Francis Parker Yockey
Encyclopedia
Francis Parker Yockey was an American
political thinker and polemicist best known for his neo-Spenglerian
book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published under the pen name
Ulick Varange in 1948. This 600-page book argues for a culture-based, totalitarian path for the preservation of Western culture. Although best remembered today as a writer, Yockey was active with many far right
causes around the world throughout his adult life.
efforts to gain intelligence in regard to his activities, as recorded by his biographer Kevin Coogan
in his book Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International.
Yockey was born in Chicago
, Illinois
, but his family returned to their original homestead in Ludington
, Michigan
during the Great Depression
. His parents were anglophiles who raised Yockey to appreciate Europe
and high culture. Subsequently, Yockey's mother introduced him to classical music. Young Francis had a prodigious talent for the piano
and developed his repertoire to include pieces by Liszt
, Beethoven
, Chopin
, and Haydn
. Yockey claimed that his ideas about race were initially the result of a car accident wherein he was assaulted by several African Americans. As a result of this attack he lost his front teeth and wore dentures
for the rest of his short life.
Before becoming a devotee of elitist
and anti-materialist
Oswald Spengler
, he briefly flirted with Marxism
. Aside from Spengler, he was heavily influenced by the ideas of German legal scholar Carl Schmitt
. Unlike Spengler, who regarded the Nazis as too bourgeois and disagreed with their anti-Semitism and strict biological view of race, Yockey believed in German
National Socialism
, and supported various Fascist
and neo-Fascist causes for the remainder of his life, including anti-Semitism
. Like Spengler, Yockey rejected a wholly biological view of race, instead preferring a spiritual conception of race married with Karl Haushofer
's idea of geopolitics
.
As a university student in the late 1930s, Yockey had his first political essay published in Social Justice
, a periodical distributed by Fr. Charles Coughlin
, known as the "radio priest," At the time Coughlin was widely known for his sympathetic view of the anti-Bolshevist policies associated with Adolf Hitler
's Germany
, Benito Mussolini
's Italy, and Gen. Franco
's Spain.
Yockey attended at least seven universities. He studied for two years (1934–36) as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan
, and then transferred to Georgetown
's School of Foreign Service. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona
, and graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame
Law School in 1941.
, the German-American National Alliance, William Dudley Pelley
's Silver Shirts, Sir Oswald Mosley's
Union Movement
, George Sylvester Viereck
, the American H. Keith Thompson
, Gerald L.K. Smith, and James H. Madole
's National Renaissance Party
. Thompson and Madole, in particular, became advocates of Yockey's worldview. While Yockey's pro-Fascist activities began in the late 1930s, they did not end there. Unfazed by the defeat of the Axis
in the Second World War
, Yockey actually became even more active in neo-Fascist
causes after 1945. From this point forward, he remained dedicated solely to his cause of reviving Fascism. He dispensed with any semblance of an ordinary life, and remained constantly on the move, travelling to wherever he felt he could pursue his goals most effectively, and cultivating countless contacts along the way.
Yockey's ideas were usually only embraced by those, however, who could countenance the necessity of an alliance between the far Left and the far Right, which was a fundamental pillar of Yockey's ideas. The American Nazi Party
of George Lincoln Rockwell
, for example, rejected Yockey on the basis of his anti-American attitude, as well as his willingness to work with anti-Zionist
Communist governments and movements, as the ANP adhered solely to the ideals of absolute anti-Bolshevist National Socialism, as had been advocated by Hitler. (Yockey, however, seems to have remained unaware of Rockwell, as he told Willis Carto
that he had never heard of the ANP when Carto visited him in prison in 1960.) Other proponents of Universal Nazism
, such as Rockwell's ally Colin Jordan
, disagreed with Yockey's views on race, and saw Yockeyism as advocating a kind of "New Strasserism" which would undermine true Nazism.
In early 1946, Yockey began working for the United States War Department as a post-trial review attorney for the Nuremberg Trials
in Germany. 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" in November 1946.
