Person whose name is on the show,michelle me out. Thank you so much john. Welcome to the michelle me out show. It is your a through z covering the lgbt and everyone in between. Our special guest is the founder of the free radical project, a Global Network of former extremists who were the radicalizing others, trying to lead the movement by providing counseling. Hes an and in any Award Winning producer, proud father of two and an author and here to talk about his new book breaking hate confronting the new culture of extremism is christian picciolini. Welcome to the show. [applause] so this book and its your second book and wow, i flew through the 200 pages so quickly, like a hungry child afterschool. Unand because i was just craving some of this truth but before we dive into all these truths the book does share stories from other individuals that you encounter whether direct or indirect and through your work. I think we should start with telling your story and how that encounter with clark martel lead you to the chicago area skinheads, americas first organized neonazi group. Thank you for having me and its a privilege to be here and an honor but its a privilege because i know often times people who dont look like me, who have a darker skin color sometimes dont get the same Second Chances i do so i wantto acknowledge that. I was born on the south side of chicago to italian immigrant parents who worked very, very hard and growing up i didnt see them very often. They were working seven days a week, 14 hours a day so i grew up isolated from them. And was really searching for a sense of identity, community and purpose like most of us do and i found it in an alley in 1987. While i wwas smoking a joint and clark martel, the man who recruited me walked up to me, pulled a joint from mymouth, looked me in the eye and said thats what the communists and the jews want you to do to keep you dos file. At 14 i didnt know what a communist was. I didnt know if i met a jewish person and i didnt know what the word dos i lament. But that was the first time i felt somebody saw me. And really drew me in and i didnt know it at that time but i had just been recruited at 14 years old to americas first neonazi skinhead group and clark martel was americas first neonazi skinhead leader. And although it didnt sit with me in my dna, i wasnt raised as a racist, my parents were immigrants who came over from italy in the 60s and they were often victims of prejudice so it wasnt how i was raised so it was foreign to me but i was willing to swallow the things i didnt understand but my reward was this sense of agency. This kind of brotherhood, this community that i had joined that i was lacking and that felt like it empowered me until i recognize how toxic it was and i stayed in fort 8 years until i was 23. And i think every day i was in i had questions about what i was involved in but it became increasingly hard to leave because i was afraid of going back to the nothingness that i had 14 and i can say i had a coach, a ballerina truth, anybody else walked up to me in that alley at 14 i would have gone with them it just didnt happen. It would have been a great ballet career. You dont want to see me dance, trust me. And you of course did leave. Can you tell us what did it for you . I was in for great eight years and i dont think there was a day i didnt question what i was involved in at least very quietly. But i also met people along the way that challenged me, not in an aggressive way, not through debate or telling me i was wrong but through a lived experience and getting to know them. I opened a record store in 1995 to sell racist music that i was making and importing but i also sold a small section of hiphop music and punk rock music and heavy metal music never expecting anybody to come in and buy those things. It was just me going to city halland the saying i want to opena record store. I couldnt tell them i was selling nazi music and people came in to shop for it, people of color. People from the Lgbtq Community and it was the first time i had an interaction with people outside my Social Circle and i recognized quickly once that happened that i actually respected them more, like them more and wanted to be around them more than the people i surrounded myself with for 8 years and eventually i became embarrassed to sell that music, pulled it from the shelves and it was 75 percent of my revenue so i had to close the store and that gave me an opportunity to disengage from the movement. I should also say my wife and children had left me by that point because i was involved. My wife, we got married at 18, had our first son at 19, second son at 21 and she never was supportive of what i was involved in, she hated it and i failed to prioritize my family over the Movement Even though i had this sitting in front of me this identity, purpose of being a father and a husband i still didnt see it. Youre going over that fast but in your book your pointing out icp, identity, community and purpose. Not the same Insane Clown Posse but talk a bit more about it. It gets to theheart of how someone was able to grab you and pull you into the movement. At some point in o our lives we have to find that. It develops our values. Its the committee were part of, family. So people gravitate towards extremist movements, talk about this in depth in my book, do so because theyre searching for unity unity purpose, not hate. The ideology is the final component that defied the locks into place that allows them to then blame the payment someone else. But, of course, its also tried Unity Committee purpose and were not all extremists, may be 2020 we kind of art, but thats a joke. [laughing] but i think what the differentiator is, a search for identity Committee Purpose but also a broken search where what i call potholes in our lifes journey. Potholes are traumas and trauma can be 1 million different things. They canan be of use. It could poverty. It can be the loss of a loved one, grief, divorce. For me it was abandoned meant. I felt abandoned by