Joseph Tommasi
Joseph Charles Tommasi was an American neo-Nazi who led the National Socialist Liberation Front, an openly terroristic neo-Nazi group. A former member of the National Socialist White People's Party, he was removed from that group for unclear reasons in 1973. He was known for his radical views and explicit advocacy of violent action, which put him at odds with most other neo-Nazis of the time. Tommasi was murdered by a member of the NSWPP in 1975, at the age of 24. He continues to ideologically influence neo-Nazis.
Tommasi officially joined the National Socialist White People's Party at the age of 17, becoming the leader of their Californian branch. In 1971, Tommasi was offered several thousand dollars from the Committee to Re-elect the President as part of a plan to help Richard Nixon win the 1972 presidential election by getting George Wallace removed from the California ballot. When Tommasi was paid less than he was initially offered, he spoke out about the deal to the press, contributing to a media scandal. Tommasi's behavior was sometimes controversial among his associates, and he was known to flout the behavioral norms of neo-Nazis.
When the NSWPP's leader Matt Koehl suspended Tommasi from the organization in 1973, Tommasi proceeded to found the NSLF as an independent organization with a far more militant ideology. Members of the NSLF committed or took credit for several bombings, shootings, and arsons. The NSLF also distributed propaganda, including the periodical Siege. On August 15, 1975, Tommasi was fatally shot by NSWPP member Jerry Jones after a dispute at the NSWPP's local headquarters. Jones was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 300 days in jail. The NSLF continued for a few years under different leaders, with Tommasi immediately succeeded as leader by David Rust, before it disbanded in 1986.
Tommasi rejected conservatism and the social norms of most contemporary neo-Nazis, declaring himself a revolutionary and embracing elements of the counterculture. He advocated armed guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government, and was in favor of anarchy and lawlessness so that the "system" could be attacked without protection. Tommasi was an early proponent of neo-Nazi accelerationism and lone wolf terrorism, and he also influenced the development of the neo-Nazi conception of the leaderless resistance tactic. Many neo-Nazis saw Tommasi as a martyr after his death. Based on a revival of Tommasi's Siege periodical, his associate James Mason wrote the influential neo-Nazi book Siege, which celebrates Tommasi and includes many of his writings.
Early life
Joseph Charles Tommasi was born April 15, 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut. He had Italian ancestry, and had two younger sisters. He described his parents as middle class and conservative. His interest in Nazism began after a research project on Nazi Germany in the eighth grade. He stated his ideology was "self-afflicted" and that he believed he was born a Nazi.Tommasi was raised in El Monte, California, and attended El Monte High School. He did not join any clubs at the school, but was in the school band as a trumpet player. His classmates and acquaintances described him as odd; interviewed by a student journalist for the Daily Trojan, none had an explanation for his behavior. His high school band director stated that Tommasi was "the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet", but that he was "kind of like a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". A classmate recounted that he constantly defended the Nazis in class. The El Monte High School administration refused to let students broadcast editorials over the loudspeaker for fear that Tommasi would utilize it.
Tommasi later said that in high school he had wanted to become a police officer, but abandoned this after realizing it conflicted with his political ideology. In December 1966, when Tommasi was 15, he was recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as attending a meeting of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. His parents greatly disapproved of his beliefs. When he was a sophomore, his parents learned that he was a neo-Nazi when they saw him on television attending a Nazi demonstration. In response, they moved cities to Walnut, California, to keep him away from the party. This failed to dissuade him. In 1967, Tommasi was reported to the FBI by a teacher for passing out neo-Nazi propaganda to his classmates.
Politics
National Socialist White People's Party
At the age of 17, Tommasi joined his local branch of the ANP, which by then had changed its name to the National Socialist White People's Party. Rockwell had been murdered by that time, and had been succeeded as leader of the NSWPP by Matt Koehl. The California branch that Tommasi joined was known to be especially fractious, even relative to the rest of the group. As part of the NSWPP, Tommasi was involved in several protests against leftist movements, and clashes with them.He became one of the party's better organizers, and quickly ascended in the NSWPP's hierarchy. In October 1969 Tommasi was promoted to the local leader of the party in California; Harold Covington was a member of his unit, as was Martin Kerr. Tommasi was publicly disliked by some of his associates due to his Italian heritage and "less than Nordic complexion"; he was derisively nicknamed "Tomato Joe" by rival neo-Nazis, while the FBI nicknamed him the "Tomato Head Fuhrer". Despite this, he was respected by other neo-Nazis due to his sheer fanaticism. Tommasi encouraged other members of the party to learn military tactics and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.
