Early history The NSM was a schism of the
National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) in the years following
the assassination of
George Lincoln Rockwell. The National Socialist Movement was founded on March 18, 1975 in
St. Paul, Minnesota, by Robert Brannen, Greg Hurles, and
James Mason, immediately after Mason was released from prison. It has been often incorrectly reported that the group was founded earlier by Brannen and Clifford "Cliff" Herrington. Herrington knew the founders and affiliated early on, but was not involved in its founding. It aimed to promote militancy in the various other schisms as a continuation of
Joseph Tommasi's ideology. Tommasi was soon also killed; the NSM soon became heavily intertwined with his
National Socialist Liberation Front group. Mason chose the name National Socialist Movement, as he considered it the "most generic and the least pretentious label possible", and chose the word movement in order to "avoid the term party at all costs". Brannen originally served as the group's leader, but in 1983, Herrington succeeded him after Brannen had suffered multiple strokes. The group was tiny and largely unknown until 1993 when Herrington and another member wore Nazi uniforms to a Minnesota legislative committee hearing to protest a proposed gay rights bill.
Jeff Schoep Leadership transfer, Herrington's departure In 1994,
Jeff Schoep became the group's chairman, a position which he held until January 2019.
Clifford Herrington remained co-chairman of the NSM until 2006. That year, he and his family left the NSM after conflict within the NSM following the discovery that his wife, Andrea M. Herrington, was the "high-priestess" of the
theistic Satanist organization and website
Joy of Satan Ministries (now referred to as the Temple of Zeus). At the time, Joy of Satan Ministries shared a
P.O. box address with an Oklahoma chapter of the NSM. The Herringtons' ties with Joy of Satan Ministries had caused several top members belonging to the
Christian Identity movement to leave in anger. This revelation exposed the religious division in the NSM between the
Odinists, Christians and theistic Satanists. The Christian Identity movement holds that only white people are eligible for salvation. Another member,
Bill White, was forced out of the NSM by Schoep after publicly ridiculing Christian Identity theology in defense of Herrington. Despite his official departure from the NSM, Cliff Herrington participated in a handful of NSM events in 2009 and 2010. In April 2006, they held a rally on the State Capitol steps in
Lansing, Michigan, which was met by a larger counter-rally and ended in scuffles. In January 2007, Gordon Creal Young, a former
Ku Klux Klan leader in
Maryland who had disbanded his chapter to join the NSM was arrested for
statutory rape. He was accused of forcing an underaged girl to perform
fellatio on him on two separate occasions, but was eventually acquitted. In January 2009, the National Socialist Movement sponsored a half-mile section of
U.S. Highway 160 outside of
Springfield, Missouri, as part of the Adopt-A-Highway Trash Cleanup program. The highway was later renamed the "
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway" by the state legislature. In 2009, the National Socialist Movement had 61 chapters in 35 states, making it the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center. In this year,
Wikileaks published internal NSM emails on their website. On April 17, 2010, 70 members of the National Socialist Movement demonstrated in front of the
Los Angeles City Hall, drawing a counter protest of hundreds of
anti-fascist demonstrators. On May 1, 2011,
Jeff Hall, a leader of the California branch of the National Socialist Movement, was killed by his 10-year-old emotionally troubled son, who claimed he was tired of Hall beating him and his stepmother. Hall had run in 2010 for a seat on the board of directors of a Riverside County water board, a race in which he earned approximately 30% of the vote. Around this time, the National Socialist Movement was described by
The New York Times as being "the largest supremacist group, with about 400 members in 32 states, though much of its prominence followed the decay of Aryan Nation and other neo-Nazi groups". Dan Devine, the mayor of
West Allis, stated on September 2, 2011, "I believe I speak for the citizens when I say they [the National Socialist Movement] are not welcome here." In August 2012, the NSM's
Nevada state leader, Josh Davenport, was arrested on kidnapping and sexual assault charges. He was alleged to have kidnapped and raped a 13-year old girl at gunpoint before she escaped his apartment. On September 22, 2013, the NSM held a meeting in
Leith, North Dakota in support of
Craig Cobb's attempt to turn the town into a neo-Nazi stronghold. The meeting was met by a counterprotest drawing hundreds of participants, most of whom were
Native Americans from the
Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and other nearby reservations. In June 2016, the group helped organize with the
Traditionalist Worker Party the rally which turned into the
2016 Sacramento riot. In November 2016, following the first election of
Donald Trump, the organization replaced the
swastika in its logo and flag with the
Odal SS-rune in an attempt to enter mainstream politics, which they would use until March 2019. In January 2017, the pilot of the television series
Hate Thy Neighbor featured the National Socialist Movement and prominent member Daniel Burnside.
