Transcripts For CSPAN2 Romantic Violence 20170809

Violence. This is about an hour and a half. Good evening. I am abraham foxman. Im currently director of the center for the semitism and from time to time i have an opportunity to welcome some of our guests particularly in the area of prejudice and engage with them with conversation. After our guests speaks and makes his presentation i will begin with some questions and make the floor available to you to ask him, argue with him whatever makes you happy. Microphone. I will. We are delighted to welcome to, memoirs of an american skinhead with its author who lived through those experiences, Christian Picciolini. Christian is here to shed light on his unlike the path as the sun up to hardworking immigrants and becoming the leader of the chicago area skinheads when he was still a teenager. After leaving the Violent Movement he was part of during his youth he began the painstaking process of rebuilding his life. In the year 2009 he cofounded an Organization Called life after hate, a Nonprofit Organization helping people to disengage from hate and violent extremism. In 2015 christian decided to share his journey from hate to understanding in a book and be published a book called romantic violence memoirs of an american skinhead. Following his talk i will ask him some questions and you will have an opportunity to engage with him. Thank you. [applause] thank you, abe. Its a real pleasure to be here first of all. Dont be distracted by the terrible view thats outside. I may be but please dont. My name is Christian Picciolini and my journey here actually started not in 1973 in november on a snowy day 43 years ago but 22 years ago in 1995 when i left finally the organization the american neonazi Skinhead Movement that i helped to build almost from the very beginning. I was 22 years old at the time but i had already spent eight years, every single one of my formative teen years as part of americas first neonazi skinhead gang. But before that i was a relatively normal teenager. I had a thing for the chukchi haircut, happy days. It was the 80s so forgive me but i was a normal teenage kid. My parents were italian immigrants who came to the United States in the mid1960s and they were often the victims of prejudice themselves so racism wasnt something that id grew up with. In fact it was quite the opposite. We always had people of different cultures and religions visiting and i became very comfortable with that but because my parents were immigrants they also had to work very hard. They opened a small beauty shop on the southside of chicago and that kept them busy seven days a week, sometimes 14 hours a day and i didnt really see my parents very much. I had lived in a very a tie and part of chicago but when i was born my parents moved me to a very lets say a place that lacked diversity, a very white suburban areas of growing up i never really knew where exact to fit in. I didnt know if i was italian and didnt understand if i was american because of the traditional culture that kept me in a very close bubble. I had a lot of struggles growing up that i had low selfesteem and low selfconfidence. I was bullied. Severely because of my name and because i was different. I was also very short and i started to really want to be very american. I got tired of being this person whos struck out as a child of immigrants. I started to for being immigrants and are not being there for me. I felt very abandoned by them so one day when i was going through this search for an identity and the community in a sense of purpose which is really a fundamental need that everybody searches for i have this grievance, this kind of selfhatred and at 14 i was standing in an alley and i was smoking a joint and this man drove up and in 1968 firebird and he screeched to a hault a few inches from me and he got out of the car came over to me and he looked me in the eyes and said as he grabbed a joint out of my mouth, dont you know that thats what the communists and want you to do, to keep the dos ill . I was 14 and i didnt know what a communist was and had never met a jewish person and hardly knew what the words dos ill meant. His charisma struck me. For most of my life until that point i felt very powerless. I was picked on and bullied. They didnt have any friends. I didnt have a community and when this man came up to me he start to promise me. Ice could he said, come with me and you wont be powerless anymore. He will be powerful in my ears perked up a decent come with me and you wont be alone and i will give you this community. I got very interested and that he started to tell me about the dangers that existed in my community that africanamericans were moving in and immigrants were coming into steel jobs in jewish people control the media and finances in the banking system. I didnt quite understand that but i thought this guy, two out of three wasnt bad and i was willing to join the group and not he alone anymore and feel powerful. I started to learn this ideology to stay a part of this, too belonged. I didnt have it tases for racism. I didnt really understand what he was talking about and i certainly didnt see the things happening in my neighborhood that he claimed were happening. But i was lonely and a 14 years old i pledge my allegiance to this man who happened to be americas first neonazi skinhead and i went from that kid with the haircut to one of americas first neonazi skinheads in 1987. As i was involved in this organization i started to learn the rhetoric and the conspiracy theories and they would use fear rhetoric to scare us to believe being in doing harm and other people stop that from happening today look back now and i think how could i have fallen for those lies because now i see the same conspiracy theories in the same propaganda going around and its fooling so many people. Id could have been smarter than that amateurs was i was smarter than that. I didnt question the propaganda that i was being fed but ultimately i chose to swallow it and eventually i let it become a part of me because i wanted to belong so badly. That search for identity, community and the sense of purpose drove me to this movement when i was the most marginalized and the most vulnerable. Two years after i was recruited i was 16 years old and the man who recruited me went to prison for a series of vicious and heinous hate crimes one of which the final crime was going to the apartment of another skinhead girl who was part of this crew who had been seen standing at a bus stop with a black man. They went to her apartment, the whole group and they kicked in her door and they pistol whipped her until she was within an inch of her life and before they left they painted a swastika on her wall. Luckily for that they were arrested and sentenced to prison unlucky for me that propelled me into the position of leadership for this organization because i had now been around two years. I had learned how to recruit. I was fully immersed in the rhetoric and ideology and i started to draw in kids that were younger than me and oftentimes the bullies that picked on me. I would bring them in. So now because there was a void in leadership everybody recruited after me suddenly looked to me to find out what to do. Two years prior to this powerless kid who had no idea how to lead, who had no idea how to even have a relationship in real life because i wish i was suddenly propelled into leadership position of americas first neonazi skinhead gang and by this time groups have started to pop up all over the country. One thing i realized was that music was a very powerful recruitment troll. It was also very good vehicle for propaganda so i started in 1990, one of americas first white power skinhead fans