An organization that specializes in theatrical and provocative protests, the National Socialist Movement (NSM) was once one of the largest and most active neo-Nazi groups in the United States.
The group is notable for its violent antisemitic rhetoric, its racist views and its policy allowing members of other racist groups to join NSM while remaining members of other groups. NSM became the largest membership-based neo-Nazi group in this country through the 2000s and into the following decade. The groupâs brand and tactics of demonstrating in quasi-Nazi uniforms stalled, and its membership tally subsequently dipped. Since 2015, the group has sought to reinvigorate itself by forming coalitions with other white power groups. NSM arrived at the center of the deadly riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 via that strategy, which devastated the group. NSMâs membership continues to dwindle. It, as well as its former leader, Jeff Schoep, were defendants in the Sines v. Kessler civil trial, which targeted those who planned and promoted the deadly 2017 âUnite the Rightâ rally in Charlottesville. On Nov. 23, 2021, a federal court in Virginia found both Schoep and NSM, along a slew of other defendants, guilty on charges of civil conspiracy.
In Their Own Words
âIâm a [expletive] Nazi and Iâm [expletive] proud of it.â â Burt Colucci, in footage of his arrest in Arizona, April 19, 2021
âYou know what this bullshit translates to? White people got nice shit, white people worked for it, and Black people want it. ⊠They have no interest in equality. They want to fucking rule us.â â NSM leader Burt Colucci on NSMâs podcast, June 2, 2020
âImmigration into the White Homeland shall be limited to members of the White European Race, defined as White Caucasians who are the descendants of indigenous Europeans. . . . Groups who are not Europeans are separate ethnicities and thus shall have their own homelands, separate from ours.â â â25 Point Plan,â NSM website, updated April 2020
âThe guiding principle of The National Socialist Movement Corporation is fighting for civil rights and self-determination of Whites in America. The Fourteen Words, âWe must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children,â best exemplifies the mission of our movement.â â â25 Point Plan,â NSM website, updated April 2020
âWe were sending people into the military all the time. ⊠By the time I left, it was about 50 percent.â â Jeff Schoep, during a panel at the New America Foundation after he claimed to have left the white power movement, Nov. 4, 2019
âWe simply cannot be concerned and burdened by the yolk [sic] of compassion for the so-called marginalized groups of today, lest we doom our children to be in need of asylum tomorrow. We can see quite clearly by examples in Europe and south Africa how compassion comes in the form of no go zones and machete blades.â â Polly Esther, NSM Magazine, fall/winter 2017
âWhen ⊠you take a German Shepherd and mix him with a Golden Retriever you have a worthless animal that nobody wants and that isnât worth anything if youâre trying to breed him or sell him. ⊠These degenerates that allow their children to race mix and this sort of thing, theyâre destroying the bloodlines of both races.â â NSM leader Jeff Schoep, July 25, 2007, interview
âAll non-White immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force.â â â25 Points of American National Socialism,â NSM website
Background
The National Socialist Movement has its roots in the original American Nazi Party, which was founded in 1959 by former Navy Cmdr. George Lincoln Rockwell. Seven years after Rockwell was murdered by one of his followers in 1967, two of his chief lieutenants, Robert Brannen and Cliff Herrington, formed the National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement in St. Paul, Minnesota. Leadership passed to Jeff Schoep in 1994. He renamed the group the National Socialist Movement.
The NSM was once the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country, according to the SPLCâs annual survey of hate groups. The resurgence of the NSM began in 2004, in the wake of the deaths of the countryâs two major neo-Nazi leaders: the National Allianceâs William Pierce, who died in 2002, and the Aryan Nationsâ Richard Butler, who died in 2004. Also contributing to the vacuum in neo-Nazi leadership of the nation was the 2004 imprisonment of Matt Hale, the leader of the World Church of the Creator. Hale was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
The NSM began to overshadow all other American neo-Nazi groups starting in 2004. It was soon larger than the White Revolution and National Vanguard, both of which emerged from the ashes of the National Alliance. NSM members made their presence felt through frequent theatrical street acts in Nazi garb. Unlike other neo-Nazi outfits, the NSM adopted an open-arms recruiting policy that allowed members of other white supremacist groups to participate in NSM actions and join the NSM.
