election – Offbeat NOVA

Offbeat Postcripts is a series of short posts where we cover small topics of offbeat history in Northern Virginia.

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

We were going to wait until January 20, 2021, to write this short piece on Richard Spencer and his short stay in Old Town Alexandria. After recent events, however, it just felt like the right time.

On February 5, 2017, the Eng clan got into the family truckster and headed into Old Town Alexandria for a relaxing morning of shopping. It was cold that day, with the temperature hanging somewhere in the forties. Our daughter, Zelda, was just a few days shy of her first birthday. With two teeth poking out of the bottom of her mouth, she was very much the vision of a fussy 1-year-old. Admittedly, Angela and I were also a little fussy too. That morning was less than two weeks after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. As proud as I was for Angela and her friends to take part in the Women’s March the day after Trump took office, we still had to settle into the grim reality of a Trump presidency. We both thought the fresh air would do all of us some good.

You can basically separate Old Town Alexandria in a two sections, split between the north and south of King Street cut off along its Washington Street intersection. Everything across Washington Street towards the Potomac is the heavy-traffic area of Old Town where most of the restaurants and tourist traps are. Do you want to go to the Old Town Alexandria ghost tours or eat at a restaurant with overpriced appetizers? Head to the water. The other side towards the King Street Metro is much quieter with less foot traffic. There’s still a lot of cool shops and restaurants, just not in the same frequency.

Sign in front of BLOW Salon (Matthew Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)

That morning, I parked on a side street off the main road. Our first stop was the former location of Fibre Space, an excellent place for all your yarn needs if you are thinking about getting into knitting or crocheting. I waited patiently with Zelda as Angela shopped for supplies she needed for an upcoming project. After finishing up there, we decided to stroll up King Street to Misha’s Coffee on the corner of King Street and South Patrick St. Walking on the right side of the road on King, we kept noticing “No Vacancy for Hate” and “Everyone is Welcome” signs in the windows and doorways of shops and businesses. Almost every shop had at least one of these signs. A large dry-erase board in front of a salon called BLOW finally tipped us off to what was going on:

“The people who HATE the most are often the people who hate themselves the most.”

The sign included a tongue-in-cheek “Let Us Make Your Hair Great Again” slogan complete with a Trump caricature. It was then that it finally clicked why all the signs were up. It wasn’t just because of the recent tenant in the White House. Old Town Alexandria also had a new member to its population: notorious white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Richard Spencer rented the top two floors of a large white building at 1003 King Street, on the corner of N. Patrick Street, in early 2017. The bottom floor tenant at the time, Blüprint Chocolatiers, had no say in her landlord renting Spencer the space. According to a Washington Post article, however, the owners quickly made it known to residents and visitors that she had nothing to do with their upstairs neighbor. She adorned the front of their shop with red and white ribbons and a sign that read “Everyone is Welcome Here,” which many others in the surrounding area had also done. This, along with the newest addition to Alexandria, was likely in direct response to the then-recent Executive Order banning foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim country from visiting the country for ninety days, and suspending entry of all Syrian refugees into the country indefinitely.¹

Of course, we all remember what happened to Spencer on Inauguration Day:

Previously, Spencer and the National Policy Institute, his white nationalist think tank, were headquartered in neighboring Arlington, Virginia. Perhaps Trump taking the Presidency gave him the idea to seek classier accommodations on the busy Alexandria intersection.

Throughout his time there, Spencer had to endure a stable group of protestors and demonstrators below his apartment. He had plenty of time to nurse his wounded face and pride as he watched the throng of protestors through closed blinds and darkened rooms from above like a pathetic “man in the high tower.” According to WTOP, they would congregate to protest twice a month. The protests were organized by Grassroots Alexandria, a citizen-led group advocating for the safety and security of fellow Alexandrians.

So why did he move there? The Washingtonian said it best:

Why would Spencer, when he relocated from Montana, choose to pitch his tent in a deep-blue city whose diverse population is 51 percent minority? The answer is quite basic, actually. “It’s just a nice place,” he says. Spencer thinks Old Town is beautiful. He likes the restaurants. He likes “how it feels—the whole look.”²
The Washingtonian (August 1, 2017)

Spencer only stayed in Old Town for a year and a half. Throughout the course of his time there, we never saw much movement in the upstairs rooms of the white building any time we walked by or drove through the area. Hopefully he got the hint that he wasn’t welcome. There must have been a strong indication in May of 2017 when Spencer had his membership at the Old Town Sport & Health club revoked after the owner made a “business decision” to pull it. Spencer protested the decision, telling Buzzfeed that he was a “model gymgoer” who didn’t bother anyone. When the general manager, a professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, asked Spencer if he was in fact the same person, he denied it. She published photos of the confrontation in a blog post, adding, “not only are you a Nazi, you’re a cowardly Nazi.” Protests only increased in the wake of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right Rally,” which Spencer attended.³

Today, the shop beneath the apartment is a sock shop called the Old Town Sock Co. Blüprint Chocolatiers closed their doors on Easter Sunday 2020 after five-years. As of November 5, 2020, the floors above the sock sheet remain without a tenant.

