The Neo-Nazi movement started in the United States in 1959 with the founding of the American Nazi Party (ANP) by founder George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell based the party largely upon the ideology and policies of  Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party but maintained allegiance to the U.S. Constitutional principles of America’s Founding Fathers. The ANP was the first racist or neo-Nazi group to add as its platform the denial of the Holocaust. .

After Rockwell was assassinated the group broke up into several other groups, like the National Alliance, Aryan Nation, National Socialist White People’s Party and small version of the ANP.

In 1970, William Pierce, who had been an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, Pierce founded the National Alliance (NA) in the early 1970’s. The NA was the largest of the neo-Nazi group until the early part of the 21 century. In decline since the death of founder William Pierce, the National Alliance has barely been functioning.  The internal fighting directed against the leadership of Erich Gliebe, who took over the Alliance after Pierce died, and Shaun Walker (who had been the chairman of group until his arrest on federal hate crime charges in June 2006) created dissension within the group. Due to this power struggle the National Alliance splintered into half dozen groups. Groups like National Vanguard, White Revolution, and the NSM. Kevin Strom, who had been associated with the NA since the early 1990s, Started the National Vanguard (until his arrest on Child pornography charges).The National Alliance, for two decades the most formidable presence in the white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology in the world, is today severely weakened as a national operation.

Today the neo-Nazi movement is controlled mostly by the National Socialist Movement (NSM). The NSM is currently the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States due primarily to setbacks experienced by other major neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, Aryan Nations and White Aryan Resistance (WAR). The NSM promotes its  anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi ideology through the group's Website, Internet-based radio programs, white power music company and videogames. While some neo-Nazi groups prefer the suit and tie look to the Nazi brown shirts, the NSM is a throwback to the 1960s-era American Nazi Party, members wear Nazi uniforms and openly display the swastikas. This explicit Nazi imagery has apparently helped their stature or standing on the racist right.