--:-- Joe Rogan: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Gentlemen, good to see you, brother.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Hey, good to see you again. How you been?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Good. Been hanging, man. How about yourself?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I'm good, I'm good. And Jeff, nice to meet you as well.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Meet you, Joe.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is another one of your very unusual friendships.
--:-- Daryl Davis: I'm trying to make it the norm. You understand?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I mean, you're a real example of what can be done just by being a nice person.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Thank you, man, for the mention with Bono.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. So for people that don't know, Daryl has, I mean, how many people now have you converted?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I stopped counting after 200 and some.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Daryl, his journey initially started, you're a musician, you met a Klansman at a bar, and he couldn't believe what a nice guy you were, you struck up a friendship with this guy.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And I played like Jerry Lee Lewis, he didn't understand that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That too, the talent. And then this guy quit the Klan because of you and handed you his outfit and said, "I'm done. Obviously, I'm wrong. All this is wrong." You then went on to start meeting a lot of other Klan members and a lot of other different neo-Nazi factions. And you got a lot of these people to quit these hateful organizations.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, I got them to rethink because I gave them perspectives they had not considered before or not been exposed to. And that caused them to quit. I wasn't trying to get them out. I'm just trying to show them a different path.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. But it's just your patience and your ability to communicate to people is just very admirable. Because that's a very tough path. You know, for people just listening, you're a black man. You're meeting a Klansman. And you strike up a friendship. You want to have a dinner at his house, hanging out with him. He's like, "You're actually a really nice guy." He's like, "Fuck, what the fuck am I doing with my life?" And just by your own personality and just being a good human, you converted them.
--:-- Daryl Davis: But you know an interesting component to that also happens because there are people who won't talk to me, you know, and they want to fight me and all the kind of crazy stuff. I've seen it all. Right. But some of their buddies who are just as hateful as they are, when they talk to me and they end up leaving, their life improves. Hate is exhausting. And hate begets more hate. But when they leave, their life improves. And then the buddy who wanted to fight me or didn't want to talk to me, he sees his buddy's life improve, then he reconsiders. So it has that component to it as well.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so it's been more than 200 now, which is really amazing. And I think just these conversations that you've had with a lot of people sort of opened up a lot of people's eyes as well. It's like, you think of someone that's a KKK member, neo-Nazi or whatever it is, and you go, "That guy's got to be a piece of shit as a human being." And then you realize, well, a lot of these people just got fucked over in life and started off on the wrong foot and were with the wrong people and got indoctrinated to the wrong ideology and experienced the wrong things. And next thing you know, they have this rigid idea of what the world is and how they fit in. And it's all fucked up and it's all wrong. And they just don't run into anyone that shows them a different perspective. Like if you're in a small town and you're around just a bunch of assholes all the time, you're around the same assholes, like you might think everyone's an asshole.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And then you go on vacation, maybe in Hawaii, like, "God, everybody's nice here. What's going on?" Maybe I have a totally different view of the world.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, you could have that with everything. You could have that with geographical locations. You could have that with racial disparities. You could have that with everything. Well, I mean, let's take racism out of the picture for a second. Let's look at our own country. As a musician, I've played in all 50 states. When I have a booking in, say, New York City, everything's got to be on paper. You've got to sign this contract. And they want things like yesterday. It's very fast-paced. So you sign a contract and people adhere to it. My experience in the South, say Mississippi, Georgia, they don't care about contracts even though I get one. A handshake is good enough. They feel that their word is their bond. So you present them with a contract and it's like, "What, you don't trust me?"
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, right, right.
--:-- Daryl Davis: In the Midwest, which is where I'm from originally, it takes a while for people to get to know you. They want to get to know you before they commit. They're very close to the vest. Out in California, it's like, "I'll get around to it maybe next week, maybe the week after."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, right, right. Now, Jeff, how did you guys meet?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So I was contacted by a filmmaker, and they said, "Would you come down and film as part of this program?" So I didn't know I was meeting Daryl Davis. In the movement, we knew who Daryl Davis was because he was pulling people out of this movement.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Explain the movement, what movement you were a part of.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I was a part of the National Socialist Movement.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Which is Nazis.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Nazis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: For people that don't... It sounds like socialists, like, "Oh, college campuses, you know, you want Marxism, free healthcare for all." No. Different kind of socialism.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Neo-Nazism.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And how did you get indoctrinated into that?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So I was a part of that movement for 27 years.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How old are you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So I'm 51.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay. You look young. I thought you were about 40. I was like, "What the fuck?"
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, that's okay.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, you look good. Thank you. Which is crazy for a Nazi. You'd think it's a lot of stress.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: You'd think it is a lot of stress. It is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I hate to rely on stress. Yeah, look, I lost all my hair.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, I lost mine, too, and I'm not a Nazi.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You're not a Nazi. So how old were you when you got into it?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: When I first started, the fascination with it was about fourth grade.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Fourth grade?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Fourth grade.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: My grandfather fought in Hitler's army during the war, and my great-uncles did as well. So my mother and grandparents came over after the war.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wait a minute. Fought in Hitler's army?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Correct.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, they fought for the Nazis.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yes. So my mother and grandparents came over after the war.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So one would think, so he was indoctrinated by his family.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Not the truth. Quite opposite, actually. But I was fascinated. I knew that history and I knew that my grandfather had fought and I looked up to him. So I sought out on a journey myself and got involved.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But what attracted you to that? First of all, you have a made-in-Detroit church. Are you from Detroit?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I'm based in Detroit now. So were you living in Detroit at the time?
--:-- Joe Rogan: So why, what made you fascinated with Nazis living in Detroit?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, I grew up in rural Minnesota. I live in Detroit now is what I meant. But knowing that family history, I just looked up to my grandfather and I thought, you know, he's a strong individual, this is a... I'm just gonna say it like I thought it was cool at the time. There's nothing cool about it. But I wasn't taught to hate. I wasn't raised to hate. And so I sought out this movement. I joined as a teenager, quickly rose up through the ranks. Within a couple of years, I was appointed a national leader of that organization. And then I was there for 27 years. So I was taught racism and hate and to be an anti-Semite.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Now, when you were in the fourth grade, what were you? Do you remember what your feelings were about people?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I wasn't a racist at that point or anything like that. It was just thinking that it was cool seeing the videos of... I remember watching old World War II documentaries thinking, "I'm going to find my grandfather in these footages." And I just looked up to him and I sought out that path. And once you're indoctrinated, once you join and you're overwhelmed with this kind of ideology, it becomes your whole world. It's your echo chamber. Everything about it, everything that you're involved in circles around that world.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so like when you're in the fourth grade and you get interested in this, how do you eventually join up and meet the Nazis? How does that happen?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, at that age, you're not meeting the Nazis or anything like that. Today, kids are online, and they are.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a good point.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. But at that point, I wasn't. So I was searching it out, and by the time I was 18, then I'm joining.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, you didn't have Kanye songs back then.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. His song is so crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Some of these, the "Paul Kanye side of Give Him a Hug." That sounds crazy. So what was the first organization that you officially became a part of, and what did they do?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So the National Socialist Movement was the group that I sought out.
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--:-- Joe Rogan: How did you find them, first of all? Because this was all before the internet, right?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. This was a really kind of strange story. So I'm looking for books. I'm trying to read everything I can on it. I'm trying to find these books.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you have other hobbies or just being a Nazi?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No, I had other...
--:-- Joe Rogan: Were you into baseball or anything like that?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I was a long-haired rock and roll singer.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No fucking way.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You were a rock and roll Nazi? That's nuts.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. That seems like so... That's like jumbo shrimp.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. That's so counterintuitive. How are you a rock and roll Nazi? Rock and roll is all about freedom and creativity and expression.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I know there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff in my life.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that just shows you people are really complicated.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So when you first found these people, so you're a rock and roll musician, and how do you find them?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So I found them in a book at the library. I'm ordering all these books and it was written by a sociologist or something and they had all these addresses of everybody that participated in the book in the back of the book. So I'm writing, physically writing, not like emailing today, but like writing all these organizations. And then I eventually...
--:-- Joe Rogan: How old were you at the time?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Like 18.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So you're 18 and you're writing Nazi groups saying, "Hey, I'm ready. Sign me up."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wow. Okay. So who responds?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So everybody. Some of the groups were closed down at that point, but most of the groups responded. And I looked through all the literature and I met up with the National Socialist Movement. At the time it was called National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Again, this is the Nazis.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: That's a lot of words.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's what I thought.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So originally "Workers Freedom Movement." Yeah. That's a lot of freedom for some people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Another counterintuitive thing there. Socialists for some people.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. And not that socialism, not left wing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Weird socialism. Yeah. So like what were they involved in? So when you meet them, do you have to have a... Is there a vetting process? Do they make sure you're not a fed or sit you down and, you know, "What are you looking for? Why are you interested?"
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah. And back then the group was pretty small. But the reason that I picked that organization, it was only in a handful of states at the time I joined. It was pretty small. The National Socialist Movement was a continuation of the movement of George Lincoln Rockwell who was the original founder of the American Nazi Party. So that's why I wanted to join that particular organization because it had that history. Because I was a fan of history, I always wanted to be as close to the German movement as possible. So that was the group that I sought out. And then there is like a vetting process. They want to know you, sign up an application. And later on in the group, I was doing things like having people sign non-disclosure agreements and doing background checks on people and things of that nature.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I want to point this out because this is a really crazy fact that's going to blow a lot of people's minds. Before World War II, there was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. American Bund, the German-American Bund. It is nuts when you see it in Madison Square Garden and you see the swastika, the whole deal, and you're like, "This is before anybody had connected this with evil." Right. Like back then, that was an ancient Hindu symbol. Like there's a Hindu temple near my old house in California, and it has swastikas all over it because the temple's from the 1800s. And they have to tell people, "Hey, this is a sign. Hey, it's not that kind of swastika."
--:-- Daryl Davis: Right. Back in 2018, the State Department sent me over to India to speak and lecture. And you see these symbols all over the place.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Because it's a peace, good luck kind of thing. It was also a symbol for Shotokan karate. When I was a kid, when we would meet these Shotokan karate tournaments, we'd go to tournaments and meet these practitioners. Some of them would have swastika patches. This is in the 80s. This is nuts. Jamie, show that photo again. There's a video. Oh, okay. Show the video. It's really crazy because you see this enormous crowd. And this was before people had associated Nazis with a bad thing. You know, back then it was just this national socialist party. They thought, "Okay, we're good." By the way, that's how everybody used to salute the American flag. Did you know that?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Which is really crazy. The Nazi salute now that Elon got in trouble for, that is how you used to pledge of allegiance. And then once the Nazis came along, "All right, we're going to abandon that. This is connected. Got to ditch the little mustache and no more of that." But this is a really crazy video to watch because it really makes you think like how things can shift.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, you know, the highest percentage of white people in this country are of German descent.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. The second highest are British descent.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wow, I had no idea. German, I would have...
--:-- Daryl Davis: A lot of people think it's British, but it's German.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I would have thought, yeah, God, that's nuts.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And you notice in that video, Joe, they also have George Washington up there.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So they've Americanized neo-Nazism.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But it was different back then, right? This wasn't a racial cleansing. They weren't involved in eugenics. They weren't thinking of those terms, right?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I think that all came later, but this was all part of the movement here in the U.S.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. But what was the core tenets of this movement, the American Nazi movement, in the 1930s before the war?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Basically, it was German activists and they were allied with Hitler's National Socialism.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So was it anti-Semitic? Was it anti-Jewish back then?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Sure, yes. It was.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So this whole rally is a big anti-Semitism rally.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, I mean, that was before my time.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But you're a historian.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I'm a Nazi.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Like you're an enthusiast.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So when you first get brought in, you're 18. Like what do they give you tasks to do? Do they teach you about things? Like how's it go?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah. So a lot of the propagandizing and stuff is books that you're reading and studying. But the group had like meetings. You would have literature distributions. It would do like...