Schoep was only 21 when he took over in 1994. His relatively young age helped him then attract a younger generation of neo-Nazis. In fact, under Schoepâs leadership, the NSM set up a unit specifically focused on recruiting teens called Viking Youth Corps. It also launched a Womenâs Division and a Skinhead Division. NSM bolstered its online presence with a revamped website featuring the groupâs newsletter, downloadable leaflets for printing and distribution, and field reports from NSM chapters around the country. The group created its own hate-rock music label, NSM88 Records, and in April 2007 purchased the now-popular white supremacist social networking site New Saxon.
NSMâs ideology mirrors that of the original American Nazi Party. The group openly idolizes Adolf Hitler, described in NSM propaganda as âOur Fuhrer, the beloved Holy Father of our age ⊠a visionary in every respect.â NSM says only heterosexual âpure-blood whitesâ should be allowed U.S. citizenship and that all nonwhites should be deported, regardless of legal status. As Schoep put it: âThe Constitution was written by white men alone. Therefore, it was intended for whites alone.â
NSM is probably best known for its carefully staged protests, which were once carried out in full-blown Nazi uniforms and swastika armbands. The best example of the NSMâs provocative rallies came on Dec. 10, 2005, when the group made international news after a planned march through a Black neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio, sparked unrest by residents and counterprotesters. The disturbances cost the city more than $336,000, though NSM members escaped violence and were not liable for any of the destruction. âThe Negro beasts proved our point for us,â Schoep said after the rally.
NSM national and state chapter leaders voted at the groupâs national congress in April 2007 to switch to âmore militant lookingâ black battle dress uniforms (BDUs) after their previous uniforms were ridiculed.
The NSMâs militancy appeared to be part of its appeal during in the first decade of the 2000s. In 2009, after the SPLC identified over 40 active-duty military personnel on a social networking site run by NSM, Schoep told Stars and Stripes that roughly half the groupâs members had served in the military.
âWe do encourage them to sign up for the military. We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government,â Charles Wilson, an NSM spokesman, told Salon in June 2009.
Over a decade later, Schoep verified these findings at a panel at the New America Foundation, which was held not long after he left the movement.
âThe thought of people in the movement is that this is going to break into a civil war, a race war, or something like that, and you want that [military] training. Thatâs why we were sending people into the military all the time,â Schoep told the audience on Nov. 4, 2019.
âBy the time I left, about 50% of the membership had military experience in the past,â he continued.
Under Schoepâs leadership, the NSM also became known for focusing on recruiting children â specifically, 14- to 17-year-olds who Schoep says were taught military skills and how to become a âmore effective warriorâ in NSMâs Viking Youth Corps.
Despite their focus on recruiting youth, some within NSM leadership have had their fair share of run-ins with the law, particularly when it comes to the sexual abuse of children. In 2004, Indiana authorities posted a photograph of that stateâs NSM leader, John Edward Snyder. Snyder, who was convicted of rape in 1999, had been released from prison for rape and other sex charges and banned from having any contact with children in 2003.
In 2012, Las Vegas Metro Police arrested Josh Davenport, NSMâs Nevada state leader, on kidnapping and sexual assault charges against a 13-year-old girl. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in August 2012, Davenport was held without bail and faced numerous recommended charges. Among them were four counts of sexual assault against a victim under 14 years of age and four counts of sexual assault with a deadly weapon.
Scandals rock the NSM in the early 2000s
The NSM experienced its share of internal drama during this period as well. In July 2006, co-founder and chairman emeritus Cliff Herringtonâs wife was the âHigh Priestessâ of the Joy of Satan Ministry, which shared an address with the Tulsa, Oklahoma, NSM chapter. The exposure of Herringtonâs wifeâs satanist connections caused quite a stir. It was particularly controversial among NSM members who were adherents to Christian Identity, a racist and antisemitic theological system popular among certain members of the racist far right. Before the dust settled, both Herringtons were forced out of NSM.
Bill White, the neo-Nazi groupâs spokesman, also quit, taking several NSM officials with him. They created a new group, the American National Socialist Workers Party.
In December 2006, âWildâ Bill Hoff, one of the NSMâs oldest and best-known members, died in a car accident. Four months after his death, Hoffâs brother decided to reveal that Hoff, along with other family members, had Black ancestors.
