[naht-siz-uhm, nat-]
Nazism: see National Socialism.
or Nazism

Totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head of Germany's Nazi Party (1920–45). Its roots lay in the tradition of Prussian militarism and discipline and German Romanticism, which celebrated a mythic past and proclaimed the rights of the exceptional individual over all rules and laws. Its ideology was shaped by Hitler's beliefs in German racial superiority and the dangers of communism. It rejected liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, stressing instead the subordination of the individual to the state and the necessity of strict obedience to leaders. It emphasized the inequality of individuals and “races” and the right of the strong to rule the weak. Politically, National Socialism favoured rearmament, reunification of the German areas of Europe, expansion into non-German areas, and the purging of “undesirables,” especially Jews. Seealso fascism.

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The term neo-Nazism refers to post-World War II political movements, social movements, and ideologies seeking to revive Nazism, or some variant that echos core aspects of Nazism such as racial or ethnic nationalism or Völkisch integralism.

Neo-Nazis rarely use the word neo-Nazi to describe themselves, often opting for labels such as National Socialist, Nationalist or related terms. A few scholars refer to neo-Nazism as "neo-National Socialism." Some groups and individuals who support the ideology openly eschew Nazi-like terms to avoid social stigma or legal consequences. Some European countries have laws prohibiting the expression of pro-Nazi, racist or anti-Semitic views.

Neo-Nazis often use the Indo-Aryan symbols that were in use by Nazi Germany, such as the Swastika, Sig Runes and the red-white-black color scheme. Neo-Nazi activity appears to be a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries, as well as international networks. It has recently been exported to Israel. Individuals who have been involved in post-war Nazi and neo-Nazi activity include Colin Jordan, George Lincoln Rockwell, John Tyndall, Savitri Devi, Francis Parker Yockey, David Duke, William Pierce, Eddy Morrison, and David Myatt.

Holocaust denial and minimization

Many neo-Nazis promote Holocaust denial or Holocaust minimization. They claim that the intentional mass murder (often in gas chambers) of more than 6,000,000 Jews is either a lie or grossly exaggerated. Leading historians' estimates of the number of Jews who died during the Holocaust range from 5.1 to 6.2 million. Some Holocaust deniers do not identify themselves as neo-Nazis. Some neo-Nazis who do not deny that the Holocaust happened have pointed out alleged immoral equivalencies (e.g. the bombing of Dresden and the Expulsion of Germans after World War II); or they have have justified executions by the Nazis as retaliations for sabotage, terrorism and subversion.


Immediately after the Allies liberated Austria in 1945, the anti-Nazi parties - Socialists (SPÖ), Conservatives (ÖVP) and Communists (KPÖ) - passed legislation to overcome the effects of Nazi rule. A law passed on May 8, 1945, banned the NSDAP and Nazi activities. The denazification program designed to purge the state apparatus and society of Nazi followers was not successful, mainly because of the size of the problem and the bureaucratic shortcomings of the program. This failure was reflected primarily in the fact that ex-members and sympathizers of the NSDAP did not change their beliefs. Over 500,000 registered Nazis were allowed to vote in the 1949 general election. A considerable number of ex-Nazis were integrated into the SPÖ and the ÖVP, and several concessions were made to appease them, such as suppression of the history of the Nazizeit (literally 'Nazi Time'); a fall-off in the prosecutions of Nazi war criminals; and the reinstatement of Nazi civil servants, teachers, professors, lawyers and police officers.


1960s and later

In the 1960s, right-wing extremists, along with German Kameraden, gained notoriety by involvement in terrorist acts in the Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen. Prominent among these was Norbert Burger, the ex-RFS leader and subsequent chairman of the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei (NDP). The influence that the extreme right had gained in the universities became dramatically apparent five years later, during the Borodajkewycz Affair. Hundreds of students demonstrated in favor of the anti-semitic university professor Borodajkewycz, and were involved in street battles in the course of which Ernst Kirchweger, a former concentration camp inmate, was beaten to death.


The volume "Rechtsextremismus in Österreich seit 1945" ("Right-wing Extremism in Austria since 1945"), issued by DÖW in 1979, listed nearly 50 active extreme right-wing organizations in Austria. Their influence waned gradually, partly due to liberalization programs in secondary schools and universities that emphasized Austrian identity and democratic traditions. Votes for the RFS in student elections fell from 30% in the 1960s to 2% in 1987. In the 1995 elections for the student representative body Österreichische Hochschülerschaft, the RFS got 4% of the vote. The FPÖ won 22% of the votes at the General Election in the same year. In the 1980s, in the province of Carinthia, border issues with Slovenia and disagreements over the rights of Carinthia's Slovenian minority were used to orchestrate support for the far right organization Kärntner Heimatdienst.