Jonathan Krall of Grassroots Alexandria had no sympathy after Spencer’s exit from his prime real estate in Alexandria on King Street. In fact, he felt he played a part in him leaving. “Oh, I think we had an effect,” he said in the closing words of a 2018 interview with the Alexandria Gazette Packet. “We did our best.”⁴

Donald Trump has been voted out of office. People like Spencer no longer has a platform almost anywhere. His National Policy Institute was banned by YouTube in June of this year for not following the platform’s policies against hate speech. Free speech still (rightfully) exists, but thankfully fewer people are listening to his ilk.⁵

For others before him, like George Lincoln Rockwell, their presence was not welcome in this area. Northern Virginia can be many things. A cesspool of traffic. A white liberal cross-section of society filled with unaffordable houses. The bedroom community of government workers. The ends of the yellow, blue, orange, and silver Metro lines. And, most importantly, a suitable substitute for “D.C.” when you tell people you don’t know ask where you’re from because it’s easier geographically.

It is not, however, a place for fascists, bigots, and small minds. That goes double for the big white house just up the road from Old Town.

But it’s not over. For now, we can be happy and breathe for the first time in four years. Tomorrow, let’s put our masks on and get back to work.

Donald Trump: You’re Fired (Angela H. Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)

Footnotes:

Patricia Sullivan, “The chocolatiers and the white nationalist, coexisting in Old Town Alexandria, The Washington Post, February 17, 2017. Accessed November 5, 2020, LINK.
Kim Olsen, “This Virginia Town Can’t Get Rid of Richard Spencer, and It’s Driving Locals Crazy,” The Washingtonian, August 1, 2017. Accessed November 5, 2020, LINK.
NBC4 Washington, “‘Alt-right’ Leader Loses Gym Membership After Confrontation,” NBC4 Washington, May 22, 2017. Accessed November 5, 2020, LINK.
James Cullum, “A Vigil to Bid Farewell in Alexandria,” Alexandria Gazette Packet, August 20, 2018. Accessed November 5, 2020, LINK.
Kaya Yurieff, “YouTube removes Richar Spencer and David Duke a year after saying it would ban supremacists,” CNN (online), June 20, 2020. Accessed November 5, 2020, LINK.

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

It’s hard to think of Arlington, Virginia, as a hotbed for hate. Living near it has a remarkably price tag. According to one website, Arlington ranks as the eighth-most expensive city in the United States, with the 2020 cost of living sitting at 53% above the national average.¹ As you drive through its premiere neighborhoods like Bluemont, Clarendon, and Ballston, you realize why it’s one of the most desirable locations to live in not only Northern Virginia, but the entire country. It is only a stone’s throw from DC, the houses are beautiful, and the landscaping is perfect. Where there are no houses, there are meticulously built high-rises and lush public spaces. As they say, location is everything.

But Arlington has not always been beautiful and perfect. It was know for darker things . . . other things that lived quietly inside its utopian ecosystem like a virus entering a new host.

George Lincoln Rockwell (Wikimedia Commons)

Arlington was the former epicenter of the Neo-Nazi/white power movement in the United States for over two decades beginning in the early 1960s. Less than two decades after the end of the Second World War, Washington’s premiere suburb became an enclave for a reincarnation of Nazi Germany’s beliefs when George Lincoln Rockwell came into town. For seven years, Rockwell ran the American Nazi Party from his headquarters on 928 N. Randolph Street in the busy Ballston neighborhood of Arlington. He also ran a barracks for his “storm troopers” at the top of the hill in a mansion farm house called “Hatemonger Hill” by local residents.

It was from there that he drove the short distance to the Dominion Hills Shopping Center to visit the EconoWash laundromat on August 25, 1967. As Rockwell sat in his car, a disgruntled former party member fatally shot him from the roof of the building. Rockwell’s death marked a critical halt in his march towards white racialism at a time when the Civil Rights movement had reached its strongest point. It also stands as a bleak reminder of the resurgence of hatred into modern life today.²

George Lincoln Rockwell was born in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1918. He lived a privileged childhood, and was talented in many subjects. While studying philosophy at Brown University, Rockwell dropped out of school to accept a commission as an officer in the United States Navy in 1938, just three years removed from the United States’ entry into the conflict. He served as a naval aviator during the Second World War, operating in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters. As a lieutenant commander living in San Diego with his family during the Korean War, he became acquainted with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He also applauded American figures like anti-Communist stalwart Senator Joseph McCarthy and General Douglas MacArthur. It was from the latter that he adopted his signature corncob pipe, an accessory he held onto until the day he died.

