explosion which was the deadliest of the country's history more than three hundred people were killed and hundreds more injured when a truck bob ripped through the heart of the city. but of course you can follow all of those stories by logging onto our website at al-jazeera dot com start al-jazeera it's the street. yes swear every. five me ok and you in the stream today what's it like to go undercover in the world of white supremacy we have extraordinary stories of people who posed as racists in an attempt to expose them. hate is on the rise in twenty seventeen for the second year in a row the number of hate groups in the u.s. rose and since nine hundred ninety nine the total number of hate groups there has more than doubled that's according to the southern poverty law center but actually racism activists say it's not just the u.s. where they're seeing evidence of a growing movement across the western world so how are they tackling it for somebody else that is infiltration going undercover as white supremacists joining us now to talk about this we have patrick hamilton he is a researcher for hope not hate an anti racism group jomo hole is senior research of the hope not hate fear wasit is a community organizer and mike german is a fellow at the brennan center for justice and also a former f.b.i. undercover agent to them it's good to see you here you all have various different stories of how you in four treated the far right let me start with a documentary called a my year in khaki a star on undercover in the far right have a look. for the past year i've infiltrated the outright in the u.k. and america. this is my story. thank. god. thank. you. joe how to not have done to have a while before fatima abdullah i ask what made you go undercover what's the premise what are you trying to do. you know i mean what's really central to what we're trying to do undercover work is find out the bits that we can't find out from surface level research i mean you can try and out so much from what they publish more so but quite often when we look at those so quite often when we look at extreme foreign organizations it's a clear difference between what they say publicly in terms of what their front house image is that they've been trying to the world and what they say privately and how they organize so that's the first and then the second big new movements like this ok like we have to try and find out how they could not be one step ahead to see how they acquire and organize in tandem and that allows us as ninety racist organization to come up with ways to tackle it and you can't talk what you don't understand is what central to understanding i'm just thinking about preparation because basically what we're talking about here is posing as a racist patrick how did you get your mindset in that space where you could spend a year being racist. well it's quite surprising how apologetic though you have to say. in places things you used to have to agree not to knowing and i focused most of what i said then i built my account at the iran criticism to the heat of the left and. freedom of speech and that sort of thing so one of the racist things that i've said over the last year close to nothing. and just take my clothes noting as you said you just have to know the long miami show what he what you like when you're going to cover looking at missions on the pacific northwest is you back here that i do you both preparing yourself to go on to cover what did you have to did. well i mean it took a lot of work because of course we weren't just trying to get into the ideological side of the movement the organization rather we were focusing on gathering evidence of criminal acts so there is sort of pretty jhelum it within these groups that are involved in manufacturing illegal weapons manufacturing explosives things like that so it was a very specific subset of the group that we were trying to get into so it required a lot of investigative preparation and finding out who was was actually involved in criminal activities so that we could focus the operation around what they needed help with basic saw new c s twenty five three as we say tell us about have. twenty five is just a character i created online as i was getting trolled i wanted to see if i could create the echo chamber effect in my favor so a new online account was necessary with a brand new digital footprint so i could hopefully get to the root of the propaganda and and what was spreading this movement so fast online and that's why i created the account so exciting feeling here twenty fifteen hours a lot of. a lot of the black life movement was out there was a lot of courting and protesting for racial justice and they were doing what online it was my can you be told side much i was just moaned that he owes i am a police brutality survivor i have also lost a friend at the hands of police and so in my own content i was attracting you say the dark side of the internet and i was able to trace some of these guys not figured out oh these are some shell accounts and so it's this idea i don't know me said two can play that game and so i decided to just see what happened and yeah it was born from that when i was doing it i didn't think it was a big deal i didn't even find it all that courageous turns out it was ideal logically courageous because i was how i was in myself but i didn't think it would turn into all this that it has become so yeah i'm honored to be in the company that i'm in right now so over fat and happy comments he talking about your experience and i told you. how to look. at to think like years ago i would have needed like acting training and like makeup in a fake id now i could just lurk and so. i started with a little info wars went on into some american renaissance national vanguard alliance and you know i thought of comments on all of videos talking bad about al sharpton in black lives matter i started be moaning race baiters