and i would essentially use propaganda to teach people to hate, to commit acts of violence and to be proud of something that was manufactured because what we said was that diversity was contributing to a white genocide, that the more we allow diversity and multiculturalism to take place that white people would bear the brunt of that and be pushed out of this world. Of course i look back at that and i think how ridiculous that must have sounded better resonated with people. It was the use of fear rhetoric that made them afraid that really kicked them into action. So this picture is from 1991 at a concert in germany. Thats me on stage singing to about 4000 skinheads from all over europe. I sang these lyrics that really encourage people to go out and commit acts of violence and hurt other people based on simply the color of their skin or who they love. This was the First Experience were erected nice but the consequences of my works really were because after these concerts these 4000 skinheads went out to beautiful historic former east german town that produced artists thinkers philosophers and musicians and they essentially destroyed this town. They walked into shops, and looted. They broke into pubs and stole beer and debuted at the townspeople who happened to be german. That didnt compute to me. I didnt understand why we could say one thing and do another and i started to realize not only the consequences that my words would have to encourage people to commit acts of violence but i started to question the ideology and if it was something that i was really in tune with. Because for these eight years that i was involved i always had questions in the back of my mind. When i heard things that didnt make sense i wouldnt stand up and question them but i would have this internal struggle on whether it was right or whether i believed it or whether i was capable of things that i was telling people to do. I know now that for eight years that i was involved i hated other people because i hated myself. I hated my situation so much that i was willing to project my own pain onto other people so that i didnt have to deal with it myself. When i came back in 1991 from a trip to germany things changed again for me. I met a girl, fell in love and at 19 years old we were married and we had our first child. I could tell you and if you are a parent may be understand this, when i held my child for the first time in my arms there was a bit of magic. I suddenly reconnected with that innocent 14yearold who was lost and they regained my innocence. I started to at least catch a glimpse of what it meant to be innocent. And i started to shift my priorities. My identity, my community, my sense of purpose were no longer as a skinhead, as a leader. It was as a father, as a husband and all i wanted to do was support my family and provide for them. So i began to question very aggressively the ideology that i believed and that i had passed along to hundreds and maybe thousands and maybe tens of thousands of other people both through meetings and my music and i knew that thats not what i wanted for my own family. I never asked my wife who was not a part of this movement to become involved. I never thought that i wanted my child to be a part of the movement and i started to really question what i was doing. But i got a little confused again and i said okay i need to support my family. Theres not much else i know that music and i decided to open a record store. The purpose of the Records Store for me was not only to support my family but to stay a part of this movement because it was so difficult to leave despite abandoning the ideology day by day. Was so difficult to leave the identity and the community because i had a family around me that i never experienced before and it was difficult. I went and opened the store to sell white power music. Thats all i knew how to do. Very quickly, this was before the internet, very quickly the white power music became 75 of my gross revenue. People were driving from new york and california to buy this music. Trying to be a Good Business person, being greedy and maybe a little selfish i decided i wasnt going just to sell white power music but i was going to sell at the musics i started to stock heavy metal and punk rock inconsequential differences. It didnt really matter in the grand scheme of things. They were human beings and we shared these experiences and im thankful for those people because that was the first time i was allowed, that i allowed myself to somebody else because before that they were monsters and they were garbage and cockroaches. I kept as much humanization not out of it so was easy to hate the other because thats what the movement was always about the size about laming somebody else for that drop bombs that existed rather than reflect internally to see if maybe you were the contribution to their problem. Blaming that invisible person for everything that was going wrong in your life for all the perceived wrongs happening in the World Without actually knowing those people. When i began to meet these people i started to realize that there was nothing to hate. They didnt match what was in my head and now i was starting to think emotionally i was connected. I had lost the fear and then everything crashed. My life fell apart. When i left the Movement Type close the store and pulled the music from the shelves. There was so much revenue and of course i couldnt sustain the store tomorrow so i had to close it with a lost my livelihood. I also lost my family, my community that i had built for eight years. My wife and my children left me because i didnt leave the movement quickly enough or pay them enough attention and they just had to leave. I didnt have a great relationship with my parents even though they tried. Eventually when i left i lost everything and i went through period the five years until 1999 for almost every morning i woke up and i contemplated taking my own life because i didnt feel, i didnt understand exact reply i wasnt feeling better. It was treating other people with respect. I was showing compassion but i was still dying inside. Five years one of the few friends i had came up to me and she said you have to change something. I dont want you to die. I said okay, what do you suggest that she said well i just got this job at this Company Called ibm, maybe you have heard of them. You can go and apply their progressive you are crazy. I have tattoos all over my body. Im an exand i went to six high schools and got kicked out of all of them, one of them twice but it never went to college and i dont know the computer and theres no way that they would hire me but she said just try an entrylevel position and i will vouch for you. I wrote my first resume and i lied on my first resume. And i got the job. On my first day ibm has millions of customers. On my first day where did they put me . My Old High School come the same one i got kicked out of twice. I was terrified. Here i was this grown man at the time and i was nervous like it was my first day of school and how could i change my appearance so people wouldnt recognize me . I knew the minute i walked into those hallways that they would say, get out. Of course i walk in and the first five minutes who do i see facts the old black Security Guard that id got kicked out for the second time then you can call it faith or destiny, whatever but i was so scared. Ive never been so scared of my life. I did didnt know what to do. I was shaky so i decided i was going to chase them to the parking lot, probably not the best move but one i found him getting into his car at tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and when he recognized me he took a step back in fear. I knew i had to do