Manuel Co ...
, Hans Eisele, Walter Rauff
Walter (Walther) Rauff (19 June 1906 – 14 May 1984) was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany. From January 1938, he was an aide of Reinhard Heydrich firstly in the Security Service (''Sicherheitsdienst'' or ''SD''), later in the Reich Sec ...
, Artur Schmitt and others. The father of Neo-Nazism, Otto Ernst Remer, also fled to Egypt, then Syria during the 1950s. Later leaders of American
white nationalism
White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara. ''Hate Crimes''. Greenwoo ...
came to politics through the ANP, including a teenage
David Duke
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, far-right politician, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member ...
and
William Luther Pierce
William Luther Pierce III (September 11, 1933 – July 23, 2002) was an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and far-right political activist. For more than 30 years, he was one of the highest-profile individuals of the white nationalist movem ...
of the National Alliance (United States), National Alliance, although they soon distanced themselves from explicit self-identification with neo-Nazism.
In 1961, the World Union of National Socialists was founded by Rockwell and Colin Jordan of the British National Socialist Movement (UK, 1962), National Socialist Movement, adopting the ''Cotswold Declaration.'' French socialite Françoise Dior was involved romantically with Jordan and his deputy John Tyndall (politician), John Tyndall and a friend of Savitri Devi, who also attended the meeting. The National Socialist Movement wore quasi-SA uniforms, was involved in streets conflicts with the Jewish 62 Group. In the 1970s, Tyndall's earlier involvement with neo-Nazism would come back to haunt the National Front (UK), National Front, which he led, as they attempted to ride a wave of anti-immigration populism and concerns over British national decline. Televised exposes on ''This Week (Thames Television TV series), This Week'' in 1974 and ''World in Action'' in 1978, showed their neo-Nazi pedigree and damaged their electoral chances. In 1967, Rockwell was killed by a disgruntled former member. Matthias Koehl took control of the ANP, and strongly influenced by Savitri Devi, gradually transformed it into an esoteric group known as the New Order (Neo-Nazi group), New Order.
In Franco's Spain, certain SS refugees most notably Otto Skorzeny, Léon Degrelle and the son of Klaus Barbie became associated with CEDADE (''Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa''), an organisation which disseminated Third Reich apologetics out of Barcelona. They intersected with neo-Nazi advocates from Mark Fredriksen in France to Salvador Borrego in Mexico.
In the post-fascist Italian Social Movement splinter groups such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale, involved in the "Years of Lead (Italy), Years of Lead" considered Nazism a reference. Franco Freda created a "Nazi-Maoist" synthesis.
In Germany itself, the various Third Reich nostalgic movements coalesced around the National Democratic Party of Germany in 1964 and in Austria the National Democratic Party (Austria, 1967–88), National Democratic Party in 1967 as the primary sympathisers of the NSDAP past, although more publicly cautious than earlier groups.
Holocaust denial and subcultures, 1970s–1990s
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
, the claim that the Holocaust, six million Jews were not deliberately and systematically exterminated as an official policy of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, became a more prominent feature of neo-Nazism in the 1970s. Before this time, Holocaust denial had long existed as a sentiment among neo-Nazis, but it had not yet been systematically articulated as a theory with a bibliographical canon. Few of the major theorists of Holocaust denial (who call themselves "Historical revisionism, revisionists") can be uncontroversially classified as outright neo-Nazis (though some works such as those of David Irving forward a clearly sympathetic view of Hitler and the publisher Ernst Zündel was deeply tied to international neo-Nazism), however, the main interest of Holocaust denial to neo-Nazis was their hope that it would help them rehabilitate their political ideology in the eyes of the general public. ''Did Six Million Really Die?'' (1974) by Richard Verrall and ''The Hoax of the Twentieth Century'' (1976) by Arthur Butz are popular examples of Holocaust denial material.
![Flag of the Order of Flemish Militants](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Flag_of_the_Order_of_Flemish_Militants.svg)
Key developments in international neo-Nazism during this time include the radicalisation of the under former
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
member Bert Eriksson. They began hosting an annual conference; the "Iron Pilgrimage"; at Diksmuide, which drew kindred ideologues from across Europe and beyond. As well as this, the NSDAP/AO (1972), NSDAP/AO under Gary Lauck arose in the United States in 1972 and challenged the international influence of the Rockwellite WUNS. Lauck's organisation drew support from the National Socialist Movement of Denmark of Povl Riis-Knudsen and various German and Austrian figures who felt that the "National Democratic" parties were too bourgeois and insufficiently Nazi in orientation. This included Michael Kühnen, Christian Worch, Bela Ewald Althans and Gottfried Küssel of the 1977-founded Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists, ANS/NS which called for the establishment of a Germanic
Fourth Reich
The Fourth Reich (german: Viertes Reich) is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has also been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas, as well as pejoratively of pol ...
. Some ANS/NS members were imprisoned for planning paramilitary attacks on NATO bases in Germany and planning to liberate Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison. The organisation was officially banned in 1983 by the Minister of the Interior.
During the late 1970s, a British subculture came to be associated with neo-Nazism; the skinheads. Portraying an ultra-masculine, crude and aggressive image, with working-class references, some of the skinheads joined the British Movement under Michael McLaughlin (activist), Michael McLaughlin (successor of Colin Jordan), while others became associated with the National Front's Rock Against Communism project which was meant to counter the Socialist Workers Party (UK), SWP's Rock Against Racism. The most significant music group involved in this project was Skrewdriver, led by Ian Stuart Donaldson. Together with ex-BM member Nicky Crane, Donaldson founded the international Blood & Honour network in 1987. By 1992 this network, with input from Harold Covington, had developed a paramilitary wing; Combat 18, which intersected with football hooligan firms such as the Chelsea Headhunters. The neo-Nazi skinhead movement spread to the United States, with groups such as the Hammerskins. It was popularised from 1986 onwards by Tom Metzger of the White Aryan Resistance. Since then it has spread across the world. Films such as ''Romper Stomper'' (1992) and ''American History X'' (1998) would fix a public perception that white power skinheads, neo-Nazism and skinheads were synonymous.
![Black_Sun_2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Black_Sun_2.svg)
New developments also emerged on the esoteric level, as former Chilean diplomat
Miguel Serrano
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 – 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he lat ...
built on the works of Carl Jung, Otto Rahn, Wilhelm Landig,
Julius Evola
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly ...
and
Savitri Devi
Savitri Devi Mukherji (born Maximiani Julia Portas, ; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in I ...
to bind together and develop already existing theories. Serrano had been a member of the National Socialist Movement of Chile in the 1930s and from the early days of neo-Nazism, he had been in contact with key figures across Europe and beyond. Despite this, he was able to work as an ambassador to numerous countries until the rise of Salvador Allende. In 1984 he published his book ''Adolf Hitler: The Ultimate Avatar''. Serrano claimed that the Aryans were extragalactic beings who founded Hyperborea and lived the heroic life of Bodhisattvas, while the Jews were created by the
Demiurge
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge () is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term ''demiurge''. Al ...
and were concerned only with coarse materialism. Serrano claimed that a new
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
can be attained if the Hyperboreans repurify their blood (supposedly the light of the Black Sun) and restore their "Genetic memory (psychology), blood-memory." As with Savitri Devi before him, Serrano's works became a key point of reference in neo-Nazism.
Lifting of the Iron Curtain, 1990s–present
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s, neo-Nazism began to spread its ideas in the East, as hostility to the triumphant liberal order was high and revanchism a widespread feeling. In Russia, during the chaos of the early 1990s, an amorphous mixture of KGB hardliners, Orthodox neo-Tsarist nostalgics (i.e., Pamyat) and explicit neo-Nazis found themselves strewn together in the same camp. They were united by opposition to the influence of the United States, against the liberalising legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev's and on the Jewish question, Soviet Anti-Zionism, Soviet Zionology merged with a more explicit anti-Jewish sentiment. The most significant organisation representing this was Russian National Unity under the leadership of Alexander Barkashov, where black-uniform clad Russians marched with a red flag incorporating the Swastika under the banner of ''Russia for Russians.'' These forces came together in a last gasp effort to save the Supreme Soviet of Russia against Boris Yeltsin during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis. As well as events in Russia, in newly independent ex-Soviet states, annual commemorations for SS volunteers now took place; particularly in Remembrance day of the Latvian legionnaires, Latvia, 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), Estonia and the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), Ukraine.