Without notes, Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, in Brittas Bay
, Ireland
over the winter and early spring of 1948. It is a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism
and rationalism
. It was endorsed by far-Right thinkers around the world including former German General Otto Remer; Professor of Classics
at the University of Illinois
, Revilo P. Oliver
; and Italian
esotericist
Julius Evola
. Yockey became embittered with Sir Oswald Mosley
after the latter refused to publish or review Imperium upon its completion, after having promised to do so. Guy Chesham, one of the leaders of Mosley's movement, actually resigned from it, in part because of Mosley's treatment of Yockey. Imperium subscribes to Spengler's suggestion that Germany had been destined to fulfil the 'Roman' role in Western Civilization by uniting all its constituent states into one large empire.
Along with former Mosleyites Guy Chesham and John Gannon, Yockey formed the European Liberation Front
(ELF) in 1948-49. The ELF issued a newsletter, Frontfighter, and published Yockey's virulent anti-American, anti-communist and anti-semitic text The Proclamation of London. In Yockey's view, "social decay" was permeated by the Jew, who as a "Culture-distorter" and a "bearer of Culture-disease", "instinctively allied himself with all forms, theories, doctrines and practices of decadence in every sphere of life". "America is [the Jew and the liberal-communist-democrat]'s programme in process of actualization, and its example shows Europe what the liberal-communist-democratic regime of Culture-distortion is preparing for it during the coming generations". Yockey was also approached by the group around the anti-Communist Senator Joseph 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, aroused a great deal of controversy.
In late 1952, Yockey traveled to Prague
and witnessed the Prague Trials. He believed they "foretold a Russia
n break with Jewry", a view he put forward in his article What is Behind the Hanging of the Eleven Jews in Prague?. Indeed, that prediction was vindicated by the fact that the last Jewish member of the Soviet Presidium, Lazar Kaganovich, was expelled in 1957 - having been sidelined as early as 1953. (In addition, after sympathizing with Israel
in its 1948-49 war, Russia switched sides and supported the Arabs in subsequent conflicts.) Yockey believed that Stalinism
had purged Soviet Communism
of Jewish influence. He spent the remainder of his life attempting to forge an alliance between the worldwide forces of Communism and the international network of the extreme Right of which he was a part, with an aim toward weakening or overthrowing the government of the United States.
Yockey met Egypt
ian President Gamal Abdel Nasser
, whom he called "a great and vigorous man", in Cairo
in 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 Arab nationalism
, as significant geopolitical challenges to "the Jewish-American power". Some speculate that Yockey made clandestine trips during the 1950s into East Germany, and possibly even into the USSR itself, attempting to cultivate Communist ties. It is also known that Yockey visited Cuba
shortly after the revolution of Fidel Castro
, in the hopes of winning Cuban support for his anti-American alliance. He met with some lower-level officials, but nothing is known to have come of it.
Yockey was continuously pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) for over a decade, which he avoided by adopting numerous aliases. He was finally arrested in 1960 after returning to the United States from abroad, as his suitcase was sent to the wrong airport. When the authorities opened it to determine whose suitcase it was, they discovered several of Yockey's falsified passports and birth certificates. When this was reported to the federal government, the FBI tracked him down in Oakland, California and arrested him. (Curiously, he was staying at the home of a friend who was thought to be Jewish, a Holocaust survivor and teacher of Hebrew at Temple Beth Abraham, a local synagogue.) While in prison, he was visited by the American Rightist Willis Carto
, who later became the chief advocate and publisher of Yockey's ideas. Yockey was soon after found dead with an empty cyanide
capsule nearby while in a jail cell in San Francisco under FBI supervision, leaving a note in which he claimed that he was committing suicide in order to protect the anonymity of his political contacts.
Maurice Bardèche
, a French writer of fascist sympathies, wrote about his meeting with Yockey in his semi-autobiographical novel Suzanne et le taudis. Yockey, called "Ulrich Clarence" in the book, was described by Bardèche as a "lunatic." Most of Yockey's other acquaintances, however, always regarded him as a brilliant and dedicated fighter for the cause in which he believed.
.
