Playboy Interview: George Lincoln Rockwell

"Genocidal maniac!" "Barnum of the bigots!" These are among the more temperate epithets hurled regularly--along with eggs, paint, pop bottles, rocks and rotten vegetables--at George Lincoln Rockwell, self-appointed Führer of the American Nazi Party and self-styled messiah of white supremacy and intransigent anti-Semitism. Reveling in his carefully cultivated role as a racist bogeyman, he has earned--and openly enjoys--the dubious distinction of being perhaps the most universally detested public figure in America today; even the Ku Klux Klan, which shares his Jew-hating, segregationist convictions, has officially disowned and denounced him.

Until his rise to notoriety, however, like that of the pathological Austrian paper hanger whose nightmare dream of Aryan world conquest he still nurtures, Rockwell would have been first on anyone's list of those least likely to succeed as a racist demagog--or even to become one. The older of two sons born to "Doc" Rockwell, an old-time vaudeville comic, he spent his childhood years being shuttled back and forth between his divorced parents' homes--his mother's place in rural Illinois and his father's summer cottage on the coast of Maine, where he was dandled and indulged by Doc's ever-present house guests (including such showbiz cronies as Fred Allen, Benny Goodman, Groucho Marx and Walter Winchell).

Rockwell entered Brown University in 1938 and quickly became known among the faculty as a practical-joking, insubordinate student of doubtful promise. Though he spent less time studying than drawing cartoons for the campus humor magazine, he managed somehow to get passing grades; and he began to court the coed who was to become his first wife. Dropping out of school at the end of his sophomore year to enlist in the Navy, Rockwell finally got married, in late 1941, after completing his training as a fighter pilot--just in time to get shipped overseas when the War broke out. Stationed in the South Pacific, he was commanding a Navy attack squadron at Pearl Harbor when the War ended. He mustered out in late 1945, returned to Maine and took up belated residence with his wife, eking by as a part-time sign painter and free-lance photographer while he cast about for a permanent profession. Tightening the family's belt still another notch, he finally decided to quit work for study toward a career in commercial art. He moved his family to New York and signed up at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, where his considerable graphic gifts were officially recognized in 1948, when a poster he'd drawn for the American Cancer Society was awarded the annual $1000 prize of the National Society of Illustrators. Then, quixotically turning his back on art, Rockwell returned to Maine a year later to join three friends in opening an ad agency; when it went bankrupt a few months later, he again found himself scuffling for pin money from one odd job to another.

Still an officer in the Navy Reserve, Rockwell was recalled to active duty in 1950 and served throughout the Korean War at the naval base in San Diego, where he befriended a married couple who shared his passionate conviction that General MacArthur ought to run for President in 1952. In the course of their conversations, the woman gave him what turned out to be a fateful handful of right-wing political pamphlets--for among them was a particularly gamy piece of anti-Semitic hate literature, the first he'd ever seen. Though he dismissed it at first as racist trash, he found it morbidly fascinating and read it from cover to cover--and then again; it was beginning to make sense to him. The seed was planted. Nurtured by more of the same--cheerfully supplied by his new-found friends--it began to germinate; and when Rockwell picked up a copy of "Mein Kampf" in a secondhand bookstore and began to read, it took root. "I was hypnotized, transfixed," he said later. "Within a year, I was an all-out Nazi, worshiping the greatest mind in two thousand years: Adolf Hitler."

Leaving his wife and three daughters behind in San Diego when he was transferred to Iceland in 1952 as a bombersquad commander, Rockwell was divorced and remarried--to an Icelander--within a year. When his tour of duty was completed in 1954, he moved to Washington, D. C., and made still another ill-fated effort to become a breadwinner--this time as the publisher of U. S. Lady, a special-market women's magazine aimed at what he felt was an untapped readership of military wives; because of financial pressures, he was forced to sell out after the first few issues. In desperation, after a futile campaign to persuade well-heeled right-wing businessmen to underwrite his burgeoning but undefined political ambitions, he packed his wife and their few belongings into a car-drawn trailer and hit the road as a traveling salesman. No great shakes at this land of work, either, he left more than one town empty-handed and dead broke; but his wife managed somehow to keep food on the table.

Rockwell began to sit up nights mapping grandiose plans for the resurrection of National Socialism, with himself as the reincarnated Führer; and during the day, between house calls, he roamed the country seeking fellow malcontents and proselytizing for fearless, dedicated cohorts to join him in his crusade to purify the land of "Reds and blacks." By the summer of 1958 he had collected enough cash (via mailed donations from secret admirers, mostly in the South) and mustered enough fellow fanatics (11 or 12) to give the group a name--the American Nazi Party--and to begin agitating for attention. They got it: Their first official act was to picket the White House carrying such signs as Save Ike From The Kikes. Brandishing Lugers, clicking their heels and "heiling" each other in brown shirts, boots and swastika arm bands, they swaggered about their new "National Headquarters"--a tumbledown shack in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington.

When an Atlanta synagogue was seriously damaged in a mysterious bombing late that summer, the public unleashed a storm of outrage against the Nazis (though none was ever indicted), and their little shack became a target for bricks and Molotov cocktails, police raids, snipers, abusive mail and telephoned death threats. Seeing the handwriting on the wall--not to mention a widening pattern of bullet holes--Rockwell's long-suffering wife quietly packed her bags and left for Iceland.

Her decision, as even Rockwell later admitted, could hardly have been a wiser one, for that first siege proved to be merely the opening skirmish in a continuing campaign of psychological and guerrilla warfare--punctuated periodically by ugly, often violent confrontations--between Rockwell and the public, the press, the law, the courts, the Government, the Church, the civil rights movement, the John Birch Society, the Anti-Defamation League, the A. D. A., the K. K. K., the FBI, and just about every known racial, religious and political minority group from Berkeley to Baltimore. In almost every contretemps, Rockwell has come out on the short end--winding up usually either in jail for inciting a riot or in the hospital for sticking around to see how it came out.

Often bloodied (once by an outraged viewer in the middle of a television speech), but still unbowed (even by his most recent and humiliating defeat--for the governorship of Virginia), the indomitable Nazi chieftain announced recently that he plans to stage a "back-to-Africa" hate rally this summer at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street in the heart of New York's Harlem. Few think he's crazy enough to go through with it, but even fewer would be willing to swear that he isn't. In the hope of finding out for sure, and of learning how he got that way, we decided to ask the neo-Nazi for an interview. Unlike controversial past interviewees Klan Wizard Robert Shelton and atheist Madalyn Murray, Rockwell could not be called a spokesman for any socially or politically significant minority; indeed, his fanatical following is both motley and minuscule (estimates of Nazi Party membership range from 25 to 100). But we felt that the very virulence of Rockwell's messianic master-racism could transform a really searching conversation with the 48-year-old Führer into a revealing portrait of both rampant racism and the pathology of fascism. The results--obtained for us by interviewer Alex Haley--explosively exceeded our expectations. of the experience, Haley writes:

"I called Rockwell at his Arlington, Virginia, headquarters and relayed Playboy's request for an exclusive interview. After assuring himself that I wasn't Jewish, he guardedly agreed. I didn't tell him I was a Negro. Five days later, as my taxi pulled up in front of Rockwell's 'International Headquarters,' a nine-room white frame house in Arlington (since padlocked by the Internal Revenue Service, which is currently investigating the labyrinth of Nazi financial backing), I noticed a billboard-sized sign on the roof reading: White Man Fight--Smash The Black Revolution! I couldn't help wondering what kind of welcome I'd receive when they got a look at my non-Aryan complexion. I didn't have long to wait; the khaki-clad duty guard at the door stiffened as I stepped out of the cab and up the front stairs. When I identified myself, he ushered me uncertainly inside and told me to wait nearby in what he called 'the shrine room,' a small, black-walled chamber dimly lit by flickering red candles and adorned with American and Nazi flags, adjoining portraits of Adolf Hitler and George Washington, and a slightly larger, rather idealized painting of Rockwell himself--a self-portrait. On the table beside my chair sat a crudely bound and printed copy of Rockwell's self-published autobiography, 'This Time the World'; I was leafing through it when a pair of uniformed 'storm troopers' loomed suddenly in the doorway, gave the Nazi salute and informed me coolly that Commander Rockwell had ordered them to take me in one of the Party staff cars to his nearby personal headquarters.

