Skip to main content Accessibility

Sizeable NSM Rally May Reflect Renewed Vigor

Sporting their spiffy new black BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) duds, which have replaced their brown shirts of old, about 100 members of the National Socialist Movement, the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country, marched in St. Louis before holding a rally beneath the city’s landmark Gateway Arch last Saturday.

It was a strong outing for the NSM, which in recent years has suffered from dueling egos and Satan-worshipping scandals that threatened the organization’s top-dog status on the neo-Nazi scene following the implosion of three other neo-Nazi groups — the National Alliance, Aryan Nations and the World Church of the Creator. A few years ago, NSM developed a reputation for its in-your-face style of confrontation, but it has been less active recently as internal disputes wracked the organization.

NSM commander Jeff Schoep even managed to string together a few coherent sound bites.

“If we were given control of the system we’d lock down the borders, we’d institute an America First policy, we’d cut off foreign aid and spending, we’d bring the troops home,” he told one television reporter. “We’d do all kinds of things that I think the American public is for, even some of the non-whites who may not necessarily like everything we stand for.”

You know, little things like mass deportation regardless of citizenship.

The rally at the arch was the highlight of a weekend of NSM festivities marking the 35th anniversary of the group’s founding. According to an “After Action Report” posted to the group’s website, other events included: “A class held for the NSM’s Viking Youth Division by it’s Director M. Sgt. Christina Drake,” the presentation of a documentary video that “featured what NSM California troops have been doing defending America’s Border, and several speeches by various members from the CA Division that were patrolling the California Border while the meeting was in progress in Missouri.”

Also, according to the report, the NSM Women’s division prepared a “feast.” And a multicultural feast at that: “An Italian style meal with Southern hospitality was enjoyed by all.”

The day after the rally, about 20 uniformed NSM members demonstrated outside the newly opened Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Ill.

The next planned NSM public event is a book burning scheduled for May 20 in Oregon. “All who attend are asked to bring any jewish [sic] propaganda that they would like to see purified by flames,” the website notes.

Comments or suggestions? Send them to HWeditor@splcenter.org. Have tips about the far right? Please email: source@splcenter.org. Have documents you want to share? Please visit: https://www.splcenter.org/submit-tip-intelligence-project. Follow us on Twitter @Hatewatch.