WEBVTT - Death of a Demagogue, Pt. 2 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.480 Col Zone Media. There was still a little bit of 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.600 snow on the ground and Ellsworth, Maine as the sun 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:16.200 began to set. On March seventeenth, nineteen sixty eight, Claudia 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.599 and Frank Smith had been informed by a neighbor that 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.040 a suspicious looking car with out of state plates had 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:25.160 been driving back and forth past their house all weekend, 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:30.120 and by Sunday evening, Frank had had enough. He wanted 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.559 to get a good look at the driver. With Claudia 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.240 at the wheel, the couple began following the mysterious Volkswagen 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.839 that had been shadowing them for two days. Who was 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.440 chasing who? Who loaded his gun first? No one can 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.800 quite agree. By the time the dust had settled, two 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.200 members of the American Nazi Party had spent the better 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:57.040 part of an hour exchanging gunfire. Somehow no one was injured, 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:02.720 but both cars were riddled with bullet holes. After Christopher 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.840 Vidniyevitch was taken into custody, an officer overheard Frank Smith 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:11.720 ask him, what was the reason? I thought we were friends? 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:17.400 But the reason should have been obvious to Frank. Surely 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:19.960 he knew why. A loyal lieutenant of the American Nazi 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.920 Party would take a shot at him. They were both 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:27.920 men on a mission, the same mission. In fact, they 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.679 were both conducting their own investigation into the murder of 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:39.320 George Lincoln Waqua, I'm Molly Conger, and this is where 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:59.160 little Gods, that shootout in Maine took place. More than 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:03.600 six months after George Lincoln Rockwell died. His killer had 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.480 already been convicted of murder. But a closed case file 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:12.120 never stopped at conspiracy theory. You know that. And before 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.880 we can get into why Frank Smith believes John Patler 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.800 didn't do it, we have to get up to the 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:23.320 point in our story where he did. When we left 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.800 off last week, it was nineteen sixty three. John Patler 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.280 had been allowed to rejoin the American Nazi Party after 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.480 failing spectacularly at his brief attempt to lead a splinter group. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.920 Over the protests of most everyone who'd known John Patler, 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:43.480 Rockwell welcomed him home again. I struggled a bit this 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:45.919 week with the question of where to focus this episode. 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.160 It would be easy enough to take a straightforward chronological 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:52.440 journey through the activities of the American Nazi Party in 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.960 the mid nineteen sixties. There are some good stories in 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:59.640 there some wild anecdotes that I'm sure I'll revisit some 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.320 other time through the lens of some other weird little 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.560 guy who was there for them. After all, this show 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:09.960 is just one long story told out of order. Listeners 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:13.120 with long memories might remember I actually talked briefly about 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.040 George Lincoln Rockwall's nineteen sixty five campaign for governor of 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:19.760 Virginia in an episode last fall. It was a story 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:24.160 about the history of Virginia's crossburning laws, so I reserve 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:26.839 the right to come back to nineteen sixty five another day. 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.000 I hate to think I wasted half my week collecting 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:35.280 old newspaper clippings about events I'm skipping over entirely. But 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.560 what I found most interesting in piezing together this timeline 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:44.360 is the question of why why did John Patler murder 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:49.000 George Lincoln Rockwell in August of nineteen sixty seven. Truthfully, 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:54.120 no one knows, But in the absence of that elusive truth, 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:59.120 competing and conflicting narratives arose, and the question becomes what 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:03.000 motivates those Even when you can't sort out what the 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:07.800 truth actually is, trying to discern the motivations behind those 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:12.840 half truths can shed some light on things. So instead 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.080 of telling you about every time a member of the 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:17.920 American Nazi Party got arrested for disorderly conduct at a 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.720 rally that got out of hand, every trip across the 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.920 country to disrupt a civil rights march, every wild stunt 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.600 pulled by a guy in a swastika armband. Instead of 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:32.440 all that, I want to ask you a question. What 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:39.159 is a white person? Who is white? That's easy, right, 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.640 You know what a white person is. It's like what 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.080 the Supreme Court said about pornography. You know when you 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:50.359 see it, But how do you know? Is it the 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.000 color of your skin? Is it the birthplace of your parents? 