NSM’s Jeff Schoep May Be Playing Folks With This Conversion Thing

You have to pretty much find it hidden in the footnotes of a court document filed a few weeks ago, but you can’t unsee it once you do: The onetime National Socialist Movement’s leader who said he denounces them and hate overall reportedly is still working with them.

On Friday, Jeff Schoep tweeted out a statement: “Over a year ago I walked away from #extremism & made the choice to speak out against #hate 2 promote #peace inclusion & help others leave extremism. At great personal risk I do this to make amends 4 my past & the hate I once spewed. #Change is real even if some refuse 2 believe.” The tweet is intended to reinforce the role that Schoep has been seen taking on over the past year, but many have been skeptical about his supposed transition. Now a footnote in a recent court document may have confirmed those concerns, indicating that Schoep has in fact still been active all this time.

Those court documents filed on March 11 are part of an ongoing lawsuit against the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which Schoep led for over two decades, and others reportedly involved in the violence during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia three years ago. In a motion to compel discovery from the NSM, it was noted that  Burt Colucci, who currently leads the NSM, had admitted that the discovery requested was incomplete, and in particular, a response to an interrogatory asking the group to identify all persons he communicated in regards to Unite the Right. The damning footnote was in relation to this particular passage in the motion.

“Colucci’s deposition also revealed that Schoep and (Acacia) Dietz have continued to participate in NSM’s activities, even as Schoep claims to have left the white-supremacist movement,” the footnote read. “For example, on October 13, 2019, Schoep warned Colucci via text message that someone who was calling into Colucci’s podcast with death threats was ‘baiting’ him and was actually a federal informant.”

I am shocked that Jeff Schoep hasn’t really left the movement. pic.twitter.com/HRRvI5AGCu

— Shawn Breen (@TTOJAF) March 11, 2020

Dietz, Schoep’s girlfriend, can be seen listed as a registered agent for the NSM on the State of Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs website, which also notes the Nonprofit organization dissolved there in June. Also in the incorporation entry is James Stern who Schoep reportedly gave control of the NSM to during a period of infighting. Stern was a Black minister who wanted to dismantle the NSM, and filed a lawsuit with other NSM members trying to wrestle control of the organization. That suit was pending when he died of cancer in November.

The footnote however, notes that Dietz “has ‘[i]nformally’ remained a member of NSM and manages NSM’s website. As recently as December 2, 2019, Colucci asked Dietz to update the website.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that But Schoep left the NSM in March of last year, the same month James Stern took control of the organization, and went public with a disavowal of the far right now referring to himself as a “peace advocate” on his personal website. In that time, Schoep has presented at several forums and conferences around the world, and has made appearances on television and radio programs heralding his conversion. He still however targets antifa on Twitter, calling antifascism “just another form of extremism”. Even more damning has been his work with the Clarion Project, an Islamophobic organization that has listed anti-Muslim figures like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes as advisors and has been blasted for creating baseless propaganda documentaries about Muslims, one of them being called out in one article “for its cartoonish portrayal of Muslims as modern-day Nazis.” Clarion Project, which was founded by Rabbi Raphael Shore, a onetime associate of the conservative Israeli organization Aish HaTorah, also employs Frank Meenik, another onetime neo-Nazi who says he has given up those beliefs.

Jeff Schoep tweets about walking away from being a Nazi, and literally in his next tweet he’s recommending that people check out The Clarion Project, an anti-Islam hate group.

Jeff Schoep will always be a fucking Nazi. pic.twitter.com/gYQjOwsv2w

— AntiFash Gordon (@AntiFashGordon) March 29, 2020

Recently, the National Socialist Movement canceled its plans to hold their conference and rally next month in Pennsylvania due to their rally permit being pulled by the mayor of Williamsport due to the Coronavirus health crisis, saying they will hold the event on a date in July. On Friday, another motion, this one to compel Schoep for discovery, was filed, citing among other things his correspondence with Burt Colucci making such a discovery from him relevant to their case.