something. All i could think to say was im sorry. He stuck out his hand and i shook it and we embraced. Its pretty possible he cried. Im not quite sure. It was a long time ago. We talked and he made me promise one thing. Made me me promise i would tell my story to other people not because of being in exand suddenly doing better but because he recognized what i had gone through the same struggles that i had wasnt something that was unique to me, it was something that every young omar bole marginalized person goes through and the lessons that i learned also are lessons that other people can learn. Maybe he had some intuition about why young people may join isis. This was way before then because there are parallel reasons why people join gangs, why they join movements of hate and why they might travel to syria to fight for a cause that they dont really understand or that doesnt make a whole lot of sense. The parallels are that we are searching when we are the most vulnerable and identity for sense of purpose. We have a lot of marginalized and disenfranchised young people , middleaged people, older people in this world right now. A lot of people searching for answers. A lot of confusion. Its very easy for a savvy recruit or to place something in your view that tries to solve those problems for you by blaming somebody else. So i decided because it was so hard for me that i was going to write a book. I was introverted and i was just going to write a book and take this mans advice until the people my story. 10 years later i finally did it and it really is a cautionary tale for young people who might be searching for something. And in 2010 i cofounded an Organization Called life after hate with the purpose of helping people go through that transition where they are scared to leave these movements because of the identity, because of the community and because of the purpose. They may not have something they have is another special purpose in their lives and we help them transition out of that and disengage from hateful ideologies and hates and hate groups not by battling ideologically with them, not by arguing with them or debating with them because that just low raises people further. In our Political Climate what we do is we listen and we listen for what i call potholes. Before i talk about that i want to talk a little bit about what the state of the movement is today. When we think of the far right or hate groups we tend to think of skinheads and kkk and militia people and they still exist but they are not what they used to be. This movement has gone from what they called boots to suits for this was a concerted effort for us. This is no surprise. 30 years ago we had a leaderless resistance where our goal was because we recognize that we were scaring away the average american racist with their swastikas and shaved heads that we were not going to do that anymore. We were going to not get tattoos and we were going to go to universities and then we were going to get jobs in Law Enforcement and we were going to run for office. Here we are, 30 years later and what i was skeptical about 30 years ago we are starting to see some of that happening and a metastasizing of that cancer. They have gotten very smart. They have learned how to massage the message but the ideology is the same. Its based on fear so whats gone from this because of the internet, because its a place where people who are marginalized can find their communities who can build an identity if they dont have one in were alive, because of his platform which i believe and by the way, because of his platform what used to look like this now looks like this, maybe like some of your daughters, grandkids, neighbors and it looks like this if they werent giving the salute you probably wouldnt know that they were involved. Its getting younger and younger if we look at this and we say well im not going to be worried about these young kids were doing this stuff. We should because what happens, the products of this internet radicalization, the result of that is so much a dylann roof who walks into a church and kills nine people based on the color of their skin art looks like alexander who walked into a mosque recently and murdered six innocent people. Or it looks like James Jackson who murdered an africanamerican because he was trying to discourage people from interracial relationships. These are all products of the internet propaganda. Things change. When i was recruited in got a book and he got invited to meeting and you hung out with people. It was a very social movement. Nowadays its a very Virtual Movement and the scary thing about that, that is where marginalized young people live and theyre looking for answers and they are served these answers by people with a very selfish mission. So what we decided to do at life after hate was to live on line as well, to be reachable from the internet. We launched a program and an initiative called exit usa. This sole purpose is to help people disengage from hate groups and hateful ideologies. When i said earlier we dont do that by battling ideologically with them. We do it by listening. This is what i meant by that. We get contacted from three different types of people at exit usa. We get contacted by the person is engaged and wants help getting out. We get contacted by the bystanders and i can be parents, friends coworkers, girlfriends and we get contacted by formers, people who werent gauging this movement but are on their way out but for years that they were the only person on earth that had done it and they have never been able to talk about those experiences because they have never been able to talk about it and they never been able to heal fully and became fully productive. A word latest your latest joke and for the first time they will admit that they were sexually abused or their son committed suicide this morning and the rally because we understand each other and where we came from and we help each other through this thing called life. Weve been very successful with that since we launched the program in 2015 and tony is the board chair that happened to be in new york at the same time. Its good to have him here. But we have helped people disengage and help to people that were going off to get their phd with people that are teachers and theyve been able to talk about this and work through some of the issues that have broken them for many years. I want to talk about some of the type of things we see. So this young girl 17yearsold her parents contact us because they were concerned she was making neonazi propaganda videos and dating a boy from idaho who was recruiting her for the video and had become her virtual boyfriend. After speaking to the parents into getting a Little Information i did my homework before i went in to speak with this girl and i realized that he wasnt a 23yearold boy from idaho, he was a man from moscow and not only was he doing it to this girl with 12 others at the same time where he would become their virtual boyfriends, they would fall in love even though hed never seen them they could send photos and he would strip off the audio tracks and send it to them and convince them to send compromising photos and videos and when they decided they didnt want to make videos anymore he would blackmail them. Thats happening quite a bit. I will also talk about a 31yearold man from buffalo, who was on islamic phobia like ive never seen before and i he reached at two may have to read my book and said he had some questions and said there are some things i dont agree with and i said lets talk and we talked for several weeks and one day it was clear he didnt like muslims then one day he said i was walking my daughter and dog in the park and i saw a muslim man praying and