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:59.039 Is it your hair, your culture, your religion, your politics? 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:05.160 Who is white? Are people of Slavic descent white? Are 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:09.600 fair haired Northern Africans? Can a Jewish person be white? 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:15.880 Can a Communist be white? Italians are Europeans? Surely that 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.880 makes them white. But what about a dark haired, olive 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:25.520 skin Sicilian. I'm no sociologist, I'm not an expert on 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:29.279 the idea of race as a social construct. But for me, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:34.520 the clearest evidence that the boundaries of whiteness are constantly shifting, 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.000 that the definition is a highly politicized moving target that 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.039 whiteness is something that can be given and taken away. 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:45.479 Is the fact that the most racist people on the 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:49.799 planet are usually the ones writing and rewriting that definition. 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.400 In the American South, we had the one drop rule. 0:05:56.160 --> 0:06:00.239 The faintest trace of black ancestry excluded you from whiteness. 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:05.479 But without DNA testing or consistent record keeping, how could 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:09.839 you know who had a black great grandmother. In apartheid 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.080 South Africa, the law required all people to be officially 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.080 registered with the government as black, white, colored, or Indian. 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.200 But how you were classified wasn't up to you. It 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.640 was determined by someone else, not just based on how 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.320 you looked, but how you lived, what language do you 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.599 speak at home, how educated are you, how poor are you? 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.320 And it wasn't uncommon for members of the same family, 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.440 children with the same parents to end up classified differently 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:44.839 by the government. And famously, Germany adopted the Nuremberg Claws 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.200 in nineteen thirty five, codifying a definition of who is 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:53.360 German and who is Jewish. In all three of these 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.080 chapters of history, those who fell outside the legal boundaries 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:03.000 of whiteness were excluded from the benefits of citizenship and 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.880 it isn't just governments who have struggled with classifying who 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:10.360 exactly should be excluded. You'd think that no one would 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.480 be more firm than the Ku Klux Klan when it 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.920 comes to defining whiteness. But the Klan had to hold 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.000 a vote in the mid nineteen seventies to determine whether 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:23.440 white immigrants and Catholics were white enough to don white robes. 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.800 For George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party, the 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:33.640 parameters were set by Hitler himself. Rockwell was America's Hitler, 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.080 or at least he hoped to be. He wasn't just 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:41.840 repeating some of the same ideas Hitler had in Nazi Germany. 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:46.480 He felt he was Hitler's spiritual successor. His Nazi Party 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.760 headquarters were adorned with gigantic swastika banners, and his storm 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:55.440 troopers wore Nazi uniforms. He founded the American Nazi Party 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.680 after weeks of intense, vivid dreams that always ended when 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.800 he walked into a room to find Adolf Hitler sitting 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.600 there waiting for him to arrive. He through a birthday 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.840 celebration for Hitler every year on April twentieth, the first 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:13.360 full issue of the party's newsletter was far from the 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.280 only one to bear a photo of Hitler on the 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:20.840 front cover. He dedicated his nineteen sixty one memoir to Hitler, 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:25.840 and in that memoir, Rockwell is pretty clear what he 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.200 means when he talks about the white race. He's talking 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:35.240 about blonde, blue eyed Aryans, Hitler's Aryan race, people of 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:41.040 Nordic and Germanic heritage. He lists Slavs, Italians, and Greeks 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.640 in the same sentence as Chinese and Japanese immigrants. These 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:49.199 are minority groups. These are races outside his definition of whiteness. 