Most European and American neo-Fascists and other rightists
of the post-war period advocated an alliance with the United States as the best hope for the survival of Western culture under the threat of Communism. But Yockey
felt that an alliance of the Right with the Left was a far-more desirable course. This proposed alliance is referred to as a Red-Brown Alliance (the color red
representing the Far Left and the color brown
representing the Far Right). Yockey felt that American universalism, democracy and consumer culture, which was by then spreading into western Europe and much of the rest of the world, as well as its alliance with Zionism
, was far more corrosive and deadly to the true spirit of the West than was the Soviet Union. Yockey believed that the USSR had become genuinely anti-Zionist under Stalin
, that in its authoritarianism it preserved something of the traditional European concept of hierarchy, and he felt it could more easily be adapted to a Rightist orientation over time than was possible in the egalitarian United States. He thus believed that true Rightists should aid the spread of Communism and Third World
anti-colonial movements wherever possible, and he remained staunchly opposed to the government and culture of the United States, which he did not even consider to be truly Western in nature. He was also rather unique at the time (along with Evola) in his advocacy of a spiritual, as opposed to biological, understanding of race.
was founded in 1968 by Willis Carto
with the intent to promote Yockey's political philosophy and his book Imperium. Yockey was a major influence on Carto and the Liberty Lobby
, although many supporters of Yockey, such as H. Keith Thompson, claim that Carto failed to understand Yockey's ideas on their deepest level. Yockey did not have a very significant influence on the American extreme Right, however, which, throughout the Cold War
, for the most part remained staunchly anti-Communist. He had a much greater impact in Europe, where intellectuals of the Right, especially the current of thought sometimes called the European New Right, including the Belgian Jean Thiriart, the Russian Aleksandr Dugin
, and French writers Alain de Benoist
and Guillaume Faye
, adopted many of Yockey's views.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
political thinker and polemicist best known for his neo-Spenglerian
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published under the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Ulick Varange in 1948. This 600-page book argues for a culture-based, totalitarian path for the preservation of Western culture. Although best remembered today as a writer, Yockey was active with many far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
causes around the world throughout his adult life.
Early life
The biographical facts about Yockey are largely unknown with any degree of certainty. The majority comes from the accounts of those who knew him and from FBIFederal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
efforts to gain intelligence in regard to his activities, as recorded by his biographer Kevin Coogan
Kevin Coogan
Kevin Coogan is an American investigative journalist. He is the author of the biography Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International....
in his book Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International.
Yockey was born in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, but his family returned to their original homestead in Ludington
Ludington, Michigan
Ludington is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 8,357. It is the county seat of Mason County.Ludington is a harbor town located on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. His parents were anglophiles who raised Yockey to appreciate Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and high culture. Subsequently, Yockey's mother introduced him to classical music. Young Francis had a prodigious talent for the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and developed his repertoire to include pieces by Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, and Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
. Yockey claimed that his ideas about race were initially the result of a car accident wherein he was assaulted by several African Americans. As a result of this attack he lost his front teeth and wore dentures
Dentures
Dentures are prosthetic devices constructed to replace missing teeth, and which are supported by surrounding soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. Conventional dentures are removable, however there are many different denture designs, some which rely on bonding or clasping onto teeth or dental...
for the rest of his short life.
Before becoming a devotee of elitist
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
and anti-materialist
Anti-consumerism
Anti-consumerism refers to the socio-political movement against the equating of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions...
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
, he briefly flirted with Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Aside from Spengler, he was heavily influenced by the ideas of German legal scholar Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, and professor of law.Schmitt published several essays, influential in the 20th century and beyond, on the mentalities that surround the effective wielding of political power...
. Unlike Spengler, who regarded the Nazis as too bourgeois and disagreed with their anti-Semitism and strict biological view of race, Yockey believed in German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
National Socialism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, and supported various Fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and neo-Fascist causes for the remainder of his life, including anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. Like Spengler, Yockey rejected a wholly biological view of race, instead preferring a spiritual conception of race married with Karl Haushofer
Karl Haushofer
Karl Ernst Haushofer was a German general, geographer and geopolitician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's ideas may have influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansionist strategies, although Haushofer denied direct influence on the Nazi regime.-Biography:Haushofer belonged to...
's idea of geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
.
As a university student in the late 1930s, Yockey had his first political essay published in Social Justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
, a periodical distributed by Fr. Charles Coughlin
Charles Coughlin
Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than thirty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the...
, known as the "radio priest," At the time Coughlin was widely known for his sympathetic view of the anti-Bolshevist policies associated with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's Italy, and Gen. Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's Spain.