it took everything in me to not go up to him and kick him in the face while he was on the ground and i said okay, john coming to buffalo and i flew out the next day and we sat and talked and one of the first questions i asked him was have you ever met a muslim before and he said no, why would i want to do that they are evil or cry hate them. They are the devil and i said okay, so i excused myself and went to the bathroom and i got my phone out and googled the local mosque and called and spoke to them and i said i have a gentleman here who is a christian who would love to learn more about your religion. [laughter] i said i had a gentle man would you mind if we stopped by and he said of course please stop by, but no i only have 15 minutes because im preparing my Prayer Service and i said im on my way and we got the car and i said lets go get lunch and about halfway there i said we have to stop somewhere and when i told him, all he wanted to do is stop, turn around, throw uput and i said i dont care. Its a rental car, throw up, but we kept going. I said i flew to buffalo in the least you could do is try so we went to the mosque and i knocked on the door and he answered and he said i have 10 minutes please command and we can talk briefly. Three hours later, after talking and hugging and crying and realizing the similarities that we had, we left. Im happy to say that after a lot of work that john and the imam are very good friends and they go out for falafel every friday because its this action we have. We are so afraid of what we think we dont understand that we wanted to push it away and often times we push away so far that it actually turns into violence. We have two realities in this world and there are not enough bridges crossing those two realities. We have to do a better job of letting go of that irrational fear and unconscious bias we have, letting go of our ego and being vulnerable and building those bridges for the people weh claim we hate because the truth is most people ive met that were part of these movements and never had a meaningful interaction with the people they claim today hates. I didnt. Most of the people we worked with have not and when you ask these people why did you join them they say they just wanted to belong to something and once you join you have to give up Everything Else thats important in your life its hard to go back. Life after hate hopes to be that new family, and a positive gang, that support network and after we make people more resilient its Pretty Amazing without arguing ontologically with them the hate kind of falls away because now they are more resilient and selfsufficient,si more selfconfident and have the tools and training they need to compete and theres no reason to blame someone else. Theres no reason to be afraid of that other and if you pair that with the immersion idea where i introduce a holocaust denier to a holocaust survivor t or an islamic fold to a imam, thats the connection we need. All across the world there are people like me, formers, people who have dedicated their lives to helping dismantle what they once built, to helping build those bridges and im happy to be here to tell you this story. Its an honor to be here, abe. Its a pleasure to be here withu you and in this Wonderful Museum that tells a great story. Thank you for listening to my story. O i were to give you one challenge before i leave today. I would like for you to leave today, tomorrow and hopefullyyfo every day and find someone you think doesnt deserve your compassion and give it to them because chances are they are the ones who need it most. Thank you very much. [applause]. Okay. I think we are going to talk for a little bit. Christine, thank you. Thank you. Its very hard for us to really understand the journey that you have taken and at the same time its going to be difficult for you to try to explain it to us, so we thank you because every time you tell it, you live it again. You experience it again, but its for a purpose, so with great admiration and respect for the courage, im a little bad confused. What is the problem . Is it ignorance . Is an ideology . Is it the thought dysfunction . And if we has a society need to address it, where do we start . Your last sentence sort of answered my question, but im not sure. It is is it as simple as believing, dysfunction and therefore everyone who is in a situation of social dysfunction situation however you define it, are they all six of the boat to be bigots to turn to violence . Boy, the audience is huge or is it ignorance. Did you say huge. [laughter] or is it ignorance. Thereto, or is it where look, i spent a lifetime dealing with these and im not sure we are right listening to you now. May be we targeted the wrong thing. We all knew we need to educate, sensitized, love and all that, but we were preoccupied with the bigots, with the ideologues, to expose them, to put a price and a consequence on their bigotry. Whereas, i listen to you, christian. Our efforts should be at theor potential victims, so where do we set our priorities . Thank you for that, i mean, its very hard to give a blackandwhite answer to a complex problem, but i will do my best. I believe hatred is born of ignorance and fear is its father in isolation is its mother. When we fear what we dont understand then we never had the opportunity to connect and that sometimes turns into hay, but i think really what is underneath that is a lack of opportunity. Kf this is not, this im not playing like identity politics or anything like that. Theres a lack of opportunity for young people in this countrh whether its the inner cities or Rural America and i can tell you that standing in that alley at a 14 years old had someone pulled up in a card said you were a good artist or would you like to play guitar or do you want to play baseball, i wouldnt know some semi pro Baseball Players that would want to hang out, ian wouldve done that in a heartbeat. I was angry and i found myself attaching to people who were angrier than me just so i could be angry. It was a vehicle. I firmly believe that ideology is not a driver in violent extremism. Its the vehicle. If that search for purpose, search for identity and that search for community that drives people to those things and then that ideology and the grievance and the trauma or whatever they experience is the catalyst and ideology is the vehicle for that. I found angriest people i could find, so i could be angry to. I think if we are going to solve this problem and people asked me all the time how do we solve racism and i said i dont know. If i knew i would win a nobel peace prize, but i can tell you we have the to affect the people closest to us, our family, friends, loved ones. To really just show them compassion and be the message. I think two people we dont know compassion is also very important and empathy, putting yourself in their shoes and listening to them when they says really ugly things, but to listen unto me that as to why they say those ugly things and finding Common Ground and starting from that point its absurd from complete opposites i think is where we need to be because while we hate to admit it everyone here has something in common with a neonazi. We all need to be loved. We all need of money to survive and support our families. There are lots of things we have in common and maybe if we could start there and build out from there then maybe we can build those bridges. I think someone once did this experiment, took normal person bigoted person and close them up in a container and asked them to bring only one thing, which was a photograph of their family and the thesis was, what you talked about as a child etc. That regardless where they came from or how they felt about