 MAY 21 • 2020 | 11

I

n summer 2019, Rick Eaton heard something 
shocking. One of the most prominent neo-Nazis 
in the U.S. was leaving the movement.
As co-director of the digital terrorism project 
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-
based Jewish human rights organization which 
tracks hate group activity, Eaton interacts with his 
fair share of white supremacists. And he was very 
familiar with the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the 
largest neo-Nazi group in America, and its “commander”
, 
Jeff Schoep (pronounced “Scoop”), who had been in the 
group for the past 27 years and led it for the last 25. Until 
now, it seemed. Schoep, now 46, had just walked away from 
hate groups for good.
“I wanted to go and meet him immediately,
” Eaton said, 
remembering how, more than a decade prior, he had met 
Schoep while working undercover at an NSM barbecue. So 
he flew from the center’
s L.A. offices to Detroit. This time 
the two were meeting as each other’
s authentic selves, in 
a hotel lobby by the DTW airport. 
(Schoep will only say he lives in “the 
Detroit area,
” not wanting to reveal his 
location for fear of retaliation from the 
group he once led. “They view me as a 
traitor,
” he said.)
The two talked for hours about 
Schoep’
s journey, and Eaton pushed 
him to bring his message to a broader 
public. Schoep wanted to enter the 
world of peacebuilding, where he 
could try to use his story to deter people from joining hate 
groups like he had. Eaton could help him do it.
“
As soon as I sat down with Jeff in the lobby and started 
talking to him, personally, I felt that he was real from the 
beginning,
” Eaton said. 
Six months later, he brought Schoep to face a crowd of 
Jews at Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob, a Modern Orthodox 
shul in Skokie, Illinois. It was the same Chicago suburb 
where, four decades earlier, a different neo-Nazi infamously 
won a Supreme Court case that allowed his hate group to 
march through a neighborhood filled with Holocaust survi-
vors. 
But Schoep was there to ask forgiveness. And he 
received it.
“The people were so kind and forgiving and loving,
” he 
told the Jewish News two months later, from COVID quar-
antine, after fumbling with his Zoom settings. “I don’
t think 
I ever received so many hugs in my entire life, until I got 
there.
”

Ever since he could remember, Jeff Schoep had wanted to 
be a Nazi.

His grandfather was one, he said: an ethnic German from 
Prussia, he fought in the Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces) 
against Allied troops during WWII, on the Eastern Front as 
well as in the Ardennes. After the war, Schoep’
s grandparents 
were sent to POW and refugee camps before finally coming 
to the U.S.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, Schoep was fascinated by 
his grandfather (who died last year) and read everything he 
could about Nazis. He didn’
t come from a traumatic child-
hood like many who are drawn into far-right ideologies; 
both of his parents had good jobs, and his family was mid-
dle-class, he said. Schoep’
s interest in Nazism was purely his 
own decision. 
When he was 15, Schoep traveled to Germany to visit a 
great-uncle who had also fought for the Nazis and had half 
his face burned off at the Battle of the Bulge. This was short-
ly before the Berlin Wall fell, and while in Germany, Schoep 
met his first group of skinheads. “I was fascinated by the 
Third Reich,
” he said. He didn’
t know any Jews, but he hated 
them all the same. “The Jew was 
the cancer and the other races were 
symptoms of that cancer,
” he said of 
his beliefs at the time.
When Schoep got back to the U.S., 
he wrote letters to every American 
neo-Nazi group he could find. In 
1992, at age 18, he joined what was 
then called the National Socialist 
American Workers Freedom 
Movement, based near him in St. 
Paul, Minnesota. Members read literature like Hitler’
s Mein 
Kampf and Henry Ford’
s The International Jew. Before long 
Schoep was enthusiastically attending the group’
s rallies, 
holding anti-Semitic signs like “Six Million More.
”
Shortly after Schoep joined, the group’
s leader stepped 
down and appointed him in charge of the movement. He 
was 21 at the time. Schoep shortened the group’
s name to 
the National Socialist Movement — a more direct nod to 
Nazism — and his long career at the head of the country’
s 
most prominent hate group had begun.
Up until he left the NSM in 2019, Schoep had spent his 
entire adult life in the movement. He earned his income 
from operating a white-supremacist music and apparel label 
called NSM88 Records; “88” is white nationalist code for 
“Heil Hitler.
” He orchestrated their rallies and their entire 
public image, and issued strict edicts to his followers: no bad 
words or racial slurs (except, of course, for the swastika on 
their flags); no sharing of violent or racist memes online; no 
real-world violence, “only self-defense.
” 
All of this was done against the wishes of his own fam-
ily, including his grandfather, who warned him not to get 
involved in any Nazi movements. Schoep was unwilling to 
discuss more details of his family on the record, but Eaton 

continued on page 12

 JEWISH NEWS

on the cover

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