SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — It was a panel discussion on a college 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 California State University, San Bernardino, in the fall, 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.
“It makes it unsatisfying to know that eight months to a year ago, you would have hated us,” Nicholas Flowers, a 22-year-old biracial student, told Mr. Schoep after the talk.
Mr. Schoep is not the first racist in recent memory to renounce his former ways. Derek Black was a child star in the white power movement until he turned to speaking publicly against it. Joshua Bates posted a video of himself online burning his old neo-Nazi paraphernalia. Caleb Cain disavowed the alt-right movement on YouTube, the same medium that brought him in.
Bamsterman
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