National Socialist Party of America

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The National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1970 by Frank Collin, a Jew. The group broke from the Arlington, Virginia based National Socialist White People's Party. Collin was discovered to be an pedophile and was ousted from the party. Harold Covington took over the NSPA in 1980 leaving the party a year later. Another prominent member was Glenn Miller. The National Socialist Party of America lasted until 1994.

History

Frank Collin, pictured above (sitting), was the leader of the NSPA

Frank Collin

Francis "Frank" Joseph Collin was born on 3 November 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, where he attended local schools. His father, Max Frank Collin, was allegedly born Max Simon Cohn in Munich, Germany, on 23 August 1913, the son of Jewish parents and a survivor of Dachau concentration camp. Frank's mother, Virginia Gertrude, née Hardyman, was born in Chicago on 18 August 1920, and was Catholic. Frank Collin always denied having Jewish roots and maintained that his father was not telling the truth.

As a young man, Collin in the 1960s joined George Lincoln Rockwell's National Socialist White People's Party. He became the Midwest coordinator. He broke with the NSWPP due to a disagreement with Rockwell's successor, Matt Koehl, who was elected as the party leader by popular vote after Rockwell was assassinated on 25 August 1967 and who outed Collin as a Jew.

In 1970, Collin formed the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), later known as the American Nazi Party. It attracted other disaffected members of the NSWPP, as well as Michael Allen, Gary Lauck and Harold Covington. Covington helped buy a building for the group which they called Rockwell Hall, where Collin and some other members lived in a barracks in upper floor. In the late 1970s, his planned march in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois was challenged; however, the American Civil Liberties Union defended Collin's group's freedom of speech and assembly in a case that reached the United States Supreme Court to correct procedural deficiencies.

Specifically, the necessity of immediate appellate review of orders restraining the exercise of First Amendment rights was strongly emphasized in National Socialist Party v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977). Afterward, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the party had a right to march and to display swastikas, despite local opposition, based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Collin then offered a compromise, offering to march in Chicago's Marquette Park (where Martin Luther King had been attacked in 1966) instead of Skokie.

Collin ran for alderman of Chicago in 1975 and pulled 16% of the vote. In 1977, Koehl's NSWPP began a campaign in their paper White Power about Collin's father being Jewish, including publications of what they stated were Max Simon Cohn's naturalization records. Collin and the NSPA leadership continued to deny the claim and said the images were fakes. After Collin was convicted and sentenced in 1979 for child molestation, he lost his position in the party. Collin was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison at the Pontiac Correctional Center in 1979. He served three years. A 1980 article in The New York Times reported that "Frank Collin was expelled from the American Nazi Party for illicit intercourse with minors and the use of Nazi headquarters in Chicago for purposes of sodomy with children." The report indicates that other membersof the party "tipped" the police who arrested Collin.

After being released early on parole from prison, Collin created a new career as a writer, publishing numerous books under the pen name Frank Joseph. He wrote New Age and "hyperdiffusionist" works supporting the archaeological idea that Old World peoples had migrated to North America in ancient times and created its complex societies of native peoples.

In popular culture

• Collin was played by George Dzundza in Skokie, a 1981 television film about the planned march and court case.
• A character based on Collin was played by Henry Gibson in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.

See also

• American Nazi Party (disambiguation)
• List of National Socialist Parties
• Lineage of American Nationalist organizations and individuals