Francis Parker Yockey

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Francis Parker Yockey, (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960), was an American philosopher and polemicist best known for his neo-Spenglerian book Imperium, published under the pen name Ulick Varange [1] in 1948. This 600-page book argues for a race-based, totalitarian path for the preservation of Western culture.[1] While working as a Nuremberg war-crimes prosecutor in the 1940s, Yockey became increasingly sympathetic towards the trials' defendants.[2]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Yockey was born in Chicago, Illinois and had family ties to Michigan. His parents were anglophiles who raised him to appreciate European high culture. Subsequently, Yockey was introduced to classical music through his mother, who studied at the Chicago Musical College. He proved to have a prodigious talent for the piano and developed his repertoire to include Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn.

He flirted with Marxism momentarily in his youth, but later became a devotee of the elitist and anti-materialist Oswald Spengler after reading Spengler's seminal text, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), in 1934. While still a university student in the late 1930s, Yockey had his first political essay published in Social Justice, a periodical distributed under the auspices of Fr. Charles Coughlin, the so-called "radio priest," who at the time was widely known for his sympathetic view of the anti-Bolshevist policies associated with Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain.

Yockey attended at least seven universities, including Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, before graduating cum laude from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1941.

[edit] Later life and works

Over time, Yockey contacted a number of far-right organizations. These included the German-American Bund, the German-American National Alliance, William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts, Sir Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, and James H. Madole's National Renaissance Party. Yockey and George Lincoln Rockwell were alleged to be foes, due primarily to Rockwell's offense at Yockey's anti-Americanism and sympathies with the Soviet Union and other anti-zionist leftist movements. Proponents of universal Nazism, like Colin Jordan, disagreed with Yockey's view on race, and saw Yockeyism as a kind of "New Strasserism".

In early 1946, Yockey began working for the United States War Department as a post-trial review attorney for the Nuremberg Trials in Germany. He soon began agitating against Allied occupation of Germany, as well as what he perceived to be the biased procedures of the Nuremberg tribunal. Eventually, he was fired for "abandonment of position" in November 1946.

Jacket of Imperium
Jacket of Imperium

Without notes, Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium, in Brittas Bay, Ireland over the winter and early spring of 1948. It is a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism and rationalism. It was endorsed by far-right thinkers around the world including German General Otto Remer, Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois, Revilo P. Oliver, and Italian esotericist Julius Evola. Yockey became embittered with Sir Oswald Mosley after the latter refused to publish Imperium upon its completion.

Along with Mosleyites Guy Chesham and John Gannon, Yockey formed the European Liberation Front (ELF) in 1948-49. The ELF issued a newsletter, Frontfighter, and published Yockey's virulent anti-American polemic "The Proclamation of London".

In late 1952, Yockey traveled to Prague and witnessed the Prague Trials. He believed they "foretold a Russian break with Jewry", a view he put forward in his article, What Is Behind The Hanging Of The Eleven Jews In Prague?.

Yockey met Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he called "a great and vigorous man", in Cairo in 1953. He worked briefly for the Egyptian Information Ministry writing anti-Zionist propaganda. Yockey saw the rise of non-aligned states in the Third World, and in particular the Arab Revolt, as significant geopolitical challenges to "the Jewish-American power" [2].

Yockey was found dead with an empty cyanide capsule nearby while in a jail cell in San Francisco under FBI supervision, after having been incarcerated on charges of using false passports.

Maurice Bardèche, a French writer of fascist sympathies, wrote about his meeting with Yockey in his semi-autobiographical novel Suzanne et le taudis. Yockey, called "Ulrich Clarence" in the book, was described by Bardèche as a "lunatic".

[edit] Legacy

The National Youth Alliance was founded in 1968 by Willis Carto with the intent to promote Yockey's political philosophy and his book Imperium. Yockey was a major influence on Carto and Liberty Lobby.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ ADL Research Report 'Poisoning the Airwaves: The Extremist Message of Hate on Shortwave Radio' U.S. Newswire February 1, 1996
  2. ^ Liberty Lobby in the spotlight with Duke, Buchanan in race Chicago Tribune January 12, 1992
  3. ^ Liberty Lobby in the spotlight with Duke, Buchanan in race Chicago Tribune January 12, 1992

[edit] External links

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