like eric holder and barack obama. and just mirroring the anti-black sentiments that were thrown at me and to be honest it was kind of exhilarating. as you see as twenty five you oh i mimicking what does that person look like you know maybe i can what are you saying what are you doing but i'm trying to do was through some of the more intellectual arguments doubt and type blackness that these folks to see what else i could glean it was easy to be a hyperbolic troll and say outlandish things but i wanted to see if there was a strong ideological basis like and what i found was that well it seems to me that the right to use the white victim narrative to bait a brand new generation of guys who didn't really get the full historical knowledge of what race actually meant in this culture using the blowback from centuries of racism and freddy that blow back as oppression they were able to say well you guys are also victims here is a way out of that victimhood and so are a lot of guys without the knowledge of well for a lot of rebranded mind come five days it was interesting to see it spin out. let me put this is that that that you know i mean actually it's really really interesting what you're saying because it's absolutely true i mean one of the key elements of the all right is this is the they cost themselves the white identity movement and it's central to them is the notion of victimhood i mean it's and this is across lots of logic in the system for a movement in western europe and north america this notion that seems paradoxical to most people but they genuinely believe that the most persecuted people are whites straight christian men and the way they see it is that was what i would argue kind of left wing cultural had tremendous notions you know equality civil rights gay rights women's rights and political correctness is oppressing them and they see this kind of leveling out of societies as them being persecuted so it's up to absolutely right what he's saying those fundamental element of these fallen movements is this notion of healing oppressed. and i think that goes way back right i mean that the interesting thing i think. the most surprising thing to me when i first went into the neo nazi movement was how old these ideas are and you have to remember you know it's only one hundred fifty years ago that we were fighting to outlaw slavery in this country it's only sixty seventy years ago that there are far right had control in europe so you know these ideas were around for a long time and the way it was framed that just in a way that justified slavery and colonialism was the concept of the white man's burden right it was this infringement on. white people that there were these other people out there that we had to go and police and take care of and administrate over them and that kind of thing so so these ideas have a long heritage going back hundreds of years terry mckinney solstice on twitter what's hard to understand about master race philosophy we saw it in nazi germany israel south africa america it's hardly miss it basically what's the point of going on to cover. well i think what was interesting was it sprang up after it looked like we may a lot of progress i was doing this during the obama era and the idea of integration was if we get close to these folks we meaning black people and you see that we're just as human issue then a lot of the lynch mob culture is going to be stopping us and you know washington post you never joins the data lynch mob never smote the body of somebody burning like you did in the forty's and fifty's and sixty's so how could this spring up again it wasn't about the idea in and of itself is how did it we just heard and i think that if we understand it from that perspective it is clear what we did what we did how dangerous was it for a whole war protests something that tended to be a racist. it's in many of these clips i've been on are directly to interest to me they're actually to me and ideas are in the interest of people of the us you see i'm a white guy i'm not their primary target some of them and or a premier in the u.s. they are armed and they talk about what they want to do with fascists and gay people so our in those situations i was i felt threatened horse go to your point as a level of revelation that comes from your work definitely going undercover and then patrick shooting it there's a little clip where a democrat greg johnson tell us who really is you talk about what to do about the jewish problem which sends tangles down my spine when i even hear that language but tell us about that festival you know. is a kind of problem and now would be classed as all right figure but it's a long standing member of the american far right but a prominent member of the american far right. he's been about a very very long time and one of the things actually in terms of. infiltration of patrick captured was the first of all footage and first of the pictures of good jobs and that's another example of why this will work can be will be used but we live in an age where because of the internet flow activism has a lower social cost in some services than did previously activists can sit in their bedroom in one place in the world and gauging hate crimes online to people in other parts of the world they can gauge and follow to be is and so now infiltrating such a we find out who these people are we found out find out what they're planning but things like greg johnson when patrick managed to get his picture increases the social construct is means that people start to realize that they might not be able to do this anonymously that they decided to make that move into you know gauging an attitude hatred online we will show let's have a little look at what patrick shot under cover this is greg johnson the. this is the. because you want different. video. for every walk away from here for the control over your people for her to. be with you. for