Yockey attended at least seven universities. He studied for two years (1934–36) as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, and then transferred to Georgetown
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
's School of Foreign Service. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, and graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
Law School in 1941.
Later life and works
Over time, Yockey contacted or worked with many of the far-Right figures and organizations of his day. These included the German-American BundGerman-American Bund
The German American Bund or German American Federation was an American Nazi organization established in the 1930s...
, the German-American National Alliance, William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley was an American extremist and spiritualist who founded the Silver Legion in 1933, and ran for President in 1936 for the Christian Party.-Family:...
's Silver Shirts, Sir Oswald Mosley's
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
Union Movement
Union Movement
The Union Movement was a right-wing political party founded in Britain by Oswald Mosley. Where Mosley had previously been associated with a peculiarly British form of fascism, the Union Movement attempted to redefine the concept by stressing the importance of developing a European nationalism...
, George Sylvester Viereck
George Sylvester Viereck
George Sylvester Viereck was a German-American poet, writer, and propagandist.-Biography:...
, the American H. Keith Thompson
H. Keith Thompson
Harold Keith Thompson is a New York City-based corporate executive and a figure within American far right circles. Thompson is a graduate of Yale University.-Early life:...
, Gerald L.K. Smith, and James H. Madole
James H. Madole
James Hartung Madole was the leader of the National Renaissance Party in the United States. He is now recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of post-war occult-fascism.-Beliefs:...
's National Renaissance Party
National Renaissance Party
National Renaissance Party was an American neo-fascist group led by James Hartung Madole. It was frequently in the headlines during the 1960s and 1970s for its involvement in violent protests and riots in New York City....
. Thompson and Madole, in particular, became advocates of Yockey's worldview. While Yockey's pro-Fascist activities began in the late 1930s, they did not end there. Unfazed by the defeat of the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
in the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Yockey actually became even more active in neo-Fascist
Neo-Fascism
Neo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. The term neo-fascist may apply to groups that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism or any other fascist leader/state...
causes after 1945. From this point forward, he remained dedicated solely to his cause of reviving Fascism. He dispensed with any semblance of an ordinary life, and remained constantly on the move, travelling to wherever he felt he could pursue his goals most effectively, and cultivating countless contacts along the way.
Yockey's ideas were usually only embraced by those, however, who could countenance the necessity of an alliance between the far Left and the far Right, which was a fundamental pillar of Yockey's ideas. The American Nazi Party
American Nazi Party
The American Nazi Party was an American political party founded by discharged U.S. Navy Commander George Lincoln Rockwell. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Rockwell initially called it the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists , but later renamed it the American Nazi Party in...
of George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell was a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs and writings have continued to be influential among white nationalists and neo-Nazis.-Early life:Rockwell was born in Bloomington,...
, for example, rejected Yockey on the basis of his anti-American attitude, as well as his willingness to work with anti-Zionist
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
Communist governments and movements, as the ANP adhered solely to the ideals of absolute anti-Bolshevist National Socialism, as had been advocated by Hitler. (Yockey, however, seems to have remained unaware of Rockwell, as he told Willis Carto
Willis Carto
Willis Allison Carto is a longtime figure on the American far right. He describes himself as Jeffersonian and populist, but is primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.-Influences on Carto:...
that he had never heard of the ANP when Carto visited him in prison in 1960.) Other proponents of Universal Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, such as Rockwell's ally Colin Jordan
Colin Jordan
John Colin Campbell Jordan was a leading figure in postwar Neo-Nazism in Britain. In the far-right nationalist circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly 'Nazi' inclination in his open use of the styles and symbols of the Third Reich.Through organisations such as the National...
, disagreed with Yockey's views on race, and saw Yockeyism as advocating a kind of "New Strasserism" which would undermine true Nazism.
In early 1946, Yockey began working for the United States War Department as a post-trial review attorney for the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
in Germany. He soon began agitating against Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
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" in November 1946.
Without notes, Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, in Brittas Bay
Brittas Bay
Brittas Bay Coastcare Group Brittas Bay in County Wicklow, Ireland is a 4 km stretch of beach on the Irish Sea coast. The beach is accessed from the R750 regional road which runs parallel to the beach, separated from it by extensive areas of sand dunes...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
over the winter and early spring of 1948. It is a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
and rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
. It was endorsed by far-Right thinkers around the world including former German General Otto Remer; Professor of Classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
at the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, Revilo P. Oliver
Revilo P. Oliver
Revilo Pendleton Oliver was an American professor of Classical philology, Spanish, and Italian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wrote and polemicized extensively for white nationalist causes....
