Life After Hate
On Wednesday night, a thousand people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the University of Virginia campus to call for peace, later marching on the same route used by neo-Nazis and white nationalists in their torchlight march last Friday. Earlier in the day, a memorial service was held in Charlottesville to remember Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who died on Saturday after she was run down by a neo-Nazi named James Alex Fields. Heyer had repeatedly championed civil rights issues on social media. Her Facebook cover read, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Her favorite color, purple, which so many people wore at the memorial service yesterday.
Heather Heyer is the latest casualty in a number of deaths at the hands of white nationalists. Foreign Policy has revealed the existence of a recent FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin that concluded white supremacist groups were, “responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016…more than any other domestic extremist movement”. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security report went on to state, “Racial minorities have been the primary victims of [white supremacist] violence. The second most common victims were other Caucasians…and other white supremacists perceived as disloyal to the white supremacist extremism movement” .
Despite the FBI and DHS findings, the Trump administration recently cut funds to groups dedicated to fighting right-wing violence. One of those groups, Life After Hate, which works to help white nationalists and neo-Nazis disengage from hate and violent extremism, was set to receive a grant under the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism program, approved by the Obama administration. When Trump DHS policy adviser Katharine Gorka released the final list of grantees in June, Life After Hate had been eliminated. Gorka is the wife of Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, who has been linked to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group.
Christian Picciolini talking:
I think I went to bed, on Sunday with a sick feeling in my stomach, like most Americans did. But I have to tell you, what I saw last night, with the community gathering together, was what America means to me. I saw people of all different races, all different colors, creeds, religions, gathered together to pay homage to a woman who essentially gave her life to fight something that is very un-American. And that gives me hope. That gives me hope for America, because I know that we want to be able to live in a country where we can get along, where we have equal justice, where the systems of racism and the institutions are rebooted so that they’re fair for everybody. And I think that this is a turning point for America, because I think we can stop sweeping it under the rug and thinking that we don’t have a problem here. It’s time to face it head on and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
I was recruited at 14 years old in 1987. I was in Chicago, and that was the home and the birthplace of the American neo-Nazi skinhead movement. In fact, I was standing in an alley at 14 years old, and a man pulled his car up as I was smoking a joint, and he came over to me, and he said, “Don’t you know that that’s what the communists and Jews want you to do, to keep you docile?” At 14, I was a marginalized kid. I had been bullied. I didn’t know what a communist or a Jew or even what the word “docile” meant. But this man brought me into a family. He gave me an identity, and he fed my sense of purpose. While it was all misdirected, being marginalized and disaffected and feeling abandoned, I was willing to trade in the feeling of power, when I felt the most powerless, for something that was evil and eventually swallowed whole.
I was a member of the Chicago Area Skinheads, which was America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead group. Eventually I became the leader of that group, when the man who recruited me, who was America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead, went to prison. I became the leader of this very infamous group, and we were involved in acts of violence. Our primary goal was marketing and recruitment. I started a band, which was a white power band, that had violent lyrics that incited people to go out and commit hate crimes. And that was a recruiting tool. It was a social movement to get people together, young, angsty teenagers who were angry at the world, who felt like they had been pushed aside and now were given somebody to blame for that.
for the eight years that I was involved, Amy, I had doubts the whole time. I came from an Italian immigrant family who came to the U.S. in the ’60s, who were often the victims of prejudice, so I wasn’t raised with these racist beliefs. It wasn’t part of my family DNA or fabric. And I questioned myself the whole time, but I squashed it because the power and the acceptance were more important to me, and I was scared to lose that.
But, essentially, over those eight years, I started to meet people who I had kept outside of my social circle, who I hated: African Americans and Jews and gay people. But the truth was that I had never had a meaningful interaction with them. But when I started to, I started to receive compassion from the people that I least deserved it from, when I least deserved it. They could have attacked me. They could have threatened me. They could have broken my windows. But they didn’t. And they knew who I was, and they took it upon themselves to show me empathy when I deserved it the least. And that helped me humanize them and dispel all the stereotypes that I had in my head. And suddenly, I couldn’t reconcile my hate anymore.
other white supremacists certainly weren’t pleased. But luckily, I was a pretty selfish leader, and I never really groomed anybody to take over locally, so when I left, the group kind of imploded. However, I was a national and international figure at the time. And there were definitely threats, of calling me a race traitor, you know, insinuations that I had started working with police, which were not true. And I still to this day receive death threats almost on a daily basis.
