Francis Parker Yockey

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Francis Parker Yockey

Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960) was an American attorney and fascist/pan-European nationalist philosopher and activist. Yockey is best known for his 1948 book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, described in its introduction as a sequel to Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, which supported the creation of a pan-European empire, in part to prevent fratricidal infighting among Europeans, but still compatible with regional autonomy. The book was dedicated to Adolf Hitler.

Early life

Yockey was born in Chicago, Illinois to a Catholic family that had ties to Michigan. His parents, Louis and Nellie Yockey, were anglophiles who raised him, his two sisters--one named Alice--and a brother to appreciate European high culture. His father had legal training but worked as a stock broker. Yockey was introduced to classical music through his mother, who studied at the Chicago Musical College. He proved to have a prodigious talent for the piano and developed his repertoire to include Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn.

Education and military service

Yockey attended several universities, the first being the University of Michigan later transferring to Georgetown University and the University of Arizona where he received his B.A. degree. His graduate studies took him to Northwestern University, DePaul University Law School, and University of Norte Dame Law School where graduated cum laude receiving his law degree in 1941.[1] He reportedly had an IQ of 170. [2]

Yockey enlisted in the US Army and served in an Intelligence Unit based in Georgia. During this time he disappeared from his base. The FBI later speculated he was engaged in espionage. While in service he allegedly had a nervous breakdown and received an honorable discharge in July 1943. It has been suggested he faked his condition to get an early discharge.

Marriage and family

After he left the US Army Yockey met and married Alice McFarland. They had two daughters, but soon divorced. His wife said, "he was opposed to the United States fighting Germany. He felt that communism was the big danger and that the war should have been with Russia."[3]

Political contacts and activity

Yockey flirted with Marxism momentarily in his youth, but later became a devotee of the elitist and anti-materialist Oswald Spengler after reading Spengler's seminal text, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), in 1934. While still a university student in the late 1930s, Yockey had his first political essay titled "The Tragedy of Youth"[4] published in Social Justice, a periodical distributed under the auspices of Fr. Charles Coughlin who at the time was widely known for his sympathetic view of the anti-Bolshevist policies associated with Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain.

During this period Yockey contacted a number of nationalist organizations. These included the German-American Bund, the German-American National Alliance, William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts, Sir Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, and James H. Madole's National Renaissance Party.

Later life and works

Imperium

After leaving the army Yockey returned to Michigan and worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County. During this time Yockey married and raised a family.

In early 1946, Yockey moved his wife and two small children to occupied Germany where he began working for the United States War Department as a post-trial review attorney for the Nuremberg Trials. He soon began agitating against Allied occupation of Germany, as well as what he perceived to be the biased procedures of the Nuremberg tribunal. Eventually, he was fired for "abandonment of position" on November 26, 1946.[5]

Thereafter he traveled a bit around Europe and retuned to the United States. In 1947 he abandoned his wife and two daughters and went into self-exile in Brittas Bay, Ireland. Here without notes, Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium, over the winter and early spring of 1948. It is a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism and rationalism. It was endorsed by patriotic thinkers around the world including German General Otto Remer, Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois, Revilo P. Oliver, and Italian esotericist Julius Evola. The book was dedicated: "To the Hero of the Second World War", presumably Adolf Hitler.

Yockey becamed embittered with Sir Oswald Mosley after the latter refused to publish Imperium upon its completion. Yockey was later able to fund the publishing of his work thanks to the generosity of Baroness Alice von Pflugul. One thousand copies of the first volume and two hundred copies of the second volume was published by Westropa Press in London in 1948.

European Liberation Front

Along with Mosleyites Guy Chesham and John Gannon, Yockey formed the European Liberation Front (ELF) in 1948-49. The ELF issued a newsletter, Frontfighter, and published the group's manifesto, The Proclamation of London, which was written by Yockey himself and summarized the main themes of Imperium (although it is short and therefore does not contain the detailed arguements of Imperium). [6] The Proclamation was published in six languages ​​German, English, Spanish, Italian, French and Flemish.

International travels

In 1950, Yockey returned to Germany and worked for the American Red Cross until 1951. That same year he went to Italy to organize a foreign delegation to the founding congress of the Italian Women's Movement, a branch of the Italian Social Movement, and delivered a speech before the Congress. From there he went to Canada, seeking to create a magazine to be called Fourth Front. He also wanted to help the rebirth of Canadian nationalist movement; the primary contact in Canada for Yockey was Adrien Arcand who had led a nationalist party before the Second World War.

