My descent into America's neo-Nazi movement -- and how I got out

My journey away from violent extremism

began 22 years ago

when I denounced racism

and left the American white supremacist
skinhead movement that I'd helped build.

(Cheers)

I was just 22 years old at the time,

but I had already spent eight years,
from the time I was 14 years old,

as one of the earliest
and youngest members

and an eventual leader within America's
most violent hate movement.

But I wasn't born in to hate.

In fact, it was quite the opposite.

I had a relatively normal childhood.

My parents are Italian immigrants
who came to the United States

in the mid-1960s

and settled on the South Side of Chicago,

where they eventually met

and opened a small beauty shop.

Right after I was born,
things got a little bit more difficult.

They struggled to survive with raising
a young family and a new business,

often working seven days a week,

14 hours a day,

taking on second and third jobs
just to earn a meager living.

And quality time with my parents
was pretty non-existent.

Even though I knew
they loved me very much,

growing up I felt abandoned.

I was lonely, and I started to withdraw,

and then I started to resent my parents

and become very angry.

And as I was growing up,
through my teenage years,

I started to act out
to try and get attention

from my parents.

And one day, when I was 14,

I was standing in an alley

and I was smoking a joint

and a man who was twice my age
with a shaved head

and tall black boots

came up to me

and he snatched the joint from my lips.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder
and he looked me in the eyes,

and he said,

"That's what the communists
and the Jews want you to do

to keep you docile."

I was 14 years old.

I'd been trading baseball cards
and watching "Happy Days."

I didn't really know what a Jew was.

(Laughter)

It's true.

And the only communist that I knew
was the bad Russian guy

in my favorite Rocky movie.

(Laughter)

And since I'm here
baring my soul with you,

I can reveal that I did not even know
what the word "docile" meant.

Dead serious.

But it was as if this man in this alley

had offered me a lifeline.

For 14 years, I'd felt
marginalized and bullied.

I had low self-esteem.

And frankly I didn't know
who I was, where I belonged,

or what my purpose was.

I was lost.

And overnight, because this man
had pulled me in,

and I had grabbed on to that lifeline
with every fiber of my being,

I had gone from "Joanie Loves Chachi"

to full-blown Nazi, overnight.

I started to listen to the rhetoric

and believe it.

I started to watch very closely
as the leaders of this organization

would target vulnerable young people

who felt marginalized

and then draw them in
with promises of paradise

that were broken.

And then I started to recruit myself.

I started to do that by making
white power music,

and soon I became the leader
of that infamous organization

that was led by that man in that alley

who recruited me that day,

who was America's first Neo-Nazi skinhead
and who had radicalized me.

For the next eight years,

I believed the lies that I had been fed,

and though I saw
no evidence of it whatsoever,

I didn't hesitate to blame
every Jewish person in the world

for what I thought was a white,
European genocide

being promoted by them
through a multiculturalist agenda.

I blamed people of color

for the crime and violence
and the drugs in the city,

completely neglecting the fact
that I was committing acts of violence

on a daily basis,

and that in many cases,

it was white supremacists
who were funneling drugs

into the inner cities.

And I blamed immigrants

for taking jobs from white Americans,

completely neglecting the fact that
my parents were hardworking immigrants

who struggled to survive

despite not getting help
from anybody else.

For the next eight years,

I saw friends die,

I saw others go to prison
and inflict untold pain

on countless victims
and their families' lives,

I heard horrific stories
from young women in the movement

who'd been brutally raped by the very men
that they were conditioned to trust,

and I myself committed acts of violence

against people solely
for the color of their skin,

who they loved,

or the god that they prayed to.

I stockpiled weapons for what I thought
was an upcoming race war.

I went to six high schools.
I was kicked out of four of them,

one of them twice.

And 25 years ago, I wrote
and performed racist music

that found its way
to the internet decades later

and partially inspired
a young white nationalist

to walk into a sacred Charleston,
South Carolina church

and senselessly massacre
nine innocent people.

But then my life changed.

At 19 years old, I met a girl
who was not in the movement,

who didn't have a racist bone in her body,

and I fell in love with her,

and at 19, we got married,
and we had our first son,

and when I held my son in my arms
in the delivery room that day,

not only did I reconnect with some of
the innocence that I had lost

at 14 years old,

but it also began to challenge
the very important things

that drew me to
the movement to begin with:

identity, community, and purpose,

things that I had been
struggling with as a young boy.