each other if the only thing that was left of that they had in common was family, that it would reduce that level of animosity etc. I dont remember how it worked out, but on that premise and what youre talking about his compassion. Your last it was so simple and basically said to all of us, you want to begin the fight be compassionate to someone you dont know or even someone you may have an antipathy to, so what we are talking about is people to people. Now, we live in a world and if you dont talk to people how do you exercise compassion. How do you we have seen in our lifetime we have destroyed privacy. We are on the way to destroy a civility. How do you fight this miracle f with such unintended consequences of undermining the ability for people to talk to each other. You cant talk to each other. So, this becomes a substitute for engaging that you are talking about. Everyone in this person probably walk past a thousand people coming here today. Those thousand people also probably live online and maybe some are unfortunate enough to do that, but the truth is we do come in contact with people all the time and we spend a lot of our time online, but we also interact with people at work and at the Grocery Store and a walking from the train station a and those are the opportunities i think that can make up for that lack of connection in a place that is supposed toio connect as more is actually may be doing the opposite and creating more of a polarization. You say despite that there is still enough opportunity to it the end of the day begin to make a difference. Yeah, i plan to go back to my hotel room and read my email, but on my way to my hotel roomy or will pass a thousand people you may never get to your hotel room. I have two more questions. One is a more delicate question in terms of wood you talked about moving away from the skinheads, the swastikas and if you put everything together that you talked about, this frustration and anger, alienation, we just experienced an election, which on all sides pushed all the buttons. Is that democracy endanger . I believe so. I believe that our understanding of democracy is shifting ande changing because of things that happened. We have experienced something no one in our lifetime has ever seen and i think we have two now really understand what democracy is. Is a fragile . It is very fragile. We are baby compared to the world. Reese is not such a great model. No, but we are still trying to figure things out. O we have never done it right, never. Weve done a lot of things right, but weve never done a completely right. For people to look back and say we stand for what we were founded on your card of agree with that because part of that was slavery and class system, but i do believe in american ideals. I do believe that we are built think of Ronald Reagan that said you can go to japan and you will never be japanese. You can go to im making these countries up, but you can come to america and you would be american no matter who you are and thats true and that is to me the democratic ideal is that everyone has a voice, equal voice. Is that in question today . At yeah. You many great analogy earlier, racism always existed in ourur country. Donald trump to doubt invented. I dont even know that hes not a bigot. Is not a racist. Hes not a anti semite. Ive never met the man, so im not going to judge him, butu he legitimized it in our country what was these kind of smoldering fires that alwaysry existed. On election day that bucket of gasoline, he tipped it over and it ignited. And broke taboos, taboos that protected our civil society. We almost had a contract with each other. You want to be a bigot . You can be a bigot and the constitution guarantees you that , but dont act it out. If you acted out you pay your price. He came and broke all of thepr taboos. What im saying is we were in your way and my weight in the lessons we try to teach in this museum, we try to explain to people that our society is based on certain understandings, Political Correctness is not a crime, not a sin, but you need to keep the hate that you experience, im saying in the sewer. That y we threw our laws and education and through sensitivity and through your experiences we have put it in the sewer and put the cover on the sewer. This last election we remove that cover and now, we have toe find ways to put the cover back on, but he didnt created. It was there. To put the cover back on, i want to invite them out and have coffee with them and i wanted to talk to them and i went to listen and understand why they are living in the sewers because there is a reason. Everyone i could never speak for the the person in Rural America who lost the factory ana is willing to forgive many of the awful things that he saidid because they have to feed their family. Ve im not saying that is right or its the ideal situation, but we need to listen. So, its not your fault, but maybe i can fix it . Right i think we all contribute to it and to some degree still have unconscious bias and its as simple as crossing the street if you see anyone walking down that looks 13 and there is something we deal with and we have to accept. Listen, when you have the far left and the far right who are at odds with each other and the work and they, that circle eventually leads to become the same thing. The last thing they have historically. The last thing we want to do is opposition to those hateful ideals is to become hateful ourselves. Thats the last thing we want to do. In fact, we dont want to do it all because that wont help us. We need to find it within ourselves to say your thoughts are ugly. What you do is very ugly. How can we find a way to connect so i can share my experiences with you without debating you, without pushing my ideas on youy without prescribing the solution to you . How can we sit down and humanize each other because theres not o lot of work that needs to happen that once the humanization happens theres already a connection there and you build from that. Final question. We both come at least now i guess maybe even then of freedom of speech, better rating, applying it, embracing that, supporting it, encouraging it, im not sure where either one of us are 100 absolute. We certainly accept the concept of yelling fire in a theater is not protected. Your experience, has that changed your appreciation, your perception, your value of the freedom of speech . H . You saw that hates hate cause of violence and death. You engaged in it. Does society need to protect itself from the christian blood . I believe in freedom of speech, but i also believe freedom of speech is not freedom of consequence, so while you may have the right to say whatever you want, if what you say or doh affects someone else negatively, you must be held accountable for that. I believe that. Thank you. The floor is yours. Yes maam. I think you need a microphone. They are recording it. I wanted to know how the other people that you are skinheads with reacted when you left and it did they pressure you were treat you badly or were you able to humanize them in some way and bring them along with you . What happened . There were some who did come along later. Once i was able to kind of work for myself i was able to reach out to them and connect with them and pull them out. Otherwise, i could not have been more a race traitor, turncoat, someone they wanted to hurt and it still continues. Even 22 years later, i received Death Threats and threats against my family, but i can tell you this, there was one point in my life from the time i was 14 until i was 22 that i blithely was willing to give my life for something i didnt really understand or knowet anything about. Kn you can bet your aspect 22 years later im still pulling