Francis Parker Yockey

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Francis Parker Yockey
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Other namesUlick Varange
Alma materUniversity of Arizona (BA)
Notre Dame Law School (JD)
Occupation(s)Author, attorney
Notable workImperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics

Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 17, 1960) was an American

pan-Europeanist ideologue.[1][2] A lawyer, he is known for his neo-Spenglerian book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published in 1948 under the pen name Ulick Varange, which was dedicated indirectly to Adolf Hitler and called for a neo-Nazi European empire.[3][4][2][5]

Yockey supported

German-American Bund.[8] He served in the U.S. Army in 1942–43, and went AWOL to help Nazi spies.[9][4]
After legal appointments in Detroit in 1944–45, he worked for eleven months on the War Crimes tribunal in Germany before he either resigned or was fired for siding with the Nazis.[9][8] In London, he worked for the British fascist Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, and after falling out with Mosley, founded the breakaway European Liberation Front in 1949, leading it until it fizzled around 1954.[10][11][12]

During the Cold War, Yockey reportedly worked with Soviet bloc intelligence, and argued for a tactical far-right alliance with the Soviets against what he saw as Jewish-American hegemony.[6][13][14] He also briefly wrote anti-Jewish propaganda in Egypt,[15] where he met its president Gamal Abdel Nasser.[16] Yockey remained influential in fascist circles until his suicide in FBI custody in 1960.[17] Yockey's last visitor in prison was Willis Carto, who became the leading advocate and publisher of his writings.[18]

Biography

Yockey had many aliases, and some facts about him are not certain.[6][19] 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".[20]

Early life and education

Yockey was born in 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of four siblings in an upper-middle-class Catholic family of Irish and German descent.[17][21][22] His father was a stockbroker.[22] Yockey was raised in Ludington, Michigan.[17] He learned classical piano.[20]

He began college as an undergraduate at the

De Paul University, and graduated from the Notre Dame Law School in 1941.[22][2] In college, he declared he would not dine with black, Jewish or communist students.[20]

Yockey had been attracted to Marxism in early life[24] before gravitating to Adolf Hitler and Nazism in the 1930s, and in college, Oswald Spengler.[22] Other influences include Karl Haushofer[25] and the Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, whom Yockey was later accused of plagiarizing.[10][26][27] Yockey joined pro-German and pro-fascist groups in the late 1930s.[9] In 1938, his essay "The Tragedy of Youth" was published in Social Justice, a journal known for publishing antisemitic tracts that was distributed by the "radio priest" Charles Coughlin.[28][29] In 1939 Yockey spoke at a gathering of Silvershirts.[8][9]

World War II and immediate postwar

Yockey enlisted in the U.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.[9] According to Yockey's biographer Kevin 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 officer Herbert Hans Haupt, who stayed at the home of his wife and was later executed for espionage for his participation in Operation Pastorius.[30] Later, Yockey received an honorable discharge from the Army for "dementia praecox, paranoid type" in 1943 after suffering a nervous breakdown or feigning one.[4][22][31] He was placed on a government list of Americans suspected of pro-Nazi views.[22] In 1944 he became an assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County, Michigan, but was bored by the work, leaving in 1945.[9][22]

In early 1946, Yockey found a job with the

Nuremberg Trials, and he moved to Germany with his wife and two daughters.[22] Evidence suggests Yockey may have tried to help accused Nazi war criminals including SS General Otto Ohlendorf by sharing top-secret documents with German defense lawyers.[4] Often absent from his job, he was fired for "abandonment of position" on the 26th of November 1946,[32] when it was noticed that he was siding with the Nazis.[8][22] He agitated against Allied occupation of Germany,[33] and later worked for the Red Cross in Germany but deserted his post.[8] U.S. intelligence began tracking Yockey in Germany in 1946 or 1947.[34] Yockey left his estranged wife and daughters in Germany in 1947 for exile in Ireland.[22]

Yockey was a central figure in early postwar Nazi networks.

