A former leader of one of the largest neo-Nazi groups gives his confessional to Jada Pinkett Smith of his previous White supremacist leanings on the latest episode of “Red Table Talk.”
Former racial demagogue Jeff Schoep ruled over a hate-spewing empire, the National Socialist Movement, for almost three decades until he finally renounced the organization in 2019 and disavowed its virulent anti-Black, anti-Semitic and minority-hating ideology.
“That’s a lot of years spewing hate,” co-host Adrienne Banfield-Norris replied before asking Schoep how he became a reformed neo-Nazi, according to People magazine.
“Twenty-seven years total. A lifetime, a lifetime,” Schoep quipped.
“It was people that helped me. When I first left — I call it my decompression period … ” he said as he explained that he felt he was losing brain cells the longer he was immersed in the neo-Nazi movement.
“You’re just like a sponge almost, because you’re going ‘Why did I stay so long? Why did I do this?’ And you feel really stupid, ignorant, and then you want to figure out ‘How can I fix this?’ ” he asked rhetorically.
Schoep told Pinkett Smith and Banfield-Norris that there wasn’t a singular event that inspired him to quit the racist group. It was rather an accumulation of smaller experiences such as a Black man fixing his car and a Jewish woman bringing Schoep into her home that eventually led him to reassess his beliefs.
“Imagine waking up every day and being pissed off at the world,” Schoep said. “You just become distrusting of everything. It’s a really negative way to live.”
The New York Times reported that in 2020, Schoep said he wanted to help other members follow in his footsteps and quit the movement.
