In 1968, a TPUSA-like organization was created that sought to persuade college students to channel their frustrations with their professors and the university into right wing activism. It was called the National Youth Alliance. Their pitch probably sounds familiar.

The organization was committed to 4 central proposition. 1) defending the heritage of Western Civilization. 2) what we would call today "race realism." 3) a rejection of liberalism. 4) a willingness to take action to fight against America's enemies.

Once one dug a bit deeper into who the NYA was, one would discover that they were neo-Nazis. The guy who wrote The Turner Diaries got his start in the NYA. This is why people familiar with the history of the far right get concerned when they hear what TPUSA has to say today.

One of the sponsors of the NYA was Revilo Oliver, a Classics professor at the University of Illinois. Oliver had been a friend of Bill Buckley's and a founding member of the John Birch Society. But in the mid-1960s he took an even harder right turn. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1368679673593356289?s=20

The thing too many folks fail to understand about the far right is that they almost always present their politics in terms that sound exactly like run-of-the-mill Christian, patriotic, conservatism. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1368676240102551552?s=20

Note the language in this undated (but probably 1970-1) fundraiser from the NYA. "Help us combat the tyranny of the left!" Reading this, one would be hard-pressed to tell that this was a literal neo-Nazi outfit.

Only you, "the silent majority" can save "our civilization" from "the tyrannical left" and the Marxist professors who train them! Do it in the name of nationalism and common sense!

Not everyone who uses rhetoric like that is a neo-Nazi. But the fact that the neo-Nazis used rhetoric like that should, one would hope, give some pause to those who would use it today.

Also, when you hear folks say "look, I'm not antisemitic, I'm just really annoyed by people who talk about antisemitism a lot," remember that the head of the Neo-Nazi NYA was a history professor who wrote a book with this title.

Today I learned that in 1983, the Navy commissioned the USS Crommelin, named after Ret. Adm. John G. Crommelin, who was on the advisory board of the Neo-Nazi NYA. 1983. Let me repeat, 1983. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Crommelin_(FFG-37)

More NYA messaging to college students, calling them to fight back against "the ideological tyranny of the left" and its "false doctrines."

Googling the other members of the NYA advisory board has sent me down some truly bizarre rabbit holes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_del_Valle

The Marines currently have a scholarship named after this guy, an open and avowed fascist from the 1930s the whole way up into the 1970s. In the 1970s he was on the advisory board of a Neo-Nazi organization.

Here's an homage to another NYA advisory board member, Richard Cotten, written by a neo-Nazi who was converted to neo-Naziism by Cotten's radio show called "Conservative Viewpoint" and HL Hunt's Life Lines in the 1960s.