– white supremacist Christopher Cantwell
This gentleman is an insecure—has no self-confidence and is clearly broken. There is something broken. I’m a firm believer that ideology isn’t what radicalizes people. I think it’s the search for identity, community and a sense of purpose. And if there’s some sort of brokenness, a void underneath that in your life—and it could be trauma or addiction or mental health issues, anything that would hold you back or deviate your path from the intended one that you were on—you tend to look for acceptance in negative pathways.
And it’s interesting that we brought up this clip, because I’ve actually reached out to this man, after I saw the videos, because he clearly needs help. And I want to offer him a compassionate ear to listen to what it is that is broken about him, because what we do at Life After Hate is, rather than argue ideologically with people, because we know that that just polarizes us further, we try to make the person more resilient, more competitive, more self-confident. And we do that by applying services, like mental health therapy or job training or life coaching or even tattoo removal. And when that person feels more confident, they tend to blame the other less. But I would follow that up with challenging their doctrine, not by telling them they’re wrong, but by introducing them to the people that they think that they hate. I may introduce a Holocaust denier to a Holocaust survivor, or an Islamophobe to spend the day with a Muslim family and have dinner. And it’s those connections, those moments, because most people have never met the people that they hate, that helps them humanize these people and dispel the ideas of them being a monster or a parasite. And that has been the most effective tactic that we’ve used.
– President Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser, Sebastian Gorka, has faced increasing calls to resign, after the Jewish American newspaper The Forward reported Gorka is a sworn member of a Hungarian far-right Nazi-allied group. The Forward reported members of the Vitézi Rend have confirmed that Gorka took a life-long oath of loyalty to their group, which the U.S. State Department says was under the direction of the Nazi government of Germany during World War II. If the report’s true, it means Gorka may have lied on his U.S. immigration application, which requires people to disclose ties to such organizations. Gorka has denied reports of his involvement with the Nazi-allied group, telling Tablet magazine, “I have never been a member of the Vitez Rend.” And I wanted to ask you about the connection of Gorka to your loss of funding. Well, there’s Sebastian Gorka in the White House, the counterterrorism adviser, top adviser to Donald Trump, but then there’s also Gorka’s wife at the Department of Homeland Security.
I think that there are a lot of connections to white supremacists, what nationalists and the alt-right in the White House at the moment. You know, aside from Gorka, we have Steve Bannon, who is clearly a manipulative propagandist. We have Stephen Miller, who has a long-standing history of being a racist. And we have Sebastian Gorka and his wife Katharine, who are very much anti-Islam—not anti-ISIS, but anti-Islam, in general. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that we were the only organization that was focused on countering far-right extremism that was cut from the program. In fact, we’re the only organization in the Western Hemisphere that focuses on disengaging far-right extremists. So, you know, with views held like the Gorkas have, it does not surprise me at all. It’s disheartening, because I really think that it’s going to hurt our ability to be able to tackle probably the biggest problem we’re facing right now in America, which is white domestic terrorism.
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I agree with Jacob that we have to hold people accountable for what they say and what they do. However, I don’t agree with the tactic of public shaming or calling somebody out with the intention of pushing them further away. And I know that wasn’t the intention. The intention was to try and make a statement so that Peter knew that his family cared about him and would welcome him back if he renounced his views. But what happens and why people join these types of movements is because they already feel ostracized, because they already feel marginalized and disenfranchised. And pushing him farther away and not giving him the support of a family structure, I fear, will actually push him further into this movement, because he went searching for something. He went searching for a community or a family and an identity. And if the family, the real family he has, is pushing that away even further, the chances of him coming back because he feels remorse about what his family said are slim to none, in my opinion.
our approach is to work with people in a compassionate and empathetic way and to listen to what they have to say, instead of arguing with them ideologically or pushing them further away. And what I listen for are these things that I call potholes—what existed in their path that deviated it. And then, my job becomes to fill those potholes, whether it’s job training or life coaching or tattoo removal or mental health therapy. And what happens inevitably is, when people are more equipped, understand what they’re dealing with internally, they don’t necessarily need to blame somebody else for what they feel is being taken away from them, because now they’re more resilient and they’re more able to compete and they’re more self-confident. However, I do challenge their ideology, as well, but not by debating. What I do is I introduce them to people that they think that they hate. And I’ve introduced Holocaust deniers to Holocaust survivors, Islamophobes to imams and Muslim families to have family dinner. And it’s those types of connections, those opportunities to humanize, that really bring people back, because people join these groups because they’re out searching for something that they’re not getting in their real life.