--:-- Joe Rogan: Mein Kampf? Like what kind of reading is that?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah. I had already read that at 16. I already read that. But the group is recommending books like that or Henry Ford's "International Jew," other books like that as well.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is that Henry Ford the car guy?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yes. He wrote a book called "International Jew." Yes. He was very anti and he supported the Nazis.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah. Henry Ford had a picture of Hitler on his desk and Hitler had a picture of Henry Ford on his desk.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Whoa. You'd be surprised, man, about some of the people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know, Walt Disney, same thing. IBM at the time, same thing, yeah.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, I knew about Walt Disney. I had heard about Walt Disney. And I heard something about the roots of IBM as well.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I mean, so many German automobile manufacturers, right? Like Audi, Volkswagen, you know, all started off as Nazis. Even Mercedes, right? Was it a Nazi-owned company?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I don't know if they were owned by the Nazis, but they were definitely a German company, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That was one of the craziest things about the Kanye thing because Kanye lost his contract with Adidas because he had said anti-Semitic things. Adidas was started by the Nazis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Which is just like, wow. But that goes to show people can advance and change.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yes. You know, the Red Cross used to not allow black blood. And then when they finally allowed black blood, they said, you know, to donate blood.
--:-- Joe Rogan: When was this?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Back when the Red Cross first started collecting blood. Because as you probably know, Charles Drew, a black scientist, was the one who discovered how to give blood transfusions. So Red Cross began collecting blood and they would not take black blood. And then when they finally took black blood, they segregated the blood. It doesn't matter if it's black versus blood. You should segregate it by O positive or O negative or whatever it is, but not by the color of someone's skin.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's crazy.
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--:-- Joe Rogan: So they give you books, they kind of indoctrinate you. What is involved in being a member? Basically, you go to meetings.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, you go to meetings. You do literature.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How often are these meetings?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It varied. Sometimes it was once a week. Other times it was once a month. It just kind of depends. It depends on the group as well. Some are very active. Some are less active.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How far were the meetings from your home where you lived in Detroit?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, this was growing up in Minnesota.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay, Minnesota.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So in Minnesota, they were pretty close by. I moved to the Twin Cities.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Were you shocked by that they were that close?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No, no. I had been looking for them since I was a teenager, but then by the time I was 18, I was able to find them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you move to be close to where the meetings are held?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No, I moved to the Twin Cities because I wanted to be close to my band. They had based out of there. But then early on, I was doxed on a radio show. I was going under a fake name at like 19 years old and still had the long hair. I got it tucked up in a hat, and I went on a radio show, and I was doxed early on, and that kind of changed the trajectory.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did you go on the radio show for?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: With the movement, with the National Association.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, and then you got doxed as the band member?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, no.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You got doxed, like, your home address and all that stuff?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: My parents. So I was going under the name Jeff Stevens because I wanted to separate my music career from the movement and also protect my family because I knew this was a movement that people didn't like, that could put them in harm's way. And so I was on the air and somehow the host says, "Your name is not..." I was spewing anti-drivel, which was pretty typical of how I behaved at the time. And the woman that was running the show, she goes, "Your name is not Jeff Stevens. It's Jeff Schoep. And your mother lives in this town. She's an attorney. She works here. Your father works in manufacturing. He works here. And we're going to call your mother in the next commercial break." And my world just fell apart. And I look back now and I try not to blame anybody else because these are my choices, my poor choices. So I take responsibility for that. But at 19 years old, that changed my trajectory. I felt like my whole world just collapsed at that point.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you think like, "Wow, all these people are mad at me, maybe I'm wrong?"
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No. You would think with this kind of stuff going on in your life, you would reflect on that. But I doubled down. And that's pretty common in that world. When someone is faced with that kind of pressure, they double down, they become more entrenched. So it's like every lash of the proverbial whip, anybody that tried to stop me from being involved in it or tried to dissuade me, it just made me more dedicated to it and more intense in that belief system. So I'm thinking I'm going to ruin my band's career now. So I quit the band. I shaved my head and I put all that energy that I had put into music into the movement. I felt like I had no choice. What that did, that doxing, it affected my mother's career. So this was a hate has consequences. It was something that was like a downward spiral for me. And this is very common for anybody that's involved in it. It separates you from your family, from those you love. It isolates you. And what it did to my mother's career is, as I mentioned, she was a lawyer. She wanted to be a judge. So she had ran to be a judge. She was elected to be a judge. And in the state of Minnesota, at the time anyways, this was back in the 90s, and there was a formality. And this is the way my mother explained to me at the time. She says, "The governor called me. And he said, 'Mrs. Schoep, your son's a leader in the Nazi party. Your father fought in the German army during the war. I do not feel you are fit to be a judge in this state.'" So that was just devastating. I carry that guilt and shame to this day for doing that. But at the time I was like, "Okay, the system is after my family." That's how I felt. And it just made me double down and become more radical.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you have a job at the time?
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did you do for a job?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I was doing all kinds of jobs, working in factories and Pizza Hut, just anywhere I could.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But your main focus was on the movement.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, my main focus was on music until all that happened. And then it became the movement, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so, like, what are the different things that you guys did?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So the group would organize social gatherings where people would just hang out and drink and party and give talks. And then there would be formal meetings where people would get dressed up and have these meetings. You would do rallies.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Who was dressed up?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Dressed up in Nazi uniforms.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like full-on German Nazi uniforms?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Back then, the old deal, yep. Back then it was armbands and brown shirts and the black ties, yep.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is that you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, that's the old uniform, yep.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that's crazy. So at any time while you're doing this, did you think, "What am I doing? I'm on the wrong path. This is crazy."
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No, no, no. Not until later.
--:-- Joe Rogan: When was later?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Around the time when I met Daryl Davis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Were you already having second thoughts about the direction of your life?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: That's a tough one to answer. I was starting to see the humanity in others. I moved to Detroit in December of '07. And Detroit's a majority minority city or people of different races. So I'm having more interactions with people of other races. By 2016, I'd met Daryl Davis. And like I said, I didn't know I was meeting Daryl Davis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How did you guys meet?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It was for a film, for Daryl's film, "Accidental Courtesy."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay, right.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So they had reached out and they explained the show and I said, "Okay," because any opportunity to spread the propaganda of the movement, I'm going to do it unless it was like Jerry Springer or something. So it sounded legit. I agreed to it. Didn't know I was meeting Daryl. I still would have done it, but I would have probably prepared to debate this guy because I knew who he was. I knew he was pulling people out of the movement. And so this was at a place called Chris's Hot Dogs in Alabama where Hank Williams had written a song. It was "Hey, Hey Good Looking," you out there, right? About a waitress. Right. And my girl and I were sitting outside and Daryl steps out of a vehicle and I'm thinking, "I recognize this guy." He comes up, shakes my hand. We shake hands, and he says, "Hi, I'm Daryl Davis. You must be Jeff Schoep." And I'm thinking, "Where do I know that name from? Where do I know his face?" It didn't quite register, because I'm just thinking about this debate that we're going to get into. And then after we sat down, it clicked. I was like, "Oh, this is the guy that gets people out of these organizations." So at this point, I'm the head of the National Socialist Movement. And Daryl and I are getting along great. We're talking about music. We're talking about all these kind of things. And it clicks in my head. "Oh, wow. I'm getting along too well with this guy. He's the enemy, or so-called enemy. He's on the other side. So I better step it up here." So I pound my fist on the table. And I said, "You know, Daryl, I'll fight to the last bullet for my people."
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. And prior to us getting together, the producer and director of the documentary called "Accidental Courtesy" asked me. They followed me around the country. I was conducting interviews with KKK members, Black Lives Matter, and different people. And they said, "Do you know Jeff Schoep?" And I said, "I know who he is. I've never met him. Would you be open to talking with him and interviewing him?"
--:-- Daryl Davis: I said, sure. So they contacted him. And then they let me know, okay, we were down in Alabama at the time. He's going to come down to Alabama. You can interview him tomorrow. And we went to this place called Chris's Hot Dog Stand or Chris's Grill, whatever, where Hank Williams made famous. And we're going to do this interview in there. So they said they got me a rental car, put me in the hotel. and said, we're going to get everything set up, we'll have Jeff here, and we're going to film you when you first come in and meet Jeff. We want to catch that on camera, then you'll sit down across from him in the booth and interview him. I said, okay, fine. So I go to the hotel, wait for their call. They call and say, okay, we're ready. So I get in this rental car and I drive to the grill, and when I pull up, I see who looks like Jeff sitting on this bench out front with this girl. So I'm thinking, well, that can't be him because he's supposed to be inside sitting in the booth. So I just sat in the vehicle, looking at him, trying to figure this out. Maybe he came out for a smoke or something like that. I'm watching him. He's not going inside. So I got out. And when I got out and started walking towards him, I think, that is the dude. I'd never met him, but I knew what he looked like. I said, I wonder why he's out here. So I went over. I said, "Hey, are you Jeff Schoep?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "I'm Daryl Davis." He shook his hand. He introduced me to his lady friend. and I said, "I thought you were supposed to be inside." He goes, "Well, I was inside, just came out or whatever." So we walk in. Of course, they didn't get to capture the moment that we met, so they're all freaked out and stuff. And we sat down in the booth and I started interviewing him, and as he pointed out, he was getting along too well with me. Just chatting, talking about music and this, that, and the other. He said he was a musician. I said, "I'm a musician. What kind of music do you like? What kind of music do you play?" He said, "Well, I play rock." And I said, "Well, rock was invented by black musicians." He said, "Oh, let's not go there. Elvis Presley invented rock." I said, "No, Elvis did not invent rock. Chuck Berry invented rock." And he goes, "Okay, well, you probably know more about music than I do. But what difference does it make what color the musician is?" I said, "Well, it doesn't make any difference to me, but obviously it makes a difference to you because in our history books, we talk about Ben Franklin. Who cares what color Ben Franklin is? If he invented electricity, he invented electricity, right?" And he goes, "Well, yeah, well, I know about the guy who invented peanut butter." I said, "OK, what's his name?" He thought about it. He goes, "Carver, Carver." I said, "What's his first name?" He said, "George Washington Carver." I said, "OK, very good." I shook his hand. And so then, he runs the NSM, National Socialist Movement, and the whole white supremacy ideology is called the movement. So anyway, I said, "It's a racist movement." He said, "No, it's like a white civil rights movement for white people. You got the NAACP." And I said, "Yes. But there are white members of the NAACP. Can I join the NSM?" He goes, "No." And I said, "Well, why not? Well then, it is a racist movement." And then we got into it and he goes, "I will fight for the last bullet for my people." I was like, whoa. He just kind of flipped out here. I said, "OK. Did you do that because you were realizing that you were getting a little too friendly with him?"
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yeah. Yes. That's so funny. Like, I'm keeping my ideology no matter what. Yes. That's funny. You're not going to trick me by being a cool guy.
--:-- Daryl Davis: We laugh about it now, but at the time I was pretty stressed out.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I would imagine.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, because I realized it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So what year was this?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Darrell, what was the first year you came on the podcast?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Oh, gosh. Kind of around then, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, 15 or 16. Yeah. So how many other different things had you done where he had known about you? Had you done like a lot of different interviews?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been doing a lot of interviews, magazines.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so you guys were just very aware of anybody who was like fucking up the cause.
