| Abstract: | Kaplan takes an in-depth look at the religious and cultic aspects of American national socialism in the post-war era. Beginning with the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, in the late 1950s, he follows the development of occult beliefs and practices in the tiny and fractious American neo-Nazi movement. He emphasizes as well the brief turn to revolutionary violence in the 1970s through an examination of the National Socialist Liberation Front, and, finally, examines the attraction of Charles Manson and his followers to the occult fringes of the national socialist 'movement'. The article is built primarily on fieldwork, in-depth interviews with adherents of occult national socialist beliefs, and primary source materials from the 1960s to the present. |