Support for General Otto Remer

In 1952, Yockey using an alias wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson on behalf of the Committee for International Justice, requesting U.S. intervention for the release of so-called "war criminals" and the cessation of harassment against General Otto Remer. Here are the excerpts:

The German National Socialist movement was only a form, and a provisional form, the great and irresistible movement that expresses the spirit of our Era, the Resurgence of Authority. This movement is the assertion of all cultural trends and all human instincts that liberalism, democracy and communism deny. The Resurgence of the Authority has both an internal aspect and an external aspect. The interior has been mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Its appearance is the creation of the Imperium-European nation-state, and thus reaffirming the role of Europe ordered by history, that of the force of colonization and organization of the world. This role is historically necessary and no other force in the world can not replace Europe for this powerful Destiny: either Europe brings peace and order in the world, the world will remain in darkness and chaos.

That same year the State Department refused to renew his passport.

"Prague Trials" and support for the Soviet Union

In late 1952, Yockey traveled to Prague and witnessed the Prague Trials. He believed they "foretold a Russian break with Jewry", a view he put forward in his article, What Is Behind The Hanging Of The Eleven Jews In Prague?. The National Renaissance Party published Yockey’s analysis in their Bulletin.

Yockey saw the trials as a watershed event signaling the Soviet Union’s final break with International Jewry. He aligned himself further with the Communist Block of nations and began working as a courier for the Czech Secret Service.[7]

In 1953 Yockey published The Enemy of Europe first in German (Der Feind Europas) and later English. Only two hundred copies of the first German edition were printed. The “enemy” identified as the United States and her allies signaled Yockey’s shift in strategy in liberating Europe from foreign occupation by tilting toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Egypt

Yockey met Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who he called "a great and vigorous man", in Cairo in July and August 1953. He worked briefly for the Egyptian Information Ministry writing anti-Zionist propaganda. Yockey saw the rise of non-aligned states in the Third World, and in particular the Arab Revolt, as significant geopolitical challenges to "the Jewish-American power".

Cuba

Yockey had a favorable attitude toward Fidel Castro. He traveled to Cuba and meet with a reporter linked to the government. Yockey spoke in support of the rise of Third World regimes as outlined in his final essay "The World in Flames".

Arrest and death

In 1960 Yockey returned to the United States in June and went to the home of Alex Scarf a man reportedly to be Jewish. The precise relationship between Yockey and Scarf is unknown.

Yockey had lost a suitcase and called the airport to find it. Meanwhile, however, the airport staff had opened the suitcase and discovered six false passports, and notified authorities. June 8, FBI agents raided the home of Scharf and found Yockey. He resisted, slamming a door on the hand of an officer, escaping for a moment, but was overtaken in the street.

The U.S. Attorney Joseph Karesh, a rabbi, fixed bail at $50,000 against Yockey, apparently on instructions from Washington. While the FBI initially told the press that it was a "mysterious cases", and that newspapers displayed headlines about the "mystery man" with three passports, he was soon described in the press as an "important fascist with international links." The authorities decided to refer Yockey to hospital for mental evaluation.

After his arrest Willis Carto meet with Yockey. Carto would later become a major promoter Yockey and his works.

Yockey was found dead with an empty cyanide capsule nearby while in a jail cell in San Francisco under FBI supervision, after having been incarcerated on charges of using false passports. [8]

Political rivals

Yockey and George Lincoln Rockwell were alleged to be foes, due primarily to Rockwell's offense at Yockey's anti-Americanism and sympathies with the Soviet Union and other anti-Zionist and leftist movements such as the Castro regime in Cuba and Nasser in Egypt. Proponents of universal National Socialism, like Colin Jordan, disagreed with Yockey's metaphysical views on race, and saw Yockeyism as a kind of "New Strasserism".

Bibliography

See also

Further reading

External links

References

  1. ↑ Holocaust Denial As an International Movement, by Stephen E. Atkins, page 147
  2. ↑ Varange by Kerry Bolton.
  3. ↑ "How Nazi Nut Power has Invader Capitol Hill", by Joseph Trento and Joseph Spear, TRUE magazine, November 1969
  4. ↑ "The Tragedy of Youth", Social Justice, August 21, 1939
  5. ↑ Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History, By Stephen E. Atkins, page 87
  6. ↑ http://blograrebooks.co.uk/bookstore/description.php?id=1993
  7. ↑ Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History, By Stephen E. Atkins, page 88
  8. ↑ Dreamer of the Day by Kevin Coogan.
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