National Renaissance Party | |
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| Abbreviation | NRP |
| Leader | James H. Madole (1949–1979) |
| Founder | Kurt Mertig |
| Founded | 1949 (1949) |
| Dissolved | 1981 (1981) |
| Preceded by | Animist Party |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Paramilitary wing | Security Echelon |
| Membership | ~50–700 |
| Ideology | Neo-Nazism |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Party flag | |
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TheNational Renaissance Party (NRP) was an Americanneo-Nazi group founded in 1949 byJames H. Madole.[1][2] It was frequently in the headlines during the 1960s and 1970s for its involvement in violent protests and riots inNew York City. It published a journal,The National Renaissance. After Madole's death from cancer in 1979, which was preceded by the commander of its paramilitary, Andrej Lisanik, being killed by a mugger, the party faded after its records were lost in a car crash that killed another member on his way home from Madole's funeral.
The National Renaissance Party was founded in January 1949 byKurt Mertig, a veteran pro-Nazi organizer previously associated with theGerman-American Bund, through the merger of several earlierAmerican fascist organizations.[1] One of the parties that helped found the NRP was theAnimist Party, established in 1945 by a young science fiction fan and right-wing activistJames H. Madole. Mertig soon handed over the leadership of the party to Madole, a position he held for the next 30 years.[3] Its headquarters were in theYorkville area of New York City.[4] The NRP was named for a phrase from theLast will and testament of Adolf Hitler, which stated that "I die with a happy heart aware [that there] will spring up...the seed of a radiant renaissance of the National Socialist movement."[5]: 89
In April 1953 the NRP established a think tank under the name of theAmerican Committee for the Advancement of Western Culture and under the direction ofH. Keith Thompson.[6] By 1954, government investigators, although unable to determine the exact size of the party, estimated its membership to be between 200 and 700,[4] although historian John George thought that NRP membership never exceeded 50 at any given time.[7] The group also had an "elite Security Echelon," headed in the 1960s by covertly JewishUnited Klans of America leader[8] andOdinistDan Burros, who killed himself on the same day in 1965 that his ethnicity was revealed byThe New York Times.[5]: 163 By 1963 Madole was running the party out of his apartment at 10 West90th Street.[9]The NRP used a bluelightning bolt within a white circle[9] on a field of red[10] as its symbol. The "Elite Guard" (stormtroopers) wore gray and black uniforms[11] with armbands featuring a lightning bolt within a circle.[2]: 80
The NRP's doctrines included standard elements of fascism, including white supremacy, anti-semitism, and opposition to democracy.[4] The party also endorsed standard racist ideas such as "the voluntary repatriation of the black man back to Africa" and the sterilization of black welfare recipients.[11] It maintained ties with other neo-Nazi organizations, such asGeorge Lincoln Rockwell'sAmerican Nazi Party, which occasionally supplied the NRP with fascist literature for distribution.[12] Madole was also influenced by thetheosophical ideas ofHelena Blavatsky, which he used as a theoretical underpinning for his opposition to racial mixing.[2]: 79–80 The NRP also maintained good relations with a number of far-out mystical groups, such as theChurch of Satan, whose founder,Anton LaVey, was a personal friend of Madole's.[2]: 83 Madole and LaVey frequently met at the NRP office and in the Warlock Bookshop inNew York.[13]
Among the stranger aspects of the party, they maintained an Overseas Office, which was headed by a man, who claimed to be half-French and half-Apache, who had previously attended the CPUSA-runJefferson School of Social Science, by the name of Manny Truhill.[14]
They would support theSocialist Reich Party for supporting Communism against Jews.[15]
NRP maintained contacts withPekka Siitoin whose groups likewise blended satanism and Nazism. Siitoin'sPatriotic Popular Front published NRP's material in Finnish, and Siitoin appeared in NRP's publications.[16][17]
The NRP published a journal,The National Renaissance, which, unlike its political activities in New York City, was widely influential in far-right circles.[1] In the early 1950s,H. Keith Thompson and Frederick Weiss subsidized a larger-than-usual print run of an issue of the magazine containing an essay byFrancis Parker Yockey entitledWhat is Behind the Hanging of the Eleven Jews in Prague? on the Pragueshow trials ofRudolf Slánský and ten other Jewish members of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia, which Yockey had attended.[5]: 106–7 Eustace Mullins, whoMartin A. Lee called "the NRP's self-proclaimed expert on the U.S. Federal Reserve," published his notorious articleAdolf Hitler: An Appreciation in the journal as well.[5]: 91