![Evstafiev-neo-bolsheviks](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Evstafiev-neo-bolsheviks.jpg)
The Russian developments excited German neo-Nazism who dreamed of a Berlin–Moscow alliance against the supposedly "decadent" Atlanticist forces; a dream which had been thematic since the days of Remer. Zündel visited Russia and met with ex-KGB general Aleksandr Stergilov and other Russian National Unity members. Despite these initial aspirations, international neo-Nazism and its close affiliates in ultra-nationalism would be split over the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995, as part of the breakup of Yugoslavia. The split would largely be along ethnic and sectarian lines. The Germans and the French would largely back the Western Catholic Croats (Lauck's NSDAP/AO explicitly Foreign fighters in the Bosnian War, called for volunteers, which Kühnen's Free German Workers' Party answered and the French formed the "Groupe Jacques Doriot"), while the Russians and the Greeks would back the Orthodox Serbs (including Russians from Barkashov's Russian National Unity, Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party, National Bolshevik Front and Golden Dawn (political party), Golden Dawn members joined the Greek Volunteer Guard). Indeed, the revival of National Bolshevism was able to steal some of the thunder from overt Russian neo-Nazism, as ultra-nationalism was wedded with veneration of
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
in place of Adolf Hitler, while still also flirting with Nazi aesthetics.
Analogous European movements
Outside Germany, in other countries which were involved with the Axis powers and had their own native ultra-nationalist movements, which sometimes collaborated with the Third Reich but were not technically German-style National Socialists, revivalist and nostalgic movements have emerged in the post-war period which, as neo-Nazism has done in Germany, seek to rehabilitate their various loosely associated ideologies. These movements include neo-fascists and post-fascists in Italy; Vichyites, Pétainists and "national Europeans" in France; Ustaše sympathisers in Croatia; neo-Chetniks in Serbia; Iron Guard revivalists in Romania; Hungarists and Miklós Horthy, Horthyists in Hungary and others.
Issues
Ex-Nazis in mainstream politics
![Kurt Waldheim 1971cr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Kurt_Waldheim_1971cr.jpg)
The most significant case on an international level was the election of Kurt Waldheim to the Presidency of Austria in 1986. It came to light that Waldheim had been a member of the National Socialist German Students' League, the SA and served as an intelligence officer during the Second World War. Following this he served as an Austrian diplomat and was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 until 1981. After revelations of Waldheim's past were made by an Austrian journalist, Waldheim clashed with the World Jewish Congress on the international stage. Waldheim's record was defended by Bruno Kreisky, an Austrian Jew who served as Chancellor of Austria. The legacy of the affair lingers on, as Victor Ostrovsky has claimed the Mossad doctored the file of Waldheim to implicate him in war crimes.
Contemporary right-wing populism
Some critics have sought to draw a connection between Nazism and modern right-wing populism in Europe, but the two are not widely regarded as interchangeable by most academics. In Austria, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) served as a shelter for ex-Nazis almost from its inception.
In 1980, scandals undermined Austria's two main parties and the economy stagnated. Jörg Haider became leader of the FPÖ and offered partial justification for
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
, calling its employment policy effective. In the Austrian legislative election, 1994, 1994 Austrian election, the FPÖ won 22 percent of the vote, as well as 33 percent of the vote in Carinthia (state), Carinthia and 22 percent in Vienna; showing that it had become a force capable of reversing the old pattern of Austrian politics.
Historian Walter Laqueur writes that even though Haider welcomed former Nazis at his meetings and went out of his way to address Schutzstaffel (SS) veterans, the FPÖ is not a fascist party in the traditional sense, since it has not made
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
an important issue, and it does not advocate the overthrow of the democratic order or the use of violence. In his view, the FPÖ is "not quite fascist", although it is part of a tradition, similar to that of 19th-century Viennese mayor Karl Lueger, which involves nationalism, xenophobic populism, and authoritarianism. Haider, who in 2005 left the Freedom Party and formed the Alliance for Austria's Future, was killed in a traffic accident in October 2008.
Barbara Rosenkranz, the Freedom Party's candidate in 2010 Austrian presidential election, Austria's 2010 presidential election, was controversial for having made allegedly pro-Nazi statements. Rosenkranz is married to Horst Rosenkranz, a key member of a banned neo-Nazi party, who is known for publishing far-right books. Rosenkranz says she cannot detect anything "dishonourable" in her husband's activities.
Around the world
Europe
Belgium
A Belgian neo-Nazi organization, Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw (Blood, Soil, Honour and Loyalty), 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-terrorism legislation, anti-terrorist laws and laws against racism,
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
and supporters of censorship. According to Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx and Interior Minister Patrick Dewael, the suspects (11 of whom were members of the military) were preparing to launch terrorist attacks in order to "destabilize" Belgium. According to the journalist Manuel Abramowicz, of the Resistances, the extremists 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 (Belgium), Front de la Jeunesse.
A police operation, which mobilized 150 agents, searched five military barracks (in Leopoldsburg near the Dutch border, Kleine-Brogel, Peer, Belgium, 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 National Alliance (Netherlands), De Nationale Alliantie.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
The neo-Nazi white nationalism, white nationalist organization Bosanski Pokret Nacionalnog Ponosa (Bosnian Movement of National Pride) was founded in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 2009. Its model is the
Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian), Handschar Division, which was composed of Bosniaks, Bosniak volunteers. It proclaimed its main enemies to be "Jews, Romani people, Roma, Serbian Chetniks, the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, Croatian separatists, Josip Broz Tito, Communism, Communists, homosexuals and black people, blacks". Its ideology is a mixture of Bosnian nationalism, Nazism, National Socialism and
white nationalism
White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara. ''Hate Crimes''. Greenwoo ...
. It says "Ideologies that are not welcome in Bosnia are: Zionism, Islamism, communism, capitalism. The only ideology good for us is Bosnian nationalism because it secures national prosperity and social justice..." The group is led by a person nicknamed Sauberzwig, after the commander of the 13th SS Handschar. The group's strongest area of operations is in the Tuzla area of Bosnia.
Bulgaria
The primary neo-Nazi political party to receive attention in post-WWII Bulgaria is the Bulgarian National Union – New Democracy.
On 13 February of every year since 2003, Bulgarian neo-Nazis and like-minded far-right nationalists gather at Sofia, Bulgaria, Sofia to honor Hristo Lukov, a late World War II general known for his antisemitic and pro-Nazi stance. From 2003 to 2019, the annual event was hosted by Bulgarian National Union.
Croatia
![20130609 Zagreb 041](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/20130609_Zagreb_041.jpg)
Neo-Nazis in Croatia base their ideology on the writings of Ante Pavelić and the Ustaše, a Fascism, fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The Ustaše regime committed a Genocides in history#Croatia, genocide against World War II persecution of Serbs, Serbs, The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, Jews and Roma. At the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, many Ustaše members fled to the West, where they found sanctuary and continued their political and terrorism, terrorist activities (which were tolerated due to
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
hostilities).
In 1999, Zagreb's Square of the Victims of Fascism was renamed ''Croatian Nobles Square'', provoking widespread criticism of Croatia's attitude towards the Holocaust. In 2000, the Zagreb City Council again renamed the square into ''Square of the Victims of Fascism''. 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.
In 2003, Croatian penal code was amended with provisions prohibiting the public display of Nazi symbols, the propagation of Nazi ideology, historical revisionism and holocaust denial but the amendments were annulled in 2004 since they were not enacted in accordance with a constitutionally prescribed procedure. Nevertheless, since 2006 Croatian penal code explicitly prohibits any type of hate crime based on race (classification of human beings), race, Human skin color, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or national origin.
There have been instances of hate speech in Croatia, such as the use of the phrase ("[Hang] Serbs on the willow trees!"). In 2004, an Eastern Orthodoxy in Croatia, Orthodox church was spray painting, spray-painted with pro-Ustaše graffiti. During some protests in Croatia, supporters of Ante Gotovina and other at the time suspected war crime, war criminals (all acquitted in 2012) have carried nationalism, nationalist symbols and pictures of Pavelić. On 17 May 2007, a concert in Zagreb by Thompson (band), Thompson, a popular Croatian singer, was attended by 60,000 people, some of them wearing Ustaše uniforms. Some gave Ustaše salutes and shouted the Ustaše slogan "''Za dom spremni''" ("For the homeland – ready!"). This event prompted the
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
to publicly issue a protest to the Croatian president. Cases of displaying Ustashe memorabilia have been recorded at the Bleiburg commemoration held annually in Austria.
Czech Republic
The government of the Czech Republic strictly punishes neo-Nazism (Czech language, Czech: ''Neonacismus''). According to a report by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, neo-Nazis committed more than 211 crimes in 2013. The Czech Republic has various neo-Nazi groups. One of them is the group Wotan Jugend, based in Germany.