But oftentimes—and I suspect this might be the case, just from what I’m hearing, and I’m not a psychologist, but because I see so many of these cases—almost eight out of 10 cases that I receive, from family members or from people asking for help, is that there’s some form of undiagnosed mental illness. And the trend that I’m seeing, actually, lately, is for so many of these young white nationalists, who live online, have undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder or Asperger’s. And I would like to ask Jacob, if he would feel comfortable sharing, if there’s any of that history with Peter, because that might explain something that, until that is treated, there’s really no way to change his mind, because he’s on a very singular focus that makes him feel very comfortable.
from what I heard from the clip from Peter and what I heard from Jacob is that what Peter is saying is straight out of, you know, the manual. He’s repeating all of the things that he’s been taught.
And, you know, I want to just give the viewers a little bit of hope. And when Jacob says, you know, he’s too far gone, I don’t believe that anybody is ever too far gone. I’ve worked with, you know, grand dragons of the KKK who have been in for 40 years and recognize the error of their ways and suddenly now realize, you know, that’s not what they want to do anymore and that they’ve wasted, you know, their lives. You know, I, myself, have a very checkered past. When I was involved in the movement, I was invited to Libya by Muammar Gaddafi to receive money to start a revolution against the Jews. I committed acts of violence that nearly killed many people. I stockpiled weapons to prepare for what I believed was an inevitable race war. So, you know, to that, I would say—and I’ve worked with people in prison who have murdered people of color because of their racism. And while they were in prison, they found a way to disengage from that, which is probably the hardest environment to do that. So, you know, just to give some hope, I’ve worked with some very tough people who, you know, most people would never think would change, and it’s really that compassion that you show them, because that’s what’s been lacking both within themselves and from the people around them as they get frustrated with, you know, their loved ones’ beliefs.
So what I would say to Jacob is, don’t give up. If you care—and it’s apparent that the family cares about Peter; otherwise, they wouldn’t have said the things that they did—but don’t give up. There are things that can be done. We need to understand what the underlying issues are with Peter, address those, and then, through immersion and meeting people that he thinks might be monsters or evil or parasites, we can build that humanity back. We can build that through empathy. So, you know—and I would offer my services to the Tefft family any time. I’m happy to sit and talk to Peter. But mostly I’ll listen, because when I listen, they always give me the clues, without even knowing it, of what is actually happening inside of them. So, we’re happy to help.
So there are websites, like 4chan and Reddit, which are essentially forums where people can post a topic, and then it will list its responses to that for discussion. And, you know, while most of the things on these sites are fairly benign, they’re also rife with misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism. Because most people can post anonymously, they can post the most heinous things that they want without any repercussion. And, you know, it kind of fertilizes itself. As these discussions go on, they get worse and worse and worse. And sometimes it’s for the intention of being as—you know, to give as much shock value as possible. But more times than not, it’s because these people actually believe this.
And aside from those sites, social media, in general, has become a fertile ground for propaganda and extremist recruitment. Because there’s so much information on the internet and because most people live online, it’s hard to distinguish what’s real, what’s fake news, what’s propaganda, what’s misinformation or even parody. And young people, I think, more than ever, in this country are disenfranchised. They’re disenchanted. They feel like there’s no hope, no leadership. They feel like they can’t find a job if they go to college. And if they do go to college, they get saddled with debt. So, they’re really searching for something right now. And without clear leadership, essentially, the internet and these propaganda sites, these conspiracy theory websites, are their moral compass. Because of algorithms online, if you click on a story, inadvertently or on purpose, the internet and social media will continue to feed you those same types of stories, the same way that you go to Amazon and buy a product, and it will recommend something else that you might like. Unfortunately, news on the internet is, in many times, the same way. So you go down a rabbit hole where that becomes your reality. And if that’s the information you’re exposed to on a consistent basis, and it’s the only information you get, it’s easy to understand why both sides can’t agree with each other, because they both think that the other person is in some alternate reality.