the solution without the witnesses there although i can hear. the fear running was mentioned about people sitting in not bad trips yeah talking about right philosophy so you knew there was some some agreement that you know she's that you recognize that well yeah i suppose what they call something like that the cage effect when you're driving for example certain negative aspects of your personality get amplified because you're divorced from the consequences and have in a very real way you're surrounded by cage while believe that's even taken to a higher level on the internet and so the anonymity makes it so that you don't have to say you don't have to face the consequences if you say this to a guy you know say it's like a guy in my size in my face there's going to be a level of danger that's associated with it and a lot of times face to face they changed it so yeah it is that cowardice and i'm going to call it what it is not being able to back up these convictions face to face and i hide behind the internet cable let me put this team this is from braden cause i get on twitter you know absolutely nothing from going on to cover up but social media validation and to acknowledge when you actually can bring. some oxygen some data to prove and to flourish. i would say this what happened in this trial is when they came out into the old thing was that they committed an act of murder right and i knew that this was coming i saw it as inevitable and i posted a video called a warning to the right message you're letting too many crazes into you're going to say something pretty soon something is going to happen when this manifests that they actually did do to this insane i said that they had that they could just act this way did something to remove their moral high ground and create a backlash against them socially that they're not going to recover from and so i believe that even if it is given them any bit of light it's the kind of light that shines on so i think that's negative that we need to actually remove and i think a lot of the country c.n.n. right now can i just quickly add to that point that i am i completely agree i mean i disagree with the question actually fundamentally i mean what we see depends on so far at movements don't exist online whatsoever and we have to find a place where we can be on the ground but for certain for what movements online space is hugely important to them but we don't often have offline activists don't write we think so-called now is primarily anonymous movement is primarily an online movement and we have to be in most online spaces and so the work that people are getting into those spaces in this interim is very important because otherwise they can go into these places for a long period of time on what i'm listening and engage in all sorts of horrible things a moment of assyria so i disagree actually thinking bones but requiring online and offline work this is do not call in and then i call mike says i think involved with the all right for a long time i can tell you that you know how i thing is i'm not well understood that something is very comfortable saying this is who i am this is what i believe mike i have. i was just going to go back to the last question where i think there is some fair media criticism and i don't think it's necessarily a political in and patrick or the case but you know one thing that i would recommend any media organization if you're doing overt interviews you know nobody makes these people the leader of a group it's not like there's a democratic process and they vote and they just declare they are but it's too soon as a mainstream media outlet puts a microphone in front of that makes them actually legitimate and and draws followers to them so you do have to be careful in how it how you cover these groups and particularly when they're covered in a way that brings their ideas into the means of mainstream political discourse you know i would defend their right to have their free speech but that doesn't mean we need to give them a platform. you have to and i would add that i got that that that were that that they own patrick they did i think it elevates that and actually is out challenging their ideas and the way that they organize rather than just insatiable izing. because this is some. klu klux klansmen or something shaw lie when you change right now actually bill says do you think this is a way to improve our education system to tackle right i did on the case should they be discussed rather than acknowledged. yeah i mean there's a number of things we have to do i mean we have to be better teaching history i mean i'm not responsible historian but we have to teach the history of these movements we have to teach that logical conclusions or these prejudices when an actor does politics there's a long track record there's a long history of what happens when we allow hateful ideas to go unchecked and it results in the results of gas chambers. and we have to teach children we have to educate children about the history of what these things do. there is also i mean yes it's not about necessarily just shutting everything down i mean we have to challenge kids will come into schools and classrooms and prejudices and everyone has a limits of prejudice with them and we have to challenge those in there to discuss that so yeah i mean i don't think just shouting racist or waving flags is going to be enough and in some sense we will have to engage people articulate reasons urns in ways that we disagree with and in most people we need to engage with i guess the key is encourage with normal people that might have views we disagree with and doing more robust research or something to combat when i say sions and activist individuals that are propagating these ideas or. there was a lot that we learn from your text talk i'm going to get people just go look at it or watch it but rocks other rahman here says did you find any of the