Denmark
The Party of the Danes was a Neo-Nazi political party founded in 2011 in Denmark. It was dissolved in 2017 after its founder Daniel Stockholm announced retirement from politics.
Estonia
In 2006, Roman Ilin, a Jewish theatre director from St. Petersburg, Russia, was attacked by neo-Nazis when returning from a 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 that the attack was characteristic of a wave of neo-Nazi violence. An Estonian police official, however, stated that there were only a few cases involving foreign students over the previous two years. In November 2006, the Estonian government passed a law banning the display of
Nazi symbols
The 20th-century German Nazi Party made extensive use of graphic symbols, especially the ''Swastika#Use in Nazism, swastika'', notably in the form of the swastika flag, which became the co-national flag of Nazi Germany in 1933, and the sole na ...
.
The 2008 United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur's Report noted that community representatives and non-governmental organizations devoted to human rights had pointed out that neo-Nazi groups were active in Estonia—particularly in Tartu—and had perpetrated acts of violence against non-European minorities.
The neo-Nazi terrorist organization Feuerkrieg Division was found and operates in the country, with some members of the Conservative People's Party of Estonia having been linked to the Feuerkrieg Division. The party's youth organisation Blue Awakening organises an annual torchlight march through Tallinn on Estonia's Independence Day (Estonia), Independence Day. The event has been harshly criticized by the
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
that described it as "Nuremberg-esque" and likened the ideology of the participants to that of the Collaboration with the Axis Powers#Estonia, Estonian nazi collaborators.
Finland
![Pekka Siitoin, 1976](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Pekka_Siitoin%2C_1976.jpg)
In Finland, neo-Nazism is often connected to the 1930s and 1940s fascist and pro-Nazi Patriotic People's Movement (IKL), its youth movement Blues-and-Blacks and its predecessor Lapua Movement. Post-war fascist groups such as Patriotic People's Movement (1993), Kursiivi printing house arson, Patriotic People's Front, For Independence, Patriotic National Movement, Blue-and-Black Movement and many others consciously copy the style of the movement and look up to its leaders as inspiration. A Finns Party councillor and police officer in Seinäjoki caused small scandal wearing the fascist blue-and-black uniform.
During the Cold War, all partied deemed fascist were banned according to the Paris Peace Treaties and all former fascist activists had to find new political homes. Despite Finlandization, many continued in public life. Three former members of the Waffen SS served as ministers; the Finnish SS Battalion officers Sulo Suorttanen (Centre Party (Finland), Centre Party) and Pekka Malinen (People's Party of Finland (1951), People's Party) as well as (Social Democratic Party of Finland, Social Democrat), a 16-year-old soldier in the consisting of those Finns who rejected the peace treaty and wanted to continue fight with Germans. Neo-Nazi activism was limited to small illegal groups like the clandestine Nazi occultist group led by Pekka Siitoin who made headlines after Kursiivi printing house arson, arson and bombing of the printing houses of the Communist Party of Finland. His associates also sent letter bombs to leftists, including to the headquarters of the Left Youth (Finland), Finnish Democratic Youth League. Another group called the "New Patriotic People's Movement" bombed the left-wing ''Kansan Uutiset'' newspaper and the embassy of communist Bulgaria. Member of the Nordic Realm Party Seppo Seluska was convicted of the torture and murder of a gay Jewish person.
The skinhead culture gained momentum during the late 1980s and peaked during the late 1990s. In 1991, Finland received a number of Somali immigrants who became the main target of Finnish skinhead violence in the following years, including four attacks using explosives and a racist murder. Asylum seeker centres were attacked, in Joensuu skinheads would force their way into an asylum seeker centre and start shooting with shotguns. At worst Somalis were assaulted by 50 skinheads at the same time.
The most prominent neo-Nazi group is the Nordic Resistance Movement, which is tied to multiple murders, attempted murders and assaults of political enemies was found in 2006 and proscribed in 2019. The second biggest Finnish party, the Finns Party politicians have frequently supported far-right and neo-Nazi movements such as the Finnish Defense League, Soldiers of Odin, Nordic Resistance Movement, Rajat Kiinni (Close the Borders), and Suomi Ensin (Finland First).
The NRM and other far-right nationalist parties organize an annual torch march demonstration in Helsinki on the Independence Day (Finland), Finnish independence day which ends at the Hietaniemi cemetery where members visit the tomb of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim and the monument to the Finnish SS Battalion. The event is protested by antifascists, leading to counterdemonstrators being violently assaulted by NRM members who act as security. The demonstration attracts close to 3,000 participants according to the estimates of the police and hundreds of officers patrol Helsinki to prevent violent clashes.
France
![Celtic-style crossed circle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Celtic-style_crossed_circle.svg)
In France, the most enthusiastic collaborationists during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, German occupation of France had been the National Popular Rally of Marcel Déat (former French Section of the Workers' International, SFIO members) and the French Popular Party of Jacques Doriot (former French Communist Party members). These two groups, like the Germans, saw themselves as combining ultra-nationalism and socialism. In the south there existed the vassal state of Vichy France under the military "Hero of the Verdun", Marshal Philippe Pétain whose emphasised an authoritarian Catholic conservative politics. Following the liberation of France and the creation of the Fourth French Republic, collaborators were prosecuted during the and nearly 800 put to death for treason under Charles de Gaulle.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the main concern of the French radical right was the collapse of the French colonial empire, French Empire, in particular the Algerian War, which led to the creation of the Organisation armée secrète, OAS. Outside of this, individual fascistic activists such as
Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche (1 October 1907 – 30 July 1998) was a French art critic and journalist, better known as one of the leading exponents of neo-fascism in post–World War II Europe. Bardèche was also the brother-in-law of the collaborationist ...
(brother-in-law of Robert Brasillach), as well as SS-veterans Marc Augier, Saint-Loup and René Binet (neo-Fascist), René Binet, were active in France and involved in the
European Social Movement
The European Social Movement (German: ''Europäische soziale Bewegung'', ESB) was a neo-fascist Europe-wide alliance set up in 1951 to promote pan-European nationalism.
History
The ESB had its origins in the emergence of the Italian Social Move ...
and later the New European Order, alongside similar groups from across Europe. Early neo-fascist groups included Jeune Nation, which introduced the Celtic cross into use by radical right groups (an association which would spread internationally). A "neither East, nor West" pan-Europeanism was most popular among French fascistic activists until the late 1960s, partly motivated by feelings of national vulnerability following the collapse of their empire; thus the Belgian SS-veteran
Jean-François Thiriart
Jean-François Thiriart (22 March 1922, Brussels – 23 November 1992), often known as Jean Thiriart, was a Belgian political theorist.
Coming from a left-wing background, during the Second World War he was a collaborator with the Nazi Third Rei ...
's group Jeune Europe also had a considerable French contingent.
It was the 1960s, during the Fifth French Republic, that a considerable upturn in French neo-fascism occurred; some of it in response to the Protests of 1968. The most explicitly pro-Nazi of these was the Fédération d'action nationale et européenne, FANE of Mark Fredriksen. Neo-fascist groups included Pierre Sidos' Occident (movement), Occident, the Ordre Nouveau (1960s), Ordre Nouveau (which was banned after violent clashes with the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (France), LCR) and the student-based Groupe Union Défense. A number of these activists such as François Duprat were instrumental in founding the National Front (France), Front National under Jean-Marie Le Pen; but the FN also included a broader selection from the French hard-right, including not only these neo-fascist elements, but also Integrism, Catholic integrists, monarchists, Algerian War veterans, Poujadists and national-conservatives. Others from these neo-fascist micro-groups formed the Parti des forces nouvelles working against Le Pen.
Within the FN itself, Duprat founded the FANE-backed Revolutionary Nationalist Groups, Groupes nationalistes révolutionnaires faction, until his 1978 assassination. The subsequent history of the French hard right has been the conflict between the national-conservative controlled FN and "national revolutionary" (fascistic and National Bolshevik) splinter or opposition groups. The latter include groups in the tradition of Thiriart and Duprat, such as the Parti communautaire national-européen, Troisième voie, the Nouvelle Résistance of Christian Bouchet,
[Stratégies et pratiques du mouvement nationaliste-révolutionnaire français : départs, desseins et destin d'Unité Radicale (1989–2002)](_blank)
, ''Le Banquet'', n°19, 2004 Unité Radicale and most recently Bloc identitaire. Direct splits from the FN include the 1987 founded FANE-revival Parti nationaliste français et européen, which was disbanded in 2000. Neo-Nazi organizations are outlawed in the Fifth French Republic, yet a significant number of them still exist.