--:-- Joe Rogan: With their awesome personality. Yeah. I mean, think about it. You're in this movement, and you've got a guy that's pulling people out.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And he's not just pulling out just anybody. Some of these people are grand wizards and shit.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Grand wizards, grand dragons. Imperial Wizards, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wizards and Dragons is fucking hilarious, by the way. So after the thing was over, you know, they're meandering around putting their cameras packed up. I pulled Jeff aside and just talked to him, just one-on-one, man-to-man, no cameras, whatever. I mean, we just talked about a couple different things, talked about women and this, that, and the other. And just what guys talk about.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, normal. Yeah. And we exchanged phone numbers. And then the following year, 2017, he was involved in that large white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly. And I knew a lot of the people who were involved in there, including—
--:-- Joe Rogan: That was the one when the guy in the car ran over people in the crowd?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yes, yes. And I know the guy who organized that thing. He's been in my house. I've sat down with them. I've been in some of their homes, et cetera. and I'd gotten wind that Jeff was rethinking. I said, "Let me stop reading all this stuff and find out for myself." So I found his number that he had given me and fortunately he still had the same number. I called him up. And he remembered me, of course, and we chatted on the phone. And then we stayed in contact. And then in 2020, I had a gig up in New York City. and they booked me and said, "Talk about how you meet these people and what you all talk about and what they think about this." I said, "Well, wait a minute. I can tell you about how I meet them and how I go about it, but as far as what they think about stuff, I can tell you, but that will be secondhand. If you want, I can bring people because every now and then I bring a former Klansman that I took out of the movement to talk and answer questions. How about if I just bring somebody?" They said, "Whoa, we've got to clear that with the sponsors or whoever." So they got back to me and said, "Yeah, who do you want to bring?" I said, "Let me give you some options." So I called Jeff. I said, "Would you be willing to come out and talk about your experiences, what got you in, what got you out?" And he said, "Yeah." So I called him back and said, "Okay, I've got this guy. He was the commander of the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country for 25 years. He was a 27-year member." And they said, "OK, fine." So I called Jeff back and said, "OK, you're on, man. They're going to fly you out to New York and you'll come on." And this is the first time we'd ever done anything together like that where we both are on the same page.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And it went over very, very well. And that was the last gig either of us had before everything got shut down for COVID.
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--:-- Joe Rogan: You're both on the same page. What do you mean by that?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, both in the same mindset. He's not fighting to the last bullet for his people. He's fighting for all people. He realizes that what he had experienced for 25 out of the 27 years he was a member, he no longer wanted to do.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So when exactly was that shift for you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: So I broke free from the movement in early March of 2019. But I was going through this process for several years. So typically you want somebody in like the work that we do, we want someone to disengage from the movement. And then we work on the de-radicalization part. My journey was backwards. So I'm de-radicalizing while I'm still involved. Now, if somebody would have told me that while I was involved, those would have been fighting words. But it was basically like the mind wasn't catching up with what was going on. So that's when I was starting those last years when I was involved. I'm saying, "This is a white civil rights group. It's not a hate group." And from the outside looking in, you go, "Man, this guy's insane. Of course it's a hate group." And I see that now, obviously.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Tell them about your girlfriends who told you it was a cult.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah. So when I was involved, every girl that I was seeing, and I was seeing quite a few different women, just about every one, if they would come and check out the movement, they would say, "Whoa, this is like a cult. And you're like a cult leader." And I'm thinking in my head, "What is wrong with these choices I'm making in women? What is with these poor choices?"
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a serious cognitive dissonance.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: But that's the thought that goes through your head, is like, it's not me.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So was it initially meeting Daryl that started this journey for you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yes, it was one of the major, major first seeds.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But you guys hadn't seen each other for quite a while. And then on your own, you just started exploring these ideas and changing your perspective.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, that and then not long after meeting Daryl, I met a Muslim filmmaker by the name of Dia Khan. And in her film, *White Right: Meeting the Enemy*. And I'd gotten to know Dia quite well over the course of that filming. And there was a number of people that left the NSM from interacting with Dia. And she has a very similar approach to how Daryl Davis approaches things. It's about listening. It's about being curious. It's about asking questions and sharing different perspectives. And that curiosity and that sincerity, it can help restructure the way someone thinks and the way they see people. So like Dia says to me, and this is actually in the film, you can see the change. Like I showed a clip a lot of times at my talks and I'll tell the audience, "Take a look at my eyes in that clip because you can see it." The cameraman caught it, zoomed in on my eyes. She's saying, "The ideology that you stand for, the things that you believe in, they made me feel less than, ugly, not worthy as a child growing up. That's how I felt. That's how your ideology made me feel." And no one aside from Daryl Davis had ever approached me with anything like that. I was told I was wrong. But that human connection, when you dehumanize another human being, you lose your humanity in that process. And I'd lost my humanity a long time ago. And what Daryl and Dia did is they cracked that door open, that window to compassion, and I could see their humanity. Daryl did something very similar. He told me about how racism and hate affected him as a child growing up. That hurt. That hurt. I mean, I'm not going to say it at the time when I'm still in the movement, but on the inside, it really hurt. That bothered me. It's like this is not this noble grand cause that I believed it was if it's causing that kind of pain and suffering to other people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So what were the steps that you had to take before you were ready to leave the movement?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I had to try everything. And I beat myself up over that a lot, but I kept saying it's a white civil rights group. I'm telling every press outlet I'm sitting down with, "Don't call us a Nazi group. It's a white civil rights organization." Of course most of them wouldn't publish that because it is what it is. But I'm going through these different changes. I'm having rules put into the organization where the last couple of years, they changed from the swastika in the public view to using an old runic symbol, the old rune. Today, they switched back. They use the swastika again. But I was doing things like that to try to change the image of the group as my own beliefs were shifting. I was trying to shift that into the party. And eventually I was like, as a man, I thought, "I'm going to fix this. I got to fix this. This mistake that I made, this terrible movement, I've got to fix it." And there's no fixing it. All I was doing was putting lipstick on a pig, dressing up the Nazi party, trying to make it look pretty. It still is what it is. So eventually after 2019 rolls around, I was like, "I just have to get away from this. This is not right. I can't fix this."
--:-- Joe Rogan: And what was the response within the movement when you left?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Not so good. Not so good. You can leave these organizations, and it depends. Different groups operate different ways. What I was involved in was above ground, so it was mostly legal. You've got underground groups that operate a little bit differently. They'll come after you and things like that. You can leave. But if you walk away and you speak out against it, you're deemed like a traitor to that cause. So I knew that was going to happen when I started speaking out. So I didn't speak out immediately. But by the end of late 2019, it was August or September of 19, I started speaking out and denounced the movement, denounced racism.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So this is before you did that event with Daryl?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yeah. Yeah. By that time, I was already out.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so how were you denouncing the movement and where were you doing this?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I did a press release and a website and made it public because that would be seen and understood.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Now, were you concerned at all about retaliation, about you being attacked or them coming for you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: You know, there's always those concerns, but I don't try to dwell on those things. I was in a high-stress, dangerous environment for a lot of years. So this is just another kind of high stress environment. But I don't want people to be afraid to leave. There's no reason to be afraid to leave. I mean, obviously, you got to be aware of your surroundings and wise to it. But I always prepared.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And when you were leaving and you were on your way out and changing your ideas about the movement and then leaving, did anybody come with you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: A lot of people came with me. The National Socialist Movement was the largest neo-Nazi organization of its kind when I left. Today, it's quite small. It's barely hanging on. People in this movement began emailing me. People I didn't even know asked me, "Is this true?" because he'd mention my name or whatever else. And I said, "Yeah," and next thing you know, they're leaving. And I'd call him. I'd say, "Do you know so-and-so?" He'd say, "Yeah, he was in my movement." I said, "Well, he called me or he emailed me and wants to get out."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wow. So how many people do you think left?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, hundreds left, hundreds left.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How big is the movement in total?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: We never had a solid number on it, but over the years, I could tell you there was thousands and thousands of people that were involved. And then, we would work with other organizations. So I spoke at Klan functions, skinhead functions, other white nationalist organizations functions. So because I was that high profile in that world and I was the most high profile white nationalist to ever walk away in the United States.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Not just walk away, but denounce.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Denounce. And completely shift your perspective. So I felt like I needed to do something right to make up for the damage that I had done. And this is one way to do it, is to help other people break free and get out of that world.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And so is this a continual process? Do other people from the movement now start to read your stuff and see you speak and then leave as well? And you also have a book out. Just tell everybody.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It's called *American Nazi: From Hate to Humanity*. And there it is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you do an audio version of this?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It's in the works. It's not out yet. So, do more people continue to reach out to you that are in the movement because of this and try to get out as well? Absolutely. And we're helping people all the time. Daryl and I both are helping people all the time get out. And it's because of that presence that I had there. A lot of people will say, "I knew him then," or "I knew of him." So they'll feel comfortable in reaching out. So it's kind of like street cred, I guess, like if you were an alcoholic for 20 years, you have more of an ability to help other people.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yes, yes. And another thing, people like Jeff and people of that status, the high status, it takes them a while to figure out if they can leave. Because that's their job. In Jeff's case, that was his job for 25 out of the 27 years he was a member, to lead that organization and build it and recruit and bring people in. He brought in numerous people. So number one, how do you go back to those people and say, "I was wrong?" You've got all this power. Everybody looks up to you. You're their leader. Their cult leader, as your girlfriends would tell you.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Thanks, Daryl.
--:-- Daryl Davis: But so, that weighs on you. And then, that is your full-time job while you're in there. The money you make is from selling Nazi merchandise, T-shirts, armbands, medallions, et cetera. And so now you're leaving. How are you going to pay your bills? How are you going to support your family? You need a job. Well, you're not trained in anything else, number one. And then what are you going to put on your resume when you go to apply for a job? "I was a Nazi leader for the last 25 years." So, all of that weighs on you. And so you need some kind of outside support, which is a lot of stuff that I provide, because you talk somebody and you give them another perspective and they leave. You can't just leave them swinging in the wind and you go on about your business. Because they have to belong to something or enter into society and they can't go back. They've already betrayed their quote-unquote family. So they're going to find something else to get into unless you provide that kind of support.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And what support do you provide them?
--:-- Daryl Davis: The shoulder to talk to, connect them. I brought him to New York, had him speak to crowds. And an interesting thing happened. I want you to tell the story about Duke.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Show him to other people. Let them know, hey, Daryl Davis is not an exception.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Because what I need to do, I find oftentimes is, when I become friends with these people, the mentality becomes, "Darryl's okay for a black guy, so all those other black people, or all those other Jewish people..." that kind of thing. So when I feel I can trust that individual, that they're not going to bring harm, I'm not concerned about myself, but I know that they're not going to bring harm to friends of mine or other people, then I will invite them to my home, invite some of my Jewish friends, some of my other black friends, some of my white friends who look just like them, but don't agree with them. So that way they can see I'm not the exception. Maybe they are the exception because now they're being exposed to people who think the same way I do.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Now, were you doing that for money? Were you running the movement? Was that your job? Or did you have another job as well?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: For a lot of years, I was basically running the record label of the movement, and that was my job as well.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, the movement has a record label?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yes. White Power Rock.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, Christ. Yeah. So that was my job, yeah. So you had to find another job, too.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And you have to find a job where they're willing to hire a Nazi. Former Nazi. Former. Get it right, Joe. Come on, Joe. Recently, though. I mean, it's tough on a resume. Yeah. What did you wind up doing for work?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It was tough. It was tough for a while. Now I help get people out of extremist groups. I speak all over the country, all over the world. I've been at the Nobel Peace Center with Diakon. I just got back from Australia, did a book tour over there, spoke at combat anti-Semitism movement. Today I do a lot of work with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, educating young people. I've done stuff even with the U.S. government. I've advised other governments as well on extremism. So this is what I do now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did you do right away though? Like what was the first things you did?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I really had to do a lot of self-work, a lot of processing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But what did you do to make a living?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I didn't. I was living off of my savings.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Are you familiar with Simon Wiesenthal?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Okay. So Jeff now works with the Simon Wiesenthal Center. That's a complete 180. He was the most famous Nazi hunter. I knew Simon Wiesenthal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, really?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, I've been doing this for like 45 years. And back in the 1980s I went to Vienna, Austria which is where he lives and I had dinner with Simon Wiesenthal.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, and picked his brain.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How old was he back then?