And now I struggled with the concept
of who I was again.

Was I this Neo-Nazi hatemonger,

or was I a caring father and husband?

Was my community the one
that I had manufactured around me

to boost my own ego,

because I felt self-hatred for myself
and I wanted to project it onto others,

or was it the one that I had
physically given life to?

Was my purpose to scorch the earth

or was it to make it
a better place for my family?

And suddenly, like a ton of bricks hit me,

I became very confused with
who I'd been for the last eight years.

And if only I'd been brave enough
to walk away at that moment,

to understand what the struggle was
that was happening inside of me,

then maybe tragedy
could have been averted.

Instead, I did compromise.

I took myself off the streets
for the benefit of my family,

because I was nervous that maybe
I could go to jail or end up dead

and they would have
to fend for themselves.

So I stepped back as a leader

and instead I opened a record store

that I was going to sell
white power music in of course,

because was importing it in from Europe.

But if I knew that if I was just
a racist or selling racist music,

that the community would not
allow me to be there,

so I decided I was going to also
stock the shelves with other music,

like punk rock and heavy metal

and hip-hop,

and while the white power music
that I was selling

was 75 percent of my gross revenue
because people were driving in

from all over the country to buy it

from the only store that was selling it,

I also had customers come in

to buy the other music,

and eventually they started to talk to me,

and one day, a young black teen came in

and he was visibly upset,

and I decided to ask him what was wrong.

And he told me that his mother
had been diagnosed with breast cancer,

and suddenly this young black teenager,

who I'd never had a meaningful
conversation or interaction with,

I was able to connect with
because my own mother

had been diagnosed with breast cancer,

and I could feel his pain.

On another occasion, a gay couple
came in with their son,

and it was undeniable to me

that they loved their son

in the same profound ways
that I loved mine.

And suddenly, I couldn't rationalize
or justify the prejudice

that I had in my head.

I decided to pull the white power
music from the inventory

when I became too embarrassed
to sell it in front of my new friends,

and of course the store couldn't
sustain itself, so I had to close it.

At that same time, I lost
nearly everything in my life.

I used it as an opportunity to walk away

from the movement that
I'd been a part of for eight years,

the only identity, community, and purpose
that I'd really known for most of my life.

So I had nobody.

I lost my livelihood
because I closed the store.

I didn't have a great relationship
with my parents, even though they tried.

And my wife and children left me
because I hadn't left the movement

and disengaged quickly enough.

And suddenly,

I didn't know who I was again

or where I fit in

or what my purpose was supposed to be.

I was miserable inside,

and I often woke up in the morning

wishing that I hadn't.

About five years in,

one of the few friends that I had
was concerned about my well-being,

and she came to me and she said,
"You need to do something,

because I don't want to see you die."

And she suggested
that I go apply for a job

where she worked at a company called IBM.

Yeah, I thought she was crazy too.

(Laughter)

Here I was, a closeted ex-Nazi
covered in hate tattoos.

I didn't go to college.

I'd been kicked out of multiple
high schools multiple times.

I didn't even own a computer.

But I went in,

and somehow, miraculously, I got the job.

I was thrilled.

And then I became terrified to learn

that they'd actually be putting me
back at my old high school,

the same one I got kicked out of twice,

to install their computers.

This was a high school

where I had committed acts of violence
against students, against faculty,

where I had protested out in front
of the school for equal rights for whites,

and even had a sit-in in the cafeteria

to try to demand a white student union.

And of course, as karma would have it,

within the first couple of hours,

who walks right by me,

but Mr. Johnny Holmes,

the tough black security guard
I had gotten in a fistfight with

that got me kicked out the second time

and led out in handcuffs from the school.

He didn't recognize me,

but I saw him,

and I didn't know what to do.

I was frozen. I was this grown man now,
years out of the movement,

and I was sweating and I was trembling,

but I decided I had to do something,

and I decided I need to suffer
under the weight of my past,

because for five years
I had tried to outrun it.

I'd tried to make new friends
and cover my tattoos with long sleeves,

and I wouldn't admit it because
I was afraid of being judged

the same way that I
had judged other people.

Well, I decided I was going to chase
Mr. Holmes out to the parking lot,

probably not the smartest
decision that I made.

(Laughter)

But when I found him,
he was getting into his car,

and I tapped him on the shoulder,

and when he turned around
and he recognized me,

he took a step back because he was afraid.