So, the internet is a—you know, I believe in the internet. I think it’s an amazing tool that brings us education and connects us and makes us closer than ever. Unfortunately, it’s also a tool that is being used for, you know, not so great purposes, and that’s to recruit the most vulnerable young people. And that’s why I asked Jacob about, you know, any history of mental illness, because it appears to me, because of the trends that I’m seeing, that these recruiters are very savvy and looking for those people because they are the most vulnerable. I believe that they’re being targeted because they’re—you know, in real life, they may not fit in, they may be socially awkward, but online they can create that identity, that community, and find a purpose. And they can role-play. They can—you know, online, they can be whoever they want. And then, this community now, which is a social community as well as a political community, goes out and protests, and they all have these ideas based on the conspiracies that they’ve read. And the idea that violence against the enemy, because they believe the enemy wants to destroy them, which is not true, they are proactive about destroying the enemy.
I believe that Donald Trump is the internet’s biggest troll. I think his account should be shut down, because in the process of his rants and his daily tweets, you know, maligning everybody from disabled people to women to people of color, and supporting organizations like the alt-right and retweeting white nationalists, this is not appropriate action for somebody who holds the largest and most powerful office in the world.
if we can call it a press conference, what I heard was Donald Trump essentially, you know, making excuses for the alt-right and protecting them, by equating the protesters to them and by saying that there were good people on both sides. What I saw at that rally was a group of Nazis, who historically are un-American, anti-American and, you know, something we fought against in World War II at the cost of many American lives, and then I saw a group of very proud American patriots who were not willing to let that happen. Now, of course, there are bad apples everywhere. And certainly, you know, violence doesn’t solve anything. But I think, by and large, the protesters that were there were peaceful and were reacting in self-defense to the attacks, the fear rhetoric, the threatening masses who were saying things like “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” which is essentially a chant for a white homeland. So, you know, if there were 300—and there were, you know, a thousand people there, however many neo-Nazis were there marching, who committed a terrorist attack. They targeted somebody and killed them. And I would ask Donald Trump what his reaction would be if it were 300 ISIS members marching down that street and a bunch of Americans showed up to protest them, if his reaction would be different to that, because, to me, it’s not that different.
– military recruiter, this marine who was identified now, the leader of Vanguard America named Dillon Ulysses Hopper, a Marine Corps recruiter, in Charlottesville this weekend
The FBI published a report recently that showed that there is a massive amount of recruiting happening within the military and within law enforcement. And, in fact, it was a concerted strategy of ours 30 years ago, when I was involved in the movement, when we recognized that the shaved heads and the swastika flags and the Klan hoods were turning away the average American white racist that we could recruit, but they were too afraid to join because, you know, of how edgy we were. So we decided at that point, 30 years ago, that we were not going to shave our heads. We were going to trade in our boots for suits. We were going to go enroll in college and recruit on campuses. We would get jobs in law enforcement, go into the military to get training and to be able to recruit there, and then even run for office. And here we are 30 years later with that dream—or that nightmare—realized. Now, you know, they’re wearing polos and khakis, and they blend in. They look like our doctors, our mechanics, our teachers, our nurses. And it’s hard to distinguish them, aside from the words that they say and the actions that they take, which oftentimes, in public, when they’re alone, they won’t do.
So I think that the movement now is much, much bigger than it is, because it has become normalized. It’s infected the average American, who normally, you know, would only say things like that behind closed doors or to people that they trusted, now feel very emboldened because of the words and the actions and the policies of the president, that they feel they have a commander-in-chief who gets them, who understands their ideology and is willing to stand up for them and fight for them. And at that press conference, in fact, that’s what he did, by equating both sides and saying that there were good people on both sides and, you know, not specifically calling out the alt-right—I should mention this. He denounced the KKK. He denounced neo-Nazis and white nationalists. But what he specifically left out was the alt-right. And then he later went on to defend them, saying, “Well, they had a permit, and the other folks didn’t.” And talked about the “alt-left,” there is no “alt-left.” There are Americans, and then there are Nazis. And let me just say, the people that didn’t have a permit there, the people who were there to counterprotest the Nazis, well, the U.S. Constitution gave them a permit to do what they did, so they didn’t need one. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s one of our most important American values, is the ability to protest what we see as damaging to our core American values, which still, frankly, need a lot of work.
I would rather hear Donald Trump talk about the tragedy of three people dying at a rally because they were there to, you know, either protest the neo-Nazis or to do their job, yet he really didn’t even mention that.
