Ralph Perry Forbes

Ralph Perry Forbes (March 12, 1940 – June 10, 2018) was an American Christian Identity minister and neo-Nazi who unsuccessfully ran for various Arkansas political offices. A former US Marine, he was a member of the American Nazi Party throughout the 1960s. Starting in 1963, Forbes led the ANP's California branch, the Western Division, until his expulsion in 1967. His religious views created conflict between him and the otherwise largely secular organization. In 1965, party leader George Lincoln Rockwell enlisted him to become the ANP's Christian Identity minister in an effort to appeal to a wider American audience; Forbes mixed neo-Nazism with Christian Identity ideology.

As leader of the Western Division he was involved in a dispute with the city of Glendale, California, in 1964 and 1965. After Rockwell was murdered in 1967, Forbes, a Rockwell loyalist, left the ANP after a power struggle within the Western Division. He moved to London, Arkansas, where he continued his Christian Identity adherence and was active in local politics. In the 1970s, he founded the Sword of Christ Good News Ministries, a Christian Identity group. He was involved in an effort to mainstream the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s. He ran for office several times, and was the campaign manager for David Duke's 1988 presidential campaign with the Populist Party.

Forbes was also known for filing several high-profile lawsuits. In 1986, he sued, among others, the Arkansas Department of Education and Satan in an effort to stop the Arkansas school system from celebrating Halloween. Federal judge George Howard Jr. agreed to hear the case, and eventually dismissed the suit. A 1992 lawsuit by Forbes after he was excluded from a television debate resulted in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals requiring public broadcasters to declare a "viewpoint-neutral" reason for excluding candidates; this was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States who decided against him in Arkansas Educational Television Commission v. Forbes.