The terms Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism refer to any social or political movement to revive Nazism or Fascism, respectively, and postdates the Second World War.
The Neo-Nazi movement is identified by allegiance to Adolf Hitler, the national insignia of Nazi Germany (e.g. the swastika), and other features specific to Germany from the period 1933 to 1945. These usually include anti-Semitism, racism, and/or xenophobia. These groups often draw membership from people who blame their society's problems, such as the disintegration of national unity and culture, and multicultural friction, on non-white immigrants and an alleged Jewish conspiracy.
Some Neo-Nazi groups espouse violence, and for this reason they are a source of concern to law enforcement. However, it is often surprisingly difficult to implicate Neo-Fascists in violence or illegality in any meaningful way. This is because these groups have adopted a proxy system whereby organizations which the Nazis intend to be financially, politically and socially successful are made to be extremely professional and respectable, whereas other, less important organizations and individuals are almost always the ones responsible for intimidations, violent acts and terror tactics. This makes it extremely difficult to track neo-Nazi criminal liabilities, because the culprits are often obscure and unimportant within the larger Nazi movement, and when groups or individuals are found guilty of crimes in these cases, they are almost always of little financial or political worth to the Neo-Nazi goals. In this way, prominent neo-Nazis may inspire, incite or even order violent crimes without much fear that their involvement will be traced in any meaningful way back to an organization which has a great deal to lose. Notable North American exceptions to this fact are Matt Hale and the World Church Of The Creator, which has essentially ceased functioning effectively since he was imprisoned for soliciting the murder of a federal judge, and Richard Butler of Aryan Nations, which lost a 6.2 million dollar lawsuit after low level security personnel at his compound opened fire on a passing vehicle. Aryan Nations has since lost its headquarters and paramilitary training grounds and split into three separate organizations, two of which claim to be the true successor to the group, but all of which are significantly reduced from the sum of the former groups parts.
Many Neo-Nazi groups also espouse Holocaust denial or Historical revisionism, claiming that the Holocaust slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews is a lie, and that the German Nazi government had no extermination policy, or at least that the extent of the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated. It is not known whether Neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionists believe these claims or if it is simply a means to make their ideology more palatable by removing the blemish of the Holocaust.
Significant people in the effort to revive Nazism include Colin Jordan, George Lincoln Rockwell, William Pierce, Savitri Devi, and David Myatt.
Neo-Nazi desecration of a Jewish cemetery in France
Neo-Nazism in Germany
Nazi iconography remains to this day heavily restricted in Germany. As German law forbids the production of Nazi devotionalia, such items come mostly (illegally) from the USA and northern European countries. Current Neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on hosting in the USA and Canada, and use other terms for Nazi ideas and symbols -- for example, the swastika may be referred to as a sun disc, sun wheel, hooked cross, wolf's cross, wolf's hook, black sun, or dark star.
In Germany immediately after World War II, Allied forces and the new German governments attempted to prevent the creation of new Nazi movements through a process known as denazification. With this and the total defeat of the Nazi regime, there was little overt neo-Nazi activity in Europe until the 1960s. Some former Nazis retained their ideology and racist beliefs, however, and passed them down to new generations.
Neo-Nazi in Germany in 2000
In the 1990s, after German reunification, Neo-Nazi groups succeeded in gaining m