"Fifteen minutes later, with me and my tape recorder in the back and my two chaperones in the front, the car turned into a narrow, tree-lined road, slowed down as it passed a No Trespassing sign (stamped with a skull and crossbones) and a leashed Doberman watchdog, and finally pulled up in front of a white, 16-room farmhouse emblazoned at floor- and second-story levels with four-foot-high red swastikas. About a dozen Nazis stared icily as the guards walked me past them and up the stairs to Rockwell's door, where a side-armed storm trooper frisked me expertly from head to toe. Within arm's reach, I noticed, was a wooden rack holding short combat lengths of sawed-off iron pipe. Finding me 'clean,' the guard ceremoniously opened the door, stepped inside, saluted, said, 'Sieg heil!' --echoed brusquely from within--then stood aside and nodded permission for me to come ahead. I did.

"As if for dramatic effect, Rockwell was standing across the room, corncob pipe in hand, beneath a portrait of Adolf Hitler. Warned about my Negritude, he registered no surprise nor did he smile, speak or offer to shake hands. Instead, after surveying me up and down for a long moment, he motioned me peremptorily to a seat, then sat down himself in a nearby easy chair and watched silently while I set up my tape machine. Rockwell already had one of his own, I noticed, spinning on a nearby table. Then, with the burly guard standing at attention about halfway between us, he took out a pearl-handled revolver, placed it pointedly on the arm of his chair, sat back and spoke for the first time: 'I'm ready if you are.' Without any further pleasantries, I turned on my machine."

Playboy: Before we begin, Commander, I wonder if you'd mind telling me why you're keeping that pistol there at your elbow, and this armed bodyguard between us.

Rockwell: Just a precaution. You may not be aware of the fact that I have received literally thousands of threats against my life. Most of them are from cranks, but some of them haven't been; there are bullet holes all over the outside of this building. Just last week, two gallon jugs of flaming gasoline were flung against the house right under my window. I keep this gun within reach and a guard beside me during interviews because I've been attacked too many times to take any chances. I haven't yet been jumped by an impostor, but it wasn't long ago that 17 guys claiming to be from a university came here to "interview" me; nothing untoward happened, but we later found out they were armed and planned to tear down the flag, burn the joint and beat me up. Only the fact that we were ready for that kind of rough stuff kept it from happening. We've never yet had to hurt anybody, but only because I think they all know we're ready to fight any time. If you're who you claim to be, you have nothing to fear.

Playboy: I don't.

Rockwell: Good. Just so we both know where we stand. I'd like to make something else crystal clear before we begin. I'm going to be honest and direct with you. You're here in your professional capacity: I'm here in my professional capacity. While here, you'll be treated well--but I see you're a black interviewer. It's nothing personal, but I want you to understand that I don't mix with your kind, and we call your race "niggers."

Playboy: I've been called "nigger" many times, Commander, but this is the first time I'm being paid for it. So you go right ahead. What have you got against us "niggers"?

Rockwell: I've got nothing against you. I just think you people would be happier back in Africa where you came from. When the pilgrims got pushed around in Europe, they didn't have any sit-ins or crawl-ins; they got out and went to a wilderness and built a great civilization.

Playboy: It was built with the help of Negroes.

Rockwell: Help or no, the white people in America simply aren't going to allow you to mix totally with them, whether you like it or not.

Playboy: The purpose of the civil rights movement is equality of rights and opportunity, Commander--not miscegenation, as you seem to be implying.

Rockwell: Equality may be the stated purpose, but race mixing is what it boils down to in practice; and the harder you people push for that, the madder white people are going to get.

Playboy: Do you think you're entitled to speak for white people?

Rockwell: Malcolm X said the same thing I'm saying.

Playboy: He certainly was in no position to speak for white people.

Rockwell: Well, I think I am speaking for the majority of whites when I say that race mixing just isn't going to work. I think, therefore, that we should take the billions of dollars now being wasted on foreign aid to Communist countries which hate us and give that money to our own niggers to build their own civilized nation in Africa.

Playboy: Apart from the fact that Africa is already spoken for territorially by sovereign nations, all but a few of the 20,000,000 Negroes in this country are native-born Americans who have just as much right to remain here as you do, Commander.

Rockwell: That's not my point. When two people prove incompatible in marriage and they can't live together, they separate: and the mass of average niggers simply don't "fit" in modern American society. A leopard doesn't change his spots just because you bring him in from the jungle and try to housebreak him and turn him into a pet. He may learn to sheathe his claws in order to beg a few scraps off the dinner table, and you may teach him to be a beast of burden, but it doesn't pay to forget that he'll always be what he was born: a wild animal.

Playboy: We're talking about human beings, not animals.

Rockwell: We're talking about niggers--and there's no doubt in my mind that they're basically animalistic.

Playboy: In what way?

Rockwell: Spiritually. Our white kids are being perverted, like Pavlov's dogs, by conditioned-reflex training. For instance, every time a white kid is getting a piece of ass, the car radio is blaring nigger bebop. Under such powerful stimuli, it's not long before a kid begins unconsciously to connect these savage sounds with intense pleasure and thus transfers his natural pleasurable reactions in sex to an unnatural love of the chaotic and animalistic nigger music, which destroys a love of order and real beauty among our kids. This is how you niggers corrupt our white kids--without even laying a dirty hand on them. Not that you wouldn't like to.

Playboy: It's sometimes the other way around, Commander.

Rockwell: Well, I'll have to admit one great failing of my own people: The white man is getting too soft. The niggers are forced to do hard manual labor, and as a result, most nigger bucks are healthy animals--rugged and tough, the way nature intended a male to be. When you take a look at how the average, bourgeois white man spends his time, though--hunched over a desk, going to the ballet, riding around on his electric lawn mower or squatting on his fur-lined toilet seat--you can't help but observe how soft and squishy a lot of white men allow themselves to become: especially some of the skinny, pasty-faced white peace creeps with their long hair, their fairy-looking clothes and the big yellow stripe up their spineless back. What normal woman would want one of these cruds? Unfortunately, some of our white women, especially in the crazy leftist environment on our college campuses, get carried away by Jewish propaganda into betraying their own instincts by choosing a healthy black buck instead of one of these skinny, pansified white peace creeps who swarm on our college campuses.

Playboy: Are you implying that the Negro male is sexually superior to the white man?

Rockwell: Certainly not. The average white workingman, the vast majority of white men, are just as tough and ballsy as any nigger who ever lived. It's the white intellectuals who have allowed themselves to be degenerate physically, mentally and especially spiritually, until I am forced to admit that a healthy nigger garbage man is certainly superior physically and sexually to a pasty-faced skinny white peace creep.

Playboy: Do you consider Negroes superior to white men in any other way?

Rockwell: On the contrary--I consider them inferior to the white man in every other way.

Playboy: That's a fairly sweeping generalization. Can you document it?

Rockwell: When I speak at colleges, they often ask me the same question. I always answer with a question of my own: How do colleges determine the superior and inferior students? By performance, that's how! Look at history; investigate the different races. The Chinese perform: they've created a great civilization. And the white races certainly perform. But the nigger race, until very recently, has done absolutely nothing.

Playboy: How recently?

Rockwell: The past 20 or 30 years.

Playboy: What about the contribution of those millions of African Negroes and their descendants--along with that of migrants of every color from all over the world--who helped found and build this country?

Rockwell: I don't dismiss it, but the fact is that any contribution of the niggers has been almost entirely manual and menial. Horses could have done most of it. or well-trained monkeys from the same trees they were flushed out of back in Africa. They've picked up a few more tricks since then--but only what they've learned from the white man.

Playboy: Recent archaeological findings have documented the existence of advanced black African civilizations centuries before the dawn of comparable cultures in Europe.

Rockwell: If they were so far ahead of us then, why are they still shooting blow darts at each other while we're launching rockets to the moon?

Playboy: The American space program isn't a segregated project, Commander. There are many Negroes working for NASA and in the space industry.

Rockwell: This only proves my point. A few niggers, like trained chimpanzees, have been pushed and jammed into such things as the space program by our race-mixing Presidents and the Federal Government; but niggers didn't originate any of the ideas or develop the fantastic organizations capable of putting men into space. The niggers in NASA are like chimpanzees who have learned to ride bicycles. A few trained monkeys riding bicycles doesn't prove that chimpanzees could invent or build or even think about a bicycle. The fact is that the average nigger is not as intelligent as the average white man.