--:-- Daryl Davis: He was old back then. Yeah. I'm not sure.
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--:-- Joe Rogan: How old he was?
--:-- Daryl Davis: He was probably maybe in his 70s maybe. You know a fun fact? If Werner Von Braun, the head guy from NASA that got us to the moon, if he was alive today, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wow, I did not know that.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, he was a legit Nazi.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, Operation Paperclip. The United States brought over all the best Nazi rocket scientists to structure our rocket program.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. Fun fact. A lot of people don't know that, but that's true, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, they all had those dueling scars on their faces, too.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So when I got Jeff to do the thing up in New York, he asked me, "Is this open to the public?" and I said, "Yeah, anybody can come." And he goes, "Yeah, I'm inviting a friend of mine who lives in New York. He was my chief of security while I was in the movement. And now he's out." And so you go ahead and tell that. This is an amazing story.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. So it's okay to say his name because he's public out with it. But this is Duke Schneider. He was my chief of security for a long time. And he had left the movement before I did. And his story is a love-conquers-hate story. So he had some kind of thyroid issues, cancer in his thyroid, and he was in the hospital. And his father's nurse was a woman by the name of Catherine. She's an African-American lady. And she was there with Duke in the hospital. And he's like, "Catherine, you don't have to stay here at the hospital with me. You can leave. I might be here for a while." and she says, "I'm not leaving your side. I'm going to be here in this hospital until you walk up out of here and you're better. I'm going to stay here, so don't argue with me. I'm going to be here." And at that moment, Duke looks to her and he says, "When I walk up out of this hospital and get better, I'm going to marry you."
--:-- Jeff Schoep: And they have been married ever since. And this is one of the, I mean, this couple, if you see them, you'd swear they just like high school sweethearts. They're just amazing, amazing people.
--:-- Daryl Davis: There's Duke Schneider.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. That's crazy. Wow.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So you know this goes to show, Joe, we all, you, Jeff, me, anybody, we know when we were kids we were told a tiger does not change its stripes, a leopard does not change its spots. That is who they are. And that is true. So why would we think that a Nazi or a neo-Nazi or a Klansman would change their robe and hood or their swastika armband or something? Well, that's where we're wrong. The stripes and spots on the tiger and lion are immutable characteristics. They're born with those. They can't change them. But the Klan robe and hood and the swastika are acquired. That's learned behavior. And what can be learned can be unlearned. Jeff is an example of that. Duke Snyder is an example of that. And when I first got into wanting to meet these people, I wasn't trying to get anybody out. And I still don't really try to get people out. I just want an answer to that question that plagued me from the age of 10. How can you hate me if you don't even know me?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Just tell me that, and then you go your way, I go my way. But what happened was, during the conversation, you start off this far apart on the ideological spectrum. You talk to somebody for five minutes, that gap narrows because you found something in common. You keep on talking, now you're here. You found more in common. At this point, you're having a cordial relationship with your adversary. You might not be going out to dinner with him, but you're having a cordial relationship. Keep on talking, and you find more in common. And now it's like a friendship. You don't agree on everything, but you have found more in common than you have in contrast. And the trivial things that you found in contrast, like skin color or whether you go to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple, begin to matter less and less because it's caused a cognitive dissonance.
--:-- Daryl Davis: When the first person left, I thought, this is a fluke. This guy probably wasn't invested in it fully. But then it happened again and again and again. I thought, okay, now something I must be doing when I'm interviewing these people. I narrowed it down to about five core values that everybody wants. I told you before, I've been to all 50 states. I've been to 64 countries on six continents. And I can tell you this, no matter how far I've gone from our country, right next door to Canada, right next door to Mexico, or halfway around the globe, no matter who I meet, they don't look like me or speak my language or worship as I do or not worship at all. I've always concluded that every person I've met is a human being. And as such, every human being wants these five core values in their lives. Everyone wants to be loved. We all want to be respected. We want to be heard. We want to be treated fairly and truthfully. And we want the same things for our family as anybody else would want for their family.
--:-- Daryl Davis: If we can learn to apply those five core values when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation or in a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I guarantee you that your navigation of that society, that culture, that situation, will be much more smooth, much more positive, and much more productive. That's what was happening because these people had been interviewed before, but they didn't leave. That is how you talk to people, more so than what you say to people and how you listen to them. When I say respect, it doesn't mean that I respect what they're saying. I'm respecting their right to say it. I think that's been one of the key things that worked with Jeff and worked with other people. When it started happening more and more, I realized I'd stumbled onto something and I needed to keep doing this. That's why I'm still doing it today. Jeff and I go out oftentimes. We just came back from Indianapolis a few weeks ago. We were in Orlando speaking to the Holocaust Center there.
--:-- Joe Rogan: When you look back on your life and you think about the enormous amount of time that you spent in the movement and now being essentially of a completely different mindset, what does that feel like for you when you look back on yourself?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It's like two different people. A lot of times when I'll speak about that life, I'll say that was my past life. I know it's not my past life. It's still the same life. But it is like looking back at a different person. When I started doing work with the Wiesenthal Center, one of the things was after talks, a lot of people in the Jewish community were like, "I don't get it. You're such a nice guy. I don't get it. It doesn't make sense." So we started showing video clips of my speeches and things that I did when I was in the movement ahead of those things. And then people were like, "Oh, now I get it," because they could see how different that person was from the nice guy that they met. But that's who I was. I always try to get out of showing those clips. I'm like, "Could I be backstage or somewhere else?" Because I don't want to look at it. It's tough because it's like, man, does it feel shame, guilt? You just feel terrible about it. I think that drives the work that I'm doing now, to help others and to repair some of that damage that's been done.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think your perspective is very important for people to understand that someone can shift their mindset. Just because someone has a hateful, evil ideology they've attached themselves to doesn't mean they're a hateful, evil person inherently. It's learned behavior and learned thinking. This is the problem with human beings: we're incredibly malleable. We follow the leader and we adopt ideologies. We're also very tribal. You become a part of a group, whether you call it a family or a team, you hate the other people because they're the enemy now. It's us against them and we're all in this together. That unites everybody. It's a part of the movement and it makes you feel like you're a part of something bigger.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a trap. It's a terrible trap, and it's a trap that human beings can easily fall into. You see it with political ideologies. You see it with religion. You see it with everything. We are very tribal, and that can manifest itself in some very disgusting thinking.
--:-- Daryl Davis: I want to add something to that. I think you're 100 percent right for the most part. But the tribal thing never came into play with me, nor did it come into play with other people who were raised the way I was. I first started traveling abroad overseas at the age of three in 1961. I was born in '58, so I'm 67 now. My first introduction to school was abroad. The State Department assigns you to the American Embassy in some foreign country for two years, and then you come back home at the end of the two years. You're here for a few months, maybe a year, and then you're back over to another foreign country for two years, back and forth, back and forth. My dad's job as a U.S. diplomat was to foster better relations between a foreign country and our U.S. government. My first introduction to school was abroad. I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different schools in different countries. The in-between grades I would do back home here.
--:-- Daryl Davis: My classmates abroad, we're talking about the 1960s, were from all over the world. Anybody who had an embassy stationed where we had our American embassy, all of their kids went to the same school. This little girl sitting at this little desk here might have been from Czechoslovakia. That kid from Nigeria, that kid from Italy, that kid from Japan. If you open the door to my classroom and look in, you would say, "Oh, this is a United Nations of Little Children." That became my baseline for what school was supposed to be. Every time I'd come home, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. Just because desegregation was passed four years before I was born in 1954 by the Supreme Court, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years and years. Even in some places today, in 2025, this country is still struggling with integration.
--:-- Daryl Davis: That became my norm, this multicultural thing. I didn't know tribes. Everybody was part of my tribe. That's why I didn't understand racism. If I had grown up here my whole life, and my first experience with somebody who did not look like me was having bottles and rocks thrown at me at the age of 10 in a parade, maybe I wouldn't be doing this work today. Maybe I would be thinking, "I'm going to stay away from those color of people." I didn't know tribalization simply because of my growing up experience.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Very unique experience.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Exactly. Most Americans didn't have that. Back in the 1960s, you buy your kids dolls. I had G.I. Joe dolls. My friends had Barbie dolls. Back then, all the G.I. Joes were white. All the Barbie dolls were white. Black kids had to play with little white dolls. There was nothing that looked like them. Today, you have all kinds of colors of dolls and nationalities and ethnicities, which broadens the scope of these children. When they see the real deal walking down the street, they think, "That's my favorite doll." So they're okay with that person, rather than reinforcing that tribalism by buying your kids the dolls that look like you and your parents.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That makes sense, and it also sets you up to be uniquely qualified to do what you do, as a person who did grow up around so many different people. Jeff, did you grow up around mostly white people?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, where I grew up is in the middle of a cornfield, basically. I grew up in a little town. It was barely 1,000 people. All white, basically. The only interactions you had with other races was typically in the summertime, like when farm workers would come up from Mexico. A lot of times people just didn't talk to them. I didn't really have hardly any interactions with people of other races.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So where did the negative ideas about other races come from?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: The movement. It came from the movement.
--:-- Joe Rogan: All from the movement, not from personal experience at all?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Nope. I did not have bad personal experiences. In fact, even to this day, most of the bad personal experience I had with other people—I've had assassination attempts. I've got scars from attacks. All white people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is post-leaving or during?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: During.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Why were they trying to kill you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, Antifa tried to get me. The scar across the back of my head was from a tire iron.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What happened there?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: They infiltrated the organization. We had went to Rochester, Minnesota to pass out leaflets. It was myself and my roommate and then two other guys that had infiltrated. At the end of the night, to make a long story short, I'm reaching into the trunk of a car to pick up this box of merchandise from the record label. The guy pulls out a tire iron and smashes me across the back of the head and says, "We're here to kill you." It felt like being scalped. The whole back of my head was scalp hanging down. I didn't get knocked out. I would have been killed if I would have been knocked out. I just remember stumbling and putting my hand across the back of my head and it felt like a wet sponge. I was just kind of stunned, staggering, concussion, and started stumbling into traffic in the middle of the street. He had gotten away from the guy and pulled me off to the other side of the street.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So there's multiple times people try to kill you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I've been shot at. I've had stabbing. People try to stab me too.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is also while you're in the movement?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And who was shooting at you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Gangs.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So people that had just found out that you guys were Nazis and they just tried to shoot you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Well, we were wearing the symbols everywhere. Flight jackets with swastika patches and stuff like that. That was pretty volatile, especially in different neighborhoods.
--:-- Joe Rogan: When you talk to other people that have left the movement, is there a pivotal moment in a lot of these people's lives where they realize that this was the wrong path? Is it an accumulation of other people's experiences? What is the main factor?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: It really is different for everybody, but usually it doesn't happen like a snap of a finger. We were talking about hundreds of people have left the movement. I can think of just on one hand, the people that have left over one act of kindness or one simple thing. Very few people do that. It's usually a process. They're going through this shift in thinking kind of like I was. They're questioning it. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance. There's a lot of confirmation bias that takes place. They're having experiences sometimes with people of other races that doesn't fit the narrative of the movement, what's being spewed. So they're fighting with this in their head for a long time. For different people, different things. Sometimes it's just seeing the humanity in the people that you once dehumanized.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Daryl, this is such a heavy path you're on. Does it feel overwhelming, interacting with so many people that have been indoctrinated into hate?
