A former neo-Nazi won't help the ABC play catch-up on white nationalism

Jeff Schoep led America’s biggest neo-Nazi group — now he sells himself as a “former extremist”, writes Tom Tanuki.

JEFF SCHOEP RAN the National Socialist Movement (NSM) from 1994 to 2019.

Under his watch, it grew to remain the largest neo-Nazi group in the U.S. for some time. It dwindled in size in 2017, when Schoep felt that it was time for the NSM to “become […] more mainstream” in the wake of Donald Trump I. He switched their logo from the swastika to the more demure Odal Rune, causing a mass exodus of neo-Nazi members from the group.

Then the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville happened — the white supremacist clash with an anti-fascist counter-rally, memorably described by Trump as sporting “very good people on both sides”, where a neo-Nazi ran over and killed Heather Heyer. After Charlottesville, the legal peril became too great for Schoep and other white nationalist figureheads.

A "countering violent extremism" organisation called Light Upon Light (LUL), launched in 2019 to coincide with the abrupt apparent defection of Schoep away from national socialism, offered him a handy reputation-laundering conduit.

LUL was founded by Jesse Morton, an ex-Al Qaeda member and friend of the far right who helped several high-profile "former" neo-Nazis like Schoep, Jason Kessler and Matthew Heimbach establish a post-Nazism career profile in public speaking. (Heimbach says he’s a "nationalist socialist" rather than a "national socialist", to give you an idea of how much he’s actually changed.)

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LUL’s chief contribution to "extremism" was described by a now-dormant blog:

'Most of LUL’s work relies on providing a pseudo-intellectual justification for U.S. imperialism and the national security industry. Jeff Schoep and Jason Kessler have done absolutely no work to repair the damage their involvement in white nationalism caused and yet LUL sees fit to parade them around in front of NatSec wonks. The doctrine of “Countering Violent Extremism” that LUL’s researchers subscribe to was always about putting a veneer of academia and community engagement over mass surveillance.'

We have academic figures like this who serve the same role in Australia, like establishment media rent-a-quote "expert" Josh Roose. But all that can be said of Roose is that he does absolutely nothing to help stop the far right. Schoep, however, actively continued to aid and abet his old movement beyond his "departure".

Schoep is described by other former white nationalists as “a grifter and not […] fully genuine”. He refused offers of deradicalisation counselling. He refused to provide anti-racist organisations or authorities with NSM membership lists. He threw his phone in a toilet, rather than have its contents be released to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against him and other white nationalists by victims of Unite the Right.

Deposition testimonials from other neo-Nazis confirm that Schoep was still involved in the NSM months after his engagement with LUL. Schoep’s partner Acacia Dietz continued to manage the NSM’s website for months after too.

Like Joshua Roose, what Schoep has become really good at is getting his name, face and quotes in everything. He published a book called American Nazi. You can book him to speak, so you can listen to him brag about leading the NSM for 25 years.

In fact, he’s been raking in the appearances in Australia recently: he just finished speaking (alongside Josh Roose, of course) at the Gold Coast’s Anti-Semitism Conference, where various politicians and Zionist lobbyists commemorated the genocide of Gazans by deciding that watermelons are antisemitic.

Here he is with a friend of his. Two flavours of genocidaire, arm in arm.

So that’s Jeff. He got out of neo-Nazism when the water got a bit hot, only helped himself, and now he’s a paid grifter.

So why on Earth is the ABC’s Rachael Lucas asking this ‘former neo-Nazi’ what he thinks about the fallout from the March for Australia?

According to them, he was in attendance at it!

'Mr Schoep attended anti-immigration protests to understand how Neo-Nazi dynamics were playing out in Victoria.'

One would think that Jeff doesn’t need much of a crash course in understanding how neo-Nazi dynamics play anywhere, given that he led America’s biggest neo-Nazi group for 25 years.

But of course, the former leader of the NSM would want to go and take a look at his global progeny growing up in the spotlight. Under Schoep, the NSM changed their attire to an all-black Italo-Fascist uniform style, one that was later adopted by groups like Australia’s National Socialist Network (NSN) and eventually became the aesthetic standard for neo-Nazis worldwide. In a sense, the NSN are his babies. Did they do him proud on August 31?

The only halfway useful thing Schoep tells Lucas for her ABC piece is that the media should promote NSN stunts less. (Thanks, Jeff. People like myself have said that sort of thing so often we’re like broken records, but thanks.) The rest of it is fluff and self-promotion, with Schoep dropping classics like:

"Hating people is exhausting.”

Wow.

If we were to start cataloguing all the grifters in the "extremism" space, we’d be here all day. My point is that everything I have shared is publicly accessible knowledge. A Google search or two would give you the same.

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So again: what is the ABC, and Rachael Lucas, doing seeking out this grifter for his "insight" on the NSN? He has none.

Look at the ABC’s coverage of the March for Australia before August 31. You’ll detect in their woeful absence of coverage that they didn’t care much about the March. Only the excellent Michael Workman put together coverage for them, warning of neo-Nazi influence over the rallies. Afterwards, it fell to independent figures such as myself to conduct rigorous documentation of how the events were captured by the NSN.

They’ve obviously lost interest in white nationalism and the far-right, and they’re scrambling to catch up. It’s a shame, but perhaps this sensitive subject matter is best left to people and outlets who are genuinely concerned about it.

I just hope they don’t think that they’re going to catch up by platforming grifters by Schoep. That’s not helping anyone.

Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.