Playboy: There's no genetic or anthropological evidence to substantiate that.

Rockwell: I know you're going to say you can show me thousands of intelligent niggers and stupid white men. I'm well aware that there are exceptions on both sides. All I'm saying is that the average of your people is below the average of my people; and the pure-black ones are even further below us. I have living evidence of this sitting right in front of me.

Playboy: If you mean me, I'm far from pure black--as you can see.

Rockwell: That's just it: You're an intelligent person; I enjoy talking to you. But, you're not pure black like your ancestors in the Congo. Now, this may insult you, but we're not here to throw pansies at each other: There had to be some white people in your background somewhere, or you wouldn't be brown instead of black. Right?

Playboy: Right.

Rockwell: Well, I'm saying that your intelligence comes from the blood of my people. Whenever they trot out some smart nigger and say, "See? Look how brilliant niggers are," what they usually show you is a part-white man with some nigger blood in him. This doesn't prove that niggers are great. On the contrary; it proves that white blood can make a part-nigger more intelligent.

Playboy: That's not proof, Commander. Can you offer any authoritative documentation to support your view?

Rockwell: A psychologist named G. O. Ferguson made a definitive study of the connection between the amount of white blood and intelligence in niggers. He tested all the nigger school children in Virginia and proved that the pure-black niggers did only about 70 percent as well as the white children. Niggers with one white grandparent did about 75 percent as well as the white children. Niggers with two white grandparents did still better, and niggers with three white grandparents did almost as well as the white kids. Since all of these nigger children shared exactly the same environment as niggers, it's impossible to claim that environment produced these tremendous changes in performance.

[Ferguson's study, conducted in 1916, we later learned, has since been discredited by every major authority on genetics and anthropology: they call it a pseudoscientific rationale for racism, based on an inadequate and unrepresentative sampling, predicated on erroneous assumptions, and statistically loaded to prove its point.--Ed.]

Playboy: In his book A Profile of the Negro American, the world-famed sociologist T. F. Pettigrew states flatly that the degree of white ancestry does not relate in any way to Negro I. Q. scores. According to Pettigrew, the brightest Negro yet reported--with a tested I. Q. of 200--had no traceable Caucasian heritage whatever.

Rockwell: The fact that you can show me one very black individual who is superior to me doesn't convince me that the average nigger is superior. The startling fact I see is that the lighter they are, the smarter they are, and the blacker they are, the dumber they are.

Playboy: That's an opinion, Commander, not a fact. Can you back it up with any concrete evidence?

Rockwell: The evidence of lifelong experience. I've never met a black nigger--I mean a real black one, so black he looks purple--that can talk, and think as, say, you can. When I do, then maybe I'll change my opinion. All the really black niggers are either what you call Uncle Toms, or they're revolutionists, or they just want to loaf, loot and rape.

Playboy: Most sociologists would agree that the vast majority of Negroes--dark-skinned or otherwise--don't fit into any of those categories.

Rockwell: Like I said, there are always exceptions--but everybody knows that they prove the rule. Evolution shows that in the long run, if the superior mixes with the inferior, the product is halfway between, and inferior to what you started with in the original superior group--in other words, mongrelized.

Playboy: The words superior and inferior have no meaning to geneticists, Commander--and neither does mongrelization. Every authority in the field has attested that the world's racial groups are genetically indistinguishable from one another. All men, in other words--including hybrids--are created equal.

Rockwell: You're bringing tears to myeyes. Don't you know that all this equality garbage was started by a Jew anthropologist named Franz Boas from Columbia University? Boas was followed by another Jew from Columbia named Gene Weltfish. And our present Jew expert preaching equality is another Jew named Ashley Montagu. Any anthropologist who dares to preach the facts known by any farmer in the barnyard--that breeds differ in quality--is simply not allowed to survive in the universities or in publishing, because he can't earn a living. You never hear from that side. But Carleton Putnam has written a wonderful book called Race and Reason, showing that there is plenty of scholarly evidence to back up my contention that the nigger race is inherently inferior to the white race intellectually. [Putnam, a former president of Delta Airlines, has no academic credentials in sociology, anthropology or genetics. Explaining its "Not Recommended" classification for his book--fully titled Race and Reason: A Yankee View--Book Review Digest writes: "At no time does the author show himself qualified to speak as a scientist."--Ed.] This equality garbage is straight Soviet, Lysenkian biology--direct from the Communist Lysenko, who preached that by changing the environment you could grow one plant from another plant's seeds. This is the doctrine that's destroying our society--because it's not true. You can't grow wheat from corn by changing the environment.

Playboy: You can't grow wheat from corn by changing anything. In any case, we're discussing human beings, not foodstuffs.

Rockwell: I don't feel like quibbling. What I'm saying is that I believe the Jews have consciously perverted the study of anthropology and biology and human genetics in order to reach this phony conclusion--and thus destroy the great white race.

Playboy: What phony conclusion?

Rockwell: The totally erroneous notion that heredity has nothing to do with why, for example, the niggers have lower scholastic averages and higher illegitimacy rates than whites.

Playboy: According to geneticists, it doesn't. In any case, how would acceptance of this notion lead to the destruction of the white race?

Rockwell: By deluding people into believing that the nigger is only "underprivileged" rather than inherently inferior: into believing, therefore, that he can be cleaned up and smartened up by letting him eat in our restaurants, study in our schools, move into our neighborhoods. The next inevitable step is to take him into our beds--and this would lead to the mongrelization, and hence the destruction, of the white race.

Playboy: You said that the Jews are behind this plot. Since they're whites themselves, how would they benefit from their own destruction?

Rockwell: They won't be mingling like the rest of us. They believe they're too pure to mix; they think they're "the chosen people"--chosen to rule the world. But the only world they could rule would be a world of inferior beings. And as long as the white man is pure, they cannot succeed. But when the white man permits himself to be mixed with black men, then the Jews can master him.

Playboy: How?

Rockwell: They already run the niggers. Except for the Black Muslims, the Jews run practically all the big civil rights organizations.

Playboy: You're misinformed, Commander. The key posts in all but one of the major civil rights groups--the NAACP--are held entirely by Negroes.

Rockwell: They're just the front men. The Jews operate behind the scenes, pulling the strings and holding the moneybags.

Playboy: The Jews who belong and contribute to these groups serve strictly in an advisory capacity.

Rockwell:You're misinformed. As I started to say, Jews want to run the white people just the way they run the niggers. Once they get the white people mixed with the black people, the white people will be just as easy to run as the niggers.

Playboy: Why?

Rockwell: Because when you mix superior and inferior, like I told you, the product is inferior--halfway between the two. The Jews would be able to outwit and outmaneuver and thus manipulate the mongrelized white man just the way he already does the niggers. That's what the whole so-called civil rights movement is all about; and they're just liable to get away with it if the good white Christians of this country don't wake up and get together before it's too late to restore the natural order of things.

Playboy: And what's that?

Rockwell: Separation. In nature, all things of a similar being tend to group together. Chimpanzees do not run with baboons; they run with chimpanzees. This is the natural order of people, too. Even in thoroughly integrated colleges, when I visit them, I notice that niggers usually sit and eat at tables with other niggers--even though they don't have to. And the white people sit with other white people. I think this is the natural tendency, and to attempt to pervert this is to fight nature.

Playboy: You fail to make an important moral and constitutional distinction between choosing to associate with one's own race and being forced to do so. Left to themselves, some people will mingle and some won't: and most Americans think this is just the way it ought to be.

Rockwell: That's all very noble-sounding: it brings a lump to my throat. But what does it boil down to in practice? Every time your people move into my neighborhood, the white people move out: and often there's violence--by peaceful, decent white men who never before committed any, but are outraged at the black invasion.

Playboy: That's an exaggeration, Commander. The record shows that fewer and fewer white people are moving out when Negroes move into white neighborhoods; and the fact is that violence very seldom occurs because of Negro "block-busting." In most instances, after an initial period of strain, the newcomers are being quietly accepted.

