Steven J. Ross, a Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, has spent decades uncovering the hidden history of American resistance to hate groups in the postwar era. His book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy, details how a covert network of activists, journalists, and lawyers worked from the 1940s through the 1960s to infiltrate and expose neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations operating across the United States. Drawing on FBI files, organizational records, and personal interviews, Ross reconstructs a largely overlooked chapter in civil rights history where private citizens took on extremist movements long before federal agencies prioritized domestic terrorism.
The spy network Ross describes was not a government operation but a loose coalition of civilian actors, including staff from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (ANL). These groups sent undercover investigators into meetings of organizations like the Columbians, the National Renaissance Party, the American Nazi Party, and the National States’ Rights Party. Their goal was to gather intelligence on violent plots, membership rolls, and funding sources, then share that information with law enforcement and the press to provoke public scrutiny and legal consequences. One of their most significant achievements was exposing the role of George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, in organizing rallies that combined Nazi symbolism with open calls for racial violence.
According to Ross’s research, which draws on archival material from the ADL and FBI surveillance files, the network operated with particular urgency in the late 1950s and early 1960s when white supremacist groups began targeting Black churches and synagogues with explosives. In 1958, the bombing of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama — though not directly tied to the groups Ross focuses on — illustrated the escalating danger of racist terrorism that these civilian monitors sought to document and prevent. The ADL’s internal reports from that period, later cited in congressional hearings, show how undercover agents recorded license plates at Klan gatherings and transcribed speeches calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Government, providing critical leads that eventually contributed to FBI investigations under COINTELPRO-white hate initiatives.
The network’s methods were meticulous but dangerous. Investigators often attended rallies under false identities, recording speeches that praised Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust even as noting the presence of weapons and paramilitary training. In one documented case from 1960, an ADL informant infiltrated a National States’ Rights Party meeting in New Orleans where speaker Jesse Benjamin Stoner advocated for the expulsion of all Jews and Black Americans from the country. The informant’s report, which included a verbatim transcript of Stoner’s speech calling for “a white Christian republic,” was later used by journalists to counter extremist propaganda in mainstream media outlets.
Ross emphasizes that this resistance occurred amid a broader societal reluctance to confront domestic fascism. As detailed in his book and corroborated by contemporary newspaper archives, many public officials dismissed early warnings about neo-Nazi activity as isolated incidents or exaggerated by Jewish organizations. The Cold War’s focus on communism further diverted attention, allowing hate groups to operate with relative impunity until high-profile violence — such as the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four Black girls — forced national reckoning. Though Ross’s narrative ends before the civil rights movement’s legislative victories, he argues that the groundwork laid by these civilian spies helped create the public pressure necessary for later federal action against groups like the Ku Klux Klan under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The legacy of this hidden struggle remains relevant today, according to Ross, who notes in recent interviews that the tactics used by postwar extremists — public marches with Nazi symbols, conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, and alliances between antisemitic and anti-Black factions — echo in modern hate movements. He points to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where demonstrators chanted “Jews will not replace us” and displayed swastikas, as a direct ideological descendant of the groups his book examines. In a 2023 lecture at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Ross stressed that understanding this history is essential for recognizing how hate groups adapt their messaging while maintaining core goals of racial and religious exclusion.
For readers seeking to explore this history further, the ADL’s Center on Extremism maintains an online archive of historical reports on postwar hate groups, including digitized bulletins from the 1950s that detail surveillance of the Columbians and National Renaissance Party. The USC Libraries’ Special Collections also house Ross’s research files related to Hitler in Los Angeles, his earlier work on Nazi plots in Southern California during the 1930s and 1940s, which shares methodological parallels with the civilian intelligence-gathering described in The Secret War Against Hate. These resources offer primary-source validation for the networks and individuals Ross brings to light in his scholarship.
As awareness grows about the persistence of hate ideologies in American society, works like Ross’s provide crucial context for understanding both the resilience of extremist movements and the enduring importance of civilian vigilance. By documenting how ordinary people once risked their safety to monitor and expose organized hatred, his research offers not just historical insight but a reminder of the role individuals can play in defending democratic values against organized intolerance.
To stay informed about ongoing efforts to track and counter hate groups in the United States, readers can consult the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual Intelligence Report, which publishes verified data on extremist organizations and their activities. The next edition is scheduled for release in early 2026 and will include analysis of recent trends in white supremacist recruitment and antisemitic incidents, continuing the tradition of public accountability that Ross’s work helps illuminate.