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While there is now more academic work on crusader & Templar imagery & its appropriation in contemporary far right, one of weirdest, most understudied bits of right-wing extremism is overlap between various chivalric orders & anti-communist, antisemitic & racist organisations
There is practically no in-depth scholarship on Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, aka Sovereign Military Order of Malta, or SMOM, or the Shickshinny Knights or offshoot orgs like white supremacist Tennessee Knights
Even though these orgs were full of ex- spooks, former senior military figures & influential right-wing propagandists. This is why Kevin Cooganâs forthcoming book, âSpy Who Would be Tsar: Mystery of Michal Goleniewski & the American Far Right Undergroundâ will be vital reading
Shickshinny Knights was officially founded in 1950s but its leader Charles Thourot Pichel was involved in an esoteric occultist fascist group called âThe Ancient and Noble Order of the Blue Lamooâ based in South Dakota that was active in 1930s https://www.jta.org/1934/08/02/archive/this-fascist-racket-19
Blue Lamoo emerged out of US branch of antisemitic international in 1920s & 1930s that propagated Protocols of Zion in US (alongside Henry Ford) & âLeslie Fryâ. Network featured fanatical Jew-hating White Russian anti-Bolsheviks linked with Nazis through orgs like Aufbau
So to recap, chivalric order Shickshinny Knights founded in 1950s with its roots in heart of US interwar antisemitism became a rallying ground for anticommunists & rw extremists. A breakaway chivalric group mutated into Tennessee-based American Pistol and Rifle Association.
The Tennessee-based American Pistol & Rifle Association was one of three organisations targeted by the FBI in a failed investigation of right-wing extremism in the 1990s called PATCON as discussed in this piece by @intelwire https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/18/patriot-games/
Members of Shickshinny knights âMilitary Committeâ included Cleve Backster, former CIA polygraph expert, Philip Corso, ex-military UFO enthusiast, Herman Kimsey, ex-CIA, Gen Pedro del Valle, leader of antisemitic Defenders of American Constitution org https://web.archive.org/web/20060823103720/http:/www.iisg.nl/research/coogan.doc
Interned U.K. fascist Adm. Barry Domvile, Gen. Lemuel Shepherd, Major General Charles Willoughby, former intelligence chief for General Douglas MacArthur who described him as âhis pet fascistâ, & who was involved with multiple far-right groups in postwar period.
