Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

mahatmakanejeeves

(59,749 posts)
Sun Aug 25, 2024, 12:51 PM Aug 25

On this day, August 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated while doing the laundry.

George Lincoln Rockwell


Rockwell during his time in the Navy

Commander of the American Nazi Party
In office: March 1959 – August 25, 1967

Personal details
Born: March 9, 1918; Bloomington, Illinois, U.S.
Died: August 25, 1967 (aged 49); Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
Manner of death: Assassination by gunshot
Political party: American Nazi Party

George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was an American fascist activist and founder of the American Nazi Party. He later became a major figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, and his beliefs, strategies, and writings have continued to influence many white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

{snip}

Death

On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was shot and killed while leaving a laundromat in Arlington, Virginia, only a few yards from where he lived. John Patler, who had been expelled by Rockwell from his party in March 1967 for repeated attempts to inject Marxist ideas into party publications, was convicted of the murder in December 1967, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served an initial eight years in prison, and later a further six years following a parole violation. Hearing of his son's death, Rockwell's 78-year-old father said: "I am not surprised at all. I've expected it for quite some time."

Matthias Koehl, the second in command at NSWPP, moved to establish control over Rockwell's body and the assets of the NSWPP, which at the time had some 300 active members and 3,000 financial supporters. Rockwell's parents wanted a private burial in Maine, but declined to fight with the Nazis. On August 27, an NSWPP spokesman reported that federal officials had approved a military burial at Culpeper National Cemetery, Rockwell being an honorably discharged veteran. The cemetery specified that no Nazi insignia could be displayed, and when the 50 mourners violated these conditions, the entrance to the cemetery was blocked in a five-hour standoff, during which the hearse, which had been stopped on railroad tracks near the cemetery, was nearly struck by an approaching train. The next day, Rockwell's body was secretly cremated.

{snip}

The Powhatan Springs Skatepark is across the street from where the laundromat stood.

The shadow of an assassinated American Nazi commander hangs over Charlottesville

By Michael E. Miller August 21


George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, holds a
news conference in Arlington on Nov. 3, 1965. (Harvey Georges/AP)

Shortly before noon on Aug. 25, 1967, a pale ’58 Chevy pulled into a shopping center in Arlington. Out stepped one of the most hated men in America.

As the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell had hung swastikas on the Mall and picketed the marches of Martin Luther King Jr. He had called for shipping blacks to Africa and sending millions of “Communist Jews” to the gas chambers — all at a time when memories of World War II were still fresh.

Now, dressed not in his Nazi uniform but a simple white shirt and dark slacks, Rockwell grabbed his dirty laundry and headed into the Econ-o-wash, only to realize he had forgotten the bleach. As he climbed back into his car to return to Nazi headquarters — a large house a block away dubbed “Hatemongers Hill” — two shots rang out. ... Rockwell died amid a flurry of Ivory Snow soap flakes.

{snip}


The Arlington parking lot where George Lincoln Rockwell was killed
on August 25, 1967. Rockwell’s car is the white sedan at center. (AP)

{snip}

John Patsalos, as he is again called, served a decade in prison before being released in the early 1980s. He is now 79 and lives in New York City. The man who once illustrated hate magazines for Rockwell now ekes out a living as a freelance cartoonist. ... Patsalos refused multiple interview requests, including one left on his door, which is covered in Dr. Seuss-like cartoons and an “I voted” sticker. He is a staunch online defender of Donald Trump.

{snip}

Michael E. Miller is a reporter on the local enterprise team. Follow @MikeMillerDC

There were these comments:

Bill Getchell
8/21/2017 10:34 AM EDT

Long forgotten now, but back in the early '60's, the University of Virginia sponsored a joint appearance by Earl Browder, former head of the U.S. Communist Party, and Rockwell. They both shared the same stage, took questions from the audience, and discussed deeply contrasting views. This was back in the day when academia was not afraid of being an open marketplace of ideas.

jbartelloni
8/21/2017 10:21 AM EDT

Dominion Hills Shopping Center, 6000 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA where George Lincoln Rockwell was shot today:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/6000+Wilson+Blvd,+Arlington,+VA+22205/@38.8740675,-77.1418221,431m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7b46626663971:0x99c34d579d86d1c!8m2!3d38.8740675!4d-77.139628

Fri Aug 25, 2023: On this day, August 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated while doing the laundry.