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. After the war Thompson and Madole became advocates of Yockey's worldview and published some of his essays.[35]

Cold War years

Yockey identified the United States, not Russia, as Europe's main enemy, urged Europeans not to collaborate with America in the

communist governments and movements. (Yockey told Willis Carto that he had never heard of the ANP when Carto visited him in prison in 1960.) Other neo-Nazis such as Rockwell's ally Colin Jordan disagreed with Yockey's views on race, and saw Yockeyism as being "Strasserist" which would undermine Nazism.[36]

Without notes, Yockey wrote his first book,

esotericist Julius Evola,[41] as well as the praise of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Giorgio Almirante, Heinz Knoke, and Karl-Heinz Priester.[42]

Yockey became embittered with Sir

antisemitic text The Proclamation of London, which called for a reinstatement of Nazism and the expulsion of the Jews (whom it labeled "the Culture-distorter") from Europe.[31][15][45] The ELF was opposed by other neo-fascist groups and essentially disappeared by 1954 due to members being alienated by Yockey's imperious personality.[12][22]

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 by Gerald L. K. Smith.[34] He also spent time in New Orleans writing propaganda for use in Latin America.[8] His intercepted letters to other fascists in the 1950s were often signed "Torquemada" after the torturer of the Spanish Inquisition.[34]

Yockey was 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 through posters in the Yorkville neighbourhood of New York City, the-then Left Wing newspaper The Daily Compass ran a front page expose, alongside negative press attention from the New York Post, probably influenced by the fact that a series of well known Holocaust deniers were going to speak alongside him.[46]

Yockey collaborated with Soviet bloc intelligence, traveled behind the Iron Curtain, and was suspected of visiting East Germany, the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Prague Trials, and asserted that they "foretold a Russian break with Jewry".[49] He then became a Czechoslovak Secret Service courier.[22] He is suspected of having been in contact with a Soviet agent by the name of Alfred Francke-Gricksch.[50]

Yockey met

anti-Zionist propaganda.[51] In the Arab world, he made contact with Nazi exiles including Otto Ernst Remer and Johann von Leers.[52] Yockey reportedly tried to persuade Nasser to finance development of a cobalt bomb by ex-Nazi scientists.[53]

Yockey was known as a womanizer, and had an affair with Hazel Guggenheim McKinley.[54] 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 called Arduous Figure Training at Bondhaven that was later found in his suitcase.[34] The 62 pages 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."[55]

Arrest and death

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.[22][31] When this was reported to the federal government, the FBI tracked Yockey down in Oakland, California, and arrested him.[31] While in prison, he was visited by Carto,[18] who later became the chief advocate and publisher of Yockey's ideas. While he was there, he was staying with the principal of a yeshiva called Alexander Scharf, who he had met in Reno and intended to give a loan of 2,000 USD.[56] Yockey was soon after found dead with an empty cyanide capsule nearby while in a jail cell in San Francisco under FBI supervision. Writing after his suicide, the San Francisco Chronicle declared him "as important a figure in world Fascism as we now know."[4]

Occult and philosophy interests

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".[57] Yockey was an owner of documents relating to Theosophy, according to the FBI.[57] At the time of his suicide, he had copies of books and articles written by Baltasar Gracián, Otto Weininger, H. G. Wells, and George B. Leonard.[58]

Influence

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While some postwar European and American

J.F.C. Fuller (a fascist) gave early praise to Imperium.[42]

Yockey is also remembered as an early and influential Holocaust denier.[4][10]

Yockey's present influence is reflected mostly through the work of

Odinists.[67] 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".[68]

In his 2011 book of correspondences with American conductor David Woodard, Swiss writer Christian Kracht recommended Yockey's Imperium.[69] The following year, Kracht published his bestselling novel Imperium.

In Malta, the Neo-Fascist leader by the name of Norman Lowell is heavily inspired by Yockey's book Imperium, and has the name of his organization, Imperium Europa directly alluding to it.[70]