; and Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
esotericist
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esotericist...
. Yockey became embittered with Sir Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
after the latter refused to publish or review Imperium upon its completion, after having promised to do so. Guy Chesham, one of the leaders of Mosley's movement, actually resigned from it, in part because of Mosley's treatment of Yockey. Imperium subscribes to Spengler's suggestion that Germany had been destined to fulfil the 'Roman' role in Western Civilization by uniting all its constituent states into one large empire.
Along with former Mosleyites Guy Chesham and John Gannon, Yockey formed the European Liberation Front
European Liberation Front
The European Liberation Front was a small neo-fascist group that split from Oswald Mosley's British Union Movement in 1948. Its founder and ideological inspiration was Francis Parker Yockey. In 1949 they issued a manifesto titled The Proclamation of London, written by Yockey...
(ELF) in 1948-49. The ELF issued a newsletter, Frontfighter, and published Yockey's virulent anti-American, anti-communist and anti-semitic text The Proclamation of London. In Yockey's view, "social decay" was permeated by the Jew, who as a "Culture-distorter" and a "bearer of Culture-disease", "instinctively allied himself with all forms, theories, doctrines and practices of decadence in every sphere of life". "America is [the Jew and the liberal-communist-democrat]'s programme in process of actualization, and its example shows Europe what the liberal-communist-democratic regime of Culture-distortion is preparing for it during the coming generations". Yockey was also approached by the group around the anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, although McCarthy never delivered it as the theme of the speech, when it was announced, aroused a great deal of controversy.
In late 1952, Yockey traveled to Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and witnessed the Prague Trials. He believed they "foretold a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n break with Jewry", a view he put forward in his article What is Behind the Hanging of the Eleven Jews in Prague?. Indeed, that prediction was vindicated by the fact that the last Jewish member of the Soviet Presidium, Lazar Kaganovich, was expelled in 1957 - having been sidelined as early as 1953. (In addition, after sympathizing with Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in its 1948-49 war, Russia switched sides and supported the Arabs in subsequent conflicts.) Yockey believed that Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
had purged Soviet Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
of Jewish influence. He spent the remainder of his life attempting to forge an alliance between the worldwide forces of Communism and the international network of the extreme Right of which he was a part, with an aim toward weakening or overthrowing the government of the United States.
Yockey met Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian President Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
, whom he called "a great and vigorous man", in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
in 1953. He worked briefly for the Egyptian Information Ministry, writing anti-Zionist propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. Yockey saw the rise of non-aligned
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...
states in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, and in particular Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...
, as significant geopolitical challenges to "the Jewish-American power". Some speculate that Yockey made clandestine trips during the 1950s into East Germany, and possibly even into the USSR itself, attempting to cultivate Communist ties. It is also known that Yockey visited Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
shortly after the revolution of Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
, in the hopes of winning Cuban support for his anti-American alliance. He met with some lower-level officials, but nothing is known to have come of it.
Yockey was continuously pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) for over a decade, which he avoided by adopting numerous aliases. He was finally arrested in 1960 after returning to the United States from abroad, as his suitcase was sent to the wrong airport. When the authorities opened it to determine whose suitcase it was, they discovered several of Yockey's falsified passports and birth certificates. When this was reported to the federal government, the FBI tracked him down in Oakland, California and arrested him. (Curiously, he was staying at the home of a friend who was thought to be Jewish, a Holocaust survivor and teacher of Hebrew at Temple Beth Abraham, a local synagogue.) While in prison, he was visited by the American Rightist Willis Carto
Willis Carto
Willis Allison Carto is a longtime figure on the American far right. He describes himself as Jeffersonian and populist, but is primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.-Influences on Carto:...
, who later became the chief advocate and publisher of Yockey's ideas. Yockey was soon after found dead with an empty cyanide
Cyanide
A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
capsule nearby while in a jail cell in San Francisco under FBI supervision, leaving a note in which he claimed that he was committing suicide in order to protect the anonymity of his political contacts.
Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche was a French essayist, literary and art critic, journalist, and one of the leading exponents of Neo-Fascism in post-World War II Europe...
, a French writer of fascist sympathies, wrote about his meeting with Yockey in his semi-autobiographical novel Suzanne et le taudis. Yockey, called "Ulrich Clarence" in the book, was described by Bardèche as a "lunatic." Most of Yockey's other acquaintances, however, always regarded him as a brilliant and dedicated fighter for the cause in which he believed.
The impact of Yockey's ideas
Yockey was rather unique among thinkers of the far right wing post-Second World WarWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Most European and American neo-Fascists and other rightists
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
of the post-war period advocated an alliance with the United States as the best hope for the survival of Western culture under the threat of Communism. But Yockey
felt that an alliance of the Right with the Left was a far-more desirable course. This proposed alliance is referred to as a Red-Brown Alliance (the color red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
representing the Far Left and the color brown
Brown
Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....
representing the Far Right). Yockey felt that American universalism, democracy and consumer culture, which was by then spreading into western Europe and much of the rest of the world, as well as its alliance with Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, was far more corrosive and deadly to the true spirit of the West than was the Soviet Union. Yockey believed that the USSR had become genuinely anti-Zionist under Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, that in its authoritarianism it preserved something of the traditional European concept of hierarchy, and he felt it could more easily be adapted to a Rightist orientation over time than was possible in the egalitarian United States. He thus believed that true Rightists should aid the spread of Communism and Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
anti-colonial movements wherever possible, and he remained staunchly opposed to the government and culture of the United States, which he did not even consider to be truly Western in nature. He was also rather unique at the time (along with Evola) in his advocacy of a spiritual, as opposed to biological, understanding of race.
Legacy
The National Youth AllianceNational Youth Alliance
The National Youth Alliance was a right-wing political organization founded on November 15, 1968 at the Army and Navy Club by Willis Carto, head of the right-wing Liberty Lobby. The aim of the group was to recruit students to counter liberal and Marxist groups on college campuses like Students for...
was founded in 1968 by Willis Carto
Willis Carto
Willis Allison Carto is a longtime figure on the American far right. He describes himself as Jeffersonian and populist, but is primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.-Influences on Carto:...
with the intent to promote Yockey's political philosophy and his book Imperium. Yockey was a major influence on Carto and the Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby was an American political advocacy organization founded in 1958 that went bankrupt in 2001. It was founded by Willis Carto. In their own words,-Antisemitic world-view:...
, although many supporters of Yockey, such as H. Keith Thompson, claim that Carto failed to understand Yockey's ideas on their deepest level. Yockey did not have a very significant influence on the American extreme Right, however, which, throughout the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, for the most part remained staunchly anti-Communist. He had a much greater impact in Europe, where intellectuals of the Right, especially the current of thought sometimes called the European New Right, including the Belgian Jean Thiriart, the Russian Aleksandr Dugin
Aleksandr Dugin
Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin is a politologist and one of the most popular ideologists of Russian expansionism, nationalism, and fascism, with close ties to the Kremlin and Russian military. He was the leading organizer of National Bolshevik Party, National Bolshevik Front, and Eurasia Party...
, and French writers Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist is a French academic, philosopher, a founder of the Nouvelle Droite and head of the French think tank GRECE. Benoist is a critic of liberalism, free markets and egalitarianism.-Biography:...
and Guillaume Faye
Guillaume Faye
Guillaume Faye is a French journalist and writer.With a PhD from Science-Po, Guillaume Faye was one of the major theorists of the French New Right in the 1970-1980’s. A former member of Alain de Benoist’s New Right organisation GRECE, he took part in the splitting of the organization in 1986...
, adopted many of Yockey's views.
External links
- "Imperium" e-book
- The Francis Parker Yockey Collection
- Review of Dreamer of the Day
- "The Tragic Life of a Spenglerian Visionary" -- Review of Dreamer of the Day
- "An American National Bolshevik" -- Review of Dreamer of the Day
- Dave Emory's For The Record broadcast #237 Interview with Kevin Coogan
- Dave Emory's For The Record broadcast #354 Interview with Kevin Coogan
- Gnostic Liberation Front's Yockey collection second page third page (criticism)
- Imperium the foe of the NWO