Germany
![Nationale sozialisten leipzig recht auf zukunft](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Nationale_sozialisten_leipzig_recht_auf_zukunft.jpg)
Following the failure of the National Democratic Party of Germany in the West German federal election, 1969, election of 1969, small groups committed to the revival of Nazi ideology began to emerge in Germany. The NPD splintered, giving rise to paramilitary ''Wehrsportgruppe''. These groups attempted to organize under a national umbrella organization, the Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists.
Neo-Nazi movements in East Germany began as a rebellion against the Communist regime; the banning of Nazi symbols helped neo-Nazism to develop as an anti-authoritarian youth movement. Mail order networks developed to send illegal Nazi-themed music Compact Cassette, cassettes and merchandise to Germany.
Turks in Germany have been victims of neo-Nazi violence on several occasions. In 1992, two young girls were killed in the Mölln arson attack along with their grandmother; nine others were injured. In 1993, five Turks were killed in the 1993 Solingen arson attack, Solingen arson attack. In response to the fire Turkish youth in Solingen rioted chanting "Nazis out!" and "We want Nazi blood". In other parts of Germany police had to intervene to protect skinheads from assault. The Hoyerswerda riots and Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots targeting migrants and ethnic minorities living in Germany also took place during the 1990s.
Between 2000 and 2007, eight Turkish people, Turkish immigrants, one Greeks in Germany, Greek and a German policewoman were murdered by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground. The NSU has its roots in the former East German area of Thuringia, which ''The Guardian'' identified as "one of the heartlands of Germany's radical right". The German intelligence services have been criticized for extravagant distributions of cash to informants within the far-right movement. Tino Brandt publicly boasted on television that he had received around €100,000 in funding from the German state. Though Brandt did not give the state "useful information", the funding supported recruitment efforts in Thuringia during the early 1990s. (Brandt was eventually sentenced to five and a half years in prison on for 66 counts of child prostitution and child sexual abuse).
Police were only able to locate the killers when they were tipped off following a botched bank robbery in Eisenach. As the police closed in on them, the two men committed suicide. They had evaded capture for 13 years. Beate Zschäpe, who had been living with the two men in Zwickau, turned herself in to the German authorities a few days later. Zschäpe's trial began in May 2013; she was charged with nine counts of murder. She pleaded "not guilty". According to ''The Guardian'', the NSU may have enjoyed protection and support from certain "elements of the state". Anders Behring Breivik, a fan of Zschäpe's, reportedly sent her a letter from prison in 2012.
According to the annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) for 2012, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis. In January 2020, Combat 18 was banned in Germany, and raids directed against the organization were made across the country. In March 2020, United German Peoples and Tribes, which is part of Reichsbürger movement, Reichsbürger, a neo-Nazi movement that rejects the German state as a legal entity, was raided by the German police.
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
is a crime, according to the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch § 86a) and Laws against Holocaust denial#Germany, § 130 (public incitement).
Greece
![Meandros flag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Meandros_flag.svg)
In April 1967, a few weeks prior to an election, a military coup d'état took place in Greece and a fascist military government ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. It was called the "Greek military junta of 1967–74, Regime of the Colonels", and was headed by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. The official reason given for the coup was that a "communist conspiracy" had infiltrated all levels of society. Although there have been persistent rumors about an active support of the coup by the U.S. government, there is no evidence to support such claims. The timing of the coup apparently caught the CIA by surprise.
The far-right political party Golden Dawn (Greece), Golden Dawn (Χρυσή Αυγή – Chrysi Avyi) is generally labelled neo-Nazi, although the group rejects this label. A few Golden Dawn members participated in the Bosnian War in the Greek Volunteer Guard (GVG) and were present in Srebrenica during the Srebrenica massacre#Greek Volunteers controversy, Srebrenica massacre.
[16/07/2005 article](_blank)
in Eleftherotypia. (Greek) The party has its roots in Papadopoulos' regime.
There is often collaboration between the state and neo-Nazi elements in Greece.
In 2018, during the trial of sixty-nine members of the Golden Dawn party, evidence was presented of the close ties between the party and the Hellenic Police.
Golden Dawn has spoken out in favour of the Bashar al-Assad, Assad regime in Syria, and the Strasserist group Black Lily have claimed to have sent mercenaries to Syria to fight alongside the Syrian regime, specifically mentioning their participation in the Battle of al-Qusayr (2013), Battle of al-Qusayr. In the Greek legislative election, May 2012, 6 May 2012 legislative election, Golden Dawn received 6.97% of the votes, entering the Greek parliament for the first time with 21 representatives, but when the elected parties were unable to form a coalition government a Greek legislative election, June 2012, second election was held in June 2012. Golden Dawn received 6.92% of the votes in the June election and entered the Greek parliament with 18 representatives.
Since 2008, neo-Nazi violence in Greece has targeted Immigration to Greece, immigrants, leftists and anarchist activists. In 2009, certain far-right groups announced that Agios Panteleimonas, Athens, Agios Panteleimonas in Athens was off limits to immigrants. Neo-Nazi patrols affiliated with the Golden Dawn party began attacking migrants in this neighborhood. The violence continued escalating through 2010.
In 2013, after the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, the number of hate crimes in Greece declined for several years until 2017. Many of the crimes in 2017 have been attributed to other groups like the Crypteia Organisation and Combat 18 Hellas.
Hungary
![Becsület napja 1997-02-15](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Becs%C3%BClet_napja_1997-02-15.jpg)
In Hungary, the historical political party which allied itself ideologically with German National Socialism and drew inspiration from it, was the Arrow Cross Party of Ferenc Szálasi. They referred to themselves explicitly as National Socialists and within Hungarian politics this tendency is known as Hungarism. After the Second World War, exiles such as Árpád Henney kept the Hungarist tradition alive. Following the fall of the Hungarian People's Republic in 1989, which was a Marxist-Leninist state and a member of the Warsaw Pact, many new parties emerged. Amongst these was the Hungarian National Front of István Győrkös, which was a Hungarist party and considered itself the heirs of Arrow Cross-style National Socialism (a self-description they explicitly embraced). In the 2000s, Győrkös' movement moved closer to a National bolshevism, national communist and neo-Eurasian position, aligned with Aleksandr Dugin, cooperating with the Hungarian Workers' Party. Some Hungarists opposed this and founded the Pax Hungarica Movement.
In modern Hungary, the ultranationalist Jobbik is regarded by some scholars as a neo-Nazi party; for example, it has been termed as such by Randolph L. Braham. The party denies being neo-Nazi, although "there is extensive proof that the leading members of the party made no effort to hide their racism and anti-Semitism."
Rudolf Paksa, a scholar of the Hungarian far-right, describes Jobbik as "anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and chauvinistic" but not as neo-Nazi because it does not pursue the establishment of a totalitarian regime.
Historian Krisztián Ungváry writes that "It is safe to say that certain messages of Jobbik can be called open neo-Nazi propaganda. However, it is quite certain that the popularity of the party is not due to these statements."
Italy
![Junio Valerio Borghese](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Junio_Valerio_Borghese.jpg)
Following the last stand of Italian Fascism with the German-supported Italian Social Republic towards the end of the Second World War, those elements within Italian society which remained loyal to the legacy of Benito Mussolini and fascism (especially veterans of the National Republican Army), rejecting both the Christian Democracy (Italy), Catholic and Italian Communist Party, Communist alternatives prominent in mainstream Italian politics, founded the Italian Social Movement in 1946 under Giorgio Almirante. The MSI was regarded as the successor of the National Fascist Party and the Republican Fascist Party. The motto of the party was "not repudiate, not restore", indicating a more moderate parliamentary democratic neo-fascism, which did not heap scorn on the recent past. Italian society did not undergo a process as extensive as the post-war denazification campaign in occupied Germany, partly due to the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
and the Western Allies not wanting Italy to move towards the Warsaw Pact (which was not an Popular Democratic Front (Italy), impossibility at the time).