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.960 But in nineteen sixty five, the commander of the American 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.199 Nazi Party was starting to wonder if he was using 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:02.920 the wrong definition of whiteness. Rockwell's political philosophy had always 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.559 relied on the legacy of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:10.720 but the United States in nineteen sixty five didn't exactly 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.520 have the same concentration of Germans as Germany. In nineteen 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:19.400 thirty five, it was becoming painfully clear that without broadening 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:22.880 this definition of whiteness, he would never have enough white 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:25.640 people to do anything with it all, and the movement 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:30.800 would be doomed. Even in predominantly white areas, American born 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:35.559 Protestants of pure Nordic or German blood were usually outnumbered 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.280 by Catholics, first generation white immigrants, and people whose ancestors 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:45.880 came from southern or Eastern Europe. He wasn't abandoning Hitler's 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:50.440 vision exactly. He was just adapting it for an American movement. 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.200 This idea of a broader coalition of whites was on 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.080 Rockwell's mind as early as nineteen sixty five, but the 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.680 evidence of that is own only in his private letters. 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.839 It's not until nineteen sixty six that the perfect opportunity 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:10.520 for rebranding the movement landed right in his lap, and 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:15.040 that's when he invented the phrase white power, or so 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:21.840 the story goes. In June of nineteen sixty six, Stokely Carmichael, 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.840 who was not yet called Kuame Toure, gave a speech 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:29.200 in Greenwood, Mississippi. The words black power had been spoken 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:33.079 before plenty of times. Richard Wright wrote a book in 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.160 nineteen fifty four called Black Power. Grace Lee Boggs founded 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:41.120 the Organization for Black Power in nineteen sixty five. Adam 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.920 Clayton Powell Junior, a congressman representing Harlem, used the phrase 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.760 in a speech earlier in nineteen sixty six, But for 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.640 some reason, when Stokely Carmichael said those words in Mississippi, 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:58.199 they stuck, and black power entered the broader American lexicon. 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.640 Paper archives from that week show a sudden explosion of 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.920 articles and op eds about black power, What is it? 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.160 What does it mean? What do they want? Should we 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:16.480 be afraid? And biographies of George Lincoln Rockwell all credit 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.360 Rockwell with the invention of the phrase white power as 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:24.280 a direct response to Stokely Carmichael. And that's kind of true. 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.320 I guess it is at least as true as it 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.920 would be to say that Stokely Carmichael invented the phrase 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:37.040 black power. He didn't, but he popularized it. But William 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.880 Schmaltz's twenty thirteen biography says that Rockwell coined the term 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:44.320 for the first time while speaking at a rally in Chicago. 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:50.240 So I figured, if the first popular usage of black 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:54.720 power spawned a thousand hand ringing op eds, I bet 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:59.520 the first time someone shouted white power, it probably at 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.760 least an ended up in the newspaper. And it did. 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:10.079 But it wasn't Rockwell who said it. Chicago newspapers on 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.720 the morning of August first, nineteen sixty six ran headlines 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.240 like white mob battles Negro marchers and sixty injured as 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:22.760 angry crowd breaks up rights march, and the articles all 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:27.080 describe a very violent, large white mob attacking a few 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:31.600 hundred black civil rights marchers near Chicago's Marquette Park, and 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.439 the people throwing rocks at the marchers were all screaming 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.320 white power. So far, this all makes sense with what 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.640 I already know about that summer. There were several famously 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.840 violent assaults on civil rights marches in and around Marquette 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.200 Park that summer, and Rockwell did speak at some of 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:55.319 those events. But I double checked my timeline. Rockwell didn't 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.600 speak at Marquette Park until August twenty first, So who's 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:05.080 yelling white power in the park three weeks earlier. A 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.600 definitive answer to that question is probably lost a time, 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:13.559 But I think I found what could be the earliest 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:19.280 recording of someone using the phrase white power movement to 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.400 describe the thing we know it as today. 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:28.080 How mister Carmichael, if I may interrupt, you may see 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:33.360 right here an indication of where mister Rockwell is aligning 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:37.120 you as the antithesis of his movement, a white supremacy 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.120 or I think he a white power movement. I think 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:41.400 here is no question about it. 