Steven Stroud is sitting across from me, opening a bag of Reese’s Pieces, in the visiting room of a prison in Oregon that has been his home for the past 12 years. He’s agreed to an interview but asks that the institution not be named.

In a past life, Stroud was a Nazi skinhead, making it his business to create a white homeland in the Pacific Northwest. Now he’s extending his hand to offer me, someone who would have been excluded from his white homeland, some candy.

Years ago, he renounced racism, he said, and has dedicated himself to working against hate. I’ve come to visit him to ask about Patriot Prayer, and how the movement led by Joey Gibson is seen through the eyes of a former Nazi.

“They’re nativist bigots,” he says. “But because they’re multiracial, they’re more popular than we ever were.”

Indeed, Gibson, who grew up in Camas, often notes that he’s part Japanese. And, one of the most prominent Patriot Prayer brawlers, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, is from American Samoa.