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Daryl Davis & Jeff Schoep (2025) - Deradicalizing Neo-Nazis · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're digging into
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  something really pretty extraordinary.
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  JRE tatch 2399. Yeah, this one had Darrell
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  Davis, the musician. You know the D radicalization.
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  Expert sitting down with Jeff Shoop.
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  Who was the head of the National Socialist Movement for, what, 25
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  years? No, a really intense pairing.
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  And our mission here really is to unpack how Davis does what he
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  does. How?
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  That dialogue actually works because it's not just talk, is
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  it? No, not at all.
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  I mean the results are kind of staggering.
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  Davis has gotten over 200 people to leave.
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  Groups like the KKK, neo Nazi factions, high level members.
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  200 that number is just, it's hard to wrap your head around.
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  And it all kicked off with that one story, right?
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  Daryl, a black man, meets a Klansman.
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  And the guy is just floored by how nice Davis is.
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  How respectful. And he quits, hands over his
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  robe and hood. That was the moment, the proof
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  of concept. But there's a real strategy
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  behind it. What was Davis actually trying
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  to achieve in these conversations?
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  Well, he makes it clear it wasn't about, like, arguing them
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  out of it or converting them on the spot.
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  Right. It wasn't about winning a
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  debate, no. His goal was simpler, maybe more
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  profound, just to give them perspectives they literally
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  couldn't get inside their bubble.
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  New information, new ways of seeing things.
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  And he operates on this interesting idea that hate.
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  It's just exhausting. It's.
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  Counterintuitive, isn't it? We think of hate as this
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  powerful driving force. We do.
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  But Davis sees the flip side. Think about the energy it takes,
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  the constant vigilance, maintaining the anger, the
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  suspicion, policing your own thoughts, dehumanizing people
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  day in, day out. It wears you down.
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  South, introducing just basic human connection becomes like a
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  crack in that exhausting facade. Exactly.
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  It creates this friction, this dissonance that the person
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  eventually just wants to resolve because it's tiring.
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  Which it kind of leads into this buddy effect he talked about.
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  Yeah. How does that work?
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  Because that seems really clever.
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  It is So say 1 extremist refuses to talk to Davis.
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  Fine, Yeah, that maybe their friend, someone they trust from
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  the group, does talk to him. OK, then that friend leaves the
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  movement and crucially, the first guy sees his friend's life
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  improve. Ah.
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  So it's not just leaving, it's seeing the positive outcome
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  afterwards. Right.
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  They get better jobs, Their family life gets better, less
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  stress. The skeptical buddy sees
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  tangible proof that leaving isn't failure, it's actually
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  better. That real world evidence must be
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  incredibly powerful, more than any argument Davis could make.
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  Way more powerful at plants, that seed of doubt.
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  Maybe this isn't the only way. Maybe life outside is OK.
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  And underpinning all of this, he has these 5 core human values.
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  He figured these out after traveling everywhere basically.
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  Yeah, 64 countries. He boiled it down to these five
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  things he says everyone wants. Doesn't matter who you are or
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  where you're from, OK? What are they?
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  To be loved, to be respected, to be heard, to be treated
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  apparently and truthfully, and #5 to want those same things for
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  your family. Love, respect, being heard,
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  fairness, family. Pretty fundamental.
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  Super fundamental and he says if you approach any conflict even
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  with someone who professes to hate you, with those values in
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  mind. It changes the dynamic, smooths
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  things over. Instantly makes it less hostile,
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  more possible to connect. OK, let's get into the actual
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  technique, the relational dialogue strategy.
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  He talked about staying calm when the other person escalates,
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  like when Shu pounded the table. Yeah, how does he do?
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  That, well, it's not just about willpower, it's a deliberate
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  tactic, right? He knows if they escalate
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  yelling, slurs, fists and he gives no reaction, he's
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  perfectly calm physically, emotionally it.
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  Messes with their expectations. Totally.
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  They're geared up for a fight, for confirmation that he's the
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  enemy they believe him to be when they don't get that fight.
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  They get frustrated, confused. Exactly.
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  That frustration weirdly makes their defenses drop.
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  Their wall comes down, as Davis puts it.
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  And in that moment of confusion, curiosity creeps in.
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  Because he's respecting their right to speak, even if he hates
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  the words. That's the key distinction,
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  respecting the right to speak, not the content.
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  It disarms them. It makes them actually start to
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  listen to his perspective, maybe for the first time.
