How Charles Manson Became a Hero of the American Far Right
The Tate–LaBianca murders established Charles Manson as one of the most notorious figures in modern American history. Manson’s very notoriety also made him into an iconic figure for neo-Nazis who embraced his vision of apocalyptic race war.
Charles Manson became a hero for an important section of America’s white power movement during his years in prison. One of the leading prophets of violent white supremacism compared Manson to Adolf Hitler — and he meant this as high praise. (Albert Foster / Mirrorpix / Getty Images)
The person most responsible for the recognition of Charles Manson as a quasi-icon of the twenty-first-century radical right is James Mason. Born in 1952, Mason is a lifelong white supremacist activist who joined George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party as a teen, then Joseph Tommasi’s more radical National Socialist Liberation Front, then became even more extreme after he took over that party’s newsletter, Siege (1980–86).
He dropped off the radar for two decades following his arrests and incarceration in the 1990s but resurfaced in the 2010s after being “recovered” on the neo-Nazi online forum Iron March, and he is presently acknowledged to be the “grandfather” or “godfather” of white power accelerationism, an ideology convinced that the inevitable collapse of society and subsequent founding of a white ethnostate should be sped up through acts of terrorism.
Unlike many others in the white power movement, Mason never concealed his racism or tried to make his extremism more palatable for the mainstream. Whether in his writings or interviews, he is almost obstinately open about his convictions.
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