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.520 That's Chicago area news anchor John J. Madigan on the 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.600 July twenty ninth, nineteen sixty six episode of his political 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:57.120 discussion show at Random. The guests that evening were Stokely 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:02.319 Carmichael and George Lincoln Rockwell. It's not until nearly the 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.440 end of that hour long segment that Rockwell seems to 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.560 have grabbed hold of the phrase, and he makes an 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.280 ominous statement about the violence that would visit Chicago in 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:12.040 the weeks to come. 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.640 But I think we're building up to an inevitable confrontation 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:19.600 between blackfire and whackfire. Am. 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:26.080 I let's this omissions you used. Just two days after 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.400 this segment aired, The phrase white power is suddenly on 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.160 the lips of this white mob setting cars on fire 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:37.120 in south side Chicago. It's what they were screaming as 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.280 they hurled rocks at the nuns who marched with the 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:44.560 demonstrators from the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations the following 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.640 weekend that screaming white mob faced off again with civil 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:51.960 rights marchers, This time Martin Luther King Junior himself was 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:54.320 in town to lead the march, part of a series 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:59.760 of demonstrations that summer centered around housing discrimination. King wouldn't 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.440 live to see the fruits of the slabor but the 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.120 Chicago Freedom Movement is generally credited as the driving force 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.000 behind the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which was 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:10.960 signed into law just a week after his death in 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:16.200 nineteen sixty eight. But on this day, August fifth, nineteen 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.560 sixty six, Martin Luther King Junior was struck in the 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:22.720 face with a rock as he entered Marquette Park, so 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.480 hard that he fell to his knees and the crowd. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:31.120 The crowd was all screaming white power as the rocks 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:36.880 ranged down. King later told reporters quote, I've been in 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:40.440 many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.320 that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.600 mobs as hostile and as hate filled as I'm seeing 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:52.320 in Chicago. And Rockwell was thrilled this was all the 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.800 proof he needed. Limiting himself to Hitler's ideas of racial 0:15:56.840 --> 0:16:01.680 purity was holding him back. It was an aryan superiority. 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.920 It was white power that had united those racist throngs 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:10.080 in Chicago. These people throwing rocks at Martin Luther King 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:15.600 Junior were white, sure, but they weren't Arian. Many of 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.280 them were Polish and Lithuanian, the kinds of white he 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:24.440 hadn't tried to appeal to before. But white power, white 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.600 power brought them together and it could be the way forward. 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.600 Rockwell couldn't make it out to Chicago right away, but 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.520 he got to work. The party's printing press, housed in 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.440 a converted henhouse in rural Spotsovania County, Virginia, ran all 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:46.280 night long, churning out signs that said white Power. As 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.280 soon as Rockwell could scrape together the funds for a 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.440 plane ticket, he flew his most loyal lieutenant out to 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:54.720 Chicago to try to take advantage of this violent momentum. 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.440 John Patler arrived at O'Hare Airport with a suitcase full 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:06.439 of white power posters on August fourteenth. As I was 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.960 poring over the newspaper archives from August of nineteen sixty six, 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.199 the first time I found a name attached to a 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:19.000 chant of white power? Was it that march on August fourteenth. 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.080 It had been chanted by the crowd on July thirty 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.720 first and on August fifth. But in all of those 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:28.879 stories it's not coming from anyone's mouth. In particular, it 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:33.080 doesn't say where it started. So if the newspaper is 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.119 any official record of history, the first man to stand 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.800 in front of a crowd and lead an organized chant 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:45.000 of white power wasn't George Lincoln Rockwell. It was the 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:49.000 man who would shoot Rockwell dead almost exactly a year later. 