Another embarrassment was in store for the NSM. In late 2006, Schoep and World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader Gordon Young announced that he was quitting the Klan to become the NSMâs Maryland leader. But that went south in January 2007, when Young was charged with sexually assaulting a young girl. Though he was acquitted, Young left NSM not long after in late 2010.
Jeff Schoepâs personal life has been the source of other movement criticism as well. In April 2010, John Taylor Bowles, who was the NSMâs 2008 presidential candidate, condemned Schoep because he had married a woman with a mixed-race child.
Schoep had left his previous girlfriend in Minnesota and moved to Detroit to be with his new partner. In 1998, he was arrested with the previous girlfriend while aiding a burglary. The coupleâs children were waiting in the getaway car. Schoep was sentenced to probation.
Despite these embarrassments, NSM remained the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States. By 2009 â the same year that the whistleblowing site Wikileaks published a trove of internal NSM emails â the group had 61 chapters in 35 states.
NSM turns its eye to the Southern border
A growing number of the NSMâs efforts and protests, beginning in the mid-to-late 2000s and extending into the 2010s, targeted immigrants.
In April 2006, Hatewatch reported that a prominent anti-immigration leader, Laine Lawless, had encouraged NSM leader Mark Martin â the âSS commanderâ of the organizationâs Western Ohio chapter â to target undocumented workers throughout the United States. In one email, Lawless encouraged NSM to utilize âseveral tacticsâ against immigrants, âincluding robbery and âbeating up illegalsâ as they leave their workplace,â Hatewatch reported.
NSM members, including the now-deceased Jason Toddy Ready â better known as J.T. Ready â patrolled along the U.S.âs Southern border as well. On June 19, 2010, Ready, NSMâs Southwest regional leader Jeff Hall and eight others (some of whom were not NSM members) congregated in Arizonaâs Vekol Valley. Hall, who was based in Southern California, described the goal of their operation as to âfight the [Mexican drug] cartels and reclaim the land.â Armed with pistols and high-powered rifles, the group led patrols through the desert and âsecuredâ an abandoned building. They claimed to have apprehended three people attempting an illegal border crossing, although this is unconfirmed.
Ready later split with NSM shortly after starting his own border patrol group. He described his new group, the U.S. Border Guard, as âthe Minuteman Project on steroids.â However, his new organization â as the June 2010 operation showed â consisted largely of other NSM members and affiliates.
On May 1, 2011, the 10-year-old son of Hall shot and killed his father at their home in Riverside, California. The event occurred hours after NSM members had gathered at Hallâs home for a meeting.
That same day, Hallâs son was arrested for allegedly shooting his neo-Nazi father to death. According to the Associated Press and an L.A. Times story that cited court documents and police reports, the boy apparently had been pushed to the breaking point by his fatherâs abuse of him and his stepmother. The boy was also frightened that heâd have to choose between them if his fatherâs behavior led to a divorce.
âHe said he was gonna turn off the smoke alarms and burn the whole house down when we were asleep. That really scared me,â Hallâs son told a detective during questioning, referring to an event a few days prior to Hallâs death. Later in the confession, the 10-year-old boy told detectives he had witnessed his father hurl a glass at his stepmother, wounding her.
Hallâs son was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in a juvenile facility. Despite the boyâs developmental disabilities, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case in 2016.
Hallâs death, however, was only the first to rock NSM.
