The National States Rights Party: A History by Michael Newton (review)

The National States Rights Party: A History by Michael Newton recounts in exacting detail the history of the fascist organization that nominated Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus for the U.S. presidency in 1960. Founded in 1958, the National States Rights Party (NSRP) recruited dues-paying members as long as they were Christian and "loyal white racists" (p. 210). However, the organization was less a political party than a conglomeration of white supremacists that published a long-lived newsletter, the Thunderbolt. Newton quotes one unnamed founder as remarking, "Without The Thunderbolt we are just another Klan or White Citizens Council" (p. 51). The NSRP loosely organized racists and fascists under the leadership of Jesse Benjamin "J. B." Stoner Jr. and Edward Reed Fields, two educated men who did not hide behind hoods but sought out the spotlight to advance their bigotry.

The strength of Newton's work is his chronological collection of primary documents produced by hate groups, an archive he has been building since age fourteen. One of the book's images is a 1954 flyer from the Realpolitical Institute with the slogan "Whiteman Awake—The Hour Is Late!" (p. 48). There is also an image of a membership form for the NSRP, guaranteeing members "a sword of steel that will cut away the chains that shackle the White-man in America" (p. 49). Newton includes NSRP documents between 1958 and 1980 in appendixes and transcribes the entire contents of lengthy letters in the text.

No one today can read this book without drawing parallels to America's current toxic racial situation. The clean-cut white men in collared shirts waving Confederate flags at the University of Alabama to protest the admission of black coed Autherine Lucy in 1956 would not have looked out of place in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. In a letter to Elijah Muhammad, J. B. Stoner wrote, "To every place it has spread, Islam has been a blight and brought darkness," indicating that the Far Right targeted Muslims long before September 11, 2001 (p. 39). When NSRP members were charged in the bombing of an Atlanta synagogue in 1958, their allies printed headlines in the American Nationalist asserting "Synagogue Bombing a Fraud" and "Jewish Groups Use Bomb Incident to Confuse Gentiles," precursors to Alex Jones's conspiracy theories (p. 58). The Thunderbolt is a print version of the Daily Stormer, indicating the NSRP's understanding of the power of media to organize far-flung, like-minded individuals. On their membership forms, NSRP members pledged to oppose "Internationalism" andtosupport "Only White Christian Immigration … America First and American Patriotism," phrases familiar to anyone in twenty-first-century America (p. 49).

This volume is the twelfth book about hate groups or organized crime that Newton has published with McFarland and Company. He is clearly in familiar territory and assumes his readers are as well. The encyclopedic nature of this history forces the reader to work hard to extract any analysis or narrative. In this book's 207 pages of text, Newton introduces hundreds of individuals without including contextual descriptors. For example, Edward Reed Fields is profiled in the first chapter, but we learn that he was a founder of the NSRP in chapter 3.

Michael Newton has authored over three hundred books, many of them encyclopedias. In this slim volume he offers an illustrated chronology, supported by information from sources including metapedia.org, which defines itself as a pro-European alternative online encyclopedia. Steeped in the world of hate groups since he was a teenager, Newton provides a collection of racist memorabilia that sadly is not dead and is not even past.