Next on the White Power Chopping Block: Burt Colucci

Seems like the Commander of the National Socialist Movement stayed in Phoenix too long after their little – VERY little – rally there. He drew down on some African-Americans and that’s why he’s still there.

CHANDLER, AZ – Just two days after he led a rally for his group the National Socialist Movement (NSM), Neo-Nazi leader Burt Colucci was arrested on Monday in for pointing a loaded handgun at a Black man and threatening to kill him and his friends.

According to news reports, the altercation began at the Hilton Phoenix when Chandler, who described himself to police as the commander of the NSM, placed trash on the car of the Black individuals that he said they threw out of the window and used racial slurs against them. The group as well as a witness said he aimed his firearm at them and threatened to kill them, although Colucci said he just put it in the “low ready” position. Chandler was arrested on charges of aggravated assault and taken to the Chandler Gilbert Jail.

Colucci took over the leadership position of the NSM two years ago, replacing Jeff Schoep, who ran the organization for over two decades and left claiming he is rejecting hate and is now working against those ideals, a conversion that many have been skeptical about after information revealed he was still corresponding with Colucci and his girlfriend maintained the NSM website. Both Colucci and Schoep must deal with a federal lawsuit stemming from the NSM’s role in the violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017, and since that day the NSM has seen very diminished numbers. A day before the rally, Colucci said he estimated the NSM has around 100 dues-paying members, and this is a nosedive into the over 1000 names and addresses found in a membership list One People’s Project obtained in 2011. Colucci was in Arizona to participate their annual conference and rally in Phoenix and where rallies in year’s past would boast 50-100 participants this year as was the case last year at their event in Williamsport, PA, Colucci lead a paltry 15 members in a park with ties to the Civil Rights Movement in Phoenix. There, the group harassed Black bystanders challenging them to fight.

On Tuesday, a Maricopa County superior court judge set Colucci’s bond at $7,500 and allowed him to travel to his home state of Florida, but said he must return to Maricopa County no later than April 25 for his next hearing. Colucci, who is currently being held at the Maricopa County Jail in lieu of bail, faces at least three years in prison if convicted.