--:-- Daryl Davis: No, it doesn't. I've had some disappointments. Not everybody's going to change.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Have you had people that were close to shifting and they fell back into their own ways?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, it's like alcoholics who fall off the wagon. But I've had some who I never thought would change. There will be people on all sides who will go to their graves being hateful, violent, racist, anti-Semitic. But even some of those I've had come back and change. I know not all would do it. Some would just die hard. They're not going to change for anything. I don't give up on those people, but I move them down my list of priorities and deal with the ones who are open to talking. Even though they're just as hateful and violent and racist, if they will talk, there's an opportunity to plant a seed. The seed's not going to bloom overnight. When it happens, great. Then I move my way down to the ones who didn't want to talk to me or we got into some kind of scuffle.
--:-- Daryl Davis: As I was telling you before, when their buddies change and they see that life improve, sometimes it's a wake-up call for them. Initially they think there's nothing this black guy can do that's going to help them. "Who the hell is he to even think? I'm the superior one, he's the inferior one." But when they compare their life to their buddy's life, and now he's superior, he's living superiorly and getting along fine, they want that. So now they come around.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: For some people it's something staggering. I can think of a couple of the cases that I've worked on. One guy, his son committed suicide and he had brought his whole family into the movement. He felt like it was the ideology that did that, and that's what helped shift him. This was a lifelong guy, in his sixties. I would have never, like Daryl said, never. You never think some people are going to change. And he changed. There was another family that I helped out this last year. They got 11 kids under the age of 18. For them, it was seeing how it was affecting their children. A lot of them have disabilities and things like that. They were seeing how the quality of life, being involved in this, it's heavy. It's a great burden. It's not something that you wish on your children. It's not something that you want for them to move forward with.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Having children also just changes your understanding of people. You start realizing that babies learn from their environment. They all come out of the womb just innocent children. You see them grow up and evolve and you realize how much of what makes you a human being is just learned behavior. Daryl, you're still a working musician?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Absolutely.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How much of your time is dedicated to helping people leave these movements? It seems pretty significant.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, it's really flipped around a lot. When I first started this, it was maybe 75% music, 25% this work. But now it's probably the exact opposite. I just take the gigs that I want to do. If it's something that I feel like playing, I'll take it. I've turned down more gigs in the last few years than I have accepted.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Does this feel right to you, or do you sometimes wish that someone else would carry the baton?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I wish people would carry the baton and improve upon what I've done. I'm just one person, and there's always room for improvement. Somebody can take my template and make amends to it. I would hope people would be inspired to do that, and there have been some.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Would you rather have more time for your music?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I'll put it this way. Music is my profession, for sure. But improving race relations is my obsession. I would much rather be on stage playing my piano with my band, seeing people smiling and dancing and clapping their hands, than going to a Klan rally and watching people in robes and hoods march around a burning cross yelling "white power."
--:-- Joe Rogan: [Laughs] You laugh, but that's what I do.
--:-- Daryl Davis: I know. It's crazy that you do that and have any feeling of safety while you're there.
--:-- Daryl Davis: There are people who don't want me there and they resent it and they get into it with their leaders, and their leaders end up banishing them. Jeff can tell you, because he's been to a lot of Klan things as well as his own organization, it's run kind of like a paramilitary. You have two kinds of rallies: public rallies and private rallies. A public rally is you want to have your Klan rally or your Nazi rally over here in the park on Main Street. You go to City Hall and apply for a permit. That's a public park. Anybody can come. You can come, I can come. If there's potential for violence, there's going to be a barricade of police in between the ralliers and the protesters so they can't meet each other. You can yell and scream over the police head. If it's in some rural place, like he's talking about in rural Minnesota, anybody can go. There's not a whole lot of police presence. It's mostly white people.
--:-- Daryl Davis: If it's a private rally, it's on private property. One of the members might have a farm. "We can have the rally on my farm." You can't walk on somebody's farm unless you're invited. You have to be invited by one of the higher ups. In his case, the commander. In the Klan case, the imperial wizard or the grand dragon. It's like a Simon Says. If the leader invites somebody, then all the members have to respect that you don't bother that person, whether you like it or not. Otherwise, you'll suffer some consequences.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And why would those leaders invite you?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Curiosity. I treated them fairly. I applied those five core values. I'm writing a book. I need to know what goes on at a rally. Y'all say you don't do anything malicious. Show me. Let me come see the rally. If you're going to write a book on football, you can go to the library and get tons of books and research it and write it and have never gone to a football game. But if you really want to write an accurate one from personal experience, you need to go see a football game. How am I going to write a book on the Klan from A to Z without ever seeing a Klan rally? I explain that to them, and they say okay. I've been to both private and public.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Who's easier to convert, Klan people or Nazi people?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I would say probably Klan people. I don't want to say that a white supremacist of any group is stamped out of a standard cookie cutter. They come from all different walks of life, all different educational backgrounds, reasons for joining. But the Nazi movements, not so much the skinheads. The skinheads are very disorganized, disjointed. They go off the rails. They don't listen to anybody within their own command. The Klan does have a lot of respect for their higher-ups: the Great Titan, the Grand Dragon, the Imperial Wizard. The Nazi movements, a lot of the larger ones like his former movement, are very militarily run. There are quick consequences if you step out of line. If I don't like Joe Rogan on my rally ground, but my Grand Dragon wants him here, I'm going to be cool. I'm not going to say a word to him. I'm just going to stand over there because I know if he gets in my face, I might say something and then I'm going to get banished. It's very much run like a military in a lot of ways.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you guys train? Did you have training exercises and different things that you did?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, later on in the group, there was paramilitary training. There was a rank structure, like the military, and it was very, very controlled in that sense.
--:-- Joe Rogan: When you say paramilitary training, what were you preparing for?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: In these movements, they believe that the United States government is going to collapse, whether that's through a race war or a civil war. This goes far right, far left. Most extremist groups have this, or even the jihadi type religious extremism. They have this idea that they're going to rise up and be the leaders of the future tomorrow. So groups like this prepare. They do what you call militia training, I guess.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Interestingly enough, he mentioned the word "militia." There's a very subtle nuance here. When you have a bunch of white guys who go out in the woods and practice shooting and they're in their camouflage and practice survival skills, they're called militias. But when you have black groups that do the same thing, they're not called militias. They're called militants. It's the same thing. But the word "militant" has more of a negative connotation than the word "militia."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Interesting. Who's using these terms? By whose standard?
--:-- Daryl Davis: By the general public's standard, especially white people will use those terms. They refer to blacks as being militant. You very rarely hear about militias. When you hear about militias, it's usually kooky white people. Usually white people in Idaho or groups outside of Coeur d'Alene.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, and the Aryan Nations.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. The people in Washington State. But also Michigan, where his state, they have a lot of militias in Michigan. Timothy McVeigh was part of a militia. There are other ones. They have different names to cover up, like he used Jeff Stevens to cover the thing. There was a Klan group out of Texas. It was something Ambulance Service. Just a store window name to cover up the real organization.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Speak to the recruitment. These groups have always, since their inception, recruited law enforcement and military people into the ranks. But now it's even more concentrated where they really are going after a lot of law enforcement and military, especially those veterans who've only been in the military for two years. They feel that if somebody's in there for more than two years, they've become loyal to the government. It's harder to pull them. At the two-year point, these people have training in weaponry and bomb-making, explosives and survival skills, all that kind of stuff, which is what these people want to prepare them. They say, "You all served overseas and fought for the country over there. Now why don't you come fight for our country right here? Because this is going on in our cities. Look what's happening in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. The Jews and the blacks are taking over." They get lured in, and then they learn these weapons skills. Then they turn into lone wolves. That's why we're seeing so many lone wolves.
--:-- Daryl Davis: But what's actually going on here, Joe, is this. I learned this back in 1982.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Let me go back a little further than 1982. 1974. I age 15 in the 10th grade, sophomore in high school. And we had a class called the POTC, which stood for Problems of the 20th Century. Had a great teacher. It was a class for seniors, 12th graders, but I was taken as a 10th grader. He'd bring in different controversial speakers, talk about different abortion, you know, all kinds of controversial things back then. And one day, he brought in the head of the American Nazi Party.
--:-- Daryl Davis: As Jeff pointed out, the Nazi party was founded by a fellow named George Lincoln Rockwell. And by the way, one of Rockwell's daughters, who long ago disowned her father, was a teacher at my school. But a lot of people didn't know that. But anyway, George Lincoln Rockwell was murdered by one of his own Nazis, a guy named John Poulter. It was founded about 35 minutes from my house in Arlington, Virginia. And John Poulter shot and killed Rockwell out there on the street on Wilson Boulevard. So Rockwell's right-hand guy was a guy named Matt Cole, K-O-E-H-L. And on this day in 1974, Matt Cole and his right-hand guy, they're the heads of the American Nazi Party now after Rockwell, came to my school, to my class, and they spoke to my class. Now, you could never do that today, but I'm glad we were able to do that back in 1974. I wish that kind of thing would happen today so people can see what's, you know, freedom of speech and all that.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Matt Cole pointed at me and pointed at another black kid in my class and said, "We're going to ship you back to Africa." And then he went like this, and all you Jews out there, you're going back to Israel. Now, I'm 15 years old. I just sat there, looking at the guy, like, what on earth is this man talking about? I didn't say anything to him. But one of my classmates was a girl, piped up and said, "Well, they live here. What if they don't want to go?" And Matt Cole said, "Oh, they have no choice. If they do not leave voluntarily, they will be exterminated in the upcoming race war." That was the first time I ever heard the term race war.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Now, I was already fascinated by racism since I was 10 years old, right? But race war, what is this man talking about? And so I began buying books and all kinds of stuff, learning different terminology for it, which will come later. Like, for example, the white supremacists, they have two terms for the race war. One is RAHOWA, R-A-H-O-W-A, which are the first two letters of three words, racial holy war. Also, they call it the boogaloo. So if you hear that term, they're not talking about the 1960s dance music, they're talking about the race war. And so Matt Cole talked about the race war.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, I graduated two years later, 1976 from high school. I graduated from college in 1980, four years after that. And like I said, racism became my obsession. I did not confront Matt Cole in school because, you know, my peer group back then, we're raised to have respect for your elders as figures of authority, whether you accept them or not, you still respect them. And so, I didn't confront him like that. But now I've graduated from college, right? I graduated in 1980 at age 22. In 1982, I'm age 24. I had developed contacts with different people. I knew where some of these groups were, etc. I found out about a demonstration, an unpublicized demonstration by the American Nazi Party that was going to take place in front of the White House.
--:-- Daryl Davis: There is a park right across the street from the White House called Lafayette Park. 24-7, 365 days a year, there is somebody in that park protesting something. Nuclear weapons, the environment, abortion, you name it, they're there all the time. And they face the White House with their billboards and whatever. So I found out the American Nazi Party was going to have a silent, unpublicized demonstration, which means nobody knows about it, not even the police, right? So I'm going to go down there and see them. Now, back then, you could drive up and down the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is where the White House sits. And I only live about 30, 40 minutes from there, 15 minutes from D.C. on a non-rush hour day. So I go down there early. They're going to be there at 12 noon. I park my car at Caddy Corner to the White House. I wait. Here comes this van. About 13 to 15 of these Nazis get out, right? And who do I see? Matt Cole and Martin Kerr. The same two guys from eight years ago who came to my school. You never forget the face. I can look at my hand right now and see his face right there. You never forget the face of somebody who tells you they gonna ship you somewhere whether you wanna go or not and if you don't go voluntarily, exterminate you.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So anyway, Matt Cole gets all his Nazis lined up. They're not wearing anything that indicates they're Nazis. They're wearing just dark black suits. And they're standing there like this, facing the White House across the street. It's lunchtime in D.C. People are walking by, not even knowing who they are. I know who they are. I guess maybe the White House might have known who they were. So anyway, once he got them all lined up, I walked right over to Matt Cole. And I said, "Matt Cole." He jumped. Like, who is this black person calling my name? And he says, "Do I know you?" And I said, "Well, you spoke at my high school." And he said, "And what high school would that be?" I said, "Wooten High School in Rockville, Maryland." And he goes, "Yes, yes, yes. I remember you. That was a long time ago." And I said, "Yes, that was eight years ago."
