H. Keith Thompson

Harold Keith Thompson (September 17, 1922 – March 3, 2002) was a New York City-based corporate executive, a Nazi agent, and a figure within American far-right and fascist circles. Thompson served in the U.S. Navy during the war.

Postwar Thompson graduated from Yale University in 1946. He made an expedition to Antarctica as part of Operation Highjump under Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd. In 1948, Thompson joined the United States Marine Corps. In 1949, he was court-martialed for sexual deviation and maltreatment. Following a conviction and the approval of the verdict, Thompson, who had already been under investigation for his Neo-Nazi activities, was dismissed from the military. Thompson also became a close ally of Otto Ernst Remer, a Nazi general who had defended Hitler against a 1944 coup plot,

In his article "I Am an American Fascist" for the obscure Exposé magazine in 1954, Thompson praised the Third Reich and Hitler and condemned the Nuremberg Trials as "vicious and vilely dishonorable". He became linked to the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics and published a number of pamphlets on its behalf. More concrete links were established with Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and Johann von Leers as part of efforts to build the ties of the extreme right in the West and the Islamic world.

Republican Party and later work Along with a number of right wing activists Thompson was also involved on the fringes of the Republican Party. Independently wealthy, he contributed to the campaigns of such right wing figures in the GOP as Jesse Helms, Oliver North and Pat Buchanan. His monetary contributions to the party were such that he was awarded membership of its Presidential Legion of Merit as a result.

He became a mentor and friend to the Holocaust denier Keith Stimely.

In his later years, Thompson largely disappeared from public view. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing he re-emerged, initially welcoming the attack; afterward, however, he later revised his position and denounced it as a government act designed to destroy the reputation of the far right.

He would also speak positively about the Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky saying that, "Zhironovky certainly seems a good man to me in many ways, certainly better than Yeltsin".

Thompson died in 2002.

Writing In the early post-war years, Thompson worked as a publisher and literary agent (his clients included Fulgencio Batista, Carol II of Romania and Hans-Ulrich Rudel). Thompson was offered a position on the board of policy of the Liberty Lobby, although he turned it down, stating that he only wanted to take one loyalty oath in his life (to Hitler when he joined the SD).