Neo-Nazis in Croatia base their ideology on the writings of Ante Pavelić and Ustaše ideology. The resurgence of the Ustaše movement in post-war Croatia is partly due to significant financial support of the Croatian Democratic Union by Croat far-right emigrants. For many of their modern supporters, the Ustaše are considered victims of the Bleiburg massacre, and the late president Franjo Tuđman even proposed to rebury Ustaše members together with victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, as a sign of national reconciliation. Croatian Serbs and majority of Croats felt insulted by that proposal.

In 1999, Zagreb's Square of the Victims of Fascism was renamed The Square of The Great Men of Croatia, provoking widespread criticism of Croatia's attitude toward the Holocaust. In 2000, city council renamed the square to Square of the Victims of Fascism again. Two streets in Croatia were renamed after the prominent Ustaše figure Mile Budak, but since 2002, there has been a reversal of this development, and streets with the name of persons connected with the Ustaše movement are few or non-existent.

During some protests in Croatia, supporters of Ante Gotovina and other suspected war criminals have carried nationalist symbols and pictures of Ante Pavelić. In 2003, an attempt was made to amend the Croatian penal code by adding articles prohibiting the public display of Nazi symbols, the propagation of Nazi ideology, historical revisionism and holocaust denial but attempt become successful only in 2006 when amendment was added to prohibit any type of hate crime based on factors such as race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or national origin. In 2007, Austrian authorities launched a criminal investigation into the widespread display of Ustaše symbols at the May 12 gathering of Croatian nationalists in Bleiburg, Austria.

Thompson, a Croatian singer, allegedly sung "Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara" in one of his concerts. That song glorifies the Ustaše and their persecution of the Serbs. His May 17, 2007 concert in Zagreb was attended by 60000 people, many of them wearing Ustaše uniforms. Some gave Ustaše salutes.This event prompted the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to publicly address a protest to the Croatian president, Stjepan Mesić.


Neo-Nazi organizations in France include the Bloc identitaire, created by former members of Christian Bouchet's Unité Radicale group. Close to national bolshevism and Third Position ideologies, Unité Radicale was dissolved in 2002 following Maxime Brunerie's assassination attempt on July 14, 2002 against then President Jacques Chirac. Christian Bouchet had previously been a member of Nouvelle Résistance (NR), an off-shoot of Troisième Voie (Third Way) which described itself as "nationalist revolutionary." Although the NR opposed at first the "national conservatives" of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, it finally changed strategy, advocating as slogan "Less Leftism! More Fascism!" The NR was also a successor to Jean-François Thiriart's Jeune Europe Neo-Nazi Europeanist movement of the 1960s, which had participated to the National Party of Europe, along with Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, Otto Strasser and others.






Legal issues

German law forbids the production of pro-Nazi materials, so such items are smuggled into the country mostly from the United States, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy. Neo-Nazi rock bands such as Landser have been outlawed in Germany, yet bootleg copies of their albums printed in the US and other countries are still sold in the country.

German neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on Internet servers in the US and Canada, and use other terms for Nazi ideas and symbols. They also invent new symbols reminiscent of the swastika and adopt other symbols used by the Nazis, such as the sun disc, sun wheel, hooked cross, wolf's cross, wolf's hook, black sun, and dark star. A trial was held before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany over the prohibition of the National Democratic Party (NPD), which had been accused of being a partly neo-Nazism accepting party. In the course of the trial, it was discovered that some high-ranking party members worked as informants for the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. The trial was temporarily suspended, and then rejected by the court because of the unclear influence of informants within the NPD.

In 2004, NPD received 9.1% of the vote in the parliamentary elections for Saxony, thus earning the right to seat local parliament members. The other parties refused to enter discussions with the NPD. In the 2006 parliamentary elections for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and six seats in the local parliament. Other neo-Nazi groups that have been active in Germany and have attracted government attention include the Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit (which was banned in 1982), the Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists (banned in 1983), the Nationalist Front (banned in 1992), the Free German Workers' Party of Michael Kühnen and Friedhelm Busse, the German Alternative, National Offensive, and the Homeland-Faithful German Youth.




Israel has seen a surge of neo-Nazi activity in the past decade, linked to the arrival of over 1.2 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union a substantial proportion of whom do not identify as Jews, even though they have some Jewish ancestry. In August 2007, Israeli police broke up a cell in Petah Tikva made up of eight young immigrants from the former Soviet Union, which had had been attacking religious Jews, foreign workers and gays; and which had been vandalizing synogogues with Nazi images.