my pairs but it could also be Mental Illness, joblessness, poverty. But even privilege can be a pothole. Privilege keep this isolated from humidity. That can also detour us. These potholes detours to the fringes where these fringes narratives live and are plenty there. And extremist narrative or extremist behavior can be anything from being a neonazi to flying to syria to join isis, to joining a gang, to become a school shooter, even being a drug use. That is a manifestation extremist behavior at a think itself extremism could be suicide. Instead of taking your paint out on someone else its taking out on yourself. If we start to look at why the motivations of why people engage in these extremist behaviors,t e can learn how to fill the potholes so that we can bring people back. We do share all of the stories tiell back into the why. Ill start with you and ask you, you answered it, the why. But any time in the few years that you are a part of did they call it cash . Chicago area skinheads, cash. Did you ever feel, do you ever feel horrible . Did compassion over ever come the ideology that you started believing in or the hate that was poison your mind and your heart . Yeah, i dont know i felt guilty but it wasnt a i safe place to show that. It was in a place to vulnerable with my peers. I suspect i wasnt the only one who stopped those types of feelings down and embraced the hatred even more so because there was a reward in that. Being a violent, saying violent things was the price of admission. It is what kept us there. What think that this feeling of respect for each other even though there was no respect. We didnt even have selfrespect. I really think its a tough thing to think that people can leave those movements. I know its hard to believe, maybe if were nice to quoteunquote the bad people, that they might change but i can tell you i felt 300 people disengage and it isnt the compassion they receive when they least expect it for people they least deserve it sometimes. That is most powerful thing ive seen. Lets begin with story number one in the book, which i think speaks to a lot of the questions that at least i have as as a 38 year old gender nonconforming woman from stockton, california, and grew up in poverty, and those surrounding me thinking life and now doing this program here at the Commonwealth Club tryingb to address the political challenges we are facing. The book opens up with a story of cassandra, a young girl from new jersey, who gets a deep into an internet relationship. Im going to let you tell the story because theres so much of there, at a think you will understand why it would capture some of a mage if that ever hit in the room but especially someone like myself. Cassandra was a 17yearold girl when her parents contacted me, which is often the case, a bystander will contact me for help. She was, she is a twin living in new jersey who struggled with social anxiety her whole life wash his sister was very social and t very active. The was the dynamic between them that was difficult for cassandra to get beyond, but in 2016 she had been recruited by an online boyfriend, a man who, 21yearold man who said he was from idaho, had blonde hair and blue eyes. And recruited her to be a mouthpiece for propaganda. She was a 17 making Holocaust Denial videos, prowhite videos online and was getting a significant following of people. And was dating this guy who kept coercing her to do these things. When her parentsth contacted me after about a month or so, my investigation, i discovered her boyfriend was at 21yearold man from idaho with blonde hair and blue eyes. In fact, it was two people. One being a russian man in st. Petersburg who was 31, and another one being a peruvianth National Living not far from here in Union City California who were working togetheris essentially to catfish or pretend to be somebody else and forth her into being a girlfriend. They were recruiting of the girls come some as young as 14 by pretending to be the boyfriend. He would steal photos online and videos and send them to her as if they were his. He would strip the audio ofcom record his own audio. She had never seen him, and when her parents contacted me she was very deep in this and i turned what it also discovered as part of my investigation and october of 2016 before the president ial election was that they had applied toio thousandsf other internet accounts, social media accounts, that were neonazi, protrump, antihillary but they were all these fake russian troll accounts. Of course nobody knew that effective because were not talking about that. I turned over 22 gigabytes of information over to the fbi the first week of november before the election. I said im not exactly sure what i found what i have these thousands of theno count federal tiger russia, all pronazi and protrump and antihillary but they are not americans stealing this. They are involved with this girl. I think with a problem because i was tracking these accounts and discovered they were changing from these protrump pronazi accounts to them black lives matter account and they would become feminist account and they became lgbt accounts and the became something else. The goal was gorgeous of flooding. Against all these other kinds of accounts they were creating and pullingot and real americans as part of this debate. You did realize you literally had stumbled across, not literally but you stumble across what was probably literally the biggest story of the century. Because about three months later the fbi and cia came out and said we have discovered russian meddling or influencing on social media through Companies Like facebook and whatnot. I wish the fbi wouldve done a because he never contacted me back after turn over their information. I thought they thought i was crazy, off the street with that info but it proved to be accurate. I sent an email email that wee helical campaign with that information and the astral information and they give it to them and theyy also didnt repl. At least they sent you a request for funds. Thats