– he has still never commented on or tweeted, since that’s the way he communicates on the bombing of the mosque, the Muslim mosque, in Minneapolis.
anybody who knows or has watched Donald Trump knows that he doesn’t take time to say what’s on his mind. He flies off the cuff. He says things that, you know, most people find appalling. So, for him to say he wanted to do his research about the KKK and David Duke to see if he would disavow them, I don’t know anybody, you know, with any critical thinking skills or logic, that needed to do research on the KKK in order to disavow them. You know, to me, that’s just dodging the question. That’s just trying not to alienate part of your base, that, frankly, did a hell of a job online to get him elected. When I monitor these people who are in these extremist groups, and when I’m doing research on people that I’m working with, I discovered hundreds of thousands of accounts that were being driven by the alt-right and Eastern Europeans and even, in some cases, coming from Russia as these fake accounts that were continually pushing out propaganda that was pro-Trump, anti-Hillary and very national socialist or white nationalist in nature.
You know, for somebody who lives on Twitter to not see that, to retweet things with a hashtag that say “whitegenocide,” to be promoting and putting out conspiracy theories, it’s irresponsible. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of his inability to govern because of his ego. Trump is a Trump supremacist, and the people around him are racists. They’re white supremacists. And it’s damaging for our country, a country that, while we may not have completely fulfilled our American values, because we do have many things that are broken, and our history shows that, you know, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but the idea of America, the idea of the promise of democracy, is being destroyed daily by this man being in office who does not represent the majority of the people. In fact, he represents a very small majority of Americans in the things that he says. And he’s being irresponsible, and, you know, he’s damaging the fabric of our country, something that we’ve worked very hard for and something that people have lost their lives for and have been treated unfairly for, for many, many years
Let’s take the statues down, however we need to take them down. Let’s put them in Confederate cemeteries, so people who do genuinely believe in the heritage, even though I disagree with that, can still pay homage to their idols and to their family members who lost their lives in the Civil War. However, I think we need to replace those statues with civil rights heroes, true Americans, who did give their lives to fight for justice and the American dream. And especially the Robert E. Lee statue that is in Charlottesville, I would propose that a statue goes up in its place to honor the three people who died that day, you know, because those are true Americans. These are people that we need to look up to. These are the values that we hold dear as Americans—not politicians or military generals who promote war, who promote slavery, who owned slaves. That’s not what America is about anymore. We’re moving forward, and we need to move forward with the values that we hold dear and that we want our children to be able to benefit from. So, let’s take them down, and let’s replace them with something that represents who we are and who we want to be.
the monuments don’t really mean anything to these groups. They use them as an excuse to gather. You know, they don’t care. They’re egotists. They only care about themselves, their agenda and how it moves them forward. And they’ll use, you know, the term “free speech” to hold a rally, or they’ll use an excuse to protect a statue to hold a rally. So, let’s just dispel that myth. Those statues really don’t mean anything to them.
As far as the recruitment that’s happening in the military and in law enforcement, if we really kind of take a step back and look at it, police officers and law enforcement officers and military people are constantly, every day, in difficult situations. And over time, people become jaded, especially after you’ve—you know, you’ve worked in crime-ridden neighborhoods for 20 years, and you’ve had to deal with sometimes the worst of the worst people. Well, recruiters know this. Recruiters know that they become jaded, and they become prejudiced towards these people. So they actually infiltrate these organizations to recruit these white officers or white military people who have become jaded, and they create kind of an us-against-them mentality, where they shift the blame to minorities or African Americans or people of color, in general. And they essentially manipulate these people and capitalize on the fact that, you know, their job is stressful and that they can use an opportunity to blame somebody else and then recruit those people.
They also go into the military to get free training. And there are white supremacist groups and militia groups in the United States that are massive, that are strictly meant for ex-military and ex-law enforcement. And these are white supremacist, racist, you know, ultra-fundamentalist, constitutionalist organizations that, many times, often target police officers, to kill them, because they seem them as part of the system. It’s a dichotomy that doesn’t make any sense to me, but it’s a really savvy strategy on the part of white nationalists to go to the places where they know people are the most vulnerable to their message.
it’s important for these rallies to be legal, just because of the threat of violence. You know, I think that the towns and law enforcement need to be aware of these ahead of time so that they can prepare accordingly, so that what happened in Charlottesville, hopefully, doesn’t happen again. You know, but that said, I do believe they have the right to say what they believe. However, that does not give them the right to direct that toward somebody else, nor does it make it acceptable for somebody to have to accept that. Free speech gives you the right to say and believe what you want, but it does not necessarily give you the privilege of somebody agreeing with you or somebody having to listen to that.