Fri Aug 25, 2017: George Lincoln Rockwell, American Nazi, gunned down doing the laundry fifty years ago today
3 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
On this day, August 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated while doing the laundry. (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Aug 25 OP
Other links: mahatmakanejeeves Aug 25 #1
How many Jilly_in_VA Aug 25 #2
I'm sure he was careful to keep the whites and the colored (fabrics) separate. mahatmakanejeeves Aug 25 #3

mahatmakanejeeves

(59,749 posts)
1. Other links:
Sun Aug 25, 2024, 12:59 PM
Aug 25
Nazis in Arlington: George Rockwell and the ANP

1/2/2013 in Virginia by Mark Jones


Now a coffee shop, this brick duplex near the Arlington
County courthouse was the headquarters of the American
Nazi Party for almost 20 years. (Photo source: Mark Jones)

{snip}

As it turned out, the crippling blow to the organization would come from within. On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was assassinated by one of his former deputies in the parking lot of the Dominion Hills strip mall on Wilson Blvd. John Patler – who had left the group a few months earlier after a dispute – took a rifle up to the shopping center roof and shot Rockwell through the front windshield of his car, which was parked outside the Econowash laundromat.

Close-Up of an American Nazi
November 28, 2010 by The Editorial Desk

Newly unearthed photos from the 1960s document hatred and banality on display in Northern Virginia.

By Charles S. Clark / Photos by Jack Hiller

In the spring of 1960, a mere 15 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, an American version of the Nazi Party was operating openly in middle-class suburban Arlington. ... The Nazis’ hypnotic commander, etched into public consciousness by his full name of George Lincoln Rockwell, set up headquarters in a ramshackle home at 928 N. Randolph St. (today the site of the Richmond Square high-rise apartments in Ballston). The façade of the wood-frame house bore a large sign reading: “White Man … Fight! Smash the Black Revolution Now.”

{snip}

Why Arlington?
Rockwell, born in Bloomington, Ill., in 1918, grew up with performing skills as the son of vaudeville comedians. His upper-crust status would afford him prep school in Maine and philosophy studies at Brown University in Rhode Island. Later he attended the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, where he developed the drawing talents he would use in the advertising field and later to create Nazi fliers. He served as a Navy pilot during World War II.

When the Korean War broke out, Rockwell left his first wife and three children and was assigned to a U.S. naval air facility in Iceland. There he read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and became obsessed with Aryanism. He married an Icelandic woman and honeymooned in Germany (in Hitler’s retreat town of Berchtesgaden.)

In the mid-1950s, in a move that would estrange him from his wives and family, Rockwell returned to the United States and conceived the American Nazi Party. In 1958, he moved to the suburbs of the nation’s capital, where it would be easier to win publicity and funding in a primarily white jurisdiction.

Death of an Arlington Nazi
December 30, 2010 by The Editorial Desk

George Lincoln Rockwell was an internationally famous hate-monger when he was gunned down in Arlington in August 1967.

By Charles S. Clark / Photos by Jack hiller

The political ringleader who had achieved international notoriety was seen doing his own wash at a coin-operated laundromat on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington. Just before noon on Friday, Aug. 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party whose presence for nearly a decade had been an embarrassment to many locals, told the proprietor at the Econowash in Dominion Hills Shopping Center that he had to return home to fetch some bleach.

As the 49-year-old Rockwell slid into the seat of his fading blue-and-white 1958 Chevrolet, gunshots rang out from the roof of the shopping center. Two bullets burst through the windshield, knocking his car into another vehicle as Rockwell fell and landed face-up in the parking lot, splayed beside his box of Ivory Snow and a copy of the New York Daily News. Bystanders called police, but in minutes, the flamboyant—and ordinarily well-guarded—leader of the modestly sized American Nazi movement had died of a shot through the heart.

An important witness to the killing was the owner of nearby Tom’s Barber Shop, Tom Blakeney, now 80 and retired in Fredericksburg. Blakeney knew Rockwell as a customer of his shop. He recalls, Rockwell behaved “as a gentleman, and had been a lieutenant commander, so if you didn’t know his politics, you’d never guess.” Blakeney also cut the hair of some Nazi troopers; he remembers them cursing at images of black Americans on the barber-shop television.

American Nazi Party’s George Rockwell Assassinated 50 Years Ago Today in Arlington

by Chris Teale August 25, 2017 at 1:45 pm

{snip}

However, today there was a reminder that Rockwell’s Nazi beliefs did not die with him. A group of at least five men and one woman arrived in the parking lot, set up a small swastika-adorned wreath and a Nazi flag, and gave the “Heil Hitler” salute in memory of Rockwell, according to a photo tweeted by NBC 4’s Mark Segraves.

A small group of Nazis just showed up in Arlington to honor George Lincoln Rockwell on 50th Anniv at site of his murder.



Fri Aug 25, 2023: Other links:

Sat Aug 26, 2017: Other links:

From RandySF:

Sat Aug 26, 2017: Neo-Nazis fly swastika, salute at Virginia shopping center where leader was killed

‘Shocking’: Neo-Nazis fly swastika, salute at Virginia shopping center where leader was killed

By Michael E. Miller August 26 at 8:50 AM

{snip}

Michael E. Miller is a reporter on the local enterprise team.
Follow @MikeMillerDC
Latest Discussions»Culture Forums»American History»On this day, August 25, 1...