--:-- Joe Rogan: He remembered you?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, he remembered me. And he said, "Yes, that was a long time ago." I said, "Yes, that was eight years ago." He goes, "Yes, yes, I remember. What can I do for you?" I said, "Well, I'm still here." He says, "I can see that. How can I help you?" I said, "Well, you can tell me just who the hell gives you the authority to make permanent travel arrangements for me." And he says, "What's your name?" I said, "Daryl Davis." And then he did something I've never forgotten. He shook my hand, and he held my hand real tight, and he shook his finger in my face. And he said, "Mr. Davis, you have to understand one thing. It is in the interest of your race, the black race, to be a strong race. And you cannot be a strong race unless you are a pure race. And you cannot be a pure race if you are miscegenating with other races. It is in the interest of my race, the Aryan race, which is what he calls white race, right, to also be a pure race. And we cannot be a strong race if we are miscegenating with our mud races such as yours. We are becoming a mongrel race."
--:-- Daryl Davis: So anybody who's non-white is a mud race. And he's fearing that his race is dying out, becoming a mongrel race by mixing with other races. So he says, until the racists understand that they cannot miscegenate, we cannot live side by side. We cannot live together. And what do you hear there? Fear.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Fear. So he, you know, I talked to him for about maybe 20, 30 minutes. I wasn't there to beat him up or cuss him out. I just wanted to understand where he's coming from.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And so a few months later they applied for a permit. They had their National American Nazi Party recruitment rally in Washington D.C. So people came from all over the country, right? And now this time it was publicized. So you had about 50 of them show up, and there were tens of thousands of people that came to protest from New York, Richmond, Virginia, Baltimore, all over. So you have every police department was there, too. And there was rioting, all kinds of craziness going on. You could not get to the Nazis. I saw Matt Cole and them. And now, of course, they're wearing their Gestapo uniforms with the SS insignias, flying swastika flags and all that kind of thing. And you couldn't get to them because the police have their shields and their batons and pushing people back.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So then people came with bricks and all kinds of stuff and began throwing them over the heads of the police to land on the Nazis gathered in this opening in the park. And so the cops began tear gassing everybody. And then it became a full blown riot. People were turning over police cars, breaking out the windows, kicking out the headlights, setting buildings on fire in Washington, D.C. You can find it on YouTube. And so anyway, this is before the Internet. Right. 1980s. My secretary and I go home. We watch the news. And there's Matt Cole sitting in the studio of one of the network TV stations, NBC, CBS, ABC, whatever it was. And he's talking to the anchor person. And they're showing footage of the riot in D.C. that day. He says, "You see, it's the blacks and the Jews who are turning over the police cars and trying to attack us. You don't see the Nazis turning over the police cars."
--:-- Daryl Davis: It was then that I realized what he was doing because he was a pretty smart guy, just smart in the wrong direction. I couldn't figure out why would he have his national recruitment rally to recruit people into the Nazi party in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is two-thirds black. There are no black people in D.C. who want to join the American Nazi Party. There are no Jews in Washington, D.C. or Jews anywhere who want to join the American Nazi Party. So why D.C.? Because he knew that would happen. And he has the official footage from CBS, ABC, NBC. He takes that footage goes out there to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho or Washington State, the Pacific Northwest, and says, "You see what's going on in our nation's capital? Our country is being run by ZOG." ZOG is a very common term in white supremacy. It stands for Zionist Occupied Government.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, boy.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. And so he shows this rioting of all these people who he alleges are blacks and Jews, destroying and denying people their right of freedom of assembly, freedom of speech. So then it's a recruitment tool. So I learned that. And I realized what he was doing. And I've seen the Klan do the same thing. They will go somewhere where they know there's going to be some kind of a riot. That's why they want to march in Skokie, Illinois, which was an all Jewish neighborhood, because they knew it was going to create a disturbance. And they use that.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So I learned a lot from Matt Cole.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Bizarre that someone would be smart in the wrong way like that. It's bizarre.
--:-- Daryl Davis: It's bizarre, but you find it in any color, every color. You know, divide and conquer is how you gain power.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: And going back to the fear factor of that, we did the exact same thing. Every time there was violence, when we'd clash with Antifa or something like that, we had people out there filming. Like NSM had its own media arm. So they're out there filming that, and we would put out those clips. So immediately, especially if there was violence, if there were actual clashes and the police weren't keeping people separated, those always turned into recruits. That's how these groups would utilize that stuff. So you had people that were like, "Oh, man, I missed it. I didn't know we'd be fighting with the Reds. I'll be at the next one." And then you'd have applications coming in from new recruits that would see it on the news. So these groups are always manipulating the media.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: And some of the rallies that I organized were at places like Valley Forge, Yorktown, Virginia, historic places that you could use those elements and it would guarantee the press. Or downtown L.A. at the City Hall or marching on D.C., places that would guarantee a lot of press. And just like Daryl said, it wasn't necessarily to recruit people in those areas. It was to whip up chaos because that would benefit these groups.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How do these groups use the media or rather social media and the internet to radicalize people?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Nowadays it's a double-edged sword, the media, because these groups before, like I was discussing earlier, you had to kind of search them out or a recruiter had to find you or something like that. It wasn't easy to find. Now a fourth grader can click on a website and go find these groups. They're easy to find online. And so sometimes they're very overt, but a lot of times there's different censorship things that are in place. So they'll change the cover of the book. So the propagandists that we had in the group were making stuff look less innocuous, not using swastikas or things like that. So some groups are very prolific at that, and they'll use podcasts. They'll use videos.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Do they have a Nazi podcast?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Don't get any ideas, man.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I would say like—
--:-- Joe Rogan: I was just thinking, like, how many people are listening to Nazi podcasts?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: That really varies.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is it still a large movement in this country?
--:-- Joe Rogan: And how does it grow now? Does it grow based on the things Daryl was talking about, like riots and stuff like that, where they'll use that? Maybe Black Lives Matter riots from the 2020s?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, one of the things that's causing it to grow also, which I was going to lead up to when I talked with Matt Cole, what I learned in 1982 was that these people, meaning the movement, the white supremacy movement, are fearing. He told me this in 1982. They are fearing the year 2042. It's not a conspiracy. It's for real. The U.S. census is taken every decade. I'm 67. It doesn't matter how old you are, how old he is or whatever. When we all were children, the black population in this country was 12%. Native Americans, 1%. Latino Hispanic Americans, almost 2%. Asian Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, almost 3%. Whites were like around 86%, 87%. I was born in '58. So every decade, this is happening. And this is what Matt Cole was telling me, that they were fearing. He used the word fear. He said it has to be stopped. He said in the year 2042 if this trend continues, this country will be 50% white, 50% non-white.
--:-- Daryl Davis: The last census taken in our country was 2020. Guess what? Whites went from like 80-some percent from the time I was a kid and you were a kid. Now, 59%. That was in 2020. It's less than that right now in 2025. So in 2040, it's going to be this. It's predicted between 2045 and 2050, it's going to flip. And for the first time in the history of the United States, whites will become the minority. And while there are plenty of white people who say, "Hey, that doesn't bother me, no big deal, it's evolution, what's the big deal?" There is a slice of our population, the ones that I deal with, who think it is a big deal, and they're trying to stop it.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And that's why when I first started, I've been doing this for 45 years. When I first started doing this, it was just the KKK, white power skinheads, and some neo-Nazi groups. That was basically it. Today you've got the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the skinheads, the Patriot Front, the Vanguard, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the National Alliance, on and on and on, a whole slew of groups. And they're all saying, "Come join us, come join us. We're going to take back our country." So people out of fear of their identity being erased, because what they tell me is, "Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown." They call it the browning of America or white genocide through miscegenation. So these people out of fear of their identity being erased, because they truly believe that they are patriots and it's their job to save this country. "We built this country. We wrote the Constitution. And now people are coming into our country who don't look like us and squeezing us out of our own country." That's the mentality. And as Jeff points out, they're surrounded by an echo chamber that keeps repeating that. So then it becomes the truth to them.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So they run and join these groups to take back the country. But when the group does not act fast enough to take back the country, they get antsy and frustrated and say, "You know what, if the Nazis can't do it or the Klan can't do it, I'll do it myself." And they walk into a black church in South Carolina, boom, boom, boom, boom, and murder nine black people doing Bible study. Or the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, kill off 11 Jewish people. The Buffalo grocery store in New York. The Sikh Indian temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin murders seven Sikh Indians doing religious service. The Walmart in El Paso, Texas, 23 Mexican people were murdered by white supremacists a few years ago. These people are called lone wolves. And every time one of them gets taken out by law enforcement or gets arrested and their property gets searched, law enforcement always finds a cache of automatic weapons that are being stockpiled for RAHOWA or the Boogaloo, because they're looking to have this redo of the Civil War to preserve their lifestyle.
--:-- Daryl Davis: And so 2042 is going to be a pivotal year. And we're only 16, 17 years away from that right now.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So that's why they walked down the street chanting, "They will not replace us." That's what that's all about.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yep. This is white replacement theory, right? Which is bogus. Nobody's trying to replace anybody. You guys just aren't fucking enough. It's so simple. You're already the majority. You need to do your work.
--:-- Daryl Davis: It is just not my sister, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's just such a disturbing aspect of society that you would think there's going to come a point in time where there's enough education, enough understanding, and especially with the access to information we have with the Internet, this would all go away. But it doesn't seem like that's helping because it seems like the more access to information, the more people settle into these echo chambers.
--:-- Daryl Davis: That and also a lot of the old guard realized, this is happening. And if we want to preserve our culture, we need to pass this on to young people. We need to get more young people involved. And they began recruiting young people to disseminate this information and galvanize more of their peers into this ideology. And back to the recruitment of military and law enforcement, because they know this is going to happen and they're going to want those people on board to be on that side. You can probably talk about military and law enforcement inside your organization. I can talk about it in the Klan or whatever.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: As far as the military was concerned, we were actively trying to recruit military. So early on in the organization, it was like 10% maybe of the members. By the time I left, it was about 50%.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And how did you do that?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: On their applications, we were asking what branch they were in, what rank they achieved, because we were looking at all that for potential leadership. So anybody that had military experience, especially in the higher ranks, those people would be naturally looked at for leadership positions in the party because they had those skills.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But how did they try to recruit military people?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Using the same tactics as everybody else, but as far as the organization specifically, having that military structure, like we discussed earlier, gave them—somebody that was coming out of the military that was retired or something like that—it would provide that structure that they were missing. So a lot of times for people that are involved in this stuff, it's fulfilling a psychological need. It's being part of a mission. It's having that driving force that's behind their ideology. So finding a place to fit in, having a mission, a sense of purpose. I think a lot of times people miss that aspect of it. And I explain it not to excuse it because there is no excuse for it. These are choices that people make. But if you understand the psychology of it, like why someone's involved in it, that's helpful to help pull them out. And also when someone's coming out of these organizations, to have a new mission, have something else. So for a lot of people that might be learning to play guitar or doing an extreme sport or getting involved with the church or just it could be anything. But there has to be something because if they're missing that, that's when they really struggle. That's one thing I've seen a lot of.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So what is the protocol? Like how do you handle, say if someone is leaving and they contact you and say, "I know you left. I want to leave too." What are the steps you take to make sure that they do find some sort of a new purpose?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: A lot of times just kind of asking them questions, asking a lot of questions and seeing what they're interested in and finding those things, trying to help them find that sense of purpose because that's missing. So I had a lot of people say when they left, "I don't have that." So a lot of times we talk through that. "Well, what interests you? What are you interested in?" And a lot of times we try to keep them kind of steer clear of politics. But for some people it might be okay. But typically that's probably one they should stay away from for a little bit.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So politics, because they have this desire to help fix society. So I think they're going to get involved. "I'm not a Nazi anymore. So I'll get involved in fixing it in a more legitimate way."
