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How a black man ‘outsmarted’ a neo-Nazi group and became their new leader

By Katie Mettler
March 2 at 10:03 AM

This story has been updated.

Without notifying his followers or even his inner circle, the longtime president of a legacy neo-Nazi group signed over its control to a black civil rights activist from California. James Hart Stern, a 54-year-old with a history of infiltrating white-supremacist groups, is the new leader of the National Socialist Movement.

Stern’s first move as president was to address a pending lawsuit against the group by asking a Virginia judge to find it guilty of conspiring to commit violence at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Next, he plans to transform the hate group’s website into a space for Holocaust history lessons.

“I did the hard and dangerous part,” Stern told The Washington Post in his first interview since taking over 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 had confounded those who study hate groups and perplexed those within the organization, who had heard nothing from Jeff Schoep, the man who led the Detroit-based hate group for 24 years.

Before Friday, neither man had publicly addressed the organizational changes. ... Stern came forward Friday to share the full story of his unconventional rise to power: an “epic” tale, he said, that includes infiltration, persuasion and a hint of manipulation. There’s a reason, he said, that some call him the “race whisperer.”
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Katie Mettler is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. She previously worked for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Fla. Follow https://twitter.com/kemettler