The NRP was investigated by theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for possible prosecution under theSmith Act, although no action was ever taken in this regard.[5]: 89 The investigation began in 1954, when HUAC commissioned a staff report on the group.[4]
According toThe New York Times, the report found "that the National Renaissance Party appeared to have controvened the Smith Act (against advocacy of overthrow of the Government by force or violence) as much as had theCommunist party itself" and that the NRP "had 'virtually borrowed wholesale' from Fascist and Nazi dictators material for its program," which included the abolition of American democracy, a "fascist" economy controlled by corporations, deportation of "unassimilable" people and oppression of Jews.[4]
On May 25, 1963, an NRP rally onFirst Avenue between85th Street and86th Street was attended by approximately 2500 hecklers who threw "eggs and oranges" at the participants while Jack Weiser, commander of theJewish War Veterans of New York State, attempted to make acitizen's arrest of James H. Madole for "inciting to riot against the Jewish people."[9] At least one member, Louis Mostaccio, was arrested for assault on anNYPD detective as a result of this incident.[18] Mostaccio, who attacked the detective with a flagpole, was convicted in June 1963 of assault but acquitted of the additional charge of "violating the weapons law by being in possession of the flagpole."[18] Mostaccio ended up serving five days for his crime.[19]
Later that year, 8 members of the NRP were arrested in New York and charged with "planning to incite rioting" at twoWhite Castle restaurants inThe Bronx.[20] According to the charges, the NRP plotted riots in response to demonstrations sponsored by theCongress of Racial Equality demanding an end to racially discriminatory hiring practices at the White Castles.[20] Madole andDan Burros were among those arrested, and searches of the members' homes and vehicles turned up, in addition to the usual anti-semitic literature, a "crossbow, steel-tipped arrows, a revolver, a flare gun, a derringer, and a tear-gas pen and pencil set."[20] In addition the weapons cache included "bottles of nitric acid, machetes, and bayonets."[21]
The 8 NRP members were indicted in August 1963. District AttorneyIsidore Dollinger was quoted inThe New York Times as saying that he considered "the prosecution of these individuals, who are closely connected with the American Renaissance Party [sic] — a Nazi movement — to be of the utmost importance."[21] Six of the 8 were sentenced in July 1964, with Madole and Burros, called "hate mongers" by the presiding judge, getting two years each.[22] Soon thereafter, both Burros and Madole were released pending appeal.[23][24]
In the summer of 1965, the NRP applied to theNew York City Board of Education for permission to hold party meetings at the Robert Wagner Junior High School at 220 E.76th Street[25] inYorkville.[11] The Board initially refused, citing concerns that "the proposed meeting might tend to cause dissension or provoke disorder."[25] FutureUnited States Solicitor General and then New York City Corporation CounselJ. Lee Rankin informed Board presidentLloyd K. Garrison in February 1966 that the NRP had a legal right to use the facility.[25] One week after receiving Rankin's opinion, the Board voted to allow the NRP to meet at the school, a decision which was protested by theAnti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.[26]
The NRP held its first meeting at the school on March 18, 1966.James H. Madole and others spoke to an audience of about 200 people, who greeted the NRP leadership with general derision.[11] Major John Ryan, commander of the NRP security echelon, moved the audience to laughter with his claim that the NRP intended to "recruit and train clean-cut young men and women for the party."[11] Ryan ended his speech by pronouncing the slogan "white man unite, white man fight."[11]
In 1965 theOrange County, New York Board of Supervisors decided to allow political parties to hold meetings in court houses inGoshen andNewburgh and the NRP applied to use them.[27] The Board refused, insisting that the NRP, rather than being a political party, was a "fascist" and "subversive" organization.[27] The NRP sued, and, in June 1967, theNew York Court of Appeals overruled the County's decision and a lower court, which had upheld it.[27]
The NRP finally managed to arrange a meeting at the Orange County Courthouse in Newburgh on July 29, 1967.[28] Protests against the meeting turned into riots in black sections of the small city and over 30 protestors were arrested for vandalism and throwing rocks at police officers.[28]
Andrej Lisanik, a former Czech military officer who served as the commander of the paramilitary of the NRP, was killed by a mugger in October 1977. Madole died of cancer in 1979. Following Madole's funeral, his mother turned over the NRP's records to loyalist Jean Charlebois. On his way home, following the service, Charlebois vehicle struck a concreteabutment on the highway. Charlebois was killed, and the NRP's records flew away in the wind. By 1981, the party was defunct.[29][2]: 85
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