Rockwell: I don't know what neighborhoods you've been hanging around in, but my own experience has been that violence and animosity are the rule rather than the exception. And that goes double when one of my guys moves into a place like Watts. Your people don't just riot; they try to kill him. This is natural. Their instincts are coming out, and they always will. And any effort to override these instincts, or deny they exist, will inevitably be unsuccessful. Nature will prevail.

Playboy: Negro hostility toward Nazis could hardly be offered as proof that integration is unnatural. Nor is anti-Nazi violence confined to Negroes.

Rockwell: You're right--the Jews are even better at it.

Playboy: You've been quoted as saying that the Watts, Harlem and Rochester riots, among others, were actually instigated by Jews. Do you have any evidence to substantiate that charge?

Rockwell: I didn't say they started them: I said they engineered them. First of all, they tell the niggers. "You people don't have to obey the laws you don't like"--just like Martin Luther Coon preaches. If a cop arrests a nigger, it's "police brutality." And he's told he should fight back. Whenever a policeman tries to do his duty, the Jew-oriented niggers have been told to try and take the prisoner away from this brutal cop The Jews turn him into a psychological bomb--so that when a cop comes along and does his duty it's just like touching a match to a fuse. Boom--up it goes! Like it did in Watts. Like they do in Harlem.

Playboy: In both the Watts and Harlem riots, the bulk of the property damage was suffered by Jewish-owned stores and businesses. Why would the Jews foment violence that's bound to result in the destruction of their own property?

Rockwell: It just happens that most of the businessmen making money off the niggers in the ghettos are Jews. The big Jews in charge are willing to sacrifice the little Jews just as a general sacrifices some troops to win a war.

Playboy: But what could any Jews possibly win by engineering riots?

Rockwell: They're just natural-born agitators. They just can't help coming in and getting everybody all stirred up--and they're always the ones to suffer for it. Every time! But they just can't quit. It's irrational as hell. With all their liberalism and their preaching about equal rights for niggers, they've promoted disorder and chaos that's eventually going to bury them. The liquor dealers are getting it now. Last summer, all those kike store owners in Watts kept screaming, "Oy! Stop! Listen! We're your friends!"--while the coons beat their brains out. And that's just the beginning, just a sample of things to come. This summer I predict that racial violence even more terrible than Watts will erupt--all because of these two troublemaking inferior races.

Playboy: In judging Negroes "inferior" to whites, you said a while ago that you made this appraisal on the basis of "performance." Do you find Jews inferior for the same reason?

Rockwell: I've never accused the Jews of being incapable of performing. As a matter of fact, I think there's a good chance they're superior to everybody else in terms of actual mental capabilities. I think the average Jew is probably sharper intellectually than the average gentile, because for years and years he's had to live by his wits. Consequently, there has evolved a race of Jews who are more agile mentally than the rest of us.

Playboy: In what way do you consider Jews inferior, then?

Rockwell: Spiritually. I believe that a human being, in order to be a successful person, in addition to performing--inventing a rocket or something--has got to have something he believes in, something more than his own survival, something that's a little bigger than himself. The Jews don't. They've even got a rabbi now who admits he's an atheist--Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Birmingham, Michigan.

Playboy: Perhaps you didn't know that the current Church movement toward disbelief in God originated among the Protestant clergy. In any case. Rabbi Wine's convictions are a minority voice and could not in any way be said to represent those of the Jewish faith in general. Most Jews continue to believe in God, as set down in the Torah.

Rockwell: Jews talk a lot about God. But actually their god, just like Marx said, is money. Cash! This is where the Jews fail--in their lack of idealism. Most of them are strictly materialists at heart. Wherever the Jews have gone, they've moved into a friendly, unsuspecting country and promptly started to glut on its people and resources. They think they're engaging in business, but actually what they're doing is eating the country up alive. And when people begin to resent their viciousness and greed, and either kick the Jews out or kill them, they always scream "Persecution!" That's not persecution. It's self-defense.

Playboy: Are you implying that Hitler was justified in exterminating 6,000,000 European Jews?

Rockwell: I don't believe for one minute that any 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated by Hitler. It never happened. You want me to prove it to you?

Playboy: Go ahead.

Rockwell: We have the figures for the number of Jews in the world in 1939, before World War Two: 15,688,259: and the figures for the number living after World War Two: 18,000,000. Now, if you take the number of Jews for after World War Two--and add the 6,000,000 you say were gassed, you get a total of 24,000,000--which means that there would have to have been a 50-percent increase in the Jewish population during a period of about five years. Even people as good at sex as the Jews couldn't possibly reproduce that fast. So you see, the Jews' own figures convict them as liars!

Playboy: What's your source for these statistics?

Rockwell: The pre-War figures came from the 1947 World Almanac, page 219: and the post-War figures from The New York Times, February 22, 1948, in an article by Hanson Baldwin.

[Subsequent investigation revealed that the World Almanac figure of 15,688,259 is correct as claimed. The post-War figures cited by Hanson Baldwin in The New York Times were in the following context: "In these countries (Palestine and Egypt), the Jews are tied by bonds of religion to the rest of the 15 to 18 million Jews of the world." According to every official source, however. Baldwin's estimates are in error. The figures compiled by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. D C., show that the world's Jewish population declined from 16,600,000 to 11,400,000 between 1939 and 1945--while European Jewry decreased 6,000.000 during that same period, from 9,700,000 to 3,700,000.--Ed.] Playboy: Population figures aside, do you deny the validity of documentary photographic evidence showing the gas chambers themselves, and the thousands of bodies piled up in concentration-camp trenches?

Rockwell: I emphatically deny that there is any valid proof that innocent Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis. The photographs you've seen that have been passed off as pictures of dead Jews have been identified as pictures of the corpses of German civilians--mostly women and children and refugees--who were killed in the one-night Allied bombing of Dresden, which slaughtered 350,000 innocent people.

Playboy: By whom have these pictures been so identified?

Rockwell: By Matt Koehl, my research chief, who says that you can recognize the buildings in the background of these so-called Nazi atrocity photographs as buildings in Dresden.

Playboy: We don't accept the findings of your research chief as authoritative.

Rockwell: I have conclusive evidence to prove that some of these "documentary" photographs are frauds, pure and simple. In a magazine published by the Jews and sold all over America, they show a bottle supposedly containing soap made by the Germans out of the poor, dead, gassed Jews.

Playboy: What evidence do you have for claiming that it's fraudulent?

Rockwell: Common sense. That soap could have been made out of anything: it could have been melted down from a dozen bars of Lifebuoy. But here's my ultimate proof of just how utterly ridiculous all the anti-Nazi literature you've read really is: an article in Sir magazine. March 1958, on how the Nazis gassed and burned and murdered everybody. It's by "a former corporal of the SS" as told to an American Army master sergeant who signs himself "Lew Cor." Well, "Lew Cor" is simply Rockwell spelled backward. I wrote it myself--as a test. I wrote the vilest lies I could think of! And here they all are in print in this magazine. Look at the photographs! These are supposed to be actual shots of Nazi victims mentioned in the article--victims that I invented!

Playboy: Your own willingness to lie about Nazi atrocities doesn't prove that the Jews have done the same thing, Commander. Do you also dismiss the testimony of hundreds of prison-camp survivors who have given eyewitness testimony about Nazi atrocities?

Rockwell: I have an affidavit from a Jewish doctor, a prisoner at Auschwitz, who says there were no gas chambers.

Playboy: Do you have that affidavit?

Rockwell: I'll send you a photostat. [It has not arrived.--Ed.] I believe the gas chambers in these concentration camps were built after the War--by Jewish Army officers. We know this for sure: It was mostly Jewish Army officers who went in there to liberate these camps. And it was mostly Jewish Army CIC officers who were in charge of the Nuremberg trials. It was they who tortured innocent Nazis, using any kind of vile method they could to cook up phony evidence.

Playboy: Can you prove these charges?

Rockwell: I know of several cases where American personnel resigned in disgust at the methods used.

Playboy: That doesn't prove that torture was used to extract false testimony. In any case, you still haven't said whether you dismiss eyewitness testimony of Nazi atrocities.

Rockwell: Certainly I do. I've lost count of the times I've been in court, after being assaulted and beaten by gangs of Jews, and seen these same Jews get up on the witness stand, with tears pouring down their faces, and tell how I attacked them! The Jews are the world's master liars! They are geniuses at it. Why, when a kike is up on a witness stand, he doesn't even need onions to start the tears pouring.

Playboy: It's said that you keep a model gas chamber here at your headquarters. Is that true?

Rockwell: No, but we have an electric chair at Sing Sing that's already done a great deed for America in frying the Rosenbergs; and there are hundreds of thousands more Rosenbergs running around America who need frying--or gassing.

Playboy: By "more Rosenbergs," do you mean more Jews or more Communist spies?

Rockwell: More Communist Jews. They're practically the same thing.

Playboy: Are you saying that many Jews are Communists, or that many Communists are Jewish?

Rockwell: I use the term "Communist Jews" in exactly the same sense that I would say "Italian gangsters." Most Italians are not gangsters, but everybody knows that the Mafia is mostly Italians. Well, my experience is that communism is as Jewish as the Mafia is Italian. It's a fact that almost all of the convicted spies for communism have been atheist Jews like the Rosenbergs. And international communism was invented by the Jew Karl Marx and has since been led mostly by Jews--like Trotsky.

Playboy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Mao Tse-tung, among many others, certainly aren't Jews.

Rockwell: The Jews operate nowadays mostly as spies and agitators for the Reds. Mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't vast numbers of Jews who despise communism.

Playboy: Yet you say there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish Communists in America?

Rockwell: Perhaps more.

Playboy: What evidence do you have to back up that figure?

Rockwell: Plain statistics. Fourteen of the 16 Americans convicted in U. S. courts of treason as Communist spies have been racial Jews and one of them was a nigger. of the 21 Communist leaders convicted in Judge Medina's court, 19 were racial Jews. of the so-called "second-string Politburo" Communist leaders rounded up, more than 90 percent were racial Jews.

Playboy: The total number of convicted spies who you say are Jewish comes to 33. That's far from hundreds of thousands.

Rockwell: There's also evidence in black and white. Even in their own publications, the Jews do not hide from the Jewishness of communism. It's there for anybody to see. For instance, the largest-circulation Communist newspaper in America is not The Worker, but a paper published in Yiddish called The Morning Freiheit. Any American can get a copy of this Jewish Communist newspaper and read, in the English portions, the open Communist treason they're preaching.

Playboy: The views of The Morning Freiheit certainly can't be said to reflect those of most American Jews, Commander. Can you give a specific example of a pro-Marxist statement by any recognized spokesman for American Jewry?

Rockwell: Just one? That's easy. Let's take a statement made by Rabbi Stephen Wise; he's one of the leading spokesmen for American Jewry.

Playboy: He died in 1949.

Rockwell: Well, before he died, he wrote, "Some call it communism: I call it Judaism." That's a direct quote. I'd say that's putting it pretty unequivocally, wouldn't you?

Playboy: Can you produce proof of that statement?

Rockwell: Certainly. I'll send it to you. [The proof has not arrived, nor was Commander Rockwell able to tell us the name of the publication in which the alleged statement appeared. An official at Manhattan's Hebrew Union College, where Rabbi Wise's entire works are kept in archive, later said that no such statement appears anywhere in the late rabbi's writings. Rabbi Edward Kline, Wise's successor at New York's Free Synagogue, told us further that no such quote appears in any of Wise's speeches; nor could he, as a lifelong foe of communism, said Kline, have been capable of making such a remark. Confronted with this evidence, Rockwell later retracted the allegation.--Ed.]

Playboy: Do you have any tangible evidence to substantiate your charges?

Rockwell: Would you accept evidence based on a statistical sampling?

Playboy: Let's hear it.

Rockwell: Out of the number of Jews that I have known personally, a tremendous proportion--at least 50 percent, maybe as high as 85 or 90 percent--have been pro-Red; either card-carrying Communists or accessories before or after the fact, either openly and knowingly aiding and abetting communism and promoting the Communist overthrow of this Government, or assisting the Communist enemies who are killing Americans, or consciously suppressing legal evidence which would tend to convict such traitors.

Playboy: Your own conjectures about the political sympathies of Jews you've known personally. Commander, could hardly be accepted as evidence to support your allegations about them, let alone the "hundreds of thousands" you say are pro-Red. In any case, you say they "need frying--or gassing." On what grounds?

Rockwell: Treason. Everybody--not just Jews--with suspicious records of pro-communism, or treasonable Zionism, or any subversive attack on this country or its people, should be investigated and arrested and the evidence placed before a grand jury. If they're indicted, they should be tried for treason, and if they're convicted, they should be killed.

Playboy: How?

Rockwell: Well, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of Jewish traitors to execute, don't forget. I don't see how you can strap that many people in electric chairs and get the job done before they all die of old age; so it seems to me that mass gas chambers are going to be the only solution for the Communist traitor problem in America.

Playboy: Your suggestion of gas chambers as a "solution for the Communist traitor problem" is reminiscent of the "final solution for the Jewish problem" instituted by the Nazis in Germany. Are you planning to lead another anti-Semitic crusade along the lines laid down by Hitler?

Rockwell: The crusade I plan to lead will be much broader in scope than that. In Germany, Hitler produced a local "lab experiment": he provided me with an ideology in the same way that Marx provided one for Lenin. My task is to turn this ideology into a world movement. And I'll never be able to accomplish that by preaching pure Aryanism as Hitler did--by glorifying the Nordic-Germanic people as a "master race." There is an easily identifiable master race, however: the white race. You can find it all over the world. This is what I'm fighting for--not Aryanism, but white Christian solidarity. In the long run, I intend to win over the people of Greece, of Germany, of Italy, of England, of Canada, of France, of Spain, of Latin America, of Rhodesia, of South Africa--the people of every white Christian country in the world. All the white Christian countries of the earth I would try to mold into one racial, religious, political and military entity. I want them eventually to have hegemony.

Playboy: Over the nonwhite, non-Christian nations?

Rockwell: Over the Afro-Asian bloc, which is to me the ultimate danger the earth faces. Worse than the bomb! These people have something both communism and democracy have lost. They're fanatics! They're full of this wild-eyed belief and vitality that the white man has gradually been losing. If they ever unite, there will be almost a billion of them against the white man--a ratio of seven to one. They're breeding so fast that the odds could easily be ten or fifteen to one before too long. When these billions of primitive colored people are able to control an atom or an H-bomb, as Red China may soon be able to do, we could wipe out a hundred million of them, and there would still be plenty more who kept coming. The white race couldn't take that kind of a bloodletting for long. We'd be wiped out! The huge masses of semi-animal colored people would simply sweep over us, and there'd be nothing we could do about it. It would be the ultimate victory of quantity over quality--unless the white people unite first. We're in real trouble if they get together first. But make no mistake: There's going to be a battle of Armageddon, and it's going to be not between communism and democracy, but between the colored millions of the world and the small but elite corps of white men; ideological, economic and philosophical issues will play little or no part in it. When the time comes--and it's later than we think--I plan to be ready not only to defend myself, but to lead the millions of whites all over the world who today are foolishly pretending they don't know what's going on.

Playboy: Estimates of your nationwide membership range from 25 to 100. Do you propose to lead the white Christian nations with this handful of followers?

Rockwell: In the first place, we're a world movement, just as communism is a world movement rather than a local or a national organization. We've launched a world union of National Socialists, of which I am the international commander. In the second place, you've got those figures wrong. In this country alone, we've got about 500 storm troopers--that's men ready for street action--plus about 1500 Party members. Also about 15,000 correspondents--people sympathetic to our cause who write in and donate. And our membership abroad numbers in the thousands.

Playboy: Where abroad?

Rockwell: Let me name you countries. Argentina: Horst Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann's son, is our leader there: he's either in jail or disappeared, but our movement is growing there. In Australia, our movement is temporarily busted up, but my leader--an American--is running around under cover, trying to get his group back together again. In Spain, we've got a pretty good undercover movement, but Franco doesn't appreciate it, so we have to stay under cover. In England, Colin Jordan is operating wide open--and doing very well. In France, we've got a damned good group: they were all arrested just a while back. In Belgium, I've got an ex-SS paratrooper in charge, and he's doing very well. In Sweden, we've got a tremendous group: they were all just arrested. In Austria--our guy is in jail, so things are pretty well broken up there. In Canada, John Beattie is leading a tremendous and successful movement. Our leader in Chile is in jail. In Germany, we've gone under cover: our leader is going to jail shortly. In Holland, we're doing fine. In Ireland, they're coming along fast. In Italy, we've got a real tremendous movement. In Japan, one of our guys stabbed the Socialist deputy. Remember? New Zealand is coming along fine. But Norway isn't doing too good. We've a fine group in South Africa now, though, and we've got a group in Rhodesia now, too.

So you see, we've got groups all over the world. They're still little. But after all, it's only been 20 years since Hitler died. Twenty years after Christ was crucified, there were almost no Christians. Right now, the followers of the swastika are in the catacombs, like the original followers of the cross were then. I can't say we're a Christian movement in the ordinary sense: in fact, I personally am an agnostic. But I deeply believe that there is a power greater than ours that's helping us in our fight to keep the world natural and racially pure--as opposed to perverted and mongrelized. We've got an ideology, a dedication, a belief, a vitality to match the zealotry of the fanatical Asian-African bloc. That's why we're going to grow: that's why--eventually--we're going to prevail.

Playboy: Can you tell us just how you plan to go about fulfilling this destiny--with or without divine intervention?

Rockwell: I have a four-phase plan. The first phase is to reach the masses: you can do nothing until you've reached the masses. In order to reach them--without money, without status, without a public platform--you have to be come a dramatic figure. Now in order to achieve that. I've had to take a lot of garbage: being called a nut and a monster and everything else. But by hanging up the swastika, I reach the masses. The second phase is to disabuse them of the false picture they have gotten of me, to educate them about what my real program is. The third phase will be to organize the people I've educated into a political entity. And the fourth phase will be to use that political entity as a machine to win political power.

That's the plan. They all overlap, of course. Right now we're about 50 percent involved in phase two; we're actually beginning to educate people--in interviews like this one, in speaking engagements at colleges and the like. The other 50 percent is still phase one--just raising hell to keep people aware that there's such a thing as the American Nazi Party, not caring what they call us, as long as they call us something.

Playboy: What kind of hell-raising?

Rockwell: Well, I haven't done it yet, but one of my ambitions is to rent me a plane and skywrite a big smoke swastika over New York City--on Hitler's birthday. That sort of thing. Or I might get one plane to do the Star of David, and I'll come in another plane and squat and do brown smoke all over it--on Ben Gurion's birthday, I've checked Federal regulations, and they couldn't do a thing about it. All I need is the money to do it. But that's in the future. One of the biggest things we've already done to propagandize ourselves is our "Coon-and Lines Boat Tickets to Africa." It's our most popular mail-order item: white high school students order them by the thousands. Would you like me to read you what a ticket entitles one nigger to?

Playboy: Go ahead.

Rockwell: Six things. One: a free trip to Africa on a Cadillac-shaped luxury liner. Two: choice cuts of all the bananas and missionaries desired en route, and a free jar of meat tenderizer. NAACP members may sit up front and twist to Martin Luther Coon's jazz band. Three: a barrel of hair-grease axle grease delicately scented with nigger sweat. Four: a framed picture of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Golden. Five: an unguarded chicken coop and watermelon patch on deck, plus fish and chips for breakfast. And six: plenty of wine, marijuana, heroin and other refreshments. And six: On the reverse side, we offer white liberal peace creeps a year's supply of "Instant Nigger." It's described as "Easy-mixing powder! Just sprinkle this dingy black dust on any sidewalk! Just make water on it, and presto! Hundreds of niggers spring up--little niggers, big niggers, fat niggers, skinny niggers, light niggers, midnight-black niggers, red niggers, even Jew niggers." It reads here, "Why wait? With this Instant Nigger Powder, any nigger-loving beatnik peace creep can have all the niggers he can stand!" Want one? Compliments of the house.

Playboy: Is mail-order hate literature your main source of income?

Rockwell: That, plus initiation fees from new members; plus small donations from those who believe in what we're trying to do; plus the proceeds from special events like one of our "hate-nannies."

Playboy: What are they?

Rockwell: Big musical jamborees. We hold them on patriotic holidays.

Playboy: Would you give an example of a hate-nanny lyric?

Rockwell: Sure. Remember, you asked for it: "Ring that bell, shout for joy / White man's day is here / Gather all those equals up / Herd them on the pier / America for whites / Africa for blacks / Send those apes back to the trees / Ship those niggers back / Twenty million ugly coons are ready on their pier / America for whites / Africa for blacks / Ring that bell, shout for joy / The white man's day is here / Hand that chimp his ugly stick / Hand that buck his spear . . ." That's just the first part of that song. Do you want to hear more of it?

Playboy: No, we get the general idea.

Rockwell: Well, I believe a man ought to hoist up his flag and tell you what he is. And that's just what we do here.

Playboy: Are there any anti-Jewish ballads in your hate-nanny song bag?

Rockwell: Oh, yes! One of our favorites is The Jews Are Through in '72. It goes to the tune of Mademoiselle from Armentières. Want to hear it?

Playboy: We'll listen.

Rockwell: "The Jews are through in '72, parlez-vous / The Jews are through in '72, parlez-vous / We'll feed them bacon till they yell / And send them all to kosher hell / Hinky dinky, parlez-vous . . ." The chorus repeats, and then comes the next verse: "We'll steal the rabbi's knife and sheath / And make him do it with his teeth / Hinky dinky, parlez-vous." The rest of it I don't remember.

Playboy: The song says the Jews will be "through in '72." Is that date significant in some way?

Rockwell: 1972 is the year I'm going to be elected President on the National Socialist ticket. Five years of the Johnson Administration will leave the country so torn with racial tensions that some Republican will be a cinch to win in 1968. Then, in 1969, a great economic catastrophe is going to hit this country.

Playboy: The nation's economy has never been healthier than it is today, and most economists predict that the end of the boom is not in sight.

Rockwell: Nevertheless, there will be an economic catastrophe, though of what nature I'm not sure. It could be an inflation. I say so because all this buildup is based on sand. America's so-called prosperity is based on debt, war and inflationary money which has no backing and is bound to collapse. Along about 1969, it's all going to come tumbling down like a house of cards, and the President is going to be blamed for it. In the ensuing economic chaos, plus all the racial warfare, the people will welcome a man who stands unequivocally for the white Christian majority.

Playboy: What makes you think so?

Rockwell: As I travel, I find that people everywhere, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities, are looking for what I offer. Most of them won't agree with me openly, but if you take them aside, ask them privately, they'd probably tell you "Rockwell has the right idea: White Christian people should dominate." By 1972, with the economy coming apart at the seams, with the niggers pushing, with the Communists agitating, with all of this spiritual emptiness, with all this cowardice and betrayal by our Government, the masses of common, ordinary white people will have had it up to here. They'll want a real leader in the White House--no more spineless jellyfish, no more oily, two-faced demagogs, no more queers in the White House like Walter Jenkins and his friends. They'll be looking for a white leader with the guts of a Malcolm X, with the guts to stand up and say, "I'm going to completely separate the black and white races and preserve white Christian domination in this country, and I'm going to have the Jew Communists and any other traitors gassed for treason. And if you don't like it, you know what you can do about it."

Playboy: Do you seriously think you can be elected on that platform?

Rockwell: I know so. Things are going to be so desperate by then that it won't matter whether I've got two horns and a tail: I'll be swept into office.

Playboy: If you are elected, who from among contemporary public figures would you appoint to your Cabinet?

Rockwell: If he were still alive, I'd have General Douglas MacArthur as Secretary of State. For Secretary of Defense, Retired General of the Marine Corps "Chesty" Puller. For Attorney General, J. Edgar Hoover. For Secretary of the Interior, Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Let me think, now, others: Senators William Jenner and Harry Byrd, Charles Lindbergh--and William Buckley; he won't appreciate that, but I think his brilliance could certainly be valuable. You'll have to agree that this is a Cabinet to give nightmares to any Jew alive. They'd start swimming for Israel even before I was sworn in. But I don't think there's a man in that Cabinet who is known as anti-Semitic.

Playboy: How about anti-Negro?

Rockwell: Well, I'd prefer to call them pro-white.

Playboy: If you had carte-blanche power to do so as the Chief Executive, would you create a dictatorship along the lines of Hitler's?

Rockwell: No, I'd reinstitute the American Constitutional Republic the way it was set up by our authoritarian forefathers--who were, in essence, nothing more than National Socialists just like me.

Playboy: In no way did the founding fathers attempt to abridge the democratic right to "liberty and justice for all." How can you call them Nazis?

Rockwell: In the first place, I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republic--an authoritarian republic with a limited electorate--just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about. In those days, all the niggers were slaves: but today, thanks to several misguided amendments, our Constitution provides even the blackest of savages with the same rights as his former white masters.

Playboy: Then you advocate the disenfranchisement of Negroes?

Rockwell: And the revocation of their citizenship.

Playboy: And the restoration of slavery?

Rockwell: No, we have machines to do their work now. I would simply revoke their citizenship and then offer them the alternatives of either returning to Africa with our generous help and assistance in establishing a modern industrial nation, or being relocated on reservations like the Indians were when they became a problem to the survival of the white people. This will apply to you, too, by the way. Nothing personal, you understand; I like you, personally; but I can't make any exceptions.

Playboy: of course not. What would you do with America's 6,000,000 Jews?

Rockwell: I think the Jews can be dealt with individually rather than as a group--like the niggers must be because of their race. As I said earlier, I think all Jews--in fact, all those connected in any way with treason, whether Jews or not--should be investigated and their cases put before grand juries; if they're indicted, they should then be tried, and if convicted, they should be killed.

Playboy: Having disposed of Jews and Negroes, would that complete your list of those slotted for removal?

Rockwell: Not quite. I'd also purge the queers. I despise them worst of all. They're one of the ugliest problems of our society, and they must be removed--I don't know if with gas, or what, just so they don't poison society. If they insist on being queers, put them on some island, maybe--but certainly not around the rest of society. They're the ultimate symbol of a decaying civilization.

Playboy: Since you're concerned about the problem, Commander, would you like to reply to a frequent charge by psychiatrists that the womanless atmosphere of military asceticism and institutionalized hostility that characterize your "hate monastery," as you've called your headquarters here, make it an ideal sanctuary for those with repressed homosexual tendencies?

Rockwell: My reply is that this is the standard Jewish charge. The biggest charger that we are a bunch of homosexuals is Walter Winchell, whose real name is Isadore Israel Lipshitz, or something like that. [Winchell's real name is Walter Winchel.--Ed.] He's always calling me "George Lincoln Ratwell, Queen of the Nazis," saying I'm a fairy, and so forth. Universally, I have found that the Jews themselves, as Hitler said, are the greatest people in the world for accusing others of their own crimes.

Playboy: You haven't answered the charge that your Party is a haven for homosexuals.

Rockwell: Well, I do think there is a tendency for queers to come here, because to a queer, this place is as tempting as a girls' school would be to me. Whenever I catch any of them in here, I throw them out; and I have caught quite a few of them in here. We had one case where we had reason to believe that the police would catch two guys in the act. The two of them left here hand in hand. I tried to get them prosecuted. We won't tolerate that sort of thing.

Playboy: How about heterosexual relations? Are they verboten, too?

Rockwell: Absolutely not. Any man who didn't vigorously enjoy normal sex could never be a National Socialist. One of the best American Nazis I've ever known used to use a vulgar expression, "Those who won't fuck won't fight." I wouldn't put it so crudely myself, but I heartily subscribe to that doctrine. I never knew a good fighting man who didn't enjoy a lusty sex life.

Playboy: Are any of your men married?

Rockwell: A few, but most are either single or divorced, like myself. I believe very strongly in the importance of basic morals to protect civilization, but it's almost impossible for a guy in this kind of work to have a normal marriage and family; so most of us have no choice but to make other arrangements. And I might add, to paraphrase a French bon mot, vive les arrangements. But I must admit that it's damn difficult--especially for me--to have any sort of normal (continued on page 154) (continued from page 82) contacts with women, since I'm so often approached in this regard for political blackmail.

Playboy: Is it true that you require your Party members to swear an oath against drinking, smoking and cursing?

Rockwell: All my officers take an oath against drinking, including myself. Most have also taken an oath against smoking. I, myself, would not smoke except that the corncob pipe I've smoked for so long has become sort of a trademark. As for cursing, it's hard to stop cursing in the rough situations in which we live, just like in the Armed Services: but I do all I can to discourage it.

Playboy: You've used swearwords in this interview. Is this setting a good example for your men?

Rockwell: Well, I exempt myself from that oath for professional appearances such as this. In talking to you, I've used words like "nigger" and "kike" because this is a big interview in a national magazine, and I want to attract attention--to shock people into listening to what I have to say. If I were discussing, say, the favorite word of niggers--"mother-fucker"-- I'd say it strictly as a factual observation and to make a point. But in private conversation, neither I nor any of my members ever use that word--or any other foul language.

Playboy: Do you also forbid the use of drugs?

Rockwell: Certainly. I've had a few guys in here who I think were marijuana smokers, but I've thrown them out and turned them in. Addiction to any drug is degenerative mentally as well as physically, and we're dead serious about our dedication to the healthy-body-healthy-mind philosophy.

Playboy: Is karate or judo instruction part of your training program?

Rockwell: Not so much of that. I've found that unless you're a real expert at karate or judo, it doesn't help you much. Unless you use it instinctively, it's no use at all. So we concentrate on physical education, boxing and weapons training.

Playboy: What sort of weapons?

Rockwell: Rifles and pistols.

Playboy: For what purpose?

Rockwell: Self-defense. I believe the white people of America should learn methods of surviving in the event of racial anarchy and general bedlam in this country, which I think is likely.

Playboy: Do you share the belief of the Minutemen in the importance of being prepared for an armed Communist invasion of the U.S. mainland?

Rockwell: The Minutemen are kidding themselves. If there is a total Communist take-over, they haven't got a prayer in the world of surviving it, let alone stopping it--running around in the weeds with a few guns like little boys playing cops and robbers. All they're doing is giving themselves an emotional catharsis. They're wasting millions of dollars, and in the process they're getting a lot of good kids sent to jail for illegal possession of weapons. I think it's like the Klan. Their aim. insofar as being ready is concerned, I'm for. I'm for the Klan's principles, ideas and so forth--except the anti-Catholicism--but from my point of view, their methods stink!

Playboy: What methods?

Rockwell: Their partial terrorism. I feel that terrorism is a valid weapon in guerrilla warfare, or any kind of warfare; and under the circumstances in which our country finds itself, I would favor terrorism if it could be complete--if it would work. A hundred years ago. I'd have been a Klansman with a rope and a gun and the whole business. I'd have really gone all out during the Reconstruction to save the white South. And make no mistake about the terrorism: It did the job. But today, it plays directly into the hands of Martin Luther Coon: it manufactures martyrs for the Northern press, for the liberals, and it doesn't scare the niggers out of hell-raising anymore.

Playboy: But apart from your belief that racial violence against Negroes has become self-defeating, you have no moral objection to it?

Rockwell: None at all. What I object to is wars among white men. This is what we've been doing for centuries--fighting among ourselves and wiping each other out. The North versus the South is a perfect example: the biggest bloodletting we've had. the cream of the white population wiped out, all because of the niggers. It solved nothing; it really changed nothing--except that a lot of good white kids got killed. I'm agin that! If we have any more wars. I want to fight the Red Chinese or the Jews, or go over to Africa and fight the niggers. This I can see some point to. As far as violence on an individual basis is concerned, well, when I come to power I plan to have dueling for officers in the Armed Forces. I'll have two purposes in that: first, to maintain a corps of officers unafraid to face death--not just in case of war, and second, to restore the concept of personal honor. I don't think going to court and suing somebody is really a deterrent to libelous, vicious talk. But people don't flap their mouths quite so freely when they're liable to have to back it up with a gun. Right now dueling isn't legal, but the moment it is, I would be eager to face Billy James Hargis and Robert "Rabbit" Welch on a field of honor for going around calling me a Communist.

Playboy: Have you considered the possibility that you might be killed in such a confrontation?

Rockwell: I've not only considered it; I expect it. And I'm ready for it. Being prepared to die is one of the great secrets of living. I know I'm going to go--probably in some violent manner: the only question is when and how. But I don't think that's going to happen to me until I complete my mission. I know this is irrational, but I believe that I was placed here for a purpose and I think God has something to do with it: Our country needs a leader. So I think I'll be spared. As Rommel said, "Stand next to me: I'm bulletproof."