The Soviet Union-born neo-Nazis are reported to operate in cities across Israel, and have been described as having little connection to Jewish heritage, and of being influenced by the rise of neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Widely publicized arrests have led to a call to reform the Law of Return to permit the revocation of Israeli citizenship for and the subsequent deportation of neo-Nazis.


The post-Soviet era has seen the rise of a variety of extreme nationalist movements in Russia, some of which are openly neo-fascist or neo-Nazi. Neo-Nazi groups in Russia are characterized by racism, antisemitism and extreme xenophobia towards non-Russians.

Russian neo-Nazi organizations have generally defined themselves as standing outside of the political process, disdaining the electoral system and advocating the overthrow of the government by force. Their ideology has centered on defending Russian national identity against what they perceive as a takeover by minority groups such as Jews, Caucasian (whether Orthodox or Muslim) and Central Asian immigrants as well as muslim Russians. Dark skinned Russians are often subject to racial abuse, regardless of religious affliation. Cleansing the nation by killing or expelling Jews and also dark- skinned immigrants from other parts of the country as well as former countries of the USSR has been a generally accepted goal for Russian neo-Nazis. Their ideology became epitomized in the slogan "Russia for the Russians", a catchphrase also adopted by less extreme factions. Russian neo-Nazis have generally not outlined discernible economic programs. They have openly admired and imitated the German Nazis and Adolf Hitler, and Hitler's book Mein Kampf stood high on their reading list. The most prominent organization, Russian National Union, led by Aleksandr Barkashov, adopted a three-ray Swastika as its emblem (the German Nazi swastika can be thought of consisting of two rays; the Z shaped segments).

Social roots



Russian neo-Nazis have made it an explicit goal to take over the country by force, and have put serious effort into preparing for this. Paramilitary organizations operating under the guise of sports clubs have trained their members in squad tactics and weapons handling. They have stockpiled and used weapons, often illegally. Reputedly, many were interested in martial arts and unarmed combat, and have organized realistic hand to hand combat classes. Russian neo-Nazis' most notable action so far was their participation in the armed defense of the Supreme Soviet building against government forces during the standoff between Boris Yeltsin and the Communist-dominated parliament in 1993.

On August 15, 2007, Russian authorities arrested a student for allegedly posting a video on the Internet which appears to show two Muslim, migrant workers being beheaded in front of a red and black Swastika flag. Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of a Moscow-based center that monitors hate crime in Russia, said, "It looks like this is the real thing. The killing is genuine...There are similar videos from the Chechen war. But this is the first time the killing appears to have been done intentionally." A Russian neo-Nazi group called the National Socialists of Russia claimed responsibility for the murders.


There are several neo-Nazi groups in Serbia. Neo-Nazism in Serbia appeared in the 1990s during the Yugoslav wars. Before the breakup of Yugoslavia, neo-Nazism was strictly forbidden and very unpopular. Although neo-Nazism in Germany mostly focuses on racial and political intolerance, neo-Nazism in Serbia is mostly based on national and religious factors. Nacionalni stroj (National Alignment), a neo-Nazi organization from the Vojvodina region, orchestrated several incidents in 2005. Charges were laid against 18 of the leading members in late 2005, and each of them faced up to eight years in prison. The group was still active in 2007, as was demonstrated by a display of religious hatred.

Blood and Honour has a branch in Serbia, where it is called Krv i čast. Its website claims that the group intends "to propagate revolutionary idea of National Socialism without compromise. Also, the intention of Serbian Blood and Honour Division is to motivate all NS followers to radical activities and not only to passive observing or listening to the music. Since 2001, this organization, with chapters in several Serbian cities, organized several memorial concerts on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.

United States


In 1959, the first explicitly postwar American neo-Nazi group was founded by George Lincoln Rockwell. The American Nazi Party achieved high-profile coverage in the press through their public demonstrations.



Members of The Order were convicted of crimes such as racketeering, conspiracy, violating civil rights and sedition. Matthew F. Hale of the World Church of the Creator was imprisoned for soliciting the murder of a federal judge. Aryan Nations lost a $6.2 million dollar lawsuit after Aryan Nations members opened fire on a passing vehicle. Aryan Nations has since lost its headquarters and paramilitary training grounds, and has split into three separate organizations.


Many Neo-Nazi groups use the sun wheel to represent the Aryan race because this symbol was used by the Indo-Europeans in ancient times as far back as the 2nd millennium BC.

Neo-Nazi organizations

The Americas


United Kingdom

Other European countries

Other continents

Neo-Nazi bands

See also



Primary sources

Academic surveys


External links

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