Francis Parker Yockey | |
|---|---|
 Yockey in handcuffs after being arrested | |
| Born | (1917-09-18)September 18, 1917 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | June 17, 1960(1960-06-17) (aged 42) San Francisco County Jail,San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Ulick Varange |
| Alma mater | University of Arizona (BA) Notre Dame Law School (JD) |
| Occupations | Author, attorney |
| Notable work | Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics |
Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 17, 1960) was an American lawyer, author, andfascist known for his neo-Spenglerian bookImperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published in 1948 under thepen nameUlick Varange, which called for aneo-Nazi European empire.[1][2]
Yockey supportedfar-right causes around the world and remains an influence onwhite nationalist andneo-fascist movements.[3] Yockey was anantisemite, a reverent proponent of GermanNazism, and an earlyHolocaust denier.[1] In the 1930s, he contacted and worked with the Nazi-alignedSilver Shirts and theGerman-American Bund. He served in theU.S. Army in 1942–43, and went AWOL to help Nazi spies. After legal appointments in Detroit during 1944 and 1945, he worked for 11 months on the War Crimes Tribunal in Germany before he either resigned or was fired for secretly and subversively siding with the Nazis. In London, he worked for the British fascistOswald Mosley'sUnion Movement, and, after falling out with Mosley, founded the breakawayEuropean Liberation Front in 1949, leading it until it fizzled, around 1954.
During the Cold War, Yockey reportedly worked withSoviet bloc intelligence, and argued for a tactical far-right alliance with the Soviets against what he saw as Jewish-American hegemony. He also briefly wrote anti-Jewish propaganda in Egypt, where he met its then president,Gamal Abdel Nasser. Yockey remained influential in fascist circles until his suicide in FBI custody in 1960. His last visitor in prison wasWillis Carto, who fervently picked up the baton, becoming the leading advocate and publisher of Yockey's writings.
Yockey had many aliases, and some facts about him are not certain.[3][4] Acquaintances and declassified FBI files described him as a talented speaker, brilliant, well-read, sometimes charming, humorous and a gifted mimic — but also haughty, immature, secretive, a loner, and, in the FBI's words, "nervous, high-strung, erratic, unpredictable and dictatorial", with "an amazing capacity for alienating people".[5]
Yockey was born on September 18, 1917 inChicago,Illinois, to Louis and Rose Ellen Yockey. He was the youngest of four siblings in an upper-middle-class Catholic family of Irish and German descent; he had two sisters, Vinette and Alice, and an older brother, James.[6][7][8] His father was a stockbroker who had trained as a lawyer, while his mother studied at theChicago Musical College.[8][6] Yockey was raised inLudington,Michigan.[7] He learned classical piano, at which he excelled.[6][9]
He began college as an undergraduate at theUniversity of Michigan, then transferred toGeorgetown University,[10] and later completed his degree at theUniversity of Arizona. Before starting law school atNorthwestern University, he also studied law atDe Paul University, and graduated from theNotre Dame Law School in 1941.[8][2] In college, he declared he would not dine with black, Jewish or communist students.[9]
Yockey had been attracted toMarxism in early life[11] before gravitating toAdolf Hitler andNazism in the 1930s, and in college,Oswald Spengler.[8] Other influences includeKarl Haushofer[12] and the Nazi theoristCarl Schmitt, whom Yockey was later accused of plagiarizing.[13][14] Yockey joined pro-German and pro-fascist groups in the late 1930s.[2] In 1938, his essay "The Tragedy of Youth" was published inSocial Justice, a journal known for publishing antisemitic tracts that was distributed by the "radio priest"Charles Coughlin.[15][16] In 1939 Yockey spoke at a gathering ofSilvershirts.[2]
