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CSUSB professor comments on former white nationalist who participated in CSUSB panel discussion
The New York Times
April 4, 2020
In fall, a panel discussion took place on the Cal State San Bernardino campus about the importance of rejecting extremism. And one of the supposed experts on tolerance participating was Jeff Schoep, a man who once called the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., “a glorious day for white solidarity in America.”
At CSUSB, Mr. Schoep, who led America’s largest neo-Nazi organization for two and a half decades, shared that he had only recently renounced his racist views. The event was his first public appearance in the United States since making the announcement, and some members of the audience were skeptical.
Mr. Schoep is among more than two dozen defendants accused in a lawsuit of planning and carrying out the violence at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that resulted in the murder of a counterprotester. A ruling against them could lead to significant financial penalties, among other consequences.
Critics say Mr. Schoep is simply trying escape legal liability, but he contends his new life has nothing to do with the lawsuits, and that he has put himself in danger by renouncing his former ways.
Still, “when you’re America’s poster boy for Nazism for over two decades, that sticks,” said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
Read the complete article at "He Says His Nazi Days Are Over. Do You Believe Him?"
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