So important to look deeply into our own hearts and those of others. This is the work that humanizes and that nurtures compassion, understanding, and wisdom. This is the antidote to our human fears and ignorance, the path of heart and soul that heals, awakens, and connects rather than divides. - Molly
This is taken from the transcript interview on Democracy Now!
Watch our complete discussion with a
former neo-Nazi and the nephew of a white supremacist who marched in the
Charlottesville, Virginia, protest. Christian Picciolini is co-founder of Life After Hate, a nonprofit helping people disengage from hate and
violent extremism. He was a leading neo-Nazi skinhead gang member and far-right
extremist in the 1980s and 1990s. We also speak with Jacob Scott, the nephew of
Peter Tefft, who was disowned by his father, Pearce Tefft, in a letter published in a local
newspaper.
AMY GOODMAN: 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. This is Heather’s mother, Susan Bro.
SUSAN BRO: Remember in your heart: If you’re not outraged,
you’re not paying attention. And I want you to pay attention, find what’s
wrong. Don’t ignore it. Don’t look the other way. You make it a point to look
at it, and say to yourself, "What can I do to make a difference?" And
that’s how you’re going to make my child’s death worthwhile. I’d rather have my
child, but, by golly, if I got to give her up, we’re going to make it count.
AMY GOODMAN: 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, quote, "responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000
to 2016...more than any other domestic extremist movement," unquote.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security report went on to state,
quote, "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," unquote.
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.
For more, we’re joined by Christian
Picciolini, who is co-founder of Life After Hate, leading neo-Nazi skinhead
gang member and far-right extremist in the ’80s and ’90s, author of Romantic
Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead.
Christian, welcome to Democracy
Now! Talk about your response to what happened in Charlottesville.
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Well, I think I went to bed, Amy, 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.
AMY GOODMAN: Christian, when did you become a white
supremacist?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: I was recruited at 14 years old in 1987. And I
spent—
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you live?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: 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.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the groups you were in and
what you did?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: 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.
AMY GOODMAN: What was it that started you moving away and
questioning what you were doing?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: You know, 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.
Please continue this transcript, or to
watch the video, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/18/life_after_hate_full_intv_with
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