The National Socialist League, was a Neo-Nazi political party in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 that existed from 1974 until the mid 1980s. It was founded by Russell Veh in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 in 1974. Veh financed the party using the profits from his printing

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 business. He also financed the party with a film distribution unit that specialized in Nazi propaganda

Nazi propaganda

Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

s, including the perennial favorite Triumph of the Will

Triumph of the Will

Triumph of the Will is a propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of...

. The National Socialist League had chapters in various parts of California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

History

The party was founded in 1974 by Russell Veh and several other Neo-Nazis. The National Socialist League was unique in restricting its members to gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 Nazis. The group distributed membership applications declaring NSL’s “determination to seek sexual, social and political freedom” for Aryans

Aryan race

The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...

.

Before disappearing in the 1980s, the National Socialist League put out a journal called NS Kampfruf.

Organizing efforts in San Francisco

The National Socialist League placed advertisements identifying themselves as the Gay Nazis that included their phone number in order to recruit new members during 1974 and 1975 in the classified ad section of the San Francisco gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter

Bay Area Reporter

The Bay Area Reporter is a free weekly newspaper serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities in the San Francisco Bay Area; it is the oldest-continuously published, and one of the largest LGBT newspapers in the United States....

.

Anti-Jewish film distribution controversy

While normally low-profile, the NSL stirred a controversy in 1983 when it attempted to market the infamous 1930s Nazi anti-Semitic

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...

 hate film that had been pirated by the group. An article in the Los Angeles-based Heritage and S.W. Jewish Press, titled "'Gay Nazis’ Peddling Vile 'Jud Suss

Jud Süß (1940 film)

Jud Süß is an antisemitic propaganda film produced in 1940 by Terra Filmkunst at the behest of Joseph Goebbels. The movie was directed by Veit Harlan, who wrote the screenplay with Eberhard Wolfgang Möller and Ludwig Metzger, and starred Ferdinand Marian and Harlan's wife Kristina Söderbaum.The...

' Film", named Veh and the National Socialist League. “We are most familiar with Mr. Veh (which is an alias, incidentally) and his notorious operations,” said legitimate film distributor, David Calbert Smith III.

See also

• Edmund Heines
  Edmund Heines
  Edmund Heines was a Nazi Party leader and Ernst Röhm's deputy in the SA.-Life:Heines served in World War I as a volunteer, and was discharged in 1918 as a lieutenant. In 1925, he joined the Nazi Party and the SA . In 1929, he was convicted of murder, but soon received an amnesty...
  
  
• Ernst Roehm
• Homosexuals in Nazi Germany
• Leather subculture
  Leather subculture
  The leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures...
  
  
• Michael Kuehnen
• Order of the Jarls of Baelder
• Sexuality of Adolf Hitler
• The Hidden Hitler
  The Hidden Hitler
  The Hidden Hitler is the English-language version of the 2001 book Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators by German-Jewish professor and historian Dr. Lothar Machtan. The original book was published in Germany by Alexander Fest Verlag, while the English-translated version was published...
  
  
• The Pink Swastika
  The Pink Swastika
  The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party is a book first published in 1995 by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams.-Synopsis:According to the authors, homosexuality found in the Nazi Party contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany...