We are so busy being misled by reality TV shows targeting a 10 year old reading limit, we forget the marvelous rich legacy of Americans who have gone before. Setting out to make America Great, White and Christian.

Who could forget George Lincoln Rockwell. A USN Navy Commander with 19 years in uniform. (Thank you for your service.)

A religious man from the outset, George saw the fundamental problems besetting US society in the 50’s and 60’s. And (with God on his side) set out to make America Great again. And white. And like Trump, took his inspiration from great fascists of the past. George knew a thing or two about war and military rule and realised the greatness of Herr Hitler. Not put off by his experience in WW2 as a US soldier. Quite the contrary.
By 1960 he was leader of the US Nazi Party with his own 30 foot swastika flag to leave no doubt for interested voters. In the presidential election of 1964, Rockwell ran as a write-in candidate, receiving 212 votes. He ran unsuccessfully in the Virginia gubernatorial election of 1965 as an independent, this time polling 5,730 votes, or 1.02 percent of the total, finishing last among the four candidates. By now he was on the up.

Rockwell led the American Nazi Party in assisting the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations during the Civil Rights Movement, in attempts to counter the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But he soon came to believe that the Klan was stuck in the past and ineffective in helping him wage a modern racial struggle. They were not Christian enough and too tolerant of Jews. After hearing the slogan “Black Power” during a debate in 1966 with Black Panther Stokely Carmichael, Rockwell altered the phrase and started a call for “White Power”. He is the originator of Trumps lets Make America White Again slogan.

Curiously, George Lincoln Rockwell got along well with many Black nationalist groups and their leaders such as Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X as they shared the goal of racial separation. Rockwell told his followers that Elijah Muhammad

“has gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called ‘niggers’ and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color…Muhammad knows that mixing is a Jewish fraud and leads only to aggravation of the problems that it is supposed to solve…I have talked to the Muslim leaders and am certain that a workable plan for separation of the races could be effected to the satisfaction of all concerned—except the communist-Jew agitators”.

Inspired by black Muslims’ use of religion to mobilize people, Rockwell sought collaboration with Christian Identity groups. In June 1964, he formed an alliance with Identity minister Wesley A. Swift and began to promote his ideas within the Identity movement.
Things were on the up for Apartheid America in the mid 60’s. Until suddenly they weren’t. On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was shot and killed while leaving a laundromat in Arlington, Virginia by John Patler, a recently expelled member of Rockwell’s group. (Yes. Another disgruntled employee with a gun.) Rockwell was just 49.
Hearing of his son’s death, Rockwell’s 78-year-old father said: “I am not surprised at all. I’ve expected it for quite some time.”

White nationalist politician and Trump supporter David Duke was a student in high school, when he learned of Rockwell’s assassination, saying “The greatest American who ever lived has been shot down and killed”. In the mid-1960s, Rockwell, like Hitler, developed his Nazi political philosophy within the Christian religion. The Christian Identity group Aryan Nations started to use various Nazi flags in its services, and its security personnel started wearing uniforms similar to those worn by Rockwell’s stormtroopers.

Rockwell may be gone, dead before his time in a real tragedy for America’s greatness. In fact, when Trump says ‘Make America Great again’ he is doubtless referring to the same vision as Rockwell. Who, had he lived, may well have saved America from becoming so un-great it needed a Apricot bewigged reality TV star to ‘Make America Great again’.