Daryl Davis Says Nazi Jeff Schoep Changed and Should Not Have to Pay For What He Did in C’Ville; Evidence Says Otherwise

Davis has been playing Apologist to the Fascist Stars for some time now, but this is bad. Real bad.

A “Petition For Reconsideration” has been filed by civil rights activist Daryl Davis on behalf of Jeff Schoep, the one time head of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), to the judge that presided over the lawsuit against the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally held in Charlottesville, VA four years ago, urging him to either remove the punitive damages or lower the amount based on a conversion from Nazism despite past evidence that has even appeared in court document indicating Scheop was still maintaining connections to his past colleagues, including those who were involved in small rallies over the weekend, one resulting in a physical altercation, and in particular his successor who was just indicted by an Arizona grand jury on a disorderly conduct charge stemming from an assault arrest last April.

In court documents filed Jan. 21 in the U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Daryl Davis says that while Schoep and the NSM was indeed a part of the organizing of events in Charlottesville as well as the violence of that day that ultimately resulted in the death of one person who was counterprotesting the White supremacists that participated in the rally, he has since turned his life around and became a changed man. “I know his life began turning around in 2018 and had made a 180 degree turn from his former way of life and beliefs by 2019,” he wrote, noting that he had taken Schoep on lecture tours across the country and that he has spoken as a consultant before a number of law enforcement programs helping them to build programs to address extremism. “Your Honor, of the 14 defendants and 10 organizations put on trial and found guilty because of their participation in the Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville on August 12 2017, Jeff Schoep is and continues to be, the ONLY defendant in that case who has turned his life around, but has set up a 501c3 organization for the sole purpose of intervention, prevention and countering violent extremism.” The petition included eight testimonials from Davis and other individuals who joined Davis in his support for Scheop, including two members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Integrity First for America (IFA) filed Sines v. Kessler on Oct. 11 2017, exactly two months after the Unite the Right rally began. In late 2018, Schoep began working with James Hart Stern, an African-American activist, to transfer control of the organization to him. In March 2019 weeks after he successfully made the transfer he resigned his position as head of the NSM and on Aug. 12 of that year, the second anniversary of Unite the Right, he announced that he renounced his Neo-Nazi past, saying in a statement, “It is now my mission to be a positive, peaceful influence of change and understanding for all humanity in these uncertain times.”

Almost immediately there were questions regarding Schoep’s announcement. Schoep never worked with the Sines v. Kessler plaintiffs and even attempted to delay them from receiving information. IFA attorneys filed motions to compel discovery in Mar 2020, noting Schoep’s “pattern of resistance, recalcitrance, and outright defiance of Court orders and . . . [his] discovery obligations.”

Court documents filed by IFA showed that despite his pronouncements about renouncing the NSM ion, Schoep still maintained communication with Burt Colucci, who became the head of the NSM in his stead, taking control back from James Hart Stern who died of cancer in Nov. 2019 while fighting NSM members over control in a lawsuit. A desposition even noted Schoep warning Colucci in Oct. 2019 that one of his podcast caller was an FBI informant. Schoep’s girlfriend, Acacia Dietz, who claimed in March 2020 that “almost a year has passed since I left the far-right,” was listed as a registered agent for the NSM on the State of Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs website, a month later and was still maintaining the NSM website according to court documents. In 2020, Davis produced a video with neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach for Light Upon Light, the organization founded by Jesse Morton, who passed away Dec. 21, that touted itself as one that helps former White supremacists transition. Like Schoep, Heimbach was named as a defendant in Sines v. Kessler and said he too left the White Power movement joining Schoep at Light Upon Light, but his conversion has been in question as well. In July, Heimbach announced he was returning to hate politics and relaunching his organization.

Davis is known for reaching out to White supremacists hoping to encourage them to renounce their beliefs. He claims to have encouraged 200 Klansmen to give up their robes in the course of the past 40 years but in recent years neo-fascists who have not turned around have instead been using an association with him as a deflection from criticism of and even actions against their activities. Schoep is also not the first person that faced legal troubles from their actions during the Unite the Right rally that he has defended. When Richard Preston, the Imperial Wizard of the Rosedale, Maryland-based Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, pled no contest to charges that he fired a handgun at a Black man during the rally, Davis paid his bail and took him to the African American History Museum in Washington, DC as a form of mitigation. Preston was sentenced to eight years in prison, with four years suspended.

In 2019, a neo-fascist conference was held in Philadelphia that although titled “Ending Racism, Violence and Authoritarianism” it was organized by podcaster Tim Pool featured as prominent speakers propagandist Andy Ngô and others who promoted the racism, violence and authoritarianism they were suggesting they wanted to end. A week before the conference was to be held in their original New Jersey venue, residents expressed opposition to the event causing the venue to shut their doors to it. It was only after this that Davis began being promoted as a keynote speaker and was seen in all of the advertising throughout the week. Afterwards, Davis said in a Facebook post he was told that he was being called a White supremacist by those protesting the afterparty that was still being held in a brewery near the original venue. Hardly any of the protesters even knew Davis, the majority of them being local residents, and Davis never had any contact with them as he was only seen going into the brewery, which closed its doors just a month ago.

Over this past weekend the NSM was seen holding small rallies in Orlando, Florida and video showed at in at least one instance Burt Colucci and others of his group engaged in a physical altercation with a commuter that was driving by. An Jan. 4 indictment was also unsealed on Jan. 27 against Colucci on misdemeanor and felony counts stemming from an incident in Maricopa County, AZ where he hurled racial slurs and pepper spray at Black people in a Phoenix suburb, pointing a loaded handgun and threatening to kill them, just two days after leading a hate rally in Phoenix that coincided with their annual conference. He faces at least three years in prison if convicted, and the next conference, which they call the “NSM Nationals” is scheduled for April 23 in Washington State, according to the NSM website.

Davis is currently on the board of advisors for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, an organization that according to its website is a “nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity”, but is comprised of conservatives that have seen controversies for their own racism such as television commentator Megyn Kelly , anti-Muslim activists such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has declared she is at with Islam and called for the closing of Islamic schools, and members of the Manhattan Institute, which has been in the forefront of recent campaigns against the teaching of the contributions of African-Americans in history under the guise of falsely calling it Critical Race Theory, which is actually the study of how racism is employed within institutions.