up the weed to spreading from those seeds. Not only am i filling potholes that deviate people from their original path, but im a bit of a gardener. Yes, i mean, its part of the business. I could be hit by a bus or by the one train following on the tracks, but i know i am living my passion. Go to penn station. Its safe. This is what i am meant to do because im one of few people in the world who have this experience and unique knowledge and the will to be able to help people and put myself into sometimes very uncomfortable situations, but i also know its my duty because i have that information. Hello. I read your book. It was fascinating and infuriating. I grew up in northern georgia in the late 80s. We always call this the battle days you go to a punk show in there would be a thousand people and 100 skinheads intimidating the entire crowd with dozens of nazi gangs. We see a big resurgence in White Nationalism organizing here in new york with communism games in new york attacking people in the bars and i appreciate the workpp you do with getting people out. I think the exit programs are important, but how do you think people should intervene, i mean, its in full gear and in some ways youre waiting to spin out because personal issues or the move that has exhausted itself and people are looking for the next thing. Had usage as people intervene with movements when they are in full swing . The last part of your statement is partly true. We do retroactively wait for people to come to us, but the bystanders are also pointing out people that dont necessarily want to leave these movementsjut and we also engage with them, so not just people who have an excuse to leave and i would say thats part of my answer isat i number one understand this is full swing. Its something that is completely come up to the topic at and has momentum. It is effectively recruiting hundreds of thousands of young people in this country and abroad. Its probably just as dangerous if not more dangerous in europe because there is a sense of historical nationalism there. We need to speak up and not be afraid to speak up, but also know where to draw the line to wear becomes an ideological battle because i can tell you at 18 years old if you had told me i was wrong or punch me in a face at a rally or canceled my gym membership or anythingmy happening to some of the peoplee today i would have come back with a gun, i mean, it would not have deterred me or changed ui was, so we have to find a way to connect with the people that are sometimes the ugliest people around. Ount. I know its not for everyone and i know its not something that there are groups that are on the left that are anti races that try to solve it with violence and what i see happening is the right becoming more violent and growing because they feel more marginalized and people who are also marginalized are joining and using that as ammunition too grow, so when i see a nazi walking down the street my first instinct is i probably want to punch him, but i know its not effective. It would not have been effective for me or the thousands of people we work with, so we have to find a way and i know its not a popular idea, we had to find a way to steal that empathy for them and find a way to show them compassion because almost two to one as every person we work with will tell you that they changed because someone they did not expect it from or deserve it from show them compassion when they least a deserved it. And then you have isis. 1 mole of compassion would work there. Yes maam. People who are becoming radicalized, but this really is a battle for good and evil, not in the religious sense, but the truth is. Also from a religious sense seeing that 99 of us live in the middle. There are evil people in this world and definitely very very good people. Most of us we go backandforth depending on the day, depending on the situationd in the mood and what we need to do is know people can change and that they can come over to theng good side. D they just need to be exposed. Lady in the blue jacket. How are your kids doing and whats doing in your personal life and have you ever thought of going into politics . Oh, boy. My little boys are 24 and 22 and they are amazing human beings who i have a wonderful relationship with as well as the appearance. My mother does, he too much, but she hasnt figured out how to text message yet so im okay for a while. She calls me literally one half hour before i would sit here and im like not now mom. I have a wonderful relationship with my family. Once i was able to forgive myself eventually, i became a better father, husband, friend, employee in a better human being and im not going to rule out chicago mayor for my future. [laughter] you never know. [inaudible] how was the reaction when you were involved with it . That was my question. It took my parents about a year to figure out was what i was involved in. They thought hes just doing kid stuff. I hid it a lot the first year. Once they figured it out, they were terrified. They were concerned about my safety. And they didnt understand. There was even one point where my mom, bless her heart, said why do you like this guy like go for someone italian like alod capone at least or Something Like that. [laughter] she wouldve tried Everything Possible to get me away from when i was involved in and i have to tell you that thanks to my parents i am here today because they never gave up on me thats the white house calling. Not this white house. On that very grateful for the fact my parents did not give up on. They would never give up, even when i didnt have a Good Relationship and i had i wanted nothing to do with them and i thought why cant you understand what im telling you. I really thought i was saving the world. If they had given up on me, i dont know that i would be here now. Here. to. How do you propose that we as a nation get rid of the hate because of someone like trump who encourages and thinks its okay to punch that person in the face and how does that make it right . How do we get the change out because thats huge and we have a president that is such an idiot that he cant figure out that he is still in the middle east when he is in israel. You are way off the subject, but okay. We vote. We didnt mobilize enough. Lets talk outside in the hallway. We need to understand we live in a broken society we have a lot of things to fix and that things we kept in the sewer and put the lid on we need to recognize they exist and not keep them in the sewer because if they are the sewer they will grow, faster and eventually come out of the sewer and to start to infect other people. So, we need to not be afraid to deal with awkward tough conversations. This could be a very big reset for us to realize that this still exists. Believe it or not people thought we were living in a post Racial Society. I think you could probably ask the people of color in this room if that exists and they would tell you know. No weve never lived in a post Racial Society and that is the truth. Christian, im just thinking, it sounds so wonderful, take them out of the sewers and embrace them. Em if you had embraced, gotten up one morning and had this revelation, came into your group followers and then embraced them they would have punched you. Yeah. They could have even killed you because they would have suspected something horrific etc. , which they couldnt deal with, so im i think its one thing to reach out to the bus driver, you know. Its quite another we are talking about people who are bigoted by belief, by profession of they may have gone through what you went through, but to spend the time go into the sewers, i would rather we spend time and changing our society which removes bullying, which removes