![Flag of Ordine Nuovo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Flag_of_Ordine_Nuovo.svg)
The Italian Social Movement held a similar position in Italian politics that the National Democratic Party of Germany did in Germany; careful enough to stay within the laws of the new democratic state, but still clearly identified with the Axis legacy. During the 1950s, the MSI moved closer to bourgeois conservative politics on the domestic front, which led to radical youths founding hardline splinter groups, such as Pino Rauti's Ordine Nuovo (later succeeded by Ordine Nero) and Stefano Delle Chiaie's National Vanguard (Italy), Avanguardia Nazionale. These organisations were influenced by the esotericism of
Julius Evola
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly ...
and considered the Waffen-SS and Romanian leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu a reference, moving beyond Italian fascism. They were implicated in Years of Lead (Italy), paramiliary attacks during the late 1960s to the early 1980s, such as the Piazza Fontana bombing. Delle Chiaie had even assisted Junio Valerio Borghese in a failed 1970 coup attempt known as the Golpe Borghese, which attempted to reinstate a fascist state in Italy.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Italian Social Movement under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini moved closer to conservative politics, adopting a "post-fascist" position. This was opposed by the fascist element under Rauti who created Fiamma Tricolore in 1995. The party was dissolved under Fini in 1995, who replaced it with the National Alliance (Italy), National Alliance. This party rapidly moved away from any connection to the fascist past, towards the center-right in coalition with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. The two parties merged in 2009 to become The People of Freedom. Alessandra Mussolini, troubled by Fini's explicit condemnation of her grandfather broke with the AN to found Social Action. Aside from Fiamma Tricolore, the other extant neo-fascist groups in Italy are New Force (Italy), Forza Nuova, the National Social Front, Fronte Nazionale, Social Idea Movement, Movimento Idea Sociale (another Rauti creation) and the cultural ''CasaPound'' project. In terms of current size, they are mostly negligible.
Ireland
The National Socialist Irish Workers Party, a small party, was active between 1968 and the late 1980s, producing neonazi propaganda pamphlets and sending threatening messages to Jews and Black people living in Ireland.
Netherlands
Noteworthy neo-Nazi movements and parties in the Netherlands include the National European Social Movement (NESB), the Dutch People's Union (NVU), the Centre Party (Netherlands), Centre Party/Centre Party '86 (CP/CP'86), the National Alliance (Netherlands), National Alliance (NA),
and the Nationalist People's Movement (NVB). Individuals of note have included ''Waffen-SS'' volunteer and NESB founder Paul van Tienen, war-time collaborator and NESB co-founder Jan Wolthuis, former NVU member w:nl:Bernhard Postma, Bernhard Postma, the "Black Widow" Florentine Rost van Tonningen, former NVU leader Joop Glimmerveen,
CP/CP'86 member and NVB leader w:nl:Wim Beaux, Wim Beaux, former CP/CP'86 member and NA leader w:nl:Jan Teijn, Jan Teijn, former NVU member and "Hitler-lookalike" w:nl:Stefan Wijkamp, Stefan Wijkamp, former CP'86 member and current NVU leader Constant Kusters,
[ and former NVU member and NA leader w:nl:Virginia Kapić, Virginia Kapić.
Both the General Intelligence and Security Service and non-governmental initiatives such as the far-left anti-fascist research group Kafka research neo-Nazism and other forms of political extremism and have attested to the local presence of international movements such as Blood & Honour, Combat 18, the Racial Volunteer Force, and The Base (hate group), The Base, and expressed concern at the online dissemination of alt-right and Accelerationism#Far-right accelerationist terrorism, far-right accelerationist thought in the Netherlands.
]
Poland
Under the Polish Constitution promoting any totalitarian system such as Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
, fascism, or communism, as well as inciting violence and/or racial hatred is illegal. This was further re-enforced in the Polish Penal Code where discrediting any group or persons on national, religious, or racial grounds carries a sentence of 3 years.
Although several small far-right and anti-semitic organisations exist, most notably National Revival of Poland, NOP and National Radical Camp (1993), ONR (both of which exist legally), they frequently adhere to Polish nationalism and National Democracy (Poland), National Democracy, in which Nazism is generally considered to be against ultra-nationalism, ultra-nationalist principles, and although they are classed as Nationalism, nationalist and fascism, fascist movements, they are at the same time considered anti-Nazi. Some of their elements may resemble neo-Nazi features, but these groups frequently dissociate themselves from Nazi elements, claiming that such acts are unpatriotic and they argue that Nazism misappropriated or slightly altered several pre-existing symbols and features, such as distinguishing the Roman salute from the Nazi salute.[PAP (2008-06-21)]
Faszystowskie gesty w Myślenicach.
''Dziennik.pl'' Kraj. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
Self-declared neo-Nazi movements in Poland frequently treat Polish culture and traditions with contempt, are anti-Christian and translate various texts from German, meaning they are considered movements favouring Germanisation.
According to several reporter investigations the Polish government turns a blind eye to these groups and they are free to spread their ideology, frequently dismissing their existence as conspiracy theories, dismissing acts political provocations, deeming them too insignificant to pose a threat, or attempting to justify or diminish the seriousness of their actions.
Russia
Some observers have noted a subjective irony of Russians embracing Nazism, because one of Hitler's ambitions at the start of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
was the Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) which envisaged to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all Slavs from central and eastern Europe (e.g., Russians, Ukrainians, Poles etc.).[William W. Hagen (2012). ]
German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation
''. Cambridge University Press. p. 313. At the end of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, over 25 million Soviet citizens had died.
Russian National Unity (RNE) was a Neo-Nazi group founded in 1990 and was led by Alexander Barkashov, who claimed to have members in 250 cities. RNE adopted the swastika as its symbol, and sees itself as the avant-garde of a coming national revolution. It is critical of other major far-right organizations, such as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). As of 1997, the members RNE were called Soratnik (comrades in arms), receive combat training at locations near Moscow, and many of them work as security officers or armed guards. RNE was banned in 1999 by Moscow's court in 1999, after which the group faded away.
In 2007, it was claimed that Russian neo-Nazis accounted for "half of the world's total".
On 15 August 2007, Russian authorities arrested a student for allegedly posting a video on the Internet which appears to show two 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."
Under serious police pressure, the amount of racist and neo-Nazi acts began to decline from 2009 in Russia.
Atomwaffen Division Russland is a neo-Nazi terrorist group in Russia tied to multiple mass murder plots. AWDR was found by former members of National Socialist Society responsible for 27 murders and AWDR is connected to local chapter of the Order of Nine Angles responsible for rapes, ritual murders and drug trafficking. The Russian authorities raided an Atomwaffen compound in Ulan-Ude and uncovered illegal weapons and explosives.
Serbia
An example of neo-Nazism in Serbia is the group Nacionalni stroj. In 2006 charges were brought against 18 leading members. The other organization was Obraz (organization), Obraz which was banned on 12 June 2012 by Constitutional Court of Serbia. Besides political parties, there are a few militant neo-Nazi organizations in Serbia, such as Blood & Honour, Blood & Honour Serbia and Combat 18.
Earlier, on 18 June 1990, Vojislav Šešelj organized the Serbian Chetnik Movement (SČP) though it was not permitted official registration due to its obvious Chetnik identification. On 23 February 1991, it merged with the National Radical Party (NRS), establishing the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) with Šešelj as president and Tomislav Nikolić as vice president. It was a Chetnik party, oriented towards neo-fascism with a striving for the territorial expansion of Serbia.
Slovakia
The Slovak political party Kotlebists – People's Party Our Slovakia, which is represented in the National Council (Slovakia), National Council and European Parliament, is widely characterized as neo-Nazi. Kotleba has softened its image over time and now disputes that is fascist or neo-Nazi, even suing a media outlet that described it as neo-Nazi. As of 2020, the party spokesperson was Ondrej Durica, a former member of the neo-Nazi band (White Resistance). 2020 candidate Andrej Medvecky was convicted of attacking a black man while shouting racial slurs; another candidate, Anton Grňo, was fined for making a Na stráž, fascist salute. The party still celebrates 14 March, the anniversary of the founding of the fascist Slovak State. In 2020, party leader Marian Kotleba was facing trial for writing checks for 1,488 euros, alleged to be a reference to Fourteen Words and Heil Hitler.
Spain
Spanish neo-Nazism is often connected to the country's Francoist and Falangism, Falangist past, and nurtured by the ideology of the National Catholicism.
According to a study by the ABC (Spain), newspaper ''ABC'', Black Spanish people, black people are the ones who have suffered the most attacks by neo-Nazi groups, followed by Maghrebis and Latin Americans. They have also caused deaths in the anti-fascist group, such as the murder of the Madrid-born sixteen-year-old Murder of Carlos Palomino, Carlos Palomino on 11 November 2007, stabbed with a knife by a soldier in the Legazpi (Madrid Metro), Legazpi metro station (Madrid).
There have been other neo-Nazi cultural organizations such as the Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe (CEDADE) and the Circle of Indo-European Studies (CEI).