Yockey enlisted in theU.S. Army in 1942, serving in an intelligence unit. He went AWOL from his camp in Georgia in November 1942 on a Nazi mission to Texas and Mexico City.[1][2] According to Yockey's biographerKevin Coogan, Yockey secretly helped German Nazi spies who had landed in the United States and Mexico. He was also a friend of a German American intelligence officerHerbert Hans Haupt, who stayed at the home of his wife and was later executed for espionage for his participation inOperation Pastorius.[17] Later, Yockey received an honorable discharge from the Army for "dementia praecox, paranoid type" in 1943 after suffering a nervous breakdown or feigning one.[1][8][18] He was placed on a government list of Americans suspected of pro-Nazi views.[19] In 1944 he became an assistant prosecuting attorney forWayne County, Michigan, but was bored by the work, leaving in 1945.[2][8]
In early 1946, Yockey found a job with theUnited States War Department inWiesbaden, Germany, as a post-trial review attorney for theNuremberg Trials, and he moved to Germany with his wife and two daughters.[20] Evidence suggests Yockey may have tried to help accused Nazi war criminals includingSS General Otto Ohlendorf by sharing top-secret documents with German defense lawyers.[1] Often absent from his job, he was fired for "abandonment of position" on November 26, 1946,[21] when it was noticed that he was siding with the Nazis.[2][19] He agitated againstAllied occupation of Germany,[22] and later worked for theRed Cross in Germany but deserted his post.[23] U.S. intelligence began tracking Yockey in Germany in 1946 or 1947.[24] Yockey left his estranged wife and daughters in Germany in 1947 for exile in Ireland.[19]
Yockey was a central figure in early postwar Nazi networks.[2] Over time, he contacted or worked with far-right figures and organizations including theGerman-American Bund, theNational German-American Alliance,William Dudley Pelley'sSilver Shirts,Sir Oswald Mosley'sUnion Movement,George Sylvester Viereck, the AmericanH. Keith Thompson,Gerald L. K. Smith, andJames H. Madole'sNational Renaissance Party. After the war Thompson and Madole became advocates of Yockey's worldview and published some of his essays.[25]
Yockey identified the United States, not Russia, as Europe's main enemy, urged Europeans not to collaborate with America in theCold War, and wanted to act against American forces in Germany and England.[26] Yockey's ideas were usually embraced only by those who could countenance an alliance between the far left and the far right.[27][28]
Without notes, Yockey wrote his first book,Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, inBrittas Bay, Ireland, over the winter and early spring of 1948.Imperium is a Spenglerian critique of 19th centurymaterialism andrationalism[29] that scorns democracy and equality, extols Nazism, and blames Jews for various problems.[19][30] It is dedicated to "the hero of the Second World War", by which he meantHitler.[2] In an early example ofHolocaust denial, it also claims that the Nazis'gas chambers were faked. Yockey mailed copies ofImperium to far-right figures in Europe and America.[19] Views expressed in it were endorsed by former Nazi GeneralOtto Remer (who had been Hitler's bodyguard);[31] the AmericanRevilo P. Oliver; andItalianesotericistJulius Evola,[32] as well as the praise ofHans-Ulrich Rudel,Giorgio Almirante,Heinz Knoke, andKarl-Heinz Priester.[33]
Yockey became embittered with SirOswald Mosley (Hitler's leading British proponent[34]) after the latter refused to publish or reviewImperium upon its completion, after having promised to do so.[35][36] Mosley punched Yockey in the nose during a dispute in London's Hyde Park.[37] With a small group of British fascists including the former Mosleyites Guy Chesham and John Gannon, Yockey formed theEuropean Liberation Front (ELF) in 1948–49. The ELF formed ties with old Nazis along with other fascists.[36][38] It issued a newsletter,Frontfighter, and in 1949 published Yockey's virulentanti-American,anti-communist andantisemitic textThe Proclamation of London, which called for a reinstatement of Nazism and the expulsion of the Jews (whom it labeled "the Culture-distorter") from Europe.[39][26] The ELF was opposed by other neo-fascist groups and essentially disappeared by 1954 due to members being alienated by Yockey's imperious personality.[38][40]
TheAmerican Nazi Party ofGeorge Lincoln Rockwell rejected Yockey's anti-American attitude and willingness to work withanti-Zionistcommunist governments and movements. (Yockey toldWillis Carto that he had never heard of the ANP when Carto visited him in prison in 1960.) Otherneo-Nazis such as Rockwell's allyColin Jordan disagreed with Yockey's views on race, and saw Yockeyism as being "Strasserist" which would undermine Nazism.[27]