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  It's. Like emotional judo, using their
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  energy against them. Yeah, that's a good way to put
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  it. OK, so to really grasp why this
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  works, we need to understand the other side, Jeff Shope's side,
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  how deep this stuff runs. Commander for 25 years.
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  How does someone even get started down that path?
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  Yeah, his story is interesting because it wasn't like family
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  tradition exactly. He wasn't raised to hate.
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  No, no, He said it started really young, like 4th grade.
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  He looked up to his grandfather, his great uncles who had fought
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  in Hitler's army. So there was a sort of
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  fascination, maybe an admiration, but he sought out
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  the movement himself as a teenager.
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  And how he found them is just old school pre Internet.
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  Right, He found a sociology book in the library.
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  In the back, there were addresses for Nazi
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  organizations. Seriously.
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  Addresses. Yep, and he wrote physical
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  letters eventually connected with the group that became the
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  NSM. Wow.
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  Yeah, that takes a certain kind of determination.
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  It does, and there's this contradiction too.
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  He described himself back then as a long haired rock'n'roll
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  singer. A rock singer?
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  Neo Nazi? Yeah.
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  It feels like Yeah. Jumbo shrimp, like they said.
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  Yeah. More intuitive.
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  It shows that these movements aren't always monolithic, right?
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  They attract people looking for something, identity, belonging,
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  even if they don't fit the stereotype initially.
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  So he finds this group, gets involved, yeah.
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  And then it becomes everything. Total immersion.
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  The echo chamber effect. His entire world revolves around
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  the ideology. And then comes that doxing
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  incident. He was only 19.
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  Yeah, 19 on a radio show they revealed his real name, his
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  parents info. And his mother was running for
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  judge. An attorney running for judge in
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  Minnesota, The governor denied her the position specifically
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  because of Jeff's leadership in the NSM.
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  OK, you'd think that would be the wake up call, seeing the
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  direct devastating impact on his own family.
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  Logically, yes, but what did he do?
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  He doubled down. Completely shaved his head, quit
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  the band, went all in. Why?
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  How does that happen psychologically?
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  It's a defense mechanism, right? Instead of internalizing it as
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  my actions hurt my mom, he flipped it.
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  He saw it as proof the system was out to get them.
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  Exactly, the system is persecuting my family because of
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  my beliefs. It validated the whole narrative
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  the NSM was pushing, made him dig in even deeper, confirmed
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  his worldview. So OK, 27 years total in the
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  movement, 25 as leader, deeply entrenched.
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  How does someone like that even begin to get out?
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  Well, he said his process was kind of backwards.
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  He started de radicalizing while he was still, you know,
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  technically involved. While still the leader.
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  Yeah, bits and pieces starting to unravel internally.
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  The first really big moment was meeting Darrell Davis.
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  For that documentary, Accidental Courtesy in 2016.
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  Right. And Shoop just found himself
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  getting along with Davis too well.
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  Getting along too well with the enemy, that creates a problem
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  for the ideology. A huge cognitive dissonance
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  problem. But the real shift, the sort of
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  emotional turning point, came from someone else.
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  Dia Khan, the filmmaker. She's Muslim.
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  Yes, and she didn't debate him on politics or history.
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  She told him how his ideology, his group's rhetoric, made her
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  feel as a child. How did she?
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  Put it. Less than ugly.
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  And that hit him hard, he said. That's when he realized when you
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  dehumanize someone else, you lose your own humanity in the
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  process. Seeing the real human cost.
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  Not abstract enemies, but a person's childhood pain.
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  That's often what does it the emotional impact, not just
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  intellectual arguments. So after that he tried to reform
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  the NSM, change the symbols that kind of.
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  Thing. Yeah, he called it.
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  Putting lipstick on a pig. Tried swapping the swastika for
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  an older rune, trying to make it seem less overtly Nazi.
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  But realized it was pointless. Pretty much.
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  He finally officially left in March 2019.
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  OK, so he's out, but leaving. That's not the end of the story,
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  is it? It sounds incredibly difficult.
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  Oh, it's immensely challenging. And this is where a lot of
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  people falter or even relapse. Think about it.
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  What are the biggest hurdles? First, the public admission.
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  He had to basically say I was wrong to thousands of people he
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  personally recruited. That takes a lot.
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  Huge amount of humility and probably facing incredible
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  backlash from the movement. Absolutely 22nd, the practical
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  stuff. His entire income came from the
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  movement A record label merchandise.
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  So he left with nothing. Financially wiped out and then
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  third. Imagine writing a resume.
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  Previous experience Neo Nazi commander 25 years.
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  Yeah, how do you ever get a job? The stigma is enormous.
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  Permanent. Almost.
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  Exactly. And this is where Darrell
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  Davis's point about support becomes so vital for society,
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  not just for the individual. You can't just expect people to
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  walk away from their entire life structure, social, financial,
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  ideological with no safety net. No, they need help finding those
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  5 core things again. A new community you know, for
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  love and respect. Therapy maybe, to be heard.
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  Practical help too, right? Job connections, maybe financial
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  advice, housing, all of it. Fair treatment, help providing
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  for their family. Without that support structure,
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  the pole to go back to the only group that might still accept
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  them. Well, it's strong.
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  It's easy to see how relapse could happen.
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  Very easy. But Shoop, he seems to have made
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  a truly remarkable turn from raging anti semite.
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  Who'd had zero contact with Jewish people before?
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  Now working with the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
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  A leading Jewish human rights organization.
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  It's a complete 180. And he mentioned something
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  really poignant about that. Yeah, he said the Jewish
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  community, the very people he spent decades demonizing, have
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  actually been the most welcoming to him since he left.
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  That says a lot about them, and maybe about the potential for
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  change. It really does.
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  It points towards something like restorative justice, maybe the
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  capacity for forgiveness even from victims.
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  Before we wrap this up, there was one more piece Davis brought
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  up kind of chilling. Look at what's fueling extremism
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  now, this fear about the year 2042.
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  Right, 2042 or maybe closer to 20452050 that window.
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  That's when the US Census predicts.
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  Predicts that the white population will become a
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  statistical minority in the US, the so-called Browning of
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  America. And that fear is being
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  weaponized. Massively.
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  It's a huge recruitment tool for white supremacist groups.
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  It directly feeds the white replacement theory.
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  They will not replace us. Chance we saw exactly.
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  That comes directly from this demographic anxiety.
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  And it's not just about recruitment, is it?
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  This fear motivates violence. Definitely.
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  It leads to people stockpiling weapons, preparing for what they
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  call Rehoa racial holy war. Or the boogaloo?
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  Is that the current term? Yeah, that's the slang for the
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  civil conflict or societal collapse they anticipate or even
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  hope for. The narrative becomes If
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  demographic change happens, violence is the only answer.
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  Which connects directly to these lone wolf attacks acts,
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  individuals acting on that belief.
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  Precisely, they see themselves as soldiers in that war,
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  fighting for survival against this perceived replacement.
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  So pulling all this together, it's heavy stuff, but what's the
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  main take away? Is there hope in this?
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  I think there is. The biggest thing is what's
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  learned can be unlearned. Hate isn't like in.
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  It's not like a leopard spots. It's acquired.
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  Ann Davis's work, Shoop's transformation.
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  They prove it's possible to change even from the absolute
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  extremes. Yeah, even high profile leaders
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  can fundamentally shift, which tells us something important
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  about how to deal with these ideas, which is confrontation,
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  not suppression. Trying to silence bad ideas
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  often just backfires. Makes them seem forbidden.
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  Validates the persecution complex.
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  So, better ideas, better arguments.
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  Better, smarter, more articulate ideas, but delivered through
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  that respectful relational dialogue.
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  Davis Models meeting hate with humanity, basically.
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  And Davis had that great point. Not everyone has to do what he
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  does. Not everyone needs to be face to
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  face with a Klansman. Right.
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  He talks about different lines of effort.
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  You can be on the frontline like him or the backline doing
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  research, providing intelligence.
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  The sideline offering support, mentoring those who leave or
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  online countering the hate messages, promoting positive
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  stuff. All equally important, he says.
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  All part of the same goal. Which?
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  He calls just being pro human. Simple as that.
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  Pro human, it gives everyone a role to play.
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  That idea being pro human, it leaves us with a final pretty
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  challenging thought, doesn't it? Thinking about Shoop again, the
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  guilt he carries, the impact on his mother.
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  Yeah, the. Consequences are real and
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  lasting. So if we as a society genuinely
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  want people to leave extremism behind, to reintegrate safely,
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  and if even their former targets, like the Jewish
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  community in Shoop's case, can show acceptance, what does that
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  demand from the rest of us? It really forces you to ask, how
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  do we handle forgiveness? How do we deal with that
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  permanent stigma, the very real damage someone caused, while
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  still allowing for the possibility of change and
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  reintegration? A.
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  Tough question. Definitely something to think
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  about long after this deep dive ends.