Francis Joseph Collin (born November 3, 1944) is an American former political activist and Midwest coordinator with the American Nazi Party, later known as the National Socialist White People's Party. After being ousted for being partly Jewish (which he denied), in 1970, Collin founded the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA). In the late 1970s, his planned march in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois was challenged; the case ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court to correct procedural deficiencies.

In 1979 Collin was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to seven years in prison, and he lost his position in the party. After being released early on parole from prison, Collin created a new career as a writer, publishing numerous books under the pen name Frank Joseph. He wrote New Age and hyperdiffusionist works.

Early life

Collin was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where he attended local schools. His father, Max Frank Collin, was born Max Simon Cohn in Munich, Germany, on August 23, 1913, the son of Jewish parents who were murdered in the Holocaust, and was a survivor of Dachau concentration camp. Frank's mother, Virginia Gertrude née Hardyman, was born in Chicago on August 18, 1920, and was Catholic.

Political activity

As a young man, Collin in the 1960s joined George Lincoln Rockwell's National Socialist White People's Party (formerly the American Nazi Party). He became the Midwest coordinator. He broke with the NSWPP due to a disagreement with Rockwell's successor, Matt Koehl, who was elected as the party leader by popular vote after Rockwell was assassinated on August 25, 1967. The falling out stemmed in part from published accounts by Max Collin, Frank's father, who said that he was a Jewish Holocaust survivor and had changed his name from Cohen (or Cohn) to Collin.

In 1970, Collin formed another organization, the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA). It attracted other disaffected members of the NSWPP, as well as Michael Allen, Gary Lauck and Harold Covington. Covington helped buy a building for the group which they called Rockwell Hall, where Collin and some other members lived in a barracks in upper floor. The Chicago authorities became concerned about violence and passed an ordinance which required demonstrations to post large insurance bonds. Collin went to the ACLU and they filed a suit.

Specifically, the necessity of immediate appellate review of orders restraining the exercise of First Amendment rights was strongly emphasized in National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977). Afterward, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the party had a right to march and to display swastikas, despite local opposition, based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Collin then offered a compromise, offering to march in Chicago's Marquette Park (where Martin Luther King had been attacked in 1966) instead of Skokie. In what Kaplan described as a play for power in the organization, Covington and the other NSPA members turned the evidence on Collin over to the police. Collin was convicted of child molestation His time in the Pontiac Correctional Facility in Illinois had coincided with the period when Russell E. Burrows worked there as a prison guard. He subsequently wrote many books and articles in support of Burrows Cave, an alleged cache of ancient treasure in an unrevealed location, supposedly discovered by Russell Burrows in southern Illinois. In 1987, he had his first New Age book published, The Destruction of Atlantis: Compelling Evidence of the Sudden Fall of the Legendary Civilization.

He wrote articles for Fate magazine, and he was also the editor of The Ancient American magazine. The Ancient American focuses on what it says is evidence of ancient, pre-Columbian transoceanic contact between the Old World and North America, with the implication that all complex aspects of North America's indigenous cultures must have originated on other continents. The magazine's claims are similar to discredited nineteenth century theories, and as a result, they are considered dubious or exploitative by scholars.

Books (as Frank Joseph)

  • The Destruction of Atlantis: Compelling Evidence of the Sudden Fall of the Legendary Civilization (Atlantis Research Publishers, 1987)

:*Reprinted 2004, Bear and Co.,

  • Atlantis in Wisconsin: New Revelations About the Lost Sunken City (Galde Press, 1995)
  • Edgar Cayce's Atlantis and Lemuria: The Lost Civilizations in the Light of Modern Discoveries (A.R.E. Press, 2001)
  • Lost Pyramids of Rock Lake: Wisconsin's Sunken Civilization (Galde Press, 2002)
  • The Lost Treasure of King Juba: The Evidence of Africans in America before Columbus (Bear and Co., 2003)
  • Synchronicity & You: Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in Your Life, 2003,
  • Last of the Red Devils: America's First Bomber Pilot (Galde Press, 2003)
  • Survivors of Atlantis: Their Impact on World Culture (Galde Press, 2004)
  • The Atlantis Encyclopedia (New Page Books, 2005)
  • The Lost Civilization of Lemuria: The Rise and Fall of the Worlds Oldest Culture (Bear and Co., 2006)
  • Opening the Ark of the Covenant: The Secret Power of the Ancients, The Knights Templar Connection, and the Search for the Holy Grail (New Page Books, 2007)
  • Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds (Arcturus, 2008)
  • Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America: The Lost Kingdoms of the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippians, and Anasazi (Bear and Co., 2009)
  • Power of Coincidence: The Mysterious Role of Synchronicity in Shaping Our Lives (Arcturus, 2009)
  • Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935–45 (Helion & Company Ltd., 2009)
  • Gods of the Runes: The Divine Shapers of Fate (Bear and Co., 2010)
  • Atlantis and 2012: The Science of the Lost Civilization and the Prophecies of the Maya (Bear and Co., 2010)
  • The Axis Air Forces: Flying in Support of the German Luftwaffe (Praeger, 2011)
  • Ancient High Tech: The Astonishing Scientific Achievements of Early Civilizations (Bear and Co., 2020)
  • Military Encounters with Extraterrestrials: The Real War of the Worlds (Bear and Co., 2018)

See also

  • Dan Burros

References

Works cited