Greatest Power On Earth Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Abstract
Of the several neo-Nazi groups Russel Veh organized in the 1960s and 1970s, the National Socialist League was probably the most marginalized. Founded in Los Angeles in 1974, the NSL claimed in the flyer pictured here to be the "first and only Homophile organization for National Socialists!!" In its newsletter, the N.S. Mobilizer (originally the N.S. Kampfruf, or "battle cry") the group espoused the belief "that National Socialism is a unifying creed for all proud, self-aware White men, and this unity must include White sexual noncomformists. . . ."
Compared to the sexually suggestive or explicit images of men adorned with leather and Nazi paraphernalia featured in the NSL’s newsletter, this item is noteworthy for its innocuousness. Apart from the text, its image appears similar to countless other prideful images appearing in the publications of Nazi organizations which proliferated as the most extreme wing of a white supremacist backlash to civil rights activism in the 1960s (see: Vote Right-Vote White-Vote States Rights). In this context, the upright soldier in this flyer can be understood as a visual appeal for acceptance by marginalized people made by still further-marginalized ones that sought in Nazism a way to express their racist outrage.