unemployment, which teaches respect because if we put everything on top of the sewers, the sewers even if they come out will have no one toou recruit. What we do with life after hate is very much like out polio was treated. We treat those who are sick through intervention, but we also know that in order to keep other people from being sick we have to inoculate the publisher from that disease, so there is prevention and what youre talking about is prevention. I wholehearted believe in that, that if we dont victims. I think if we dont bring opportunity to the people that need it the most we will continue to have this problem because really going down to those depths where i was was not an ideological thing. It was a selfhatred thing and how can i hurt other people more than i feel hurt myself, so i think we have to deal with the trauma and with tony taught me this, the toxic shame people have an equipped them at a young age to be more inclusive, to be more understanding, to be more accepted of diversity and just other people in general. I was in montana couple weeks ago and it had a terrible situation there and i did not see one person of color the whole time i was in the state. I was therefore six days and i said who do you guys hate here. [laughter] native americans, their number one because thats what they have. At there is always someone to hate. If we are marginalized in disconnected, it doesnt matter who the other person is, there is always someone to hate, but i know that we can get past that because as unfortunate and terrible as 911 was the one day i saw a bear cut unified and it did not matter who you were or where you came from was september 12, and that gave me hope for just a minute. But, i know we can get back there. To hear anyone in the balcony and then we will wind it up. Thank you for your story. Your book is fascinating and your messages as well. My question is based upon your experience and the examples you brought up it seems like your organization and your efforts are grounded more towards white supremacists. Is there any outreach, are their efforts you are doing to name an example, muslim extremists and it percentagewise, how much of your efforts have been caged up to that point. Good question. I tend to like to use the word isis inspired terrorists because they certainly not reflect muslim ideals. We focus on the far right because that is our background. However, i also know that what we do transfers over to gangs, transfers over to you know, isis inspired extremists or jihadists and leftwin extremists as well. We do have a very Large Network of the former jihadists that we work with, but i personally have also worked with people when i was in belgium it was interesting. When i was in belgium a few months ago a man had reached out to one of the municipalities where i was speaking in and he was a return for the fighter that connect from syria, hadng done his prison time and was trying to reintegrate and he was having a hard time because he had no one to talk to. P could not talk to the people in his community because some of those people thought he was a trader. He couldnt talk to the community because some dont want to associate with him because they thought by talking to him authorities might think im a terrorists. He really had no network and he sought me out and saw it was going to speak and reached out and said i would love to speak to this man and we met in brussels and walked around andlu spend three hours, which seems to be the magic number for some reason. We spent three hours together and are stories were so strikingly parallel that was mind blowing. Both of their parents were immigrants and a settled in areas where people werent warily friendly to immigrants. His brother had been killed in syria. My brother was murdered after i left the movement. Mov we struggled with that identity and that loss of community and that sense of purpose because we both believed what we were doing at the time was the righteous thing to do and we were saving the world and we couldnt understand for the life of us why people didnt understand that, so i think some date in our future when we had the ability to scale in that direction we would like to offer our services or partner with organizations that can offer those may be culturally specific , but i believe fundamentally opportunity and is the best way to go. The most important question for me to know is did pontiac really make a firebird in 1968 . [laughter] just kidding. 28 i love the facebook. I go on it all the time, you know whatever time i have i really enjoy it and i like to connect with my friends. A lot of interesting and fun things to see. One day someone posted something about the rothschilds. I have heard this name throughout my life. I still dont know anything about them, but for that one moment i decided who are these people, you know, so i wrote the name in the search box and it must have been some kind of algorithm because all of these other sites came up and they were very subtle. They didnt seem to have likely hate you. It wasnt like that, but there was something about it that wasnt part of the phrase, wasnt quite kosher. My question to you is because you mention how subtle this movement is, what are some words that even someone, experienced facebook person like myself should look out for. Now, we are talking my language. [laughter] first of all i want to touch on your topic of algorithms. Thats important. What happens when you go online whether its social media or googling things. There are algorithms that exist that act as a recommendation just like when you that amazon and buy diapers it will say you should buy huggies. News is the same way, so when you start reading these fake news stories, and his propaganda stories it will keep recommending them to you becaust it thinks thats what you want. The danger is that you go into a silo into a bubble, into your own reality with very little crossover. Of this happens on the left and right. Of this is not exclusive to neonazis and its hard to distinguish what is real news, lets propaganda, whats fake news, with parity . We have lost our sense of Critical Thinking in many regards because we have become so reliant on the powers of the, so now to talk about some of the dog whistles that they use or some of the subtle rebranding of things that they use when they are really talking about things that when i hear it i am like i know exactly what theyre talking about. They use the term globalization and the globalists these days to really describe kind of like the International Bankers and jewish control finance and thats really what theyre talking about. They have become very very good at massaging their message though they are not saying jews control the media. They call it the liberal media now. You know, there were accusations that in the last donald trump add that he ran on election day, the star of david was used the extra picture of Hillary Clinton and when the voiceover was talking about the globalist with pictured of george sowers primus permit jewish people and when i saw that i thought the first thing, wow what, this is a white power video like i wouldve made this 30 years ago and i could have written that the speeches he is saying. What they got good at doing is massaging the message. They have toned it down so its palatable to the average person. If you go up to, you know, average american racist in the south and sake take this swastika flag and put it on your wall they are like its anti american, but give them may be a Confederate Flag or Something Else and they will say yeah, i hate black people. I will put that on my wall, so they gotten good at marketing, at packaging. The suits, you know they still have the same haircut