--:-- Daryl Davis: And one of the problems, Joe, is this. When these people leave the movement, there is a moniker that's tagged on them and a stigma that follows. When you see their name in the media, it's never "Jeff Schoep, blah, blah, blah." It's always "former neo-Nazi Jeff Schoep." Doesn't say "former rock musician."
--:-- Joe Rogan: No. That's some wacky ideas, but let's not talk about that.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah. So that stigma kind of follows, and it's hard for them to break. Whereas most people, when they screw up or whatever, it's forgiven. Like, say you and I are friends. I call you and say, "Hey Joe, you're not gonna believe this. Last weekend I got thrown in jail for a DWI." You'd be like, "Man, you need to quit drinking and driving. Why don't you call me? I would come pick you up." And you and I would still be friends. But if I call you and say, "Hey man, I got arrested for murder or for rape," you'd be like, "Why are you calling me?" You're distancing. So even though these people might have been friends with somebody who later became a white supremacist or whatever, the stigma of it even now that they're out, they still are a little leery and want to stay clear because you're judged by the company you keep. So it's always "ex-con," blah, blah, blah, instead of just saying "so-and-so is working here."
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, there's very few people that even want to believe that someone's capable of change.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Exactly. The tiger strikes a leopard. They would always think, "This guy's got to be fucked up. He was a Nazi."
--:-- Jeff Schoep: And it's crazy because I had a reporter one time, and I won't say who, but he had said, "You know, I visit a murderer in prison and I'm okay with that, but I'm not so sure about your journey." Like, what he was saying in so many words was he was more comfortable with the murderer than somebody—
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's fascinating.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: —and this is a reporter, a journalist. And they were more uncomfortable speaking with a former neo-Nazi.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Were they Jewish?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No, no, no. Definitely liberal, yes.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I think the stigma of it is just so unforgivable, which is part of the problem.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So then why, if you're not going to forgive that person or that ideology, why do you want to fight it? Why do you want to combat it? Why not just accept it? Because it's not going to change, or at least you're not going to change your attitude towards it. You have to help. If you want these people to leave and reintegrate into society, you have to have forgiveness.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Prison is a penal institution, not a reform institution, which is why this country has the highest recidivism rate of any country in the world. People go there and they don't get reformed and they learn from better people than they were at their crime and they go back out and they do it again. And people don't accept them because they have that stigma that follows them. "Well, I can't hire an ex-con," blah, blah, blah. Where do they go? That's the recidivism.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: An interesting side note on that. We talk about some of the hate that I had. I was a raging anti-Semite, more than a racist by all points. And the irony of today working with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, I mean, there's just so much irony there. And the Jewish community was the community that I dehumanized and villainized the most. And Joe, they have been the most accepting and welcoming as far as since the change has happened. And that just blew my mind because the first time I went to speak at a synagogue, I thought, "Man, these people are going to want to stone me to death. What should I say? How am I going to do this? What is this going to be like?" I'd never been in a synagogue before. And this was a place in Skokie, Illinois. And I tell you, after speaking there, I got more hugs and more love and compassion than probably any other place I could ever remember being.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's really interesting. So did they try to understand why you at one point in time hated Jews? Did they ask you questions? Like, what did you think?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Yeah, yeah. I mean, they have something called teshuva, which means like forgiveness or repentance. And tikkun olam means to heal the world. So these were things that were counterintuitive and contrary to everything that I thought I knew about the Jews.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Now you're speaking Hebrew. You understand.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Right. Yeah. So it was really bizarre. So like when I speak with kids at schools, I said, "You guys remember in elementary school when you had opposite day and your shirt's backwards and all that kind of stuff?"
--:-- Jeff Schoep: I said, that was my life. Everything that I thought that I knew about the Jews and the movement—I was an expert on the Jews, the Jewish question, you know?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Did you have any experience with Jewish people?
--:-- Joe Rogan: So this was all just based on Nazi ideology?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Huh. So you had no negative or positive interactions with Jewish people?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: No. Towards the end of my time when I was involved, I had a few interactions with Jewish people that I knew of. But before that, no, absolutely not. Just wouldn't discuss anything with them, wouldn't talk to them. I just felt like they were inherently evil. I swallowed the whole anti-Semitic pill, I guess you could say. I believed all of it. And they were the people that I dehumanized the most. And yet today, they are the people that have been the most open.
--:-- For the longest time, Jews have been blamed for things they had nothing to do with. They say the Jews run the media, they own the media, they run the banking systems and all that kind of stuff. People begin believing that, and they become persona non grata, even though they may not even know any Jewish people. That's why I say when I feel I can trust some individual around my friends, I bring in some Jewish friends of mine and other black friends or white friends so that they can see something outside the echo chamber.
--:-- Another former neo-Nazi who's a very good friend of mine was telling me—
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a funny sentence. Former neo-Nazi who's a very good friend of mine.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: A Freudian slip.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, it's accurate.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Exactly. So anyway, he was telling me when he was in the movement, he's from Wisconsin. Their football team is the Green Bay Packers, and they're crazy about their football team. He would tell me that they're not allowed to watch football games because it's interracial. There's black and white members on the teams playing together, so that's forbidden. He'd have to sneak around and watch, turn the volume down and watch the game because he loved the Packers. When the Packers would score, he'd do like this. [gestures silently] When he got out and other people were getting out, it turns out they were doing the same thing, watching the game.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's so crazy. But he has a great story. Tell me about the guys from Cameroon.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yeah. So I had met some embassy people from the country of Cameroon in Africa. They came out to one of my talks. Afterwards, they said, "You know, it was really fascinating. America is really far behind on race relations. When we first got here, we didn't realize we were black." I was like, "What are you guys talking about? I got to understand this. What do you mean you didn't realize you were black?" He said, "Well, of course we realize we're black. But in Cameroon, we're Cameroonian. That's who we are. In the United States, it's different. You're black American, white American. We're treated differently in the United States, even by other black people." He says, "Now we know we're black."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wow. I took a minute to wrap my mind around that one. It makes sense. They think of themselves as Cameroonian. As they should.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, as they should. That's what's crazy when you experience racism from other black people. You're like, "Whoa."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, now hold on. Or discrimination.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Well, when you experience it from anybody. But understand something. We have a unique thing here called slavery. Jewish people have a unique thing called the Holocaust. If a white guy is walking down the sidewalk and another white guy is coming up the sidewalk, they're going to pass and not say a thing. If two black guys are passing, they're going to go, "Yo man, what up?" They're going to acknowledge one another because they have a shared experience. They both are descendants of slaves. They both have experienced racism at some point in their life. If two Jews pass who don't know each other, they're going to go "Shalom" because of that commonality, that experience. Unless you've had that experience, you don't react to it.
--:-- When I lived in Africa on the continent for 10 years—I lived in Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, and Senegal, and visited many other countries—I can tell you, all black people don't look alike. All black people don't know each other.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a funny thing to say, too.
--:-- Daryl Davis: But a lot of white people think that.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yeah, especially older ones.
--:-- Daryl Davis: At one time, in a city, all black people probably did know each other because they had to go to the same school. There was only one black school in the town. They couldn't go to different white schools. They could only shop in a certain store. They couldn't shop in every store or restaurant. So they would run into each other more often. But today, no. The stigma is still there, the sentiment, especially with older people.
--:-- So anyway, if I'm walking down the street—and this has happened—and some black guy from Africa is coming up the street, I go, "Hey man, what's up?" I don't know the guy. He looks at me kind of strange like, "I don't know you, why are you talking to me?" Because he doesn't have that experience. We're not monolithic.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is the only way these movements like the neo-Nazis work—if you don't know a lot of people from all over the world and realize we're all just people. It is very fear-based. Think about it. You're clinging to the lowest common denominator. You all have a certain amount of melanin in your skin and you're all from a certain part of the world. That's it. It's really not a very good commonality.
--:-- Daryl Davis: It's terrible.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's terrible, yeah. Especially when you think about the differences in personalities and tastes and how people behave. It's not a good indicator at all. It's the dumbest thing. It has no bearing on your character, no bearing on your intellect, no bearing on any of the things that we find fascinating and attractive about people. It's just the color of your skin, which is the dumbest thing on earth.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Absolutely. And we all may engage in it somewhat. For example, if I like Chinese food and I go to a Chinese restaurant, I don't want to see a bunch of white college kids or black college kids in the kitchen cooking it for me. I want the authentic real deal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's not prejudice. You want to experience the culture. If I go to an Italian restaurant, I'm assuming there's going to be a bunch of old school Italian people back there cooking. I want heavy accents. I want the smell of garlic in the air. Do you know where Italians came from originally?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I'm assuming Italy?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's where they live. I mean, what are you trying to say?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I'm going to tell you. Italians came from Africa. They came from the Moors.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, yes. Sicily in particular. That's actually where my family's from.
--:-- Daryl Davis: There you go. They're darker in Sicily than in Rome and Venice. The further you move from the equator, the darker the skin.
--:-- Daryl Davis: The Moors came into there. We all evolved from Africa at some point in time, way back when. A lot of people don't realize that. They need to check their DNA and check their history rather than just take it from where they started, where they were born.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's why I think it's so important to not ban books and rewrite history.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Of course.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There is some indication that human beings might have come out of Asia as well. One of the oldest known human skeletons they found predates Lucy. Lucy wasn't a Homo sapien. They found something that is a Homo sapien that's 500,000 years older than when they thought Homo sapiens existed. This is very recent. It was likely that this was taking place in multiple areas of the world, just like there are different animals in multiple places of the world, different primates. There are a bunch of different kinds of human beings. There are Denisovans, which were just recently discovered. Then there was the Hobbit people on the island of Flores. When it comes to the evolutionary history of human beings, it's very, very odd.
--:-- But when you talk about the cultural history of human beings, that's when things get really crazy. A lot of people traveling all over the place and settling into the climate. The reason why white people are white is just because there is no sun. It's that simple. They had to develop essentially like a giant solar panel to suck up vitamin D because they weren't getting any from the sun. It's really that simple. That's when it gets real weird. Which has nothing to do with their intelligence or lack thereof.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Zero. It's all environmental. Over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, people changed their appearance. When you tell people that, they're like, "Wait, what? We all came from the same source?" It destroys it. That's why we can all have babies. Other animals that are very different—certain fish can have babies with other fish, but those fish become infertile. Donkeys and horses can have a mule, but a mule can't have babies. A liger can't have babies. People can have babies with people, obviously, because we're the same thing. Any culture of people can have babies with other cultures of people because we all come from the same source. Kind of wipes out the whole racism argument, doesn't it? It's the stupidest thing ever because it's adaptive to environment. Your DNA, my DNA, his DNA are 99.9% the same. That should be taught in elementary school. Don't wait to teach it in college when people's minds are already solidified.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yes, yes, yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think that exposure you had to that Nazi coming to visit you, even though it's negative exposure, it's probably good to see. When I was a kid, I was 14. Barney Frank—I remember him. He wasn't openly gay then, but he was one of the first openly gay members of Congress. He lived near me. I lived in Massachusetts at the time. He was debating a member of what was then the Moral Majority. It was this really goofy guy who came out with an American flag on his lapel. He was very anti-gay marriage, very anti a lot of things. He was clumsy, not very eloquent, not a very compelling speaker. Then Barney Frank went up. He was so much smoother, so much more articulate. For all the kids I was in school with, we left thinking, "That guy made more sense." It's good to see someone with a very narrow-minded, bigoted perspective and then someone who is more intelligent, has a much better vocabulary, smoother in their ability to disseminate information and dissect the bad arguments of the other person. We all walked out of there like, "That guy's a moron."