We do have former soldiers. We don’t have any former law enforcement. But I do know very many people from the organization that I used to lead 30 years ago, the neo-Nazi group, that actually did go on to become police officers in Chicago, probation officers, prison guards, and, you know, infiltrate that way, and especially the military. Many went into the military.
I commend the branches of the armed services that actually came out and said that they oppose racism. That’s very rare for these military branches to come out and say something that is political like that, and I commend them for that. And I do believe that the vast majority of people in law enforcement and in the military are there because they want to do the right thing. Unfortunately, we hear about the bad apples that are there, and they do exist. I mean, we hear, time and time again, the unfair treatment of African Americans, the murdering of young black men for, you know, a broken headlight or a missing license plate or, you know, because of the prejudice, the biases that exist in these police officers because they’ve been jaded for so long and they’ve become afraid, or they’re racist.
And, you know, it’s really disconcerting that we’re at this stage now, after making progress, that we’re going backwards, that we’re not just taking steps backwards, but we’re taking leaps backwards. And, you know, until we can understand that we need each other, that America was established to bring together people that were oppressed—and now we should be accepting people who are being oppressed from all over the world, because that is really what America is. We are the melting pot, and we are successful, and we are the greatest country, for a reason. And that’s not strictly because of white male Americans.
the neo-Nazi, skinhead, white supremacist, Klan movement. It’s a very misogynistic movement. While publicly they proclaim that white women are the future of their race because, you know, they’re birthing the next generation of white warriors, behind closed doors, women are treated—I don’t even want to say “poorly,” because that’s not even—that’s giving it too much credit. They’re treated like garbage, essentially as baby makers, as slaves, as people who are not respected and second-class. There are definitely more men in this movement than women. In my day, I would say, you know, maybe 10 or 15 percent of the people in the movement were women. And I would say that that’s definitely growing now, as the movement is starting to recruit more young people online, and more females have access to the internet and are starting to find this propaganda.
The 14 Words are “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” If we were to remove the “white” in front of “children” and just say “our,” I would say that that’s a pretty benign statement that anybody can get behind. We want to, you know, make sure we’re safe, and we want to build a better life for our children. But they’ve specifically made it just for, you know, white children. It was a phrase that was invented by David Lane, who was a member of The Order, which was a terrorist organization that committed acts of murder. They robbed banks—or, sorry, they robbed armored cars worth millions of dollars and distributed that money to organizations like the White Aryan Resistance and Aryan Nations. You know, it’s their mission statement. But the way that they interpret that is not in a benign way. The way that they interpret that is, you know, to protect our people and the future of our white children, we have to eliminate the enemy; otherwise, our future and our children are going to be diminished, that—and they’ll claim that diversity and multiculturalism are code words for white genocide.
White genocide, for them, doesn’t necessarily mean the killing of people of their race, but it means the watering down, the loss of identity of European culture. You know, they believe that interracial relationships are destroying European heritage, that eventually the white race will disappear from the face of the Earth because it’s been breeded out, you know, and especially white men. And I just want to kind of pick up on what Jacob said. These young men who are in this movement, their biggest fear is that they’re going to lose their white male identity. and privilege. And they feel America is demasculating them. So, you know, everything that they do is really driven by ego. It’s driven by fear and a low self-confidence and the ability to, you know, not think critically.
they’re pushing women aside to, you know, go set up the party favors and make the food and keep their beer cold, while they go out and pretend to be, you know, white warriors. You know, this is something that’s never changed. It’s been like this, you know, for 30 years, since I’ve been involved. It’s an insecurity. It’s a brokenness. And these are people who are living in an alternate reality, that can be brought back. However, you know, I think that because of anger on both sides, we’re using the wrong tactic. Polarization is happening, because we’re being aggressive with each other. We’re arguing. We’re debating. And I think we need to start with finding common ground. We’re all Americans. We all want security. We all care for our children. We want them to be successful. You know, we want to have a job. Let’s focus on that. And if we focus on that, maybe the problem of blaming the other will go away.
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Christian Picciolini
co-founder of Life After Hate and former neo-Nazi skinhead gang member.
— source democracynow.org 2017-08-18