In May 2012, the 39-year-old, now-former NSM member J.T. Ready was reported to have shot and himself and four others a murder-suicide. The victims included Readyâs girlfriend, his girlfriendâs daughter and boyfriend, and the daughterâs a 15-month-old child. Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found ammunition, weaponry, explosives and smoke grenades at Readyâs home. At the time of his death, Ready had been running for sheriff of Pinal County in Arizona. His campaign websites described the countyâs residents as âunder constant threat of encountering the horrific reality of terrible violence associated with illegal immigration.â
The rise and fall of âPioneer Little Europeâ
NSM hit the national news cycle again in August 2013. At the time, Hatewatch and the North Dakota-based The Bismarck Tribute reported that the then-61-year-old neo-Nazi Paul Craig Cobb had concocted a scheme to build up his own white ethnostate in the small town of Leith, North Dakota (pop. 19). Cobbâs specific plan to build a âPioneer Little Europeâ originated from a 2001 proposal offered up by H. Michael Barrett. Barrettâs vision, as Hatewatch noted in an article from Aug. 22, 2013, was âto consolidate white residents in existing cities and towns and create all-white enclaves.â
Cobb donated or sold land for pennies to the leaders of several white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, including the NSM. Schoep, for his part, spoke highly of the Leith project, telling The New York Times in an Aug. 30, 2013, article: âI would like to see it prosper and move forward. People should move there and get the process going. It gives us a base of support for elections and things like that.â
In September 2013, Schoep and a dozen or so NSM members showed up in Leith. The group planted Nazi flags on Cobbâs property. NSMâs website described the goals of their visit as beginning to âplant the seeds of National Socialism in North Dakota.â Instead, Leith residents and other North Dakotans showed up to counterprotest the NSM in a rally planned by a group called UniteND.
In November 2013, Cobb and 29-year-old white nationalist Kynan Dutton were arrested on four counts of felony terrorizing related to a so-called âsafety patrol.â The two men were accused of shouting at and threatening a number of Leith residents. NSM, via Schoep, returned to North Dakota in order to support Cobb and Dutton, according to a report in the Grand Forks Herald.
In February 2014, Cobb pleaded guilty to one count of felony terrorizing and five counts of misdemeanor menacing.
NSM embraced a âbig tentâ approach in rallies across the country
NSM held a number of rallies in the early-to-mid 2010s. These included a Kansas City rally on Nov. 9, 2013, marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnact; a rally for NSMâs 40th anniversary in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in April 2014; and a Toledo, Ohio, rally in April 2015, ten years after NSMâs presence in that community caused significant civil unrest.
Some rallies brought NSM together with other white power groups, such as the Klan. A few of these events â including a rally in November 2014 at a courthouse in Rockwall, Texas â made these interactions seem more incidental. However, others appeared to be a more deliberate attempt at overcoming factionalism. This included a March 2013 rally in Memphis, where some 60 Klansmen marched with NSM members.
As Hatewatch chronicled in October 2015, NSM was one of six white power groups to organize support for the Confederate flag after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people on June 17, 2015, in a Charleston church.
On July 18, 2015, NSM headed to South Carolinaâs statehouse to protest the decision to remove the Confederate flag from the buildingâs grounds. NSM was joined by âflaggersâ from other white power groups. Among them were the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, who were headquartered in Pelham, North Carolina.
âThe time for factionalism in the White Nationalist Movement has ended. Pro-white organizations have agreed to come together, in order to build a united front of white organizations fighting side by side for the same end goal,â Schoep wrote in April 2016. He was referring to NSMâs decision to promote its âWhite Rights Rallyâ in Rome, Georgia, alongside John Michael Estesâs pro-Confederate âRock Stone Mountainâ march.
Shortly thereafter, NSM joined a hodgepodge of white nationalist, racist skinhead and Klan groups to form a coalition known as the Aryan Nationalist Alliance (ANA). The ANAâs stated mission was to build a white âethnostate.â However, it also doubled as a means to draw other white power activists into NSMâs ranks. Schoep originally piloted the coalition, though he received aid from Aryan Strikeforceâs Josh Steever and Steve âBowersâ Natasi, of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively.
ANAâs first major gathering took place in mid-September 2016 in Temple, Georgia, about an hour west of Atlanta. As a local antifascist group noted, while the event was originally billed as a NSM regional meeting, it was later rebranded as an ANA event.
Some within this coalition of racist organizations rebranded itself a mere few months later. By November 2016, the group had renamed itself the Nationalist Front (NF). As journalist Vegas Tenold wrote in his 2018 book, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America, the decision to rename the group was connected to an effort to shed some of the groups âmore troublesome members.â Matthew Heimbach and his neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party had joined the ANA in the early summer of 2016. Among the conditions that Heimbach had set for joining the ANA was, Tenold noted, that it push out those groups who were unwilling to mask their more outlandish odes to Nazi symbolism. Heimbach, like others in the white nationalist movement, saw 2016 as an opportunity to seize whatever mainstream power they could get. Branding was crucial to that effort.
