Frank Collin

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Frank Joseph Collin (born November 3, 1944) is the former leader of the National Socialist Party of America, whose plan to march in the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois was the centerpiece of a major First Amendment decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie.

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[edit] Life

Frank Collin joined George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party in the 1960s, but broke with the ANP due to a disagreement with Rockwell's successor, Matt Koehl, who had assumed the leadership role by popular vote after Rockwell's August 25, 1967 assassination by a disgruntled member, John Patsalos, who used the name "John Patler" during his tenure in the ANP.

Collin's organization, the National Socialist Party of America, remained relatively obscure until 1977, when it announced plans to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois in retaliation for the City of Chicago banning the NSPA from speaking publicly in Marquette Park. It prompted a landmark legal battle. At the time, Skokie had the largest Jewish population per-capita in the United States, and many residents were Holocaust survivors. It was widely presumed that this is why Skokie was chosen. Ultimately, the NSPA won the right to march, but without their swastika armbands (yet with their Nazi military uniforms). However, the Skokie march was called off when the city of Chicago, at the behest of Skokie's Jewish leaders and residents, decided to allow Collin to speak in the city.

Skokie, a 1981 made-for-television film, dramatized the events. George Dzundza portrayed Frank Collin.

Arguably, the downfall of Frank Collin was the revelation that his father's real surname was either "Cohn" or "Cohen" and had reportedly been a prisoner at the Dachau concentration camp. It meant that Collin was at least half-Jewish by ancestry. It was also discovered that Collin was a pedophile. Both of these revelations led to his falling out of favor with members of the neo-Nazi movement. Collin soon left it altogether. A psychiatrist who interviewed Collin when he was a Nazi concluded that he was consumed by hatred for his father which may have influenced him to reject him in extremis by becoming a Nazi and adopting and publicly espousing antisemitic beliefs.

Eventually, Frank Collin was convicted of the sexually molestation of young boys and sent to prison in 1979 on charges of child molestation.[1] He abandoned National Socialism and began writing under the pseudonym "Frank Joseph". In 1987 his book, The Destruction of Atlantis: Compelling Evidence of the Sudden Fall of the Legendary Civilization was published. Collin is now a self-described neo-pagan and edits The Ancient American, which promotes the theory of diffusion of peoples in and out of the Americas during ancient eons.

The American Nazi Party organization led by Matt Koehl would change into the National Socialist White People's Party, and later the esoteric New Order. Other elements would become the underground organization called The Order. This organization would gain infamy for being involved in the June 18, 1984, assassination of Alan Berg, a liberal radio talk show host in Denver, Colorado.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ “Hate Groups, Racial Tension and Ethnoviolence in an Integrating Chicago Neighborhood 1976-1988,” by Chip Berlet; in Betty A. Dobratz, Lisa K. Walder, and Timothy Buzzell, eds., Research in Political Sociology, Vol.9: The Politics of Social Inequality, 2001, pp. 117–163.

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