The extreme right has little electoral support, with the presence of these groups of 0.36% (if the Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC) party is excluded with 66007 votes (0.39%), according to the voting data of the European elections of 2014. The first extreme right party FE de las JONS obtains 0.13% of the votes (21 577 votes), after doubling its results after the crisis; this is followed by the far-right party La España en Marcha (LEM) with 0.1% of the votes, National Democracy (Spain), National Democracy (DN) of the far-right with 0.08%, Republican Social Movement (MSR) (far-right) with 0.05% of the votes.
Sweden
Neo-Nazi activities in Sweden have previously been limited to White supremacy, white supremacist groups, few of which have a membership over a few hundred members. The main neo-Nazi organization is the Nordic Resistance Movement, a political movement which engages in martial arts training and paramilitary exercises and which has been called a terrorist group. They are also active in Norway and Denmark; the branch in Finland was banned in 2019.
Switzerland
The neo-Nazi and white power skinhead scene in Switzerland has seen significant growth in the 1990s and 2000s. It is reflected in the foundation of the Partei National Orientierter Schweizer in 2000, which resulted in an improved organizational structure of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist scene.
Ukraine
In 1991, the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) was founded. The party combined radical nationalism and neo-Nazi features.[Local Jews in shock after Ukrainian city of Konotop elects neo-Nazi mayor]
". ''The Jerusalem Post''. 21 December 2015. It was renamed and rebranded 13 years later as Svoboda (political party), All-Ukrainian Association "Svoboda" in 2004 under Oleh Tyahnybok. In 2016, ''The Nation'' reported that "in Ukrainian municipal elections 2015 Ukrainian local elections, held [in October 2015], the neo-Nazi Svoboda party won 10 percent of the vote in Kyiv and placed second in Lviv. The Svoboda party's candidate won the mayoral election in the city of Konotop."[Congress Has Removed a Ban on Funding Neo-Nazis From Its Year-End Spending Bill]
". ''The Nation''. 14 January 2016. In 2015, the Svoboda party mayor in Konotop reportedly had the number "14/88" displayed on his car and refused to display the city's official flag because it contains a star of David, and has implied that Jews were responsible for the Holodomor.
The topic of Ukrainian nationalism and its alleged relationship to neo-Nazism came to the fore in polemics about the more radical elements involved in the Euromaidan protests and subsequent Russo-Ukrainian War from 2013 onward.[Ukraine: Svoboda Party Building Close Relations with Germany's Neo-Nazi NPD Party]
". ''International Business Times''. 19 March 2014. Some Russian, Latin American, U.S. and Israeli media have attempted to portray the Ukrainian nationalists in the conflict as neo-Nazi. The persons regarded as Ukraine's national heroes and increasingly celebrated in the nationalist revival of the 2014 period — Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych or Dmytro Klyachkivsky of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) — at times supported and then opposed the presence of the Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in Ukraine.
The Azov Battalion, founded in 2014, has been described as a far-right militia, with connections to neo-Nazism and members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia, and expressing neo-Nazi views.
According to Vyacheslav Likhachev of the , members of far-right (including neo-Nazi) groups played an important role on the pro-Russian side, arguably more so than on the Ukrainian side, especially during the early 2014. Members and former members of the National Bolshevik Party, Russian National Unity (RNU), Eurasian Youth Union, and Combatants_of_the_war_in_Donbas#Cossacks, Cossack groups participated in starting branches for the recruitment of the separatists.[Yudina, Natalia (2015)]
"Russian nationalists fight Ukrainian war"
, in: ''Journal on Baltic Security'', Volume 1, Issue 1 (De Gruyter, de Gruyter). pp.47–69. doi:10.1515/jobs-2016-0012. A former RNU member, Pavel Gubarev, was founder of the Donbas People's Militia and first "governor" of the Donetsk People's Republic. RNU is particularly linked to the Russian Orthodox Army, one of a number of separatist units described as "pro-Tsarist" and "extremist" Orthodox nationalists. 'Rusich' is part of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group in Ukraine which has been linked to far-right extremism.[Šmíd, Tomáš & Šmídová, Alexandra. (2021)]
Anti-government Non-state Armed Actors in the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
''Czech Journal of International Relations'', Volume 56, Issue 2. pp.48–49. Quote: "Another group of Russian citizens who became involved in the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine were members of the so-called right-wing units of the Russian Spring." Afterward, the pro-Russian far-right groups became less important in Donbass and the need for Russian radical nationalists started to disappear.
The radical nationalists group C14 (Ukrainian group), С14, whose members openly expressed neo-Nazi views, gained notoriety in 2018 for being involved in violent attacks on Romani people, Romany camps.
United Kingdom
In 1962 the British neo-Nazi activist Colin Jordan formed the National Socialist Movement (UK, 1962), National Socialist Movement (NSM) which later became the British Movement (BM) in 1968.
John Tyndall (politician), John Tyndall, a long-term neo-Nazi activist in the UK, led a break-away from the National Front (UK), National Front to form an openly neo-Nazi party named the British National Party. In the 1990s, the party formed a group for protecting its meetings named Combat 18, which later grew too violent for the party to control and began to attack members of the BNP who were not perceived as supportive of neo-Nazism. Under the subsequent leadership of Nick Griffin, the BNP distanced itself from neo-Nazism, although many members (including Griffin himself) have been accused of links to other neo-Nazi groups.
Sonnenkrieg Division is a neo-Nazi terrorist organization in the United Kingdom, linked to international Atomwaffen Division network. Multiple members have been jailed for plotting terror attacks against minorities. Sonnenkrieg Division has been proscribed as a terrorist organization in United Kingdom and Australia. Sonnenkrieg Division is also closely tied with the Order of Nine Angles linked to the Murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
The UK has also been a source of neo-Nazi music, such as the band Skrewdriver.
Asia
Iran
Several neo-Nazi groups were active in Iran, although they are now defunct. Advocates of Nazism continue to exist in Iran and are mainly based on the Internet.
Israel
Neo-Nazi activity is not common or widespread in Israel, and the few reported activities have all been the work of extremists, who were punished severely. One notable case is that of Patrol 36, a cell in Petah Tikva made up of eight teenage immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had been attacking foreign workers and gay people, and vandalizing synagogues with Nazi images. These neo-Nazis were reported to have operated in cities across Israel, and have been described as being influenced by the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe; mostly influenced by similar movements in Russia and Ukraine, as the rise of the phenomenon is widely credited to immigrants from those two states, the largest sources of emigration to Israel. 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.
Mongolia
From 2008, Mongolian neo-Nazi groups have defaced buildings in Ulaanbaatar, smashed Chinese shopkeepers' windows, and killed Chinese immigrants. The neo-Nazi Mongols' targets for violence are Chinese, Koreans, Mongol women who have sex with Chinese men, and LGBT people. They wear Nazi uniforms and revere the Mongol Empire and Genghis Khan. Though Tsagaan Khass leaders say they do not support violence, they are self-proclaimed Nazis. "Adolf Hitler was someone we respect. He taught us how to preserve national identity," said the 41-year-old co-founder, who calls himself Big Brother. "We don't agree with his extremism and starting the Second World War. We are against all those killings, but we support his ideology. We support nationalism rather than fascism." Some have ascribed it to poor Education in Mongolia, historical education.
Taiwan
The National Socialism Association (NSA) is a neo-Nazi political organisation founded in Taiwan in September 2006 by Hsu Na-chi (), at that time a 22-year-old female political science graduate of Soochow University (Taiwan), Soochow University. The NSA has an explicit stated goal of obtaining the power to govern the state. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre condemned the National Socialism Association on 13 March 2007 for championing the former Nazi dictator and blaming democracy for social unrest in Taiwan.["Taiwan political activists admiring Hitler draw Jewish protests"]
''Haaretz'' (Reuters, the Associated Press). 14 March 2007. Accessed 23 October 2015.
Turkey
A neo-Nazi group existed in 1969 in İzmir, when a group of former Republican Villagers Nation Party members (precursor party of the Nationalist Movement Party) founded the association "Nasyonal Aktivitede Zinde İnkişaf" (''Vigorous Development in National Activity''). The club maintained two combat units. The members wore SA uniforms and used the Nazi salute, Hitler salute. One of the leaders (Gündüz Kapancıoğlu) was re-admitted to the Nationalist Movement Party in 1975.
Apart from neo-fascist[Political Terrorism, by Alex Peter Schmid, A. J. Jongman, Michael Stohl, Transaction Publishers, 2005, p. 674][''The Nature of Fascism'', by Roger Griffin, Routledge, 1993, p. 171][''Political Parties and Terrorist Groups'', by Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger, Routledge, 2003, p. 45] Grey Wolves (organization), Grey Wolves and the Turkish ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party, there are some neo-Nazi organizations in Turkey such as the Turkish Nazi Party or the National Socialist Party of Turkey, which are mainly based on the Internet.
