Weird Little Guys

Before he joined the American Nazi Party in 1965, Frank Smith was already a career criminal working for the New England mafia.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1952/05/06/archives/friend-of-sutton-seized-as-suspect-in-schuster-death-armed-burglar.html

https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/news/legacy-of-the-commander/article_c5ebf480-2fef-536c-aee8-11a2925441a0.html

Simonelli, Frederick J. (1999). American Fuehrer: Geo...

When the commander of the American Nazi Party died, he left instructions with his successor. He wanted the military funeral he was entitled to as an American veteran. It didn't go well.

Sources:

https://snccdigital.org/events/protests-danville-virginia/

https://www.thejc.com/life/lawyer-who-helped-a-loving-couple-nn57y8ct

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article120224913.html

In 1976, the recently paroled assassin went back to prison after being arrested in Charlottesville. He was acquitted on the charge of being naked in a stranger's living room, but he'd violated his parole. He's tried to stay out of the spotlight ever since. Decades later, his son wrote that he was a changed man. His comments after the 2017 Unite the Right rally say otherwise.

Sources:

Schmaltz, William H. (2013). For R...

In the third episode of the story of George Lincoln Rockwell's assassin, Rockwell finally dies and his assassin goes on trial.

Sources:

Schmaltz, William H. (2013). For Race And Nation: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. River's Bend Press

Simonelli, Frederick J. (1999). American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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In the year leading up to George Lincoln Rockwell's assassination, he was trying to take the American Nazi Party in a new direction. Not everyone within the party was on board with the changes.

Sources:

Schmaltz, William H. (2000). Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's

Schmaltz, William H. (2013). For Race And Nation: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi...

Sometimes when a weird little guy gets shot, the guy who killed him is just a weirder little guy.

Sources:

Schmaltz, William H. (2000). Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's

Schmaltz, William H. (2013). For Race And Nation: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. River's Bend Press

Simonelli, Frederick J. (1999). American Fuehrer: George Linco...

The American Freedom Party and the American Fart party have a couple things in common - the acronym, for one thing. They've also both filed paperwork with the federal election commission claiming to be a national political party. One is a silly little joke about farts, the other is a group of white nationalists who don't know how to do paperwork.

Sources:

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/american-freedom-party/

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After the 2012 election, the American Third Position Party rebranded. Not because their candidate lost, they expected that. But probably because their candidate didn't know what the party's name meant.

Sources:

https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2012.pdf

https://politicalresearch.org/2016/12/19/what-third-position

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neofascism-european-style/

https://www.alt...

In 2012, a newly formed white nationalist political party tried to get their candidate on the ballot. The American Third Position Party wanted Americans to vote for Merlin Miller, but how did the party end up picking him?

Sources:

https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2012.pdf#page=11

https://irehr.org/2018/06/14/what-is-the-american-freedom-party/

https://www.ocregister.co...

After Devon Arthurs murdered his roommates, he claimed he'd only done it to prevent the loss of innocent lives. The man he said was planning a terrorist attack was arrested with a car full of guns, but not charged with any of the things Arthurs claimed their nazi terror cell had been working on.

Sources:

https://www.propublica.org/article/an-atomwaffen-member-sketched-a-map-to-take-the-neo-nazis-down-what-path-officia...

In 2017, police investigating a double homicide found more than just bodies in a Tampa condo. The founder of a neonazi group was making bombs in the garage.

Sources:

https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-threat-is-the-network-the-multi-node-structure-of-neo-fascist-accelerationism/

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/visions-chaos-weighing-violent-legacy-iron-march/

https://ironmarch.noblogs.org/post/2019/11/15/meet-lauren-paul-m...

In 2017, a man showed up at the emergency room and confessed that he'd accidentally poisoned himself with homemade ricin. He was federally charged with possessing a biological agent, but his case was dismissed on almost unbelievable technicality. But he's not the only man who thinks he can create the perfect weapon from nothing but a handful of beans.

Sources:

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/ajc-watchdog-nort...

In 2016, Nicholas Young became the first American police officer to be arrested and charged with a federal terrorism offense. At trial, jurors were shown mountains of evidence about his collection of nazi memorabilia. But what does that have to do with the gift cards he texted to an FBI informant he thought was a member of ISIS?

Sources:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4559133/united-states-v-young

Helen T...

When FBI agents started combing through the digital footprint of a dead school shooter, they found more than the usual missed warning signs.

Sources:

https://www.maargentino.com/narrative-examination-of-the-antioch-high-school-shooters-manifesto-and-diary/

https://www.maargentino.com/digital-dystopia-the-dark-nexus-of-violent-extremism-and-sexual-exploitation-a-case-study/

https://www.maargentino.com/exa...

When someone left a bomb at a Civil War reenactment event in 2017, it looked like antifascist activists were out for revenge after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. A mysterious letter writer claiming to be an antifascist collective took credit for the bomb and threatened even more violence to come if Civil War reenactments weren't called off. But the bomber wasn't antifa - it was a spurned Confederate re-enactor.

Orign...

The right wing media is buzzing with accusations that the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City is a communist. They're calling for his removal from not only the ballot... but the also the country. This anticommunist panic isn't new.

Sources:

Drabble, John. “To Ensure Domestic Tranquility: The FBI, Cointelpro-White Hate and Political Discourse, 1964-1971.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 38, no....

Last week, we talked about one particular incident of vehicular violence on protesters. But where does the tactic come from? Who is doing it? And why?

Sources:
Miller, Vincent, and Keith J. Hayward. “‘I DID MY BIT’: TERRORISM, TARDE AND THE VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK AS AN IMITATIVE EVENT.” The British Journal of Criminology, vol. 59, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–23. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26...

With vehicular attacks on protests on the rise and elected officials encouraging the tactic, old conspiracy theories about one vehicular attack in particular are circulating once again. This is the story of what actually happened on Fourth Street in downtown Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/08/us/la-immigration-protests-photos-map.html

https://files.integr...