The Order of Nine Angles, a Satanist and terrorist group, is known to draw from his beliefs.[71] Other terrorists inspired by Yockey include Leo Felton, responsible for the 2002 white supremacist terror plot and John William King an assailant in the Murder of James Byrd Jr.. [72] Additionally, far-right political activist Augustus Sol Invictus has drawn inspiration from Yockey's book Imperium,[73] as well as the New Zealander Kerry Bolton.[citation needed]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Bassin, Mark (2022). "Real Europe" Civilizationism and the Far Right in Eastern Europe (PDF). Södertörn, Sweden: Södertörn University.
  2. ^
    OCLC 52467699
    .
  3. ^ Staff (ndg) "Extremism in America: Willis Carto" Anti-Defamation League Archived October 12, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, ADL.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Mostrom, Anthony (August 8, 2020). "America's "Mein Kampf": Francis Parker Yockey and "Imperium"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved April 15, 2022. ...Imperium, which called for a transnational, neo-Nazi European Empire...
  5. ^ Staff (February 1, 1996) "Poisoning the Airwaves: The Extremist Message of Hate on Shortwave Radio" Anti-Defamation League
  6. ^ a b c Lee 2000a, p. xvi.
  7. ^ Campbell, Linda P. (January 12, 1992). "Liberty Lobby In The Spotlight With Duke, Buchanan In Race". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-1-57859-174-9
    .
  9. ^ a b c d e f Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 75-76.
  10. ^
    OCLC 1158504603.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  11. ^
    OCLC 858861623.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  12. ^
    OCLC 890161379.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  13. OCLC 1255236096.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  14. ^ Shekhovtsov 2017, p. 24.
  15. ^ a b c Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 77.
  16. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 17.
  17. ^ a b c Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 75–77, 260.
  18. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7425-0340-3
    .
  19. ^ Coogan 1999.
  20. ^
    OCLC 1086431548
    .
  21. ^ Yockey, 2013, p.799
  22. ^
    OCLC 624337327
    .
  23. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 64.
  24. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 55.
  25. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 65.
  26. OCLC 1086610934.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  27. ISBN 978-1-57859-174-9
    .:
  28. OCLC 865578716.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  29. OCLC 173243789
    .
  30. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 122.
  31. ^
    OCLC 893121332
    .
  32. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 156.
  33. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 153.
  34. ^ a b c d Mostrom, Anthony (May 13, 2017). "The Fascist and the Preacher: Gerald L. K. Smith and Francis Parker Yockey in Cold War–Era Los Angeles". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved February 27, 2018.
  35. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 418.
  36. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 510.
  37. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 159.
  38. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 76.
  39. ^ McNaughton, D. L. (2012). "Spengler's Philosophy, and its implication that Europe has 'lost its way'". Comparative Civilizations Review. 67. ISCSC, Michigan: 7–15.
  40. ^ "Pan-Aryanism Binds Hate Groups in America and Europe". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  41. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 292.
  42. ^ a b Coogan 1999, p. 168.
  43. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 169.
  44. ISBN 978-0-19-530173-1
    , retrieved April 30, 2022
  45. ^ The Proclamation of London, full text
  46. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 238.
  47. ^ a b Lee 2000a, p. XVI.
  48. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 439.
  49. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 266.
  50. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 392.
  51. ^ Rose 2021, p. 80.
  52. ^ Gardell, Mattiass W. (2003). Gods of Blood : The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Duke University Press Books. p. 168.
  53. ^ Coogan 1999, pp. 380–381.
  54. ^ Lee 2000a, pp. 104.
  55. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 27.
  56. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 23.
  57. ^ a b Coogan 1999, p. 291.
  58. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 26.
  59. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 452.
  60. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 514.
  61. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 620.
  62. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 532.
  63. ^ Gais, Hannah (October 11, 2019). "In Search of the Russian Soul". Political Research Associates. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  64. ^ Brooks, Shilo (April 12, 2022). "Prophets of the Radical Right". Public Discourse. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  65. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 616.
  66. ^ Lee 2000a, p. 160.
  67. ^ Lee, Martin A. (June 13, 2000b). "John William King Quotes Francis Parker Yockey in Statement About Hate Crime". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  68. OCLC 1091236821.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  69. ^ Kracht, C., and Woodard, D. (2011) Five Years, Hanover, Wehrhahn Verlag. p. 139
  70. ^ "Francis Parker Yockey". vivamalta. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
  71. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 220.
  72. Southern Poverty Law Centre
    . Retrieved October 5, 2023.
  73. Southern Poverty Law Centre
    . Retrieved September 4, 2023.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Francis Parker Yockey.
  1. ^ "The World in Flames". CounterCurrents. 2020.
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