| National Socialist Liberation Front | |
| Leader: | Joseph Tommasi (1969–75) David Rust (1975) James Mason (1980–82) Karl Hand (1982–86) |
| Split: | American Nazi Party (1974) |
| Ideology: | Neo-Nazism Revolutionary nationalism White nationalism White supremacy Neo-fascism Xenophobia Anti-communism Anti-capitalism Anti-Zionism Antisemitism |
| Headquarters: | El Monte, California |
| Wing2 Title: | Mother party |
| Wing2: | American Nazi Party (1969–74) |
| Position: | Far-right |
| Country: | United States |
| Abbreviation: | NSLF |
The National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) was an American neo-Nazi organization. Originally established in 1969 as a youth wing of the National Socialist White People's Party, in 1974 it reconstituted itself as the NSLF after its leader Joseph Tommasi was expelled from the NSWPP.
The NSLF were defunct by the mid-1980s.
The NSLF was established in 1969 by Joseph Tommasi, with the backing of William Luther Pierce, as a campus-based revolutionary organization to compete with New Left militant groups. Ideological as well as personal differences began to develop between Tommassi and Matthias Koehl. At the National Socialist White People's Party's second congress in 1970, Tommasi denounced the conservative old guard of the party and called for immediate revolution. Koehl expelled him from the Party in 1973, claiming that he was smoking marijuana and entertaining young women at party headquarters, as well as misusing party funds.[1] One of the NSLF's recruits during this period was Louisiana State University student David Duke.[2]
The NSLF was reconstituted as a new organization on March 2, 1974, "in the presence of 43 National Socialist revolutionaries" in El Monte, California. The NSLF broke with established Nazi tradition, eschewing brownshirt uniforms and abandoning attempts to raise a "mass movement" of supporters to win power through legal means. Instead, Tommasi argued that it was best for small bands of "National Socialist revolutionaries" to arm themselves and conduct guerrilla warfare.[3] [4] The new organization was structured with two tiers, a legal "aboveground" membership - which at most included forty members - and a smaller "underground" that was dedicated to violent, revolutionary action. This group included Tommasi, Karl Hand, David Rust and James Mason, the latter of whom was not an official member of the NSLF.[5]
Joseph Tommasi was killed at the El Monte headquarters of the NSWPP in August 1975 and was succeeded by his lieutenant David Rust, who was soon arrested on a weapons charge. Units of the group were formed in Cincinnati, Buffalo, NY, Wilmington, Delaware and Louisiana. In 1982, James Mason took a splinter group to form the Universal Order, a group that promoted the ideas of Charles Manson as a continuation of Nazism, and took with them the periodical Siege!, though the parting was reportedly amicable. By that time Karl Hand headed the group and published Defiance. Under Hand, the NSLF went back to the earlier model of uniformed political demonstrations and legality. However, the organization would come to an end with Hand's arrest on a weapons charge in the mid-1980s.[6]