what campaigns do. I i wish i could tell he was the truth, but instead what happened was around that time formal Organization Nonprofit that i was leaving, cofounded under the Obama Administration had one grid for 400,000 to focus on combating what to present online. Patiently waited for the money and administration changed and the 400,000 grant was rescinded. There were 32 groups that had one as part of this grant. We were the only group focus of White Supremacy. Everyone else was focus on radical islamve and we were the only group rescinded. We were not given a recent. Was the reason that they give you for pretty much canceling this grant that you thought you going to get . Was it a tweet . Well, no. A tweet to something else. What i got was an email from the administrator who said im sorry, that we have reviewed all the grant winners and we had deemed your organization does not qualify. It was around the same time i have tweeted something to the president which was probably not great. I shared by police about the situation, and actually the date the muslim ban, he announced the muslim ban that he is going to put that in. I think i said after you or something. F you. They tried, the head of the nse at the time her email leaked. The tinnitus of the great first and then he went back and said lets go find information on this group for us just if i take ms. They found that tweet after the fact. Was there something born to that losing that grant, the wk you wouldve done, which was it a lot to do with focusing on internet and a framework around protecting young people to be the Antidefamation League cited around 35 increase of extremists, violence or extremist related violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center also cited above same about the same percentage of increase in 20172018. There something to be said about the rise of extremists related to murders and violence, especiallyle during this administration. Hate to correlate it all and point fingers, but id love for you to kind of talk about your thoughts on the internets impact on the rise of extremist activities and White Supremacists have ganda. Pahpa ganda. Approaches me of something of that nature. I was a delinquent kid at that time but now we have millions of alienated people who are online their only reality is Virtual Reality there only connections to other people and chat rooms and these people that are drawn to these narratives. And from these foreign actors with community and purpose online. It doesnt have to jive with the reality. But unfortunately it is spilling out to the real world. And then attributed to this movement and then there is the whole transnational component that most people are not aware of that this is an american problem and it exist although i have to say never in my lifetime did i ever think what i said 30 years ago would be coming out of a twitter feed or the person in the highest office and to me that is very scary because they do feel that somebody has their back. That grant that we lost was completely focused with online the radicalization we were ready to launch a network because that is where most people are radicalized and it was pulled for weeks before charlottesville. And throughout the book as you keep sharing other stories i was reminded of things in the 1970s there was quite a number of years there are people did not buy the idea of mind control people of the cold. And with the idea to the program and a lot of the same thing to catch a Vulnerable Person alienated and alone and hurting in some way to divide the community. And it is a big issue all the things youve been involved in. So are you optimistic we would get over this . The tide is rising. We need to be very careful. If we have a problem with White Nationalism to say its a folks and blown out of proportion sometimes multiple requests per day from parents and people involved in these movements. Never in a life have i got a request from a ten yearold ki kid. But im getting that now. We have seen a rise in violence and propaganda distribution on college campuses. And they know which narratives to pitch. And to be very effective while we are still debating if there is a problem. And that has been forged for decades. But then on the threepiece suit. But he actually lived in moscow 1999 through 2003. That he saw blooded his apartment to another supremacist they have been building these alliances for a long time. And that base which they call themselves the base a little translation for al qaeda there is white g hardware they tried to take those tactics of how they kill they drive their car cars, small groups the propaganda video. The narrative in the Mainstream Media in of which Mental Illness is cited for the reasons why in the book and with that autistic spectrum disorder and that after serving two tours but it is a little dangerous to fault and point fingers and on the dangers of that. Off to the alienation and disconnection from society. The bullying to establish intimate relationships with friends and things like that. And 75 percent of the people are dealing with an emotional disorder everything from depression to bipolar and schizophrenia. And those that dont become extremist but we have to break that equivalent. And those Multiplayer Online video games. For who knows where in the world taking them from the call of duty scenario and then the nword gauging of people respond to that and then sometimes thats from a nervous five yearold. And those that respond positively to a Smaller Group and then it ramps up from there. What we need to understand the bridges and roads are fine but we have our people in the best things we can do is offer Early Adolescent Mental Health care. To make sure people are set up with opportunities. And as adults we have to learn to be vulnerable with our children. That they have to impress and then they will never learn to be vulnerable. And then we need to build up. We see these stories of the technological anger. And how people are increasingly communicating mostly thro