Americas
Brazil
Several Brazilian neo-Nazi gangs appeared in the 1990s in South Region, Brazil, Southern and Southeast Region, Brazil, Southeastern Brazil, regions with mostly white people, with their acts gaining more media coverage and public notoriety in the 2010s. Some members of Brazilian neo-Nazi groups have been associated with football hooliganism. Their targets have included African, South American and Asian immigrants; Jews, Muslims, Catholics and atheists; Afro-Brazilians and internal migrants with origins in the northern regions of Brazil (who are mostly Pardo, brown-skinned or Afro-Brazilian); Homelessness, homeless people, Prostitution in Brazil, prostitutes; recreational drug users; Feminism, feminists and—more frequently reported in the media—gay people, bisexuals, and transgender and Third gender, third-gender people. News of their attacks has played a role in debates about anti-discrimination laws in Brazil (including to some extent hate speech laws) and the issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Canada
Neo-Nazism in Canada began with the formation of the Canadian Nazi Party in 1965. In the 1970s and 1980s, neo-Nazism continued to spread in the country as organizations including the Western Guard Party and Creativity (religion), Church of the Creator (later renamed ''Creativity'') promoted white supremacist ideals. Founded in the United States in 1973, Creativity calls for white people to wage Ben Klassen#Racial holy war, racial holy war (Rahowa) against Jews and other perceived enemies.
Don Andrews founded the Nationalist Party of Canada in 1977. The purported goals of the unregistered party are "the promotion and maintenance of European Heritage and Culture in Canada," but the party is known for anti-Semitism and racism. Many influential neo-Nazi Leaders, such as Wolfgang Droege, were affiliated with the party, but many of its members left to join the Heritage Front, which was founded in 1989.[
Droege founded the Heritage Front in Toronto at a time when leaders of the white supremacist movement were "disgruntled about the state of the radical right" and wanted to unite unorganized groups of white supremacists into an influential and efficient group with common objectives.][ Plans for the organization began in September 1989, and the formation of the Heritage Front was formally announced a couple of months later in November. In the 1990s, George Burdi of Resistance Records and the band Rahowa (band), Rahowa popularized the Creativity movement and the white power music scene.
On September 18, 2020, Toronto Police arrested 34-year-old Guilherme "William" Von Neutegem and charged him with the murder of Mohamed-Aslim Zafis. Zafis was the caretaker of a local mosque who was found dead with his throat cut. The Toronto Police Service said the killing is possibly connected to the stabbing murder of Rampreet Singh a few days prior a short distance from the spot where Zafis' murder took place. Von Neutegem is a member of the Order of Nine Angles and social media accounts established as belonging to him promote the group and included recordings of Von Neutegem performing satanic chants. In his home there was also an altar with the symbol of the O9A adorning a monolith. According to Evan Balgord of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, they are aware of more O9A members in Canada and their affiliated organization Northern Order. Northern Order is a proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist organization in Canada. NO members have been arrested for trafficking explosives and firearms, and NO has active members of the Canadian Armed Forces as its members and even a member of the CJIRU was identified as a member.
Controversy and dissention has left many Canadian neo-Nazi organizations dissolved or weakened.]
Chile
After the dissolution of the National Socialist Movement of Chile (MNSCH) in 1938, notable former members of MNSCH migrated into Partido Agrario Laborista (PAL), obtaining high positions.[Etchepare, Jaime Antonio; Stewart; Hamish I., "Nazism in Chile: A Particular Type of Fascism in South America". ''Journal of Contemporary History'' (1995).] Not all former MNSCH members joined the PAL; some continued to form parties that followed the MNSCH model until 1952.[ A new old-school Nazi party was formed in 1964 by school teacher Franz Pfeiffer.][ Among the activities of this group were the organization of a ''Miss Nazi'' beauty contest and the formation of a Chilean branch of the Ku Klux Klan.][ The party disbanded in 1970. Pfeiffer attempted to restart it in 1983 in the wake of a wave of protests against the Chile under Pinochet, Augusto Pinochet regime.][
Nicolás Palacios considered the "Chilean race" to be a mix of two bellicose master races: the Visigoths of Spain and the Mapuche (Araucanians) of Chile.][Nicolás Palacios, Palacios, Nicolás, ''Raza Chilena'' (Editorial Chilena, 1918), pp. 35–36.] Palacios traces 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. Palacios claimed that both the blonde-haired and the bronze-coloured Chilean Mestizo share a "moral physonomy" and a masculine psychology.][Nicolás Palacios, Palacios, Nicolás, ''Raza Chilena'' (Editorial Chilena, 1918), p. 37.] He opposed immigration from Southern Europe, and argued that Mestizos who are derived from south Europeans lack "cerebral control" and are a social burden.[Nicolás Palacios, Palacios, Nicolás, ''Raza Chilena'' (Editorial Chilena, 1918), p. 41.]
Costa Rica
Several fringe neo-Nazi groups have existed in Costa Rica, some with online presence since around 2003. The groups normally target Jewish Costa Ricans, Afro-Costa Ricans, communism, Communists, gay people and especially Nicaraguan and Colombian immigrants. In 2012 the media discovered the existence of a neo-Nazi police officer inside the Public Force of Costa Rica, for which he was fired and would later commit suicide in April 2016 due to lack of job opportunities and threats from Anti-fascism, anti-fascists.
In 2015, the Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
asked the Costa Rican government to shut down a store in San José, Costa Rica, San José that sells Nazi paraphernalia, Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
books and other products associated with Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
.
In 2018, a series of pages on the social network Facebook of neo-Nazi inclination openly or discreetly carried out a vast campaign instigating Xenophobia, xenophobic hatred by recycling old news or posting fake news to take advantage of an anti-immigrant sentiment after three homicides of tourists allegedly committed by migrants (although from one of the homicides the suspect is Costa Rican). A rally against the country's migration policy was held on 19 August 2018, in which neo-Nazi and hooligans took part. Although not all participants were linked these groups and the majority of participants were peaceful, the protest turned violent and the Public Force of Costa Rica, Public Force intervened with 44 arrested (36 Costa Ricans and the rest Nicaraguans). Authorities confiscated sharp weapons, Molotov cocktails and other items from the neo-Nazis, who also carried swastika flags. A subsequent anti-xenophobic march and solidarity with the Nicaraguan refugees was organized a week later with more assistance. A second anti-migration demonstration, with the explicit exclusion of neo-Nazis and hooligans, was carried out in September with similar assistance. In 2019 Facebook pages of extreme right-wing tendencies and anti-immigration position as ''Deputy 58'', ''Costa Rican Resistance'' and ''Salvation Costa Rica'' called an anti-government demonstration on 1 May with small attendance.
Peru
Peru has been home to a handful of neo-Nazi groups, most notably the National Socialist Movement "Peru Awake", the National Socialist Tercios of New Castile, and the Peruvian National Socialist Union.
United States
There are several neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The National Socialist Movement (United States), National Socialist Movement (NSM), with about 400 members in 32 states, is currently the largest neo-Nazi organization in the US. After World War II, 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
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity ...
in the Southern United States with Nazi-inspired publications and iconography. The American Nazi Party
The American Nazi Party (ANP) is an American far-right and neo-Nazi political party founded by George Lincoln Rockwell and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The organization was originally named the World Union of Free Enterprise National ...
, founded by George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American far-right political activist and founder of the American Nazi Party. He later became a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs, st ...
in 1959, achieved high-profile coverage in the press through its public demonstrations.
The ideology of James H. Madole, leader of the National Renaissance Party, was influenced by Theosophy (Blavatskian), Blavatskian Theosophy. Helena Blavatsky developed a racial theory of evolution, holding that the white race was the "fifth rootrace" called the Aryan Race. According to Blavatsky, Aryans had been preceded by Atlanteans who had perished in the flood that sunk the continent Atlantis. The three races that preceded the Atlanteans, in Blavatsky's view, were proto-humans; these were the Lemuria (continent), Lemurians, Hyperboreans and the first Astral rootrace. It was on this foundation that Madole based his claims that the Aryan Race has been worshiped as "White Gods" since time immemorial and proposed a governance structure based on the Hindu Laws of Manu and its hierarchical Caste system in India, caste system.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, which allows political organizations great latitude in expressing Nazi, racist, and antisemitic views. A First Amendment landmark case was ''National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie'', 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 Chicago.