Playboy: Do you think you're bulletproof, too?

Rockwell: Not literally, of course, but I firmly believe that the more arrogant and defiant you are of danger, the safer you are from harm. I think that's the reason I've survived so many times when people have shot at me. If you're fearless enough, it implants a certain psychology in the guy that's trying to shoot at you. It's almost as if he could smell your fearlessness, the way an animal smells fear. But the effect is the opposite: Instead of being emboldened to attack, he's so unsettled that his hand shakes when he goes to pull the trigger: and this makes it almost impossible for him to hit you. Either that, or he'll back down entirely. When I go out in the street and toughs come up threatening to whip me, I look them straight in the eye and say, "Go ahead. Start." Maybe they could whip me, but so far nobody's tried.

Playboy: What's the closest you've come to getting killed?

Rockwell: The closest, I guess--though I didn't get hurt--was the time we had scheduled a picket by 14 of us of the movie Exodus in Boston. The other men were in a truck, and I had registered in a nearby hotel as Nathan Gins-burg, where I waited until the scheduled picket time of two P.M. The newspapers and radio estimated that 10,000 or more Jews were packing the streets waiting for us, and my truck full of boys couldn't get through the crowd. Well, our picket had been the subject of headlines for days, so I couldn't possibly chicken out at that point. I had to get through the crowd somehow to picket in front of the theater; so I put on an overcoat, went through the crowd quietly, and when I got in front of the theater, I took off the overcoat in the middle of all those Jews and stood there in full-dress uniform. They were shocked into silence for a moment; their jaws dropped. Then somebody hollered, "It's Rockwell! Get him!" And the whole huge mob marched in on me with their clubs and baling hooks. If I hadn't been rescued by a flying wedge of tough Irish cops, I would certainly have been killed. I was taken into protective custody and put in a cell. I'll tell you, I was glad I was out of that; it could have ended horribly. But I had to show my men that I wouldn't ask them to do anything I wouldn't do myself. Another reason I did it is the effect the Nazi uniform has on Jews: It turns them into insane hatemongers--easy to beat, outmaneuver and outthink. The most dangerous man on the face of the earth is a rational, carefully planning Jew, but a raging, hate-filled Jew will act foolishly; you can whip him.

Playboy: How many times have you been jailed for this kind of agitation, Commander?

Rockwell: Up to now, 15 times. But never for very long; two weeks was the longest--that was in New Orleans. We'd gone down there with our "Hate Bus" to make fun of nigger agitators who were calling their bus the "Love Bus." Without so much as a warrant or any real cause, the Jew-dominated officials of New Orleans had us all thrown in jail on phony charges that were later dropped. We finally got out by staging a hunger strike; eleven of us went eight days without a bite. On the fourth day, one of our men began to crack and said he was going to eat, so we had to let him know that if he did, it would be his last meal. He changed his mind. Another time in Virginia, they put me in jail, and I was facing ten years' possible imprisonment for "starting a war against the niggers." You've never seen a man act as guilty as the sheriff who arrested me.

Playboy: Guilty about what?

Rockwell: He felt he was doing the wrong thing. Here was a fellow white man fighting for the same things he believed in, and he was throwing me in jail. But this town is in the clutches of this Jew who owns two huge department stores and grocery stores there; so the sheriff was acting under leftist political pressure. But that leftist hotbed is a sanctuary of segregationist archconservatism compared with Philadelphia. Believe it or not, my men and I were jailed there for picketing a hotel where Gus Hall, the head of the American Communist Party, was speaking. As far as I'm concerned, Philadelphia is the enemy capital. They've practically got Jewish flags flying from the flagpoles. In most cities, though, I've found that they're only bluffing when they threaten me with jail. I tell them, "You'd better start arresting, 'cause I'm going to start speaking." Nine times out of ten they chicken out. They're used to nonviolent niggers being willing to go to jail--not white supremacists. Well, here's one white supremacist who ain't afraid to go to jail. And neither are my men. As a matter of fact, we've got at least two or three Party members in jail somewhere in the United States almost 365 days a year. Every Sunday night we honor them in ceremonies that we hold on the parade grounds in front of this building. We also award special decorations for conspicuous achievement on behalf of the Party and for acts of heroism above and beyond the call of duty. Our top award is the Order of Adolf Hitler, then the Gold, the Silver and the Bronze awards. The highest award I've given yet was the Silver: that was to a man who couldn't contain himself in Birmingham and belted Martin Luther Coon on the head for calling that nigger Jew Sammy Davis Jr. "an example of the finest type of American."

Playboy: You know, of course, that Dr. King is widely respected and admired by the majority of the American public, black and white--while you, a champion of white supremacy, are regarded by most people as a "nut" and a "hatemonger," abominated by almost everyone--including the John Birch Society.

Rockwell: Martin Luther Coon may go on pulling the wool over the public's eyes for a while longer, but sooner or later they're going to find him out for what he is--an 18-karat fake, a fraud on the Negro people. When the black revolution comes, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get it first--from his own people. As for my being a nut, that name has been applied to some of the greatest men the world has ever known, from Christ to the Wright Brothers. I say it's therefore one of the highest accolades I could be given. My father once told me that his Jewish friends ask him, "How could you spawn such a viper?" Well, I'm proud that Communist Jews think me a viper. As for the threats and the beatings and the investigations and the assassination attempts and all that, when I hung up the Nazi flag. I counted on being jailed and hated and hounded. If I hadn't been, I'd figure I was a flop. Harassment is par for the course in the embryonic stages of any new movement that's opposed by the established powers --especially one as revolutionary as mine. I wouldn't be surprised if the Anti-Defamation League already has a cross built for me, with the nails ready. But I don't consider myself persecuted. Maturity is to accept the consequences of your own acts. I think it's a symptom of paranoia to feel that it's anyone's fault but your own if you fail to accomplish what you set out to.

Playboy: We read a newspaper interview a few years ago in which you claimed you were being "gagged and slandered by the Jewish press," sabotaged by a nationwide journalistic conspiracy in your fight to put your case before the nation. When "the Jewish press" wasn't pretending that you didn't exist, you said, it was either deliberately misquoting you or doctoring your public statements to remove the sense and retain the shock value--in order to make you sound simple-minded or to portray you as a racist monster. Only this conspiracy of silence and misrepresentation, you claimed, was preventing you from getting your revolutionary message across to the white, gentile masses and rallying them to your flag. To some people, Commander, these might sound like the remarks of a man who's trying to blame his failures on someone else.

Rockwell: You think I'm being paranoid, is that it?

Playboy: Some people might.

Rockwell: In the Columbia Journalism Review about three months ago, Ben Bagdikian, a frequent writer for the Anti-Defamation League, wrote an article called "The Gentle Suppression" which asked the question, "Is the news quarantine of Rockwell a good thing?" Bagdikian openly reveals that the press maintains as much silence as possible about our activities. So you see. the Jew blackout on us is as real as a hand over my mouth. They know we're too poor to buy air time or advertising space, so they ban our publications from all channels of distribution, and they refuse to report our activities in the daily press. I could run naked across the White House lawn and they wouldn't report it. I'm being facetious. But I'm dead serious when I say that the only kind of free speech left in this country is that speech that doesn't criticize the Jews. If you criticize the Jews. you're either smeared or silenced. They have that same kind of "free speech" in Cuba, Red China and Russia and every other Communist country: You can say anything you like as long as it doesn't criticize the dictator. The Jews are never going to let me reach the people with my message in the American press: they can't afford to.

Playboy: How do you reconcile that statement with the fact that you're being interviewed at this moment for a national magazine?

Rockwell: I've been interviewed, taped and photographed thousands of times for just such presentations as these, but they never appear. The fact that you come here and get this interview doesn't prove that you'll print it. or that if you do, you'll print it straight. After the editors read over the transcript, they'll decide it's too hot to handle, and they'll chicken out rather than risk getting bombed by the Jews and the niggers when it comes out.

Playboy: We'll take our chances, Commander--if you will.

Rockwell: I'll take any chances to get my message read. But it's never going to happen. We've been kept out of the news too many times before. I'll bet you a hundred dollars this whole thing has been nothing but a waste of my time, because it's never going to reach the people who read your magazine.