Later, he divorced his wife and married another woman with similar interests and sympathies of his own. By 1955, he was back stateside in Washington, D.C., publishing a periodical called U.S. Lady, a magazine made for U.S. service member’s wives that doubled as his mouthpiece for his racist ideologies. His racist attitudes and words grew more vocal and more popular in the latter half of the decade, gaining a following in and around his new home in Arlington County, Virginia. He gathered his thoughts for a new vision of racial purity. He called it the American Nazi Party. By the end of the decade, he had his first headquarters in Arlington inside a brick rambler at 6512 Williamsburg Boulevard. As author Charles S. Clark noted in his exposé on Rockwell, “through the window, neighbors could see his lit-up swastika on a red flag.” The home is now a private residence estimated in value at $758,000.³

ANP Headquarters on 928 N. Randolph Street, now high-rise luxury apartments (lindseybestebreurtje/Google Street View)

In 1960, Rockwell’s American Nazi Party moved to a new location at 928 N. Randolph Street, today the site of high-rise apartments. In front of the near-derelict building was a large sign that everyone could read from the road: “White Man…Fight! Smash the Black Revolution Now.” His numbers of followers continued to grow into the early 1960s. He eventually set-up a “stormtrooper barracks” inside a large hilltop farmhouse two miles away from his headquarters at 6150 Wilson Boulevard. Local residents came to call the location “Hatemonger Hill.”⁴

The American Nazi Party (ANP) spewed their racist vitriol inside the beltway and beyond. Rockwell used the party as a platform for advocating deporting Black Americans back to Africa, sterilizing Jews, and executing race traitors like President Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren. Famously, Rockwell and several of his followers drove a swastika-clad Volkswagen van from Arlington to New Orleans to protest the “Freedom Rides” like some low-rent, racist pilgrimage to Bonnaroo.⁵

Despite their media attention, the ANP was small. One estimate had them numbering only thirty “hardcore followers” and just over three hundred total during the Rockwell era. One of those followers was John Patler, a former United States Marine who was honorably discharged after being arrested at an ANP rally. Born John C. Patsalos, he changed his last name to Patler to sound phonetically like “Hitler.” He joined the party officially in 1960 and served as the editor and cartoonist for the organization’s magazine, Stormtrooper. He was expelled from the group in 1967 for harboring “Bolshevik leanings” after a disagreement with Rockwell over policy. Although Patler claimed he loved Rockwell “like a father,” and he to him “like a son,” Patler grew unwilling to see a world where the two were separated. Rockwell sullied on, spending most of his time atop Hatemonger Hill. Patler festered until the anger, frustration, and disappointment reached a boiling point in the summer of 1967.⁶

Dominion Hills Shopping Center Today. The silver sedan in the distance is where Rockwell was killed. (Matthew Eng Photo)

Around noon on Friday, August 25, 1967, Rockwell went down the hill with his laundry to visit the EconoWash, one of the many establishments in a small strip mall called the Dominion Hills Shopping Center. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark slacks. Parking his 1958 Chevrolet in front of a barber shop owned by Tom Blakeney, the two waved at one another before Rockwell exited his car and entered the laundromat. He appeared moments later, having forgotten his bleach. As he returned to his car, as Tom Blakeney remembers, he heard two shots ring out. “I thought a car had backfired,” he said. He continued:

“I saw Rockwell kind of jumping around in the front seat, and I thought he was having a seizure. I saw him point at the roof and then slump over the steering wheel.”⁷
Tom Blakeny, Tom’s Barber Shop Owner

Two shots traveled through the windshield. One landed into Rockwell’s heart and the other ricocheted off the seat and into the roof of the vehicle. His car knocked into another nearby vehicle. According to Charles S. Clark, Rockwell “fell and landed face-up in the parking lot, splayed beside his box of Ivory Snow and a copy of the New York Daily News.” The leader of the ANP was gone. A coroner later pronounced him dead at the scene.⁸

Where Rockwell died (Matthew Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)

