Australian National Socialist Party | |
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Leader | Ted Cawthron Don Lindsay Arthur Smith |
Founded | 1962 |
Dissolved | 1968 |
Succeeded by | National Socialist Party of Australia |
Headquarters | Sydney, Australia |
Ideology | Neo-Nazism White supremacism Australian nationalism Holocaust denial Anti-communism Anti-immigration Anti-multiculturalism Antisemitism |
Political position | Far-right |
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Far-right politics in Australia |
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Nazism |
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The Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP) was a minor Australian Neo-Nazi party that was formed in 1962. It merged into the National Socialist Party of Australia, which was originally a splinter group, in 1968.
The Australian National Socialist Party was launched in 1962 by University of Adelaide physics student Ted Cawthron and Sydney council worker Don Lindsay. They were vigorously anti-communist, and argued for the perpetuation of the White Australia policy, a defensive approach to Asia and the total annexation of New Guinea. [1] [2]
The party consisted entirely of Cawthron and Lindsay until they were joined in July 1963 by Arthur Smith, known for his outward antisemitism and aggressive tactics. [1] He was a prominent figure in the Australian Nationalist Workers' Party, an attempted continuation of the "Australian Party" founded in September 1955 by right-wing journalist Frank Browne and disbanded in September 1957. Browne's party never had a serious following, though the party received some media attention and generally advocated far-right positions. [3]
Smith was the party's first leader, who managed to slightly increase membership by merging with a host of other motley white supremacist groups in Melbourne. [1] In 1964, a tiny Victorian group, the Australian National Renaissance Party, was incorporated into the ANSP. Its total membership remained very small, although it received substantial publicity from a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners , which broadcast the proceedings of a general meeting and prompted calls for Neo-Nazism to be banned. [4]
The ANSP's headquarters were raided by police on 26 June 1964, during which Smith and four other party members were arrested. The five were charged with a variety of offenses, with Smith convicted of possessing unlicensed firearms and explosives and possession of stolen goods; he served a six-month jail term. While Smith was imprisoned, Robert Pope, who had led the Australian National Renaissance Party, became acting leader, but the party's membership had collapsed following the raid. Attorney-General Billy Snedden told parliament that the party was under surveillance and probably had a membership of fewer than 100. Pope had Smith expelled from the party while he was in prison, and by late 1964 the party was essentially moribund. [5]
Throughout 1965, Smith was engaged in re-launching the ANSP. In early 1966, Smith attracted media attention when he collapsed while speaking at the Domain. Several poorly frequented demonstrations were held in support of the Vietnam War. The party again went into remission when Smith returned to his native Tasmania, but it re-emerged in June 1967 with anti-communist and anti-Semitic demonstrations. At this point, Cawthron and several other defectors formed the competing National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA), which rejected the radicalism of the ANSP. [6]
In May 1968, Smith resigned from the party and retired from politics, leaving the leadership to Eric Wenberg, a long-term party member and militarist. Wenberg made overtures to Cawthron, and the ANSP was merged into the NSPA. [7]
Neo-Nazism comprises the post-World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy, to attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases to create a fascist state.
National Socialist Party most often refers to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party, which existed in Germany between 1920 and 1945 and ruled the country from 1933 to 1945. However, similar names have also been used by a number of other political parties around the world, with various ideologies, some related and some unrelated to the NSDAP.
The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), is a British neo-Nazi organisation founded by Colin Jordan in 1968. It grew out of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which was founded in 1962. Frequently on the margins of the British far-right, the BM has had a long and chequered history for its association with violence and extremism. It was founded as a political party but manifested itself more as a pressure and activist group. It has had spells of dormancy.
Strasserism is an ideological strand of Nazism which adheres to revolutionary nationalism and to economic antisemitism, which conditions are to be achieved with radical, mass-action and worker-based politics that are more aggressive than the politics of the Hitlerite leaders of the Nazi Party. Named after brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser, the ideology of Strasserism is a type of Third Position, right-wing politics in opposition to Communism and to Hitlerite Nazism.
Francis Joseph Collin is an American former political activist and Midwest coordinator with the American Nazi Party, later known as the National Socialist White People's Party. After being ousted for being partly Jewish, in 1970, Collin founded the National Socialist Party of America. (N.S.P.A.) In the late 1970s, his planned march in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois was challenged; however, the American Civil Liberties Union defended Collin's group's freedom of speech and assembly in a case that reached the United States Supreme Court to correct procedural deficiencies. Specifically, the necessity of immediate appellate review of orders restraining the exercise of First Amendment rights was strongly emphasized in National Socialist Party v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977). Afterward, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the party had a right to march and to display swastikas, despite local opposition, based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Collin then offered a compromise, offering to march in Chicago's Marquette Park instead of Skokie. After Collin was convicted and sentenced in 1979 for child molestation, he lost his position in the party.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
The Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP), also known as the German Empire Party or German Imperial Party, was a nationalist, far-right, and later neo-Nazi political party in West Germany. It was founded in 1950 from the German Right Party, which had been set up in Lower Saxony in 1946 and had five members in the first Bundestag, and from which it took the name. Its biggest success and only major breakthrough came in the 1959 Rhineland-Palatinate regional election, when it sent a deputy to the assembly.
Harold Armstead Covington was an American neo-Nazi activist and writer. He advocated the creation of an "Aryan homeland" in the Pacific Northwest and was the founder of the Northwest Front (NF), a white separatist political movement that sought to create a white ethnostate.
James Saleam is an Australian political scientist, academic, political activist, and author noted for his involvement in Australian nationalism, anti-globalism, and the anti-immigration movement. He is currently the chairman of the Australia First Party. He came to prominence after founding National Action, a militant nationalist organization active in Sydney during the 1980s.
The National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) was a minor Australian neo-Nazi party that operated between 1967 and early 1970s. It was formed in 1967 as a more moderate breakaway from the Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP). The NSPA was led by Ted Cawthron.
National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977), arising out of what is sometimes referred to as the Skokie Affair, was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court dealing with freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. This case is considered a "classic" free speech case in constitutional law classes. Related court decisions are captioned Skokie v. NSPA, Collin v. Smith, and Smith v. Collin. The Supreme Court ruled 5–4, per curiam. The Supreme Court's 1977 ruling granted certiorari and reversed and remanded the Illinois Supreme Court's denial to lift the lower court's injunction on the NSPA's march. In other words: the courts decided a person's assertion that speech is being restrained must be reviewed immediately by the judiciary. By requiring the state court to consider the neo-Nazis' appeal without delay, the U.S. Supreme Court decision opened the door to allowing the National Socialist Party of America to march.
The National Socialist Movement is a Neo-Nazi organization based in the United States. Once considered to be the largest and most prominent Neo-Nazi organization in the United States, since the late 2010s its membership and prominence have plummeted. It was a part of the Nationalist Front and it is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet state, especially under Joseph Stalin. After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed. This campaign culminated in the so-called Doctors' plot, in which a group of doctors were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin. Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s.
Ba'athism, also spelled Baathism, is an Arab nationalist ideology which promotes the creation and development of a unified Arab state through the leadership of a vanguard party over a socialist revolutionary government. The ideology is officially based on the theories of the Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Ba'athist leaders of the modern era include the former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, former president of Syria Hafez al-Assad, and his son, the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and White supremacy as they manifest in Australia.
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