What made me turn away from hate? it s the question i m asked most often. the answer is complicated and didn t happen all at once. by 1994, i was 21 years old. married with two children. and still a committed neo-nazi skinhead. one night as i beat up a black teenager outside a mcdonald s, his eyes caught mine and it hit me. what the hell am i doing? but i couldn t let go. my wife and kids left me when it was clear i chose a violent movement over them. hatred wasn t giving my life meaning anymore.
Neo-nazi skinhead organization. i believed diversity was a code word for white genocide. that jews controlled the media. immigrants were raping our women. and i was going to save the world. recruiting vulnerable kids and transforming them into violent extremists like me. but now, instead of pulling people into hate, i m guiding them out. i invoke mein fuhrer. that s a scary thing. i know how it is to get sucked into this movement. i hate people messing with me. before i was just gabe. now i m gabe the skinhead and everyone respects me or fears me. it happened to me, and i m not willing to let it happen to anybody else. first thing i d like to say about the american flag is i don t salute the american flag
Going to think i m a trader or whatever. it s pretty refreshing to say i don t give a [ bleep] it takes a kind of twisted nerve to join the hammer skin nation. but it takes real can curage to walk away from them. it s just little stuff that happened that built that doubt more and more. just grew that seed of dissolution. i think the people that stay are afraid, afraid to start over. i want it to be me again, not thuggish skin head nazi guy. that s not how i really felt. hate always has consequences. it destroys everything in a person s life.
Because i spent eight years of my life in america s first neonazi skinhead organization. but i ve spent the last 20 years warning the public. christian picciolini joins me now. advising law enforcement and helping people disengage from hate groups. i want to help people. i feel like that s my only redemption. i ve worked on deradicalizing more than 300 individuals. but i can t win this war alone. what i see happening is a lot of violence coming. and i m struggling, can somebody like that change? is he even redeemable? hate can be broken. when former extremists like me speak out against it. this is an education into neohassism, from the clothing to the music to video games. some kid could get this and walk
Hold your hand forward and salute. this is an offshoot of the american nazi party of the 1960s. the group stages provocative rallies across the country known for flaunting swastikas, wearing nazi yuniforms and glorifying hitrer. under jeff, membership exploded, recruiting kids as young as 14. in 2011, jeff shared the official agenda on 60 minutes. his commitment to hate was unak big wous. our ideal american would be all white. and everybody else has to leave, peacefully or by force. jeff is being sued for his