Rockwell’s final gesture was for a very good reason. He was pointing at his killer, John Patler. Patler had used the vantage point from the top of the roof of the Dominion Hills Shopping Center to aim down and shoot Rockwell. Patler was a former Marine, who are as a rule expert in their marksmanship. Arlington police arrested the 29-year-old half an hour later on Washington Boulevard. A discarded raincoat and cap believed to be Patler’s was found in a nearby yard, and a German Mauser Semiautomatic pistol was recovered in the water along nearby Four Mile Run below a footbridge. He was convicted of first-degree murder in December 1967, and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was later paroled in 1975, serving less than half of his original sentence. As for Rockwell, he was given a military burial at Culpepper National Cemetery. Although the agreement for his military burial stipulated that there be no Nazi insignias to be displayed during his burial, his followers violated these conditions. He was secretly cremated the next day.⁹

Today, very little evidence of the assassination exists. There are no historical markings, only businesses that have come and gone since 1967. The facade of the entire complex has changed. The one business that still exists is the barber shop, now called Tom’s Hairstylist & Barber. As of 2010, Tom Blakeney, the original owner, was still alive, retired and living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Looking through several pictures for references, we were able to pinpoint the exact spot that Rockwell died in August 1967. Neo-Nazi sympathizers have come to the strip mall’s parking lot for years to pay homage to Rockwell.

Hatemonger Hill is now a picnic area in Upton Hill Regional Park (Renegade Tribune/Parks Rx)

Hatemonger Hill, less than a mile away, is now a picnic pavilion where families eat in between trips to the batting cages, mini-golf courses, and swimming pool. The land was demolished and annexed to Upton Hill Regional Park in 1973, as the party members soon lost their lease after Rockwell’s death.¹⁰

Unfortunately, Rockwell’s death would not the end of the city’s relationship with hate and division.

As recently as 2016, Arlington resurfaced again as a nucleus for hate when WTOP reported that alt-right talking head/inauguration punching bag Richard Spencer and the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank, was based in town before moving to neighboring Old Town Alexandria a few years later.¹¹ Charlottesville may be a few hours’ drive from Arlington, but I do not believe what transpired there was lost on residents who lived through the tumultuous years of the ANP in their city.

On August 25, 2017, a small group of Nazis showed up to the very spot where Rockwell was killed. Dressed in white shirts, black slacks, and black ties, they paid their respects to the former American Nazi Party leader. A guest at the nearby barber shop took a photo of the six individuals giving the requisite “sieg heil” salute, with one holding a large Nazi flag in the middle. The bottom of the flag touches the asphalt and the darkened motor oil stains left there over the years…well maintained machines slowly oozing out their excess and leaving an indelible mark for future generations. I can think of no better metaphor for the arrogance of the individuals in the photograph. As one Twitter user responded to the photograph with, “I count 6 losers & a flag.”

Six losers and a flag (NBC4/Aki Peritz Twitter)

I understand that journalistic integrity is built on a foundation of objectivity. That is clearly out of the window for this article. It was painful enough to expose the old wounds of such a great city once again, so close to a time when we are all near-broken and politically fragile. So if you are upset with the bias in this article because Offbeat NOVA is taking a political stance against the creeping Kudzu of fascism in the United States, we only have a few words to say. Like Rockwell, there will come a time when the hate will end, either by their own hand or the genuine good of others.

Today is election day, when the very soul of the nation is at stake. Whether you like it or not, this year is a mirror to Charlottesville in 2017. Arlington in the 1960s. Nuremberg in 1938. But like those other events, those involved will fail. Why? Because in the good words of Woody Guthrie, all you fascists are bound to lose.

Footnotes:

Kat Tretina, “10 Most Expensive Cities to Live in for 2020,” Education Loan Finance. Accessed November 1, 2020, LINK.
United Press International (UPI), “Rockwell, U.S. Nazi party leader, slain,” United Press International, August 25, 1967. Accessed November 2, 2020, LINK.
Charles S. Clark,”Close-Up Of An American Nazi,” Northern Virginia Magazine, November 28, 2010. Accessed November 2, 2020, LINK.
Clark, “Close-Up;” Mark Jones, “Nazis in Arlington: George Rockwell and the ANP,” WETA Boundary Stones, January 2, 2013. Accessed November 2, 2020, LINK.
Jones, “Nazis in Arlington.”
Frederick James Simonelli. American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Charles S. Clark, “Death of an Arlington Nazi,” Northern Virginia Magazine, December 30, 2010. Accessed November 2, 2020, LINK.
Clark, “Death of An Arlington Nazi;” UPI, “Slain.”
Michel E. Miller, “The shadow of assassinated American Nazi commander hangs over Charlottesville,” The Washington Post, August 21, 2017. Accessed November 2, 2020, LINK.
Mark Jones, Nazis in Arlington.”
Dick Uliano, “White nationalist, alt-right group calls Arlington home,” WTOP News, November 22, 2016. Accessed November 1, 2020, LINK.