The renaming of the ANA also came on the heels of Schoepâs own efforts to rework the NSMâs image into something more palatable to the outside world.
In late 2016, NSM ditched its longtime swastika logo and replaced it with an othala ruin. As Schoep told The New York Times in a Dec. 10, 2016, article, the rebrand was âan attempt to become more integrated and more mainstream.â Even though the group had gone to some lengths to tone down the perception of the group as a band of âHollywood Nazisâ in years prior, changing its logo from a swastika was a much larger jump than ditching the groupâs traditional brownshirts for black BDUs.
The newly renamed Nationalist Front â along with Matthew Heimbachâs Traditionalist Worker Party and NSM â journeyed to Pikeville, Kentucky, for a rally and conference on April 28-29, 2017. Plans fell through to hold the rally at Jenny Wiley State Park, and The Guardian reported that Schoep told a gathering of neo-Nazis and white nationalists on private land the night before the rally in downtown Pikeville that âthey were âwarriors for your people.ââ
In late July of 2017, Schoep announced that NSM would join Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler and others at the Aug. 12 âUnite the Rightâ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Though Schoep himself was never billed as one of the rallyâs speakers, two prominent NF members, namely Heimbach and the League of the Southâs Michael Hill, were.
Ongoing legal proceedings related to the Sines v. Kessler lawsuit, which was filed in October 2017, have shed light on NSMâs role in Unite the Right. The NSM, along with the Nationalist Front and a number of individuals connected to those groups, were named as defendants.
NSM and the Nationalist Front were instrumental in fomenting the chaotic, racist violence at Unite the Right, according to court documents that also showed that members of NSM and the Nationalist Front moved through the city shouting racist slurs and charging through protesters. Schoep, Hill, Heimbach and Parrott led a pack of racist protesters to Emancipation Park, shoving counterprotesters with shields and rods along the way. Schoep and other NSM members helped secure the perimeter around the park. But after the mayor of Charlottesville declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, Schoep helped lead NSM members and other Unite the Right participants to a set gathering point at McIntire Park. He was alleged to have attacked counterprotesters along the way.
âI was offered a ride to safety and declined to leave until the women and others were safe, so we just marched back through antifa,â Schoep is quoted as saying in the Sines v. Kessler complaint. âWe went right through [antifa] like warriors.â
Schoep later denied that he engaged in any violence, telling Al Jazeera English that âanyone ⊠with even half of a brainâ would know that âthe Antifa violently attacked anyone who was deemed pro-white or pro-American even.â
One Vanguard American member explained NSMâs presence as a necessity. âNSM fought so hard regardless of their optics,â the member is quoted as saying in a case file connected to Sines v. Kessler. âDo we need them at normie events? No. We need them in a fight? Yes.â
Schoep returned the favor in a tweet posted after the events of Aug. 12. âIt was an Honor to stand with U all in CâVille this weekend. NSM, NF, TWP [Traditionalist Worker Party], LOS [League of the South], ECK [East Coast Knights] ⊠and the rest, true warriors!â
In a Guardian article published the next day, he said: âUsually our rallies are peaking between 100, 200 at the most. Seeing this many people was ⊠the start of something big, I think.â
‘Unite the Right’ causes NSM to go on the decline
On Oct. 28, 2017, NSM and other members of the Nationalist Front held their first major rally after the deadly events of âUnite the Right.â The groupâs âwhite lives matterâ rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee, included around 100 white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Rallygoers reportedly attacked and verbally harassed journalists, counterprotesters and locals. After the rally, Harry Hughes, a member of NSMâs Arizona chapter, told BuzzFeed news that NSM members âfinished [the rally] by arranging themselves into a human swastika visible to a helicopter circling overhead and giving the Nazi salute to the pilots.â
But ongoing legal complications, combined with dissolution of Nationalist Front member organization the Traditionalist Worker Party in February 2018, put a stop to whatever âbigâ thing Schoep predicted would arise from âUnite the Right.â NSMâs annual April rally, which took place in Newnan, Georgia, in 2018, drew some two dozen neo-Nazis and around 100 counterprotesters, according to The New York Times.