Explicit discussion of committing violence and illegal acts was largely taboo in the NSWPP. Some lower ranking members contemplated it, though not openly; the exception to this was their ideological leader William Luther Pierce, who openly advocated violence. Tommasi operated phone lines broadcasting the group's messages, including messages from Pierce which advocated political killings. In one, Pierce advocated for senators to be killed. In March 1969, Californian authorities discontinued a phone line Tommasi operated after it played a prerecorded message from Pierce which advocated murdering black people.
In 1969, Tommasi, backed by Pierce, launched the National Socialist Liberation Front as a youth wing of the American Nazi Party; alternatively, Pierce may have launched it himself and Tommasi came to be involved. Despite their ideological similarities, Tommasi personally disliked Pierce, and when Koehl later had Pierce kicked out of the party Tommasi sided with Koehl. In September of that year, Tommasi attended the NSWPP's First Party Congress, where he met fellow neo-Nazi James Mason. At the next year's congress, he gave a speech calling for revolution. In September 1970, Tommasi was made one of the seven members of the NSWPP National Council, which advised Koehl. According to the FBI, as of that year Tommasi was working as an assembly line worker.
The NSWPP's El Monte headquarters was decorated in swastikas and their presence irritated their neighbors. The city of El Monte tried to fine them, and their neighbors wanted them evicted from their property, but these attempts to get them to leave were unsuccessful. Tommasi ended up buying the property. In January 1972, a group of protestors, including 100 members of the Jewish Defense League and 900 others, demonstrated outside their El Monte headquarters. The protest escalated into fistfights and the throwing of small explosives, rocks, and other objects at the building. Tommasi led the sixty members of the NSWPP at the branch in standing opposite them with rifles. 40 of the demonstrators were arrested. In February 1972, Irv Rubin, a JDL militant, was arrested and charged for assault with intent to commit murder for allegedly shooting at Tommasi. Charges were later dropped due to a lack of evidence. When Thomas Bradley, the first black mayor of Los Angeles, was inaugurated, Tommasi led NSWPP members in a demonstration against him. In 1973, Tommasi married Rose Tommasi.
Committee to Re-elect the President involvement
In November 1971, Tommasi was offered from Richard Nixon's election fundraising group, the Committee to Re-elect the President, to help them get George Wallace's American Independent Party removed from the Californian ballot in the 1972 presidential election. Tommasi was hired either by a CRP associate or by the CRP itself, and they were connected through a former Wallace supporter who had left and joined the NSWPP. Tommasi was told to convince AIP voters to register instead as Republican, as due to California's election rules, if there were too few registered voters for a party, they would be knocked off the ballot. The CRP feared that Wallace would split the vote in a 3-way race, and believed that if he was not an option his prospective voters would go for Nixon. The goal was to get the AIP's numbers either below 11,000 or less than 1/15th of 1% of all registered voters in the state.The plan did not work, and the AIP's voter registration actually rose during the period the plan was enacted. Tommasi's involvement was also a failure, as he only came up with 4 men for the plan instead of his promised 20. Tommasi was paid less than he was promised, and claimed the CRP had cheated the neo-Nazis. In response, Tommasi leaked the story to the press, calling it "a beautiful opportunity to screw both sides". This initially resulted in only local news reports, but after the reveal of the Watergate scandal and CRP's involvement in it, the story made national news, including in The New York Times. Hugh W. Sloan Jr. testified about the plan to the United States Senate Watergate Committee, and it was included in the final report of the Committee.
Robert Walters, the right-wing activist who created the plan, initially denied any tie to the CRP and said he had come up with the idea on his own. He also said he did not remember the Nazis. Another participant in the plan disputed Walters's telling of events; reporters ultimately found checks from Walters to Tommasi, after which Walters conceded that the neo-Nazis "might have been involved". Tommasi spent the money on a down payment on a property for the NSWPP, and the funds helped prevent the California group from collapsing. The plan was described by the Watergate Committee as a "complete failure numerically, according to all participants", though the Los Angeles Free Press noted it had perhaps worked out for Tommasi.