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.800 It was John Patler standing on a bench in Marquette Park. 0:17:55.800 --> 0:18:01.120 There is another, albeit slightly less cinematic possibility. As thrilling 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:03.920 as it is to put the first public rallying cry 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.879 of Rockwell's most famous slogan into the mouth of his killer, 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.760 I can at least speculate about the identity of the 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.080 nameless member of that crowd who may have started the 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.560 chant the first time. If nothing else, this is an 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.600 opportunity to introduce you more fully to the man who 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:25.280 opened fire on that couple in Maine. In nineteen sixty eight, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.359 the American Nazi Party had an office in Chicago. John 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.719 Patler was living in Virginia, where the party had its 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.840 headquarters and he flew out to Chicago a week after 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.040 Martin Luther King Junior was hit with that rock. But 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.800 that first week in August, there were members of the 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.040 American Nazi Party in the crowd, and they may have 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:51.720 been the ones to get those chants going. The head 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.040 of the Chicago chapter of the American Nazi Party in 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.120 nineteen sixty six was a twenty two year old named 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:01.560 Christopher Vidnyevitch. Now you know, I love to be thorough. 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.760 I love to make a whole timeline of the lives 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.639 of even the most ancillary characters in a story. I 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:12.560 guess I just love wasting my own time. And you know, 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:16.800 I don't believe at face value the biographical details that 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:22.080 I read in Nazi newsletters. But those newsletters make some 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:27.159 extraordinary claims about Vidnyevitch. He says that he joined the 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:31.439 Nazi Party as a teenager because of his burning bone 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:38.000 deep hatred of communists. That's pretty standard, But he says 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:43.080 that he hated communists because they murdered his father, and 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.159 it's a claim he would later repeat on the stand 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.040 under oath when he testified in his own trial for 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:52.119 shooting at Frank Smith in nineteen sixty eight. So I 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:57.920 did a little of my own digging. It might have 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:01.760 been faster in retrospect, who work backwards by assuming that 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.520 he was telling the truth and searching for a man 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.360 with that last name who was executed in Yugoslavia after 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:12.560 the war. But that isn't what I did. The first 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:16.280 thing I found were naturalization records for a thirteen year 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:20.399 old boy named Kristo Vidnievitch, and on the back of 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:22.440 the card it was written that his name was changed 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.960 to Christopher when he gained his citizenship. And from there 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:29.080 I was able to find a new story from nineteen 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:31.720 fifty seven about a thirteen year old boy named Kristo 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:36.080 Vidniyevitch and his seventeen year old sister taking their oath 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:40.560 of citizenship in a courtroom in Chicago. By the time 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:42.840 they were naturalized, they'd been in the United States for 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:47.800 seven years. In nineteen fifty Lydia Vidnyevitch and her two children, 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:50.879 aged ten and six at the time, were listed as 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:52.880 stateless when they arrived at the port of New York 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.240 aboard a ship that had sailed from Germany. So I 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.679 kept digging, and I found a document produced by the 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:06.000 Internet National Refugee organization. In nineteen forty eight, Lydyavidnyevitch's application 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:11.679 for refugee status was denied, and the stated reason is 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.959 quote petitioner is a crow up woman from Zagreb who 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.879 is evacuated by the Germans to Austria in December nineteen 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:21.359 forty four, with a number of other women and children 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:24.880 whose husbands were left behind by reason of their official functions. 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.360 Despite the very good impression which applicant has made upon 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.480 the board, there are reasons to believe that only the 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:35.120 wives of persons who assisted the Germans were taken care 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.600 of by the Wehrmacht. She later filed an appeal and 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.560 was ultimately deemed eligible for refugee status because the family 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:47.600 could not be safely repatriated to Yugoslavia due to threats 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.760 from someone quote moved by a spirit of revenge for 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:58.200 actions of Petitioner's husband. Well, now I'm committed. I need 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.600 to know what the story is here. I'm so far 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:02.680 afield of what I was supposed to be working on, 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.159 and there's really no excuse for a digression this long. 