then its just a progression and metastasized into something that is more easily palatable for the average american who has ae grievance, a legitimate grievance about something in their life and is willing to blame someone else or put aside and not Pay Attention to the misogynistic comments or racist comments are antiimmigrantts bu comments because i have to feed my family this town of 42 people where i cannot find a job. Its not right, but thats the reality. At the same time you dont have to be so sophisticated and look for euphemisms i mean log onto jew. Log onto holocaust and algorithms will give it to your. I dont know if you understand algorithms. Its part of the science ofit Ia Technology which continues and continuously measures con on every issue and so the bigots on whatever issue operate 24 seven and so the mechanism measures negative pros and cons and so if the traffic by the bigots is such that when you plug into jew you will get anti jew first and then you get pro jew because thats the way the messages aree floating in the cloud system and same thing with holocaust. If you search holocaust he will get Holocaust Denial because the 24 seven bigots operated on those networks, thats what they feed. In the past we went to paulo alto, we went to see the geniuses and we said to them look, thank you for all of these wonderful things you have given us, but they are unintended consequences of your genius and the unintended consequences is that you now give a preeminence to the negatives. Their answer was algorithms and with all due respect, nonsense. There are antidotes to algorithms and we see it now. That means when an issue arises on the algorithm charts, which hurts the commercial value of that server, whether they are yahoo, google or whatever all of a sudden they have a way to deal with the algorithms and so another thing is the alerts, be aware, respond because one of the meetings we went to to complain about when you walk on jew you get anti jew they said well, tell the Jewish Community to go on the internet is a nice things about the jews. We have nothing else to do, but three times a day go on their. By the way, we did it. There was a campaigner within a month we did change it, but thats not our job to protect, so it is a very serious problemr not only sophisticated, but in the crude manner as well. Fighting a losing battle because they are using technology, fake accounts, Artificial Intelligence to really inflate. Dont become a conspiracy theorist like them. Last question. Im so glad on the last. Im going to try to be unemotional, but im sitting here at the museum of jewish heritage, a living memorial to the holocaust. My mother was an ostrich and she will be 90 years old next month. My mother father was 93, also a holocaust survivor. Im here for the first time to visit this museum because i like the topic and im shocked, im so shocked at the fact that firstly, christian, went to tell you i love you. Compassion and the child of survivors. Im named esther after my grandmother who was exterminated my all of my mothers relatives were all exterminated. My father out of 12 children, six survived the, so im born israeli. I hope you are going to end with a question. I am. Im going to ask you, how can you with the events right now going on, whatever you think of mr. Trump or president trump, thank you for your compassion, christian, because i want to bring compassion to this room cm whether you are from the left or the right. There is an insane man who believes he can make a difference in a positive way. My parents brought me here to america your question is . The question is how can you sit here and not recognize the fact that right now america leadership in the world is meeting with the three different major relations and their attitude and the thinking is how can we bring peace to the world . How can we fight the evil in the world and were sitting here in the Holocaust Museum making fun of a man who is on a mission and the mission is the best mission you can think of in this world. Respectfully, thats not a question. Im not here for anything political. I just want to tell mr. Christian, christian, youre correct. Compassion and education are human, so thank you for coming and i would love for you to sign my book. Thank you. The last thing, respectfully i need is a holocaust survivor is a lecture from someone else to tell me how i should act,so believe, stand in terms of our tradition. You have a view. I respect it. Doesnt have to necessarily be our abuse and again, respectfully it is really out of place, it is really your comments at a place. This is not a discussion on conversation whether we like tha president , whether we agree with his politics, whether come to another lecture where does. This deals with christians experience as a lesson for us to better understand the forces of hatred, bigotry and prejudice that reside in our society. Our environment is part of it. Our election system and what happened is part of it, but what you are talking about with all the respect has little to do with what we are about. Come to another lecture when that is the subject. T. Thank you. Let me conclude. Feel free to come up afterwards happy to answer anyones question. We have to break it. The words christian, the words thank you are so [inaudible] seen across to say to you that for you to have the strength, the courage, the fortitude, this is not the first time and i dont compare i know when i used to speak about my holocaus experiences it was difficult. D it was very difficult because you bury your soul. You bury your experiences, so just to say thank you isnt enough, but thats the best. We value. We appreciate. We know its painful and its bearing your soul, a moment of despair and ugliness in your life for a greater purpose andr for the greater purpose to inspire us, to inspire us and again everything we have heard and argued etc. Your request and all the other things are difficult how do you change society . How do you change people . One step at a time, one person at a time and after all you have gone through what you want us to do . You want us to be nice to someone we dont know. You know what, its so little and yet its the whole world, so god to bless you. Continue the message. Come back. Be strong. [applause]. Thank you so much. I believe they are selling books in the library. Okay. I would love to sit and talk to all of you. If we can meet or there that would be great and i look forward to speaking with you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Reciate thank you. Book tv is in primetime on cspan to having at this month. Can i come a focus on politics with harvard law professor on how social media impacts political views and were public. Foxnews cohost eric boling talks about washington corruption in the swamp your wall street journal, ms. Jason riley discusses his book and call ms. Naomi klein on the current state of politics in her book knowest not enough. Join us at 8 00 p. M. Eastern right here on cspan2. Coverage of the net roots nation play 17 Conference Thursday and friday on cspan. Thursday, 10 30 a. M. Eastern daily host a q a about elections happening this year and a look at the 2018 midterm landscape. Friday, 1 00 p. M. Eastern, a discussion on standing up for working families and embracing progressive values. 2 30 p. M. Eastern and look at how to win back progressive power through organizing and at 4 00 p. M. Eastern developing Vision Statements for the type of society progressives want to see per join us for live coverage on cspan. Coming up in a little over an hour and half we take you to the National Press club for look at teenage drivers and road safety at 9 30 a. M. Eastern. Until then a discussion on oil companiean