"Unite the Right" and decline In August 2017, the NSM and their former coalition, the
Nationalist Front, infamously participated in the
Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia during which a counter-protestor was murdered and thirty-five more were injured in a
car ramming attack. After the rally, two lawsuits targeting 21 racist "
alt-right" and
hate group leaders, including the National Socialist Movement and Schoep, were filed in the
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia (
Sines v. Kessler) and another lawsuit was filed in
Virginia Circuit Court. The attacker was not an NSM member, although he had been photographed holding a shield that was handed out by
Vanguard America, which was part of the Nationalist Front. Vanguard America condemned the attack and said the attacker was not a member but rather the shields had been handed out to anyone interested. Nonetheless, the legal consequences stemming from their participation in Charlottesville lead to the collapse of the Nationalist Front and the decline of the NSM. Their last significant rally would be held in October 2017, a "
White Lives Matter" rally in
Shelbyville, Tennessee which drew around 100 white supremacists and around 200 counter-protestors. An additional rally was planned in nearby
Murfreesboro but was cancelled, although the accompanying counter-protest and anti-racist march was not cancelled and drew nearly 1,000 participants. Schoep's
Twitter account was
suspended on December 18, 2017. By February 2018, the Nationalist Front had crumbled. in 2019
James Hart Stern On February 28, 2019, the
Associated Press reported that, according to Michigan corporate records, Schoep had been replaced as director and president of the National Socialist Movement in January by
James Hart Stern, a
Black civil rights activist. In 2014, Stern and Schoep became friends when Schoep called Stern to ask about his connection to
Edgar Ray Killen, the head of the Klan chapter that Stern dissolved. When Stern learned that Schoep was a white supremacist, he arranged for a meeting between the two men. They engaged in debates about the
Holocaust, the swastika, White nationalism, and the fate of the National Socialist Movement, with Stern attempting to change Schoep's mind. He could not do that, but in 2019, Schoep came to him and asked for his advice concerning the group's legal problems. Schoep had wanted to leave the NSM because he feared the legal repercussions of their involvement in the Unite the Right rally. Stern then encouraged Schoep to turn control of the NSM over to him, and Schoep agreed.
Burt Colucci In March 2019, Schoep announced that he was leaving the NSM and he was giving his position to
Burt Colucci. He declared that Stern was not the legitimate leader of the organization. Since then, Schoep has renounced his racist past and he has also renounced his involvement in all racist groups. Despite Stern's efforts, Colucci continued to operate the group's website. Colucci quickly reversed the reforms made by Schoep, and he reinstated the swastika as the group's official symbol. The dispute over the leadership of the NSM led to a legal battle between Stern and Colucci, and as a result, each of them filed corporation registrations in their respective home states: Stern in California, and Colucci in Florida. The original incorporation in Michigan was dissolved in June 2019. Stern also filed a lawsuit seeking a ruling barring anyone from interfering in his operation of the group, but he died of
bladder cancer in October 2019, leaving Colucci as the
de facto leader of the NSM. The NSM does not keep an official count of its membership, but according to the Anti-Defamation League, since Colucci took control of the NSM, its membership has fallen to one or two dozen and it has continued to fail to attract a significant amount of participation at its events, leading the ADL to comment that the dispute between Stern and Colucci negatively impacted the group's reputation. In April 2021, Colucci was arrested on aggravated assault charges in
Phoenix, Arizona. Witnesses said he pulled a gun and aimed it at a black man, making threatening and racist remarks. The incident began with a dispute over trash pickup. His bail was set at $7,500. Two days before his arrest, he led a group of 15 members of the National Socialist Movement in a rally, but they expected that 100 people would attend the rally. According to a January 2022 indictment, Colucci was instead charged with two counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and one count of felony disorderly conduct. Colucci was not convicted until April 2024. He was found guilty of misdemeanor battery, although he had originally been charged with assault and battery with hate crime enhancements. He was scheduled to be sentenced on May 2, 2024. In June 2023, Colucci led 4 other members in a rally in Lakeland, Florida, but he also expected that 100 people would attend this rally. == See also ==