Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell (H)

After all these years George Lincoln Rockwell still remains one of the most interesting figures to appear on the white nationalist scene. Son of a famous in his day vaudeville performer, went to an ivy league school, flew missions in ww2 and Korea, married to the daughter of the Icelandic ambassador to the United States, a talented artist and cartoonist, the list goes on and on. Rockwell really is someone who could have been a success at almost anything he chose to in life and is not the typical maladjusted freak that often gravitates toward white nationalism in its various forms. Schmaltz has written a very fair and unbiased account of Rockwell and his "stormtroopers", who were a menage of brawlers, ex-cons and misfits along with some genuinly talented individuals. Rockwell in many ways was like a great pro wrestling heel with his agitation techniques, he inflamed crowds beyond the boiling point to out and out brawling riots many a time, but he also often won over initially hostile crowds using his sense of humor, (Rockwell was a VERY funny guy!) He was also the first public figure in the white nationalist scene to reject and ridicule the right wing, he was the first to draw alliances with black radicals (he had meetings with Malcolm X and was a guest speaker at NOI rallies a few times) so he was and actually still is a man years ahead of his time in many ways. The life of Rockwell is covered in this book from childhood to his assassination at the hands of one of his most dedicated followers in a very fair, unbiased, and fascinating account of the life and times of GLR.

I found this book riveting. Once I started reading, I stayed up all night to finish it. It is very well-written and well-paced and extremely informative. At times I found myself laughing uncontrollably. The book is also remarkably balanced. Lincoln Rockwell was a man of courage and conviction. But one has to count his life and his movement as a failure. Like it or not, Adolf Hitler was a political genius because he fashioned a movement that was deeply in tune with German history and the German soul and rode that movement to power. Swastikas and party uniforms had deep roots in German history. If Hitler had lived in America, that same political genius would have fashioned a movement in tune with American history and the American soul--and rode it all the way to the White House. Swastikas and party uniforms would have had no part in it--particularly after America fought long and bloody war against people with swastikas and party uniforms! Rockwell imitated the letter of Nazism, not the spirit. Therefore he failed miserably as a political leader. Rockwell's Nazism also lacked the grandeur of the real thing. Hitler modelled politics on Wagnerian opera and Roman triumphs; Rockwell modelled it on comic books and Vaudeville acts. (And he did have a great, mean, wicked sense of humor!) One fascinating aspect of this book (like Simonelli's inferior Rockwell biography AMERICAN FUEHRER) is its careful documentation of Jewish power and media control. One particularly telling fact is that when the Nazis initially began to protest the Zionist movie EXODUS, they were greeted by howling mobs pelting them with vegetables, eggs, stones, and bricks. Then the ADL, the AJC, and the Jewish War Veterans drafted their policy of denying Rockwell media attention. At the next showing of EXODUS, there was no bloodthirsty mob. (See page 81.) Schmaltz also points out collusion between the ADL and the FBI. [...] It's enough to make one into a "paranoid" right-wing conspiracy monger!

This is the best of the two books on Rockwell. Schmaltz interviewed all of ANP officers and used their jolting accounts of intra-Party activity throughout the work. He also wove in very detailed accounts of how the FBI attempted to destroy the Party with their COINTELPRO activities. This is a very compelling story and a must read for anyone wanting to understand the modern White Power/Holocaust Denial movements.Check out the bibliography--the author secured interviews will all the players of the racist movement-Matt Koehl (New Order) DeWest Hooker, Ed Fields (Nat. States Rights Party), Emory Burke (NSRP), Colin Jordan (British Nat. Party), the entire officer corp of ANP, childhood friends, all Rockwell's college speeches.Every library should have this book!

This work presents Commander Rockwell as a real person, warts and all. It is the most complete volume I have ever seen about the White Power movement of the 1960s. It is for the most part unbiased and presents most of this thrilling saga without the left wing hand wringing that usually goes along with a work on this subject. My complaints are few: More pictures are needed for a book like this. There is a heavy reliance upon Rockwell's book,"This Time The World" and some of it is not correctly rendered in "Hate". There is not enough emphasis on the last 2 years of Rockwell's life which were probably the most important ones. I can still say that I highly recomend this book to anyone interested in the subject.

I waited until Simonelli's competing book came out before making this review. Schmaltz's book is much better, bigger, more interesting, and, although Schmaltz is no Rockwell fan, more balanced. This is relatively unbiased biography of Rockwell's fearless attempts to gain power, exploits to gain publicity, stormtroopers, lieutenants, management difficulties, assassination, and the methods his enemies used against him.This book takes you inside the American Nazi Party HQ with details on the inside power struggles and the abject poverty in which Rockwell and his followers lived. It also provides many interesting stories of the confrontations of with the police, hostile crowds, and college audiences. Also of interest is the illegal methods the FBI used against Rockwell and the attempts of the Jewish groups to keep the news media from reporting about Rockwell.This fascinating book is one you'll finish. Its only weak spot is that it doesn't tell why Rockwell believed what he did. Schmaltz apparently left that for Rockwell to tell in his own book "White Power," which is still available.