Declassified FBI files show that Yockey traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York to collaborate with ultra-right activists, while eluding FBI agents who sought to question him. As a fugitive he spoke at the 1950 Christian Nationalist Party convention in Los Angeles organized byGerald L. K. Smith.[24] His intercepted letters to other fascists in the 1950s were often signed "Torquemada" after the SpanishGrand Inquisitor.[24]
Yockey was approached by the group around the anti-Communist SenatorJoseph McCarthy in 1951. He was asked to ghost-write a speech for McCarthy which stressed the importance of greater friendship between Germany and the United States. Although McCarthy never delivered it as the theme of the speech, when it was announced through posters in theYorkville neighbourhood of New York City, the-then Left Wing newspaperThe Daily Compass ran a front page expose, alongside negative press attention from theNew York Post, probably influenced by the fact that a series of well known Holocaust deniers were going to speak alongside him.[41]
Yockey collaborated with Soviet bloc intelligence, traveled behind the Iron Curtain, and was suspected of visiting East Germany, the Soviet Union and Cuba.[42][2] One theory for this derives from a September 1956 story about a mysterious American man, who went by the name of "Frederick C. Hopkins" who was released from Soviet police custody on September 6, 1956.[43] He wrote with approval of antisemitic purges in the Eastern bloc countries.[44] In late 1952, he traveled toPrague and witnessed thePrague Trials, and asserted that they "foretold a Russian break with Jewry".[45] He then became a Czechoslovak Secret Service courier.[46] He is suspected of having been in contact with a Soviet agent by the name of Alfred Francke-Gricksch.[47]
Yockey metEgyptian PresidentGamal Abdel Nasser, whom he called "a great and vigorous man", inCairo in 1953.[48][49] He worked briefly for the Egyptian Information Ministry, writinganti-Zionistpropaganda.[26][50] In the Arab world, he made contact with Nazi exiles includingOtto Ernst Remer andJohann von Leers.[51] Yockey reportedly tried to persuade Nasser to finance development of acobalt bomb by ex-Nazi scientists.[52]
Yockey was known as a womanizer, and had an affair withHazel Guggenheim McKinley.[53] In 1957, FBI agents assessed that he was "living in Los Angeles as a pimp or a gigolo" and had written pornography for money, including a sadomasochistic booklet calledArduous Figure Training at Bondhaven that was later found in his suitcase.[24] The 62-page booklet was published by Nutrix Company of Jersey City and according to the FBI "contained numerous sketeches of partially clad females and [...] was of a masochistic or sadistic nature."[54]
Coogan writes that "Yockey's occult interests had political ramifications" as he "clearly saw himself as part of an underground elite, a secret new race of god-men".[55] Yockey was an owner of documents relating toTheosophy, according to the FBI.[55] At the time of his suicide, he had copies of books and articles written byBaltasar Gracián,Otto Weininger,H. G. Wells, andGeorge B. Leonard.[56] He was an influential member of postwar Nazi circles.[26]
After more than a decade of pursuit by the FBI, Yockey was finally arrested in 1960 after returning to the United States from abroad. En route to Oakland, California, his suitcase had either been lost or had broken open at the Dallas airport, and authorities found several of Yockey's falsified passports and birth certificates.[46][18] When this was reported to the federal government, the FBI tracked Yockey down in Oakland, California, and arrested him.[18] While in prison, he was visited by Carto, his last visitor,[57] who later became the chief advocate and publisher of Yockey's ideas. While Yockey was there, he was staying with the principal of ayeshiva called Alexander Scharf, whom he had met in Reno and intended to give a loan of US$2,000.[58]
Yockey was soon after found dead with an emptycyanide capsule nearby while in a jail cell inSan Francisco under FBI supervision. Writing after his suicide, theSan Francisco Chronicle declared him "as important a figure in world Fascism as we now know."[1] He wrote a suicide note, left under his pillow which read:[59]
I shall write no messages which I know will never be delivered – only this, which will be:
You will never discover who helped me, for he is to be found in your own multitudinous ranks, at least outwardly.