In September 2018, Heimbach re-emerged after a brief stint in jail for a probation violation as NSMâs director of community outreach. The former TWP head stood alongside Schoep at an NSM rally in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Nov. 10, 2018. Heimbachâs tenure was, however, brief. By early December, he had been booted out of the NSM. An announcement described Heimbach as a âbetrayer, traitor, and [a] Communist.â
According to an Oct. 30, 2019, Washington Post article, Schoep began talks with Black civil rights advocate James Hart Stern to dissolve the NSM entirely, starting in December 2018. The same Washington Post article noted that Stern suggested such a dissolution would allow Schoep to âshed the financial burdenâ of Integrity for Americaâs lawsuit.
Stern met Schoep several years earlier through a shared connection with Edgar Ray Killen, a former Klan leader who helped carry out the 1964 murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, three civil rights workers who registering Blacks to vote in Mississippi. Stern reportedly met Killen in prison while he was serving time for wire fraud.
Stern began working to convince Schoep to cede control of NSM to him in 2018. Incorporation papers filed in Michigan by Schoepâs girlfriend, Acacia Dietz, as well as legal documents related to Integrity First for Americaâs lawsuit, listed Stern as the âPresident/Directorâ of NSM, beginning on Jan. 15, 2019. Later that month, Schoep signed a sworn affidavit starting he had agreed to the change in leadership.
Upon realizing that passing the organization to Stern would not neutralize the lawsuit, the Washington Post reported, Schoep tendered his resignation from NSM. Burt Colucci, NSMâs chief of staff, took his place.
In a statement published on NSMâs website, Schoep stated that Stern had seized control of the organization under false pretenses. He further claimed that Stern had âfraudulently manipulated [him] for the purposes of gaining control, and dissolving NSM.â
Colucci, in an effort to halt Sternâs efforts, re-incorporated the NSM in his home state of Florida on May 24, 2019. According to a deposition from Sines v. Kessler, Colucci stated he was âtired of the tug-of-war that was going on up in Michigan,â referring to efforts by Dietz and Schoep to wrest control of the organization from Stern.
After his departure from NSM in spring of 2019, Schoep reemerged on Aug. 12, 2019, to announce he had decided to renounce his lifelong neo-Nazi views. In a statement published on his new personal website, he proclaimed: âI realized many of the principles I had once held so dearly and sacrificed so much for were wrong. ⊠It is now my mission to be a positive, peaceful influence of change and understanding for all humanity in these uncertain times.â
Despite these claims, a March 11, 2020, a motion to compel discovery from the Sines v. Kessler case stated that Schoepâs involvement in NSM had not completely ceased. Schoep and his girlfriend, the document observed, âhave continued to participate in NSMâs activities, even as Schoep claims to have left the white-supremacist movement.â On Oct. 13, 2019, for instance, Schoep was said to have âwarnedâ current NSM Commander Burt Colucci that one of the callers on his podcast was an informant with the federal government. Schoepâs girlfriend, who claimed to have been out of the movement for a year as of March 2020, was also said to have ââinformallyâ remained a member of NSM and manages NSMâs website.â
On June 23, 2020, Integrity First for America announced that a federal court had granted their plaintiffâs motion to compel discovery from Colucci and NSM. Schoep received a similar injunction on May 27, 2020. He was required to turn over his phone for evidence collection, as well as to pay plaintiffsâ fees and expenses.
NSM faced further legal hurdles in 2021. In April, police in Chandler, Arizona, arrested Colucci and booked him on charges of aggravated assault. Witnesses told police that Colucci had accused them of littering, pulled a gun on them, and pepper sprayed the inside of their car while shouting racial slurs. However, as of November 2021, local news outlets reported that the Maricopa County Attorneyâs Office has yet to file charges against Colucci. In a statement released to a local ABC affiliate, prosecutors stated they had pushed the case back to law enforcement on April 22, 2021, for further review. However, according to an indictment filed on Jan. 4, 2022, Colucci was charged with two counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and one count of felony disorderly conduct.
On Nov. 23, 2021, a federal court in Virginia found the National Socialist Movement and its former leader, Jeff Schoep, liable on charges of civil conspiracy theory in the Sines v. Kessler case against the organizers of the 2017 âUnite the Rightâ rally.