Jacques Pluss

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Jacques Pluss was an adjunct professor of history at Fairleigh Dickinson University when he was fired after revelations surfaced that he belonged to a Neo-Nazi organization. The university claimed the sole cause of his firing was excessive absences ^[1]. In a recent essay, Pluss has claimed that his involvement with Neo-Nazi organizations was a research stunt.

Pluss has a Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of Chicago. He was a tenured faculty member at William Paterson University from 1984 to 2000, when he suddenly resigned in mid-semester to co-own a horse farm and teach at Fairleigh Dickinson ^[2]. While teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson, Pluss involved himself with the National Socialist Movement. Pluss appeared on radio broadcasts affiliated with the movement and also made anti-semitic and racist comments to journalists^[3].

Pluss was dismissed in March 2005, after news of his Neo-Nazi activities reached the administration of Fairleigh Dickinson. Reacting to his dismissal in an interview for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Pluss maintained that he never brought Nazi politics into the classroom ^[4], a claim confirmed by many of his students ^[5]. In an interview given to a student newspaper, he maintained that Fairleigh Dickinson was a “heavily Judaized institution” which had chosen “the typical Jewish, lawyerly, Hebrew line” in firing him ^[6]. He further stated that he would retire from academia and devote himself to the cause of the "White Aryan Race Nation" ^[7].

On January 16, 2006 Pluss published Now It Can Be Told: Why I Pretended to Be a Neo-Nazi on the website of the History News Network. He explained his affiliation with the National Socialist Movement by reference to the works of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Ernst Kantorowicz who he claimed stress "the need for the historian to “become” her or his subject in order to develop a relationship with it."

He further explained,

I decided to shift gears and enter the political realm, for the purpose of gathering research to write a book on a political subject in which I could personally partake and which was “fringe” in the most essential aspect of the word. Those literary ruminations brought me to the National Socialist Movement, the most flashy neo-Nazi group I could find. Flashy, to be sure. Completely skewed in political and social outlook, no doubt. So, I downloaded an application form on February 14, 2005, and, after sending a $25.00 check and waiting about a week, my application was heartily accepted.

Accept me? Well, of all things, why not? I was hardly surprised. After all, not many academics holding doctorates applied. In fact, not many individuals with an education over the high school level applied. With me, the NSM performed a true set of kudos. They put me on their broadband radio station immediately. My weekly show, “White Viewpoint,” spewed venom against Jews, Blacks and Hispanics. All I needed to do was to keep harping on the same pedantic nonsense about Jewish world conspiracy, the “Browning” of America,” and the failure of our present leaders in Washington to stem the tide of illegal immigration from south of our national borders. If I could give the party line in an articulate manner, back up my reasoning with reference to actual current events, and quote from historical, examples, all the better!

In turn, the National Socialist Movement claims that Pluss was "placed on leave" from the movement due to erratic psychological behavior [8][9]. Pluss claims that since his defection from the movements, there have been multiple threats on his life [10]. More recently, however, Pluss has noted that true National Socialism cannot exist in America since it must be based on membership by actual Teutonic Aryans, who are not found in the United States. He also asserts his own allegiance to Aryan National Socialism, writes that Jews are not homo sapiens, and that Jews and African Americans should be exterminated. Finally, he explains that his apparent work with anti-hate groups in earlier 2006 took place so that Pluss could practice and experience arts of dissimulation as they were laid down in Third Reich Germany by the SS and the Gestapo. [11]. In late 2006, Pluss maintains, he accepted a paid position as Administrator for the American branch of the "Stille Hilfe" Organization, dedicated to providing legal and financial assistance to Third Reich veterans of the SS and the Reich Police.(http://pluss-stille-hilfe.blogspot.com). Pluss's appointment to this position is endorsed on his blogspot by SS Brigadefuhrer Walter Schellenberg. The problem is that Schellenberg, second in command of the Gestapo, died in Turin in March 1952, shortly after his release from prison.