While some postwar European and Americannationalists of the post-war period sided with the United States against communism, or in other cases argued forthird positionism, Yockey argued for ared-brown alliance (red representing thefar-left and brown representing thefar-right) against what he saw as Jewish-American hegemony.[3][60][61][62] He argued that rightists should aid the spread of communism andThird World anti-colonial movements when they threatened the United States. This view did not have a very significant influence on the American right, which in theCold War for the most part remained anti-communist. He had a greater impact in Europe, in theEuropean New Right, where for instance the BelgianJean Thiriart[63] and the FrenchmenChristian Bouchet,[64]René Binet, andDominique Venner are known to have been influenced by him.[65] Additionally, the Russian philosopherAleksandr Dugin, and the French writerAlain de Benoist, adopted positions similar to Yockey's, although there is little evidence his work influenced them in this.[66][67] He also influencedNational Renaissance Party founderJames H. Madole.[68] The British military writersLiddell Hart andJ.F.C. Fuller who was a member of theBritish Union of Fascists gave early praise toImperium.[33]
Yockey's present influence is reflected mostly through the work ofWillis Carto and hisLiberty Lobby and successor organizations. According toStephen E. Atkins, "Because of the efforts of Carto, Yockey is more popular after his death than he ever was when he was alive".[46] Carto became a fervent proponent of Yockey's writings and published them.[57] Carto ran the Youth for George Wallace group supporting segregationistGeorge Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign. That group formed the basis for theNational Youth Alliance, which promoted Yockey's political philosophy and his bookImperium.[69] Core members of Carto's political groups were members of the Francis Parker Yockey Society, a neo-Nazi cult.[70] Additionally, the founder of theNational Alliance and author ofThe Turner Diaries,William Luther Pierce, was influenced by Yockey.[71] Afterward, Yockey continued to be a cult figure amongneo-fascists.[42] His influence also persists amongOdinists.[72] According to the American political scientist George Hawley, "Yockey's vision of a global fascist movement that transcends national borders is now a common trope within the Alt-Right".[28]
Yockey is also remembered as an early and influentialHolocaust denier.[1][73] In the 1980s, Holocaust denierKeith Stimely, a Yockey devotee who Coogan described as surpassing the previously established "absolute limit" of "Yockeyism", undertook extensive research on Yockey, and aimed to write a book about him.[74] He never wrote the book before he died of AIDS in 1992.[75] In 1999, the writerKevin Coogan, incorporating Stimely's research, wrote the first full biography of Yockey,Dreamer of the Day.[76][4] The far-right activistKerry Bolton wroteYockey: A Fascist Odyssey, a biography published by alt-rightArktos Media, in 2018.[76]
Yockey was virulently racist and despised black people and Jews.[77][78] However, Yockey was not ascientific racist, and did not believe in biological race, viewing it to be a "materialist" interpretation; he instead believed race was a spiritual matter, rather than one of skin color or phenotype.[79][80] In Yockey's view, some white people were spiritually racially Jewish, while some "Jews have adopted Western feelings and thereby acquired Western race".[81] Hence he believed that "any man who shares the feeling of this Mission, and any group which shares it, regardless of the derivation of the man or group", would share in the "crusade" of the white man, and so become white in a spiritual sense.[82] As a result, the mixed-race neo-NaziLeo Felton (half black, half white), and the Jewish neo-NaziDan Burros, were fascinated by and advocated Yockey and his writings, viewing Yockey's ideology as a way to justify their path.[82][83][80]
TheOrder of Nine Angles, a Satanist and terrorist group, is known to draw from his beliefs.[84] Other terrorists inspired by Yockey includeLeo Felton, responsible for the2002 white supremacist terror plot, and John William King, an assailant in theMurder of James Byrd Jr.[72] Additionally, far-right political activistAugustus Sol Invictus has drawn inspiration from Yockey's bookImperium.[85]
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