--:-- But nowadays, instead of that, you would only get the one person talking. The one person talking without the other person talking is not as good. This idea of protecting kids from bad ideas because you don't want them to be indoctrinated—it doesn't work with human beings. The way to get rid of bad ideas is to confront them with better ideas. The fear of having these kinds of debates in schools is really dangerous. It's dangerous for discourse. It's dangerous for the development of the ability to have arguments and ideas and to be able to debate. You have to see it done. You have to see bad thinking and good thinking. If you don't allow people to make those distinctions on their own, if you just baby them and treat them like they can't be exposed to these negative ideas, you miss out on the possibility of accepting nuance and an understanding of how a less sophisticated, less educated person can fall into these traps of these stupid ideologies.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: You just nailed it right on the head. Allowing them to see the difference.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Yes. How did you change those people, Daryl? No, I didn't change them. They changed themselves. One's perception is one's reality. Whatever somebody perceives becomes their reality. Even if it's not real, it's their reality. You cannot change their reality. If you try, you're going to get resistance. They only know what they know. If you keep trying, it's going to escalate. You're going to get loud, and it's going to explode. All fights start with yelling and screaming. Rather than try to attack somebody's reality and set it straight, don't do that. You'll fail. What you do is offer them a better perception or perceptions. If they resonate with one of your perceptions—like showing them, "This guy speaks very eloquently, that guy speaks like a moron"—just let them see it. That perception then resonates with them and they change their own reality. Don't focus on how you're going to change somebody's reality. Focus on what kind of perceptions you can offer that person that might resonate.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. By example, by who you are. When people see someone speak and it resonates with them, and see someone speak and you can sense how they think of things, you can see the thought process. You go, "Who do I admire more? This guy is thinking like an enlightened person. This is a person who's thinking in a way that I want to be able to think." Especially as a young kid, you don't want to be a moron. When you see someone you think is a moron, you're like, "Okay, I'm glad I saw that guy because that guy looks like an idiot. Now this guy makes more sense."
--:-- Daryl Davis: When Jeff and I were in that Christmas grill, and he felt he was getting along too well with the enemy—me—he started beating his fists on the table. That's shown in the documentary. He was trying to get a rise out of me because I wasn't behaving the way he was expecting me to behave. When he went into Nazi mode, I remained the same way. That freaked him out.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh, yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did it feel like to you?
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Normally when you escalate—and we call this relational dialogue, we do talks about this as well—normally 99.9% of the time when you escalate, the other person escalates. Daryl didn't escalate. I'm doing that, and he just goes, "Hmm," and then continues the conversation like I never even raised my voice. I'm like—if you start yelling at somebody, they start yelling back. I'm blown away by this. I'm like, "Why is this guy not reacting? What's going on here?" Now I'm really dialed in because I'm trying to figure him out. That's when it was soon after that you explained the story about how the Cub Scouts and how racism affected him growing up. All of a sudden I'm thinking about what if somebody would have done that to one of my kids? I saw Daryl's humanity in that moment. That's how he cracked that window open.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Jeff just made a very good point. When things escalate, you come in to meet your adversary. You know this person has a different viewpoint than you do. You're not going to let them try to change your viewpoint. You're going to be steeled into what you believe. Your ears are going to be blocking out anything that does not agree with your philosophy. If you start escalating, that blockout becomes even greater. You want that person's wall to come down. By not reacting, that person becomes curious. He's like, "Where's this guy coming from? What's up with him? He's not reacting the way most black people would react when I say whatever." As the wall comes down, the curiosity on his end rises. Now his ears are unblocked and he's ready to hear what I have to say. But if I was escalating and telling him my story about getting thrown rocks while I'm escalating, he would probably say, "Well, it wasn't me that did it. So what's the deal?"
--:-- Joe Rogan: Almost all conversations you have with people when you disagree—if you elevate your language and start yelling and they start yelling, nobody figures out anything. Nobody's ever won an argument that way. It's just a lot of "fuck you." You don't get taught that in school, and that's unfortunate. You don't get taught how to control your emotions. Too many people, when someone says, "Hey, shut the fuck up," you think that person's going to listen? Most of the time, no. If you're arguing about something and you do that, it's almost always a bad idea. It becomes a thing where someone says "fuck you" and the other person goes "fuck you" back. Nothing gets done. Especially with something so heavily charged like a racial discussion, it's so important to think of how the other person is viewing your words. What are they accepting? What do they see in you? If you turn yourself into an enemy and turn them into an enemy, nothing gets done.
--:-- Daryl Davis: The cliché, misery loves company. Negativity promotes negativity. Positivity promotes positivity. Quick example: You're driving down the highway, speed limit's 55, you're doing 75. You're getting ready to go over this hill. Oncoming traffic, some guy comes over the hill before you crest it, and he's flashing his lights. You don't know who's in that car, but they're flashing the lights. That means there's a cop on the other side working radar, or construction, or an accident. You need to slow down. You hit your brakes before you go over the hill. As soon as you crest the hill, there's a cop with a radar gun. You would have had a $150 ticket. That stranger—you don't know what color he was, what religion he is, who he voted for, who his daddy was—that person saved you from getting that ticket. As you slowly cruise by the cop, he doesn't pull you over. You're going to start flashing your lights at the oncoming traffic to save them.
--:-- But let's say you're coming up the hill and people are coming over the hill and nobody's flashing lights. You go over that hill. There he is. Pulls you over. License and registration. Comes back, gives you that $150 ticket, tells you to have a nice day. You're ruined. You lost $150. Your insurance goes up. Your day is ruined. Now, as you continue down the street, you don't flash your lights either. "That's their problem." Misery loves company. Negativity promotes negativity. A random act of kindness from a stranger. The guy could have been having a bad day, and you flashed your lights and saved him $150. Now he's having a better day. He's going to flash his lights.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a good analogy.
--:-- Daryl Davis: More humans need to not worry about somebody's skin color or who's in the car or who they voted for. Just do acts of kindness. Stop dehumanizing people. The guy in the car is just as human as you are. You don't even know who he voted for, but he flashes lights at you and saved you some money.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Are you hopeful with all the work that you've done and all the people that you've removed from the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan, seeing how your message resonates with people? I know every time I have you on, I get all these messages from people going, "Wow, that guy is amazing. What an incredible journey." I know it resonates with a lot of people, but there's still so much hatred in the world. Do you feel hopeful? Do you think things are moving in a generally good direction?
--:-- Daryl Davis: I do, Joe. I do. I think right now we are in the best time. It may seem like things are very divisive right now, and they are. Politically, racially, whatever else. A lot of wars going on, religious wars and racism, anti-Semitism—a rise in that and all kinds of stuff. But we are in the best time right now because people don't want to be in this time. "I don't know if I can have kids and raise them in this environment," that kind of thing. Listen, we are in the best time because people of the mindset, "Well, racism is over. We had a black president. There is no more racism." No, there's still plenty of racism. Before, you could turn a blind eye to it. If I don't see it, I don't hear it, then it doesn't exist. But now, every time you turn your head, it's there, it's there, it's there. You can't escape it. Now is the best time to address it, when it's in your face.
--:-- You go on vacation. You're going to drive your car to three states away. You get 10 miles down the road and your car is making some weird noise. You don't want to get out of state and have your car break down. You turn around and go back to your mechanic. "Hey man, hop in, ride around the block with me, figure out this noise." He gets in and rides around with you. The noise stopped. He tells you, "Well, I don't hear it. I can't fix what I don't hear." But if he hears it, "Oh yeah, that's one of your spark plugs loose or something." Today, we cannot turn a blind eye. It's everywhere. Now is the best time to fix it, address it. Especially because of social media.
--:-- I tell people, people say, "Well, Jeff or Daryl, you guys are on the front line. I want to help, but I don't know that I could sit down and talk to somebody who hates me. I'd probably go off on them or I'd be afraid." They don't want to be on the front line. That's fine. Don't be on the front line. You can be on the back line. You can be on the side line. You can be on line. Pick a line that you feel comfortable on and get on it. No one line is any more important than any other line.
--:-- You can probably tell me your favorite movie. You can tell me how many Oscars it won. You can tell me who the lead actress and lead actor were. Those are the people on the front line. You know who they are. But do you know who was operating the camera? Probably not. You don't know their names, even though they're listed at the end of the movie because the credits run on for 10 minutes. Those are the people working on the back line. The person hanging the lights? You know his name? No. The makeup artist? No. The person who got the wardrobe together? Those are people working on the sideline. Who put the trailer on the TV or the Internet to promote the movie? Those are people working online. Every one of those lines was important to that movie getting that many Oscars and becoming your favorite movie. No one line is any more important than any other line. I tell people, look, you don't have to be on the front line. Pick where you feel comfortable and let's all work together for the common goal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: If someone's listening to this and saying, "Okay, what Daryl's saying really resonates with me, how do I get started? How do I contribute?" What would you suggest?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Email Jeff Schoep at Beyond Barriers. Email Daryl Davis at DarylDavis.com. I co-founded an organization called the Pro-Human Foundation. You mentioned anti-racist. People talk about always anti this, anti that. I hear so much of that. I say, you know what? People keep talking about what they're against. Why don't we talk about what we're for? That's more positive. I am not anti—now what does that mean? If you use it in terms of a noun, the racist being a noun, I'm not anti-the person. I'm anti-the person's ideology. I'm not anti-racist. I'm anti-racism. I'm anti-the-ism. I am pro-human. That's what I am. I want to talk about what I'm for.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Oh yeah, that makes sense.
--:-- Daryl Davis: So contact the ProHumanFoundation.org. Contact Beyond Barriers and Parents for Peace, which I'm a part of as well. We'll talk about how you can get involved in being pro. Don't be against the person, be against the message if you want to disagree with something.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think that's a beautiful way to end this. Thank you.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Thank you, Joe. Thank you for everything you do. You're a really extraordinary person. The line you're on is the online. So thank you, my friend.
--:-- Joe Rogan: My pleasure. And Jeff, thank you for spreading this message and having the courage to accept these bad decisions that you've made and how you got trapped. Just letting people know how a person like yourself, who does seem like such a nice and intelligent guy, could get sucked into such an awful ideology. I think that's going to help a lot of people. I really do.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Thanks so much for having us. It's been an incredible honor to be here.
--:-- Joe Rogan: My pleasure. So your book, *American Nazis*, available now. And Daryl, your book, *Klan Whisperer*, also available. I used one of your quotes there.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Thank you very much. I sure did.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, beautiful. Did you do the audio for this? Did you do an audio version of it?
--:-- Daryl Davis: Like Jeff, it's a work in progress.
--:-- Joe Rogan: All right. Thank you, gentlemen.
--:-- Daryl Davis: Thank you very much.
--:-- Jeff Schoep: Thank you. Appreciate it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Bye, everybody.