The Institute for Historical Review, formed in 1978, is a Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
body associated with neo-Nazism.["Extremism in America: Institute for Historical Review"]
, Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved 28 February 2007.
Organizations which report upon American neo-Nazi activities include the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
. American neo-Nazis are known to attack and harass minorities.
In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI reclassified neo-Nazis to the same threat level as ISIS. Christopher A. Wray, Chris Wray, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stated "Not only is the terror threat diverse, it's unrelenting".
Uruguay
In 1998, a group of people belonging to the "Joseph Goebbels Movement" tried to burn down a synagogue, which also served as a Hebrew school, in the Pocitos neighborhood of Montevideo in Uruguay; an antisemitism, antisemitic pamphlet signed by the group was found in the building after the quick action of firefighters saved it. Another group, the racist and antisemitic neo-Nazi group, founded in 1996, said when they were interviewed by the newspaper ''La República de Montevideo'' that they had no involvement with the attack on the synagogue, but revealed that they maintain contacts with a group called ("White Power"), also Uruguayan, as well as with neo-Nazi groups from Argentina and several European countries. Through the Internet they have received the solidarity of the ''Patria'' pro-fascist group, based in Spain. They also said that in the city of Canelones, Uruguay, fifty kilometers from Montevideo, there is a clandestine "Aryan Christianity, Aryan church" which uses rituals taken from the Ku Klux Klan. The declared that they did not tolerate interracial or gay couples. One of the militants said in the interview that "... if we see a black man with a white woman, we break them up ...". Other neo-Nazi incidents in Uruguay in 1998 included the bombing of a Jewish-owned small business in February, which injured two people, and the appearance of posters celebrating the anniversary of Hitler's birthday in April.
Africa
South Africa
Several groups in South Africa, such as Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging, have often been described as neo-Nazi.
Eugène Terre'Blanche was a prominent South African neo-Nazi leader who was murdered in 2010.
Oceania
There were a number of now-defunct Australian neo-Nazi groups, such as the Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP), which was formed in 1962 and merged into the National Socialist Party of Australia (1968–1970s), originally a splinter group, in 1968, and Jack van Tongeren's Australian Nationalist Movement.
White supremacist organisations active in Australia as of 2016 included local chapters of the Aryan Nations. Blair Cottrell, former leader of the United Patriots Front, has tried to distance himself from neo-Nazism, but has nevertheless been accused of expressing "pro-Nazi views". Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director Mike Burgess (intelligence chief), Mike Burgess said in February 2020 that neo-Nazis pose a "real threat" to Australia's security. Burgess maintained that there is a growing threat from the extreme right, and that its supporters "regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology".
In New Zealand, historical neo-Nazi organisations include Unit 88 and the National Socialist Party of New Zealand. White nationalist organisations such as the New Zealand National Front have faced accusations of neo-Nazism.
See also
*
* ''The Believer (2001 film), The Believer''2001 film by Henry Bean
* ''The Daily Stormer''US neo-Nazi commentary & message board
*
*
*
*
*
* White separatismApartheid-type ideology
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* List of neo-Nazi bands
* List of neo-Nazi organizations
* List of white nationalist organizations
References
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
::Primary sources
* ''Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, Imperium'' by Francis Parker Yockey
Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960) was an American fascist and pan-Europeanist ideologue. A lawyer, he is known for his neo- Spenglerian book '' Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics'', published in 1948 u ...
(using the pen name Ulick Varange, 1947, )
* ''The Lightning and the Sun
''The Lightning and the Sun'' is a 1958 book by Savitri Devi Mukherji, in which the author outlines her philosophy of history along with her critique of the modern world. The book is known for the author's claim that Adolf Hitler was an avatar ...
'' by Savitri Devi
Savitri Devi Mukherji (born Maximiani Julia Portas, ; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in I ...
, (1958 (written 1948–56); )
* ''White Power'' by George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American far-right political activist and founder of the American Nazi Party. He later became a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs, st ...
(1967; John McLaughlin, 1996, )
* ''This Time The World'' by George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American far-right political activist and founder of the American Nazi Party. He later became a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs, st ...
(1961; Liberty Bell Publications, 2004, )
* ''National Socialism: Vanguard of the Future, Selected Writings of Colin Jordan'' ()
* ''Merrie England – 2000'' by Colin Jordan
* ''The Turner Diaries'' by William Luther Pierce, William Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), novel (1978, ) .
* ''Siege (Mason book), Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason (National Socialist), James Mason'' edited and introduced by Michael M. Jenkins (Storm Books, 1992) or introduced by Ryan Schuster (Black Sun Publications, )
* ''Hunter (Pierce novel), Hunter'' by William Luther Pierce, William Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), novel (National Vanguard Books, 1984, )
* ''Faith of the Future'' by Matt Koehl (New Order (publisher), New Order; Rev edition, 1995, )
* ''Serpent's Walk'' by Randolph D. Calverhall (pseudonym), novel (National Vanguard Books, 1991, )
* ''The Nexus (journal), The Nexus'' periodical edited by Kerry Bolton
* ''Deceived, Damned & Defiant – The Revolutionary Writings of David Lane'' by David Lane (white nationalist), David Lane, foreword by Ron McVan, preface by Katja Lane (Fourteen Word Press, 1999, )
* ''Resistance Magazine'' published by National Vanguard Books
::Academic surveys
* ''The Beast Reawakens'' by Martin A. Lee, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997, )
* ''Fascism (book), Fascism'' (Oxford Readers) by Roger Griffin (1995, )
* ''Beyond Eagle and Swastika: German nationalism since 1945'' by Kurt P. Tauber (Wesleyan University Press; [1st ed.] edition, 1967)
* ''Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890'' edited by Philip Rees, (1991, )
* ''Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi
Savitri Devi Mukherji (born Maximiani Julia Portas, ; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in I ...
, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism'' by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1998, and )
* ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey
Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960) was an American fascist and pan-Europeanist ideologue. A lawyer, he is known for his neo- Spenglerian book '' Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics'', published in 1948 u ...
and the Postwar Fascist International'' by Kevin Coogan, (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1998, )
* ''Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party'' by William H. Schmaltz (Potomac Books, 2000, )
* ''American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party'' by Frederick J. Simonelli (University of Illinois Press, 1999, )
* ''Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918–1985'' by Richard C. Thurlow (Olympic Marketing Corp, 1987, )
* ''Fascism Today: A World Survey'' by Angelo Del Boca and Mario Giovana (Pantheon Books, 1st American edition, 1969)
* ''Germany's New Nazis'' by the Anglo-Jewish Association (Jewish Chronicle Publications, 1951)
* ''The New Germany and the Old Nazis'' by Tete Harens Tetens (Random House, 1961)
* ''Swastika and the Eagle: Neo-Naziism in America Today'' by Clifford L Linedecker (A & W Pub, 1982, )
* ''The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America's Racist Underground'' by Kevin Flynn (author), Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt (Signet Book; Reprint edition, 1995, )
* ''"White Power, White Pride!": The White Separatist Movement in the United States'' by Betty A. Dobratz with Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile (hardcover, Twayne Publishers, 1997, ); a.k.a. ''The White Separatist Movement in the United States: White Power White Pride'' (paperback, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000, )
* ''Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right'' by Jeffrey Kaplan (academic), Jeffrey Kaplan (Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 2000, )
* ''Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, White power skinhead, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture'' by James Ridgeway (Thunder's Mouth Press; 2nd edition, 1995, )
* ''A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America'' by Elinor Langer (Metropolitan Books, 2003, )
* ''The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen'' by Raphael S. Ezekiel (Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition, 1996, )
* ''Black Sun (Goodrick-Clarke book), Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity'' by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2001, )
* ''Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe'' by Paul Hockenos (Routledge; Reprint edition, 1994, )
* ''The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today'' by Geoff Harris, (Edinburgh University Press; New edition, 1994, )
* ''The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe'' by Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (Longman Publishing Group; 2nd edition, 1995, )
* ''The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis'' by Herbert Kitschelt (University of Michigan Press; Reprint edition, 1997, )
* ''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, )
* ''The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce'' by Robert S. Griffin (Authorhouse, 2001, )
* ''Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture'' by Jeffrey Kaplan, Tore Bjorgo (Northeastern University Press, 1998, )
* ''Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism'' by Mattias Gardell (Duke University Press, 2003, )
* ''The Nazi conception of law (Oxford pamphlets on world affairs)'' by J. Walter Jones, Clarendon (1939)
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External links
Neo-Nazism
at Jewish Virtual Library
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Neo-Nazism,
Occultism in Nazism
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Identity politics
White supremacy