And I didn't know what to say.

Finally the words came out of my mouth,
and all I could think to say was,

"I'm sorry."

And he embraced me,

and he forgave me.

And he encouraged me to forgive myself.

He recognized that it wasn't the story
of some broken go-nowhere kid

who was going to just
join a gang and go to prison.

He knew that this was the story
of every young person who was vulnerable,

who was searching for identity,
community, and purpose,

and then hit a wall

and was unable to find it

and went down a dark path.

And he made me promise one thing,

that I would tell my story
to whoever would listen,

and that was 18 years ago,

and I've been doing it every since.

(Applause)

You might be asking yourself right now,

how does a good kid from
a hard-working immigrant family

end up going down such a dark path.

One word: potholes.

That's right. Potholes.

I had a lot of potholes when I was kid.

We all had them,

you know, the things in life
that we hit that invariably

just kind of nudge us off our path,
and if they remain unresolved

or untreated

or not dealt with,

sometimes we can get dangerously lost
down pretty dark corridors.

Potholes can be things like trauma,

abuse, unemployment,

neglect,

untreated mental health conditions,

even privilege.

And if we hit enough potholes
on our journey in life,

and we don't have the resources
or the help to navigate around them

or to pull us out,

well sometimes good people
end up doing bad things.

One such person
who had potholes is Darrell.

Darrell is from upstate New York,

and he had read my memoir,

and he was really upset about the ending.

You see, I'd gotten out of the movement,

and he was still in.

And he emailed me and he said,

"I didn't really like
the way that turned out."

And I said, "Well, I'm sorry."

(Laughter)

"But if you want to talk about that,
we could certainly do that."

And after a couple of weeks
of going back and forth with Darrell,

I learned he was
a 31-year old military veteran

who had been injured

and was really angry about
not being able to go to Afghanistan

to kill Muslims.

And one day on the phone,
he told me that he had seen

a Muslim man in the park praying,

and that all he wanted to do

was kick him in the face.

I flew to Buffalo the next day,

and I sat down with Darrell,

and I asked him,

"Have you ever met
a Muslim person before?"

And he said, "No!

Why the hell would I want to do that?

They're evil. I don't want
anything to do with them."

I said, "Okay."

So I excused myself
and I went into the bathroom

and I took my phone out in the bathroom,

and I Googled the local mosque

and I called them very quietly
from the bathroom,

and I said, "Excuse me,
Imam, I need a favor.

I have a Christian man who would really
love to learn more about your religion."

(Laughter)

"Do you mind if we stop by?"

Well, it took some convincing
for Darrell to go,

but finally we got there,

and when I knocked on the door,

the imam said he only had
15 minutes left for us,

because he was preparing
for a prayer service.

I said, "We'll take it."

We went in and two and a half hours later

we came out

after hugging and crying

and very strangely bonding
over Chuck Norris for some reason.

I don't know what it was about that,

but that's what happened.

And I'm happy to say now
that Darrell and the imam,

you can often find them
at the local falafel stand

having lunch together.

(Applause)

You see, it's our disconnection

from each other.

Hatred is born of ignorance.

Fear is its father,
and isolation is its mother.

When we don't understand something,
we tend to be afraid of it,

and if we keep ourselves from it,

that fear grows,

and sometimes it turns into hatred.

Since I've left the movement,
I've helped over a hundred people

disengage from extremist movements,
from white supremacist groups

(Applause)

to even jihadist groups.

And the way I do that

is not by arguing with them,

not by debating them,

not by even telling them they're wrong,

even though boy I want to sometimes.

I don't do that.

Instead, I don't push them away.

I draw them in closer,

and I listen very closely

for their potholes,

and then I begin to fill them in.

I try to make people more resilient,

more self-confident,

more able to have skills
to compete in the marketplace

so that they don't have
to blame the other,

the other that they've never met.

I'd like to just leave you
with one last thing before I go.

Of all the people I've worked with,
they will all tell you the same thing.

One, they became extremists

because they wanted to belong,
not because of ideology or dogma,

and second, what brought them out

was receiving compassion

from the people
they least deserved it from

when they least deserved it.

So I would like to leave you
with a challenge:

go out there today,

tomorrow, hopefully every day,

find somebody that you think
is undeserving of your compassion,

and give it to them,

because I guarantee you

they're the ones who need it the most.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)