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.480 But I had to know what it was that this 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:12.879 man had done that might move someone's spirit that way, 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.679 So I spent an entire day trying to find and 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:22.359 translate documentation about war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia. In nineteen 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:27.199 forty five, when Lydia Vidnyevitch spoke to a reporter at 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:31.160 her children's naturalization ceremony, she said that she had last 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:33.919 heard from her husband by letter in May of nineteen 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:36.080 forty five, when he was attempting to cross the border 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:40.919 into Austria. She neglected to mention that his letter was 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.280 written shortly after the remnants of the fascist government of 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:48.159 Croatia attempted to flee to Austria and before he was 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:50.360 captured by the British Army and sent back to face 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:57.240 a tribunal. He was executed a month later. Christopher Vidnyevitch's 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:04.080 father wasn't just a Nazi collaborator, he was a war criminal. 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:09.159 Ivan Vitnyevitch was tried alongside several high ranking officials of 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:11.680 the Nazi puppet government that carried out mass murder in 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:16.280 Croatia in the nineteen forties. Lydia told that reporter in 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:18.880 nineteen fifty seven that her husband had been a judge 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.600 in Zagreb, but he was a judge in name only. 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:27.120 He was the presiding judge of Zagreb's mobile Court Martial, 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:32.159 an instrument of the Ustasha Rejim's program of mass murder, 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:37.720 these judges roamed the country carrying out show trials. The 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:41.320 trials lasted mere minutes, and the accused had no chance 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.840 to speak for himself. The defendant was always guilty and 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:49.240 the sentence was almost always death. He would try dozens 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:53.320 of people at once for crimes as minor as reading 0:23:53.400 --> 0:24:00.320 forbidden political pamphlets, or simply for being Serbian or Romani Jewish. 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:06.359 In one afternoon in nineteen forty one, Ivan Vitnyevitch sentenced 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.920 one hundred people to die at the Yasenovats concentration camp. 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:18.160 So yes, I guess Christopher Vidnyevitch isn't technically wrong when 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:22.240 he said Communists killed his father, but it was only 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:25.320 after he stood trial for handing down death sentences for 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:34.760 thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma and political dissidence. A long tangent, 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:38.480 I know, but I think it's worth knowing that one 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:42.560 of the most fervent, violent supporters of Rockwell's Nazi Party, 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:45.840 this young man whipping up crowds that beats civil rights 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:49.680 marchers every weekend all summer in Chicago in nineteen sixty six. 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:56.040 He was a true believer. He wasn't misguided, he wasn't confused. 0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:01.880 He knew exactly what it meant to call yourself a Nazi. 0:25:02.840 --> 0:25:05.520 He knew exactly what he was advocating for and who 0:25:05.520 --> 0:25:09.439 would have to die for him to get it. It 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:14.639 wasn't ironic or edgy or joke when he put on 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:31.760 that swastika armband. He did it to fulfill his father's legacy. 0:25:34.000 --> 0:25:38.000 But we were talking about white power. It's Rockwell who 0:25:38.040 --> 0:25:40.600 gets credit for the term, even if it was a 0:25:40.640 --> 0:25:42.760 TV news anchor who put the words in his head 0:25:42.800 --> 0:25:45.280 and his lieutenants who got those crowds to chant it. 0:25:47.400 --> 0:25:51.760 In August of nineteen sixty six, Nazis raised hell in Chicago. 0:25:52.920 --> 0:25:55.320 After Patler arrived in town on the fourteenth, he and 0:25:55.400 --> 0:25:59.120 Vitnyevitch whipped up an angry mob in Marquette Park. One 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:02.960 police officer called the resulting violence the closest thing he'd 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:07.719 ever seen to an all out war. In his rousing 0:26:07.760 --> 0:26:10.639 speech from the park bench, John Patler announced to the 0:26:10.640 --> 0:26:14.200 crowd that Rockwell himself would be speaking in that very 0:26:14.240 --> 0:26:19.800 spot the next weekend. The August twenty first rally was 0:26:19.800 --> 0:26:25.400 George Lincoln Rockwell's finest hour. He'd never commanded such an audience, 0:26:26.119 --> 0:26:30.600 and he never would again. Sure, he'd spoken to huge 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:35.600 theaters of people, but this was different. Thousands of people 0:26:35.600 --> 0:26:39.000 were there not to gawk at the Nazi, not to protest, 0:26:39.240 --> 0:26:43.560 not to heckel, but because they wanted to hear him speak. 0:26:45.359 --> 0:26:47.960 A few lone hecklers were quickly handled by the crowd, 0:26:48.000 --> 0:26:52.760 but the people who were there were enthralled by him. 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:57.119 This was no college auditorium full of curious skeptics and 0:26:57.200 --> 0:27:02.160 silent protesters. This was a roaring crowd. And standing atop 0:27:02.240 --> 0:27:05.400 his camper with a giant swastika banner draped down the side, 0:27:05.960 --> 0:27:09.119 Rockwell capped off his speech by asking the crowd to 0:27:09.280 --> 0:27:13.399 yell white power, loud enough for Martin Luther King Junior 0:27:13.440 --> 0:27:16.760 to hear them on the other side of town. Over 0:27:17.359 --> 0:27:20.200 and over again, he led them in a call in response, 0:27:20.280 --> 0:27:24.879 yelling white and basking in the response as thousands of 0:27:24.960 --> 0:27:33.040 voices responded power. Years later, when James Mason was writing 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:35.800 the newsletter, they would eventually be collected into the book Siege, 0:27:36.359 --> 0:27:40.080 that bible of the modern neo Nazi terrorist He called 0:27:40.080 --> 0:27:45.199 this the Apex Moment of the nineteen sixties. But the 0:27:45.240 --> 0:27:49.480 magic was short lived. Martin Luther King Junior moved on 0:27:49.520 --> 0:27:52.800 from Chicago to other cities, and it turned out the 0:27:52.880 --> 0:27:58.280 racist white people of Chicago didn't actually like George Lincoln Rockwell. 0:27:59.080 --> 0:28:03.280 They just really hate the civil rights movement. But it 0:28:03.320 --> 0:28:07.399 was proof still for Rockwell that white power was the 0:28:07.400 --> 0:28:11.280