One of the largest and oldest neo-Nazi groups in the United States appears to have an unlikely new leader: James Stern, a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it. James Hart Stern, a 54-year-old with a history of infiltrating white supremacist groups, is the new leader of the National Socialist Movement. “As a black man, I took over a neo-Nazi group and outsmarted them.”For weeks, the sudden change in power has confounded those who study hate groups and perplexed those within the organization, who have heard nothing from the man who led the Detroit-based hate group for 24 years, former NSM president Jeff Schoep. Schoep and Stern remained firmly entrenched in their own political camps, he said, fundamentally opposed to what the other represents. “He knew that he had the most vulnerable, the most loose-cannon members that they had even had in the organization,” Stern said.

Source: Washington Post March 01, 2019 21:55 UTC