My descent into America’s neo-Nazi movement -- and how I got out | Christian Picciolini

1,727,865 views ・ 2018-04-20

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00:13
My journey away from violent extremism began 22 years ago,
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when I denounced racism
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and left the American white supremacist skinhead movement
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that I had helped build.
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(Cheers and applause)
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I was just 22 years old at the time,
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but I had already spent eight years, from the time I was 14 years old,
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as one of the earliest and youngest members
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and an eventual leader within America's most violent hate movement.
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But I wasn't born into hate;
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in fact, it was quite the opposite.
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I had a relatively normal childhood.
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My parents are Italian immigrants
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who came to the United States in the mid-1960s
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and settled on the South Side of Chicago,
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where they eventually met,
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and opened a small beauty shop.
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Right after I was born, things got a little bit more difficult.
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They struggled to survive with raising a young family and a new business,
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often working seven days a week,
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14 hours a day,
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taking on second and third jobs just to earn a meager living.
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And quality time with my parents was pretty nonexistent.
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Even though I knew they loved me very much,
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growing up, I felt abandoned.
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I was lonely, and I started to withdraw,
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and then I started to resent my parents and become very angry.
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And as I was growing up, through my teenage years,
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I started to act out to try and get attention from my parents.
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And one day, when I was 14,
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I was standing in an alley, and I was smoking a joint,
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and a man who was twice my age, with a shaved head and tall black boots,
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came up to me,
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and he snatched the joint from my lips.
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Then he put his hand on my shoulder and he looked me in the eyes,
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and he said,
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"That's what the communists and the Jews want you to do
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to keep you docile."
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I was 14 years old,
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I'd been trading baseball cards and watching "Happy Days" --
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I didn't really know what a Jew was.
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(Laughter)
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It's true.
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And the only communist that I knew was the bad Russian guy
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in my favorite Rocky movie.
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(Laughter)
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And since I'm here baring my soul with you,
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I can reveal that I did not even know what the word "docile" meant.
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(Laughter)
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Dead serious.
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But it was as if this man in this alley had offered me a lifeline.
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For 14 years, I'd felt marginalized and bullied.
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I had low self-esteem.
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And frankly, I didn't know who I was, where I belonged,
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or what my purpose was.
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I was lost.
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And overnight, because this man had pulled me in,
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and I had grabbed onto that lifeline with every fiber of my being,
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I had gone from "Joanie Loves Chachi"
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to full-blown Nazi.
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Overnight.
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I started to listen to the rhetoric
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and believe it.
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I started to watch very closely as the leaders of this organization
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would target vulnerable young people who felt marginalized
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and then draw them in with promises of paradise
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that were broken.
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And then I started to recruit myself.
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I started to do that by making white-power music.
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And soon, I became the leader of that infamous organization
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that was led by that man in that alley
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who recruited me that day,
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who was America's first neo-Nazi skinhead and who had radicalized me.
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For the next eight years,
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I believed the lies that I had been fed.
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And though I saw no evidence of it whatsoever,
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I didn't hesitate to blame every Jewish person in the world
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for what I thought was a white, European genocide
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being promoted by them through a multiculturalist agenda.
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I blamed people of color
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for the crime and violence and the drugs in the city,
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completely neglecting the fact that I was committing acts of violence
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on a daily basis,
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and that in many cases,
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it was white supremacists who were funneling drugs
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into the inner cities.
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And I blamed immigrants
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for taking jobs from white Americans,
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completely neglecting the fact that my parents were hardworking immigrants
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who struggled to survive,
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despite not getting help from anybody else.
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For the next eight years,
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I saw friends die,
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I saw others go to prison and inflict untold pain
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on countless victims and their families' lives.
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I heard horrific stories from young women in the movement,
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who'd been brutally raped by the very men they were conditioned to trust,
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and I myself committed acts of violence against people,
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solely for the color of their skin,
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who they loved,
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or the god that they prayed to.
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I stockpiled weapons for what I thought was an upcoming race war.
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I went to six high schools;
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I was kicked out of four of them,
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one of them, twice.
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And 25 years ago, I wrote and performed racist music
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that found its way to the internet decades later
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and partially inspired a young white nationalist
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to walk into a sacred Charleston, South Carolina, church
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and senselessly massacre nine innocent people.
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But then my life changed.
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At 19 years old, I met a girl who was not in the movement,
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who didn't have a racist bone in her body,
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and I fell in love with her.
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And at 19, we got married,
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and we had our first son.
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And when I held my son in my arms in the delivery room that day,
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not only did I reconnect with some of the innocence that I had lost
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at 14 years old,
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but it also began to challenge
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the very important things that drew me to the movement to begin with:
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identity, community and purpose --
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things that I had been struggling with as a young boy.
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And now, I struggled with the concept of who I was again.
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Was I this neo-Nazi hatemonger,
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or was I a caring father and husband?
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Was my community the one that I had manufactured around me
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to boost my own ego,
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because I felt self-hatred for myself and I wanted to project it onto others,
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or was it the one that I had physically given life to?
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Was my purpose to scorch the earth
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or was it to make it a better place for my family?
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And suddenly, like a ton of bricks hit me,
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I became very confused with who I'd been for the last eight years.
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And if only I'd been brave enough to walk away at that moment,
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to understand what the struggle was that was happening inside of me,
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then maybe tragedy could have been averted.
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Instead, I did compromise.
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I took myself off the streets for the benefit of my family,
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because I was nervous that maybe I could go to jail or end up dead,
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and they would have to fend for themselves.
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So I stepped back as a leader,
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and instead I opened a record store
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that I was going to sell white-power music in, of course,
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because I was importing it in from Europe.
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But I knew that if I was just a racist store selling racist music
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the community would not allow me to be there.
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So I decided I was going to also stock the shelves with other music,
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like punk rock and heavy metal
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and hip-hop.
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And while the white-power music that I was selling
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was 75 percent of my gross revenue,
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because people were driving in from all over the country to buy it
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from the only store that was selling it,
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I also had customers come in to buy the other music.
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And eventually, they started to talk to me.
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One day, a young black teen came in,
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and he was visibly upset.
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And I decided to ask him what was wrong.
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And he told me that his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
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And suddenly, this young black teenager,
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who I'd never had a meaningful conversation or interaction with,
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I was able to connect with,
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because my own mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer,
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and I could feel his pain.
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On another occasion, a gay couple came in with their son,
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and it was undeniable to me that they loved their son
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in the same profound ways that I loved mine.
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And suddenly, I couldn't rationalize or justify the prejudice
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that I had in my head.
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I decided to pull the white-power music from the inventory
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when I became too embarrassed to sell it in front of my new friends.
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And of course, the store couldn't sustain itself,
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so I had to close it.
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At that same time, I lost nearly everything in my life.
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I used it as an opportunity to walk away
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from the movement that I'd been a part of for eight years,
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the only identity, community and purpose that I'd really known for most of my life.
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So I had nobody.
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I lost my livelihood because I