Bobby Fischer
Robert James Fischer (born 1943), popularly known as Bobby Fischer, was the only American to become World Chess Champion when he defeated Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in a 1972 match in Iceland. He forfeited his title to Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov in 1975 when he refused to defend his title, unable to agree on any proposed conditions for a match with Karpov. He did not publicly play chess again until 1992, when he played a return match in Yugoslavia in violation of American sanctions on Yugoslavia. Fischer became known for making anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks in the media over the next ten years, most notoriously his praise of the September 11, 2001 attacks. This cost him his membership in the United States Chess Federation (USCF), which has since been restored. This was generally viewed as symbolic, since Fischer not only does not play chess anymore, but is also not welcome in the United States. In 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan, and has since taken asylum in Iceland.
Fischer has claimed that "chess is dead" and is unlikely to ever play traditional chess again. He currently is promoting a form of "shuffle chess" called Fischerandom (or Chess960), in which the opening position is randomized.
Anti-Semitism
Even though Fischer himself is Jewish, he often signs his name as “Robert James”, eliminating the racially ambiguous “Fischer.”, and has demanded to be excised from a Jewish encyclopedia. According to Grandmaster Larry Evans, Fischer has once told him that he admired Hitler because "he imposed his will on the world". At a 1992 press conference, Bobby Fischer called communism, rightly enough, “a mask for Bolshevism,” but he then stunned his audience by calling Bolshevism “a mask for Judaism.” In January 14, 1999, during an interview on Filipino radio, Bobby Fischer said, “You know they [Jews] invented the Holocaust story. There’s no such. There was no Holocaust of the Jews in World War II.” Bobby Fischer has also admitted to belief in “giant conspiracy of the Jewish world government.” Yet, despite, Bobby Fischer's openly anti-Semitic remarks, he has several close Jewish friends. According to the American Jewish master Ron Gross: "Bobby says we’re all victims of the conspiracy".
References
Is Bobby Fischer Anti-Semitic?, Larry Parr, May 8, 2001