people that you engage with to be able to be fine people will fine people nice people different beliefs. fine people are nice people are two different things i said i think you should people who are very kind that doesn't mean their ideologies are destructive here's what i think is most salient about this huge robbery has taken place of the white children of not only america but of the world and that is that you've been handed this shining empire and nobody really told you the details of how this employee was built nobody told you the true number of bodies that are lying beneath this empire and it's like giving somebody a company and only telling them about the assets and not the liabilities when the history is taught correctly you want to stand that racism has a certain context and that it was fundamental to creating the social caste systems that make the current world as it is right now and it was economic motives as political groups and there was certainly are cultural motives behind that and then with that context you you have a barrier for when that the wild landscape of the internet starts spewing these old and new ideas about white supremacy because you've already been inoculated against that by knowing the truth about how this thing was actually created and if you don't do that i'm sorry but it's just going to perpetuate to the next generation talking to you like any of the people that you spent a year off. i agree with what you said i mean there are of course like i met many of these people face to face many many times we had cold beer and so on and there are these moments thing that they you feel sympathy for them they have problems that i have to have problems with paying rent and and their families and so on but you're always there where what you're doing are always fair where a fair point i think psychological believes in what they want to achieve that they are nice to you because of my view i. so that always put a distance between me and them and in the end of course i don't. really feel that much sympathy for for them. to our i'm just wondering about. the seriousness of what you discovered sometimes as i was watching and reading your report i see things like this then the tory is less ceramicist charles craft this just is bizarre and ridiculous and then there was another gentleman another leader thought leader who would play not exactly later house him but he weighed it all sure it looked like he was in the hitler youth group but he was incredibly serious a very high up in the. right movement so how seriously should we be taking this. i mean look there's no doubt that you'll be the individual you're going to there's a british. who want to run in shorts all year round and you know that there's no doubt there's a level of use of terrorism war or strangeness to some of these individuals and some of these movements but that doesn't belong there dangers it doesn't come about if we're looking at this movement in the year inside yes it's extremely dangerous first of all as i say it's attracting young people in a way that some call it movement especially in western europe and struggle to do some time in one of most of those it's large numbers some of these websites have tens of thousands a hundred thousands of visitors and raising money you know some people in europe they raise two hundred grand project now running in europe so there's financing behind it and as we saw in charlottesville ideas have consequences and whether or not those monies wearing shorts or not. some of these individuals that get in this form of our business resulting in someone dying on the streets of shelves will tell us we have taken quite seriously my country and i think i have mike i think law enforcement do a better job of understanding how these groups operating particularly the criminal element within these groups operate and you know as the you. watch this coming i mean the amount of violence that was happening in these protests that waits for the most part leastways increasing it every protest every worse every year how many aiding in charlottesville so. if theo was sitting on line could see this coming and i doing research i'm going why law enforcement wasn't better here i think it's art well they can i interject something in there right there let's talk about law enforcement for me because you brought up a good a good point brother so i'm going to do it in a sentence on religion thirty seconds before the end of the show but make impact when you can do it go ahead. if the f.b.i. guys kind of terrorism when in two thousand and eight release that memo they said yeah better be looking elsewhere interation some white nationalists into the lease forces and it was ignored i think we're looking at a systemic problem it's almost like patching can joe and c.e.o. mike thank you so much for your insight into the value of going undercover in the all right movement with that goes around the well we really appreciate your insights from different parts your input from different parts of the well but before we go up a reminder that we are now streaming every day live on you tube and you can speak directly and you may find that your questions and your comments featured on the show you'll see the link to the live show every day on the out is here english it's right there you see it on the upcoming live streams and of course you can always find us on twitter using hash tag. on line and so watching everybody take. part. provoking debate the corporate taxes not job growth on the barack obama that won't do that and that's not true tackling the tough issues restrictions on media freedom all the tree killings. and crap challenging the established line every single one of the three and all thousand people who was killed with a drug dealer yes how do we know that you didn't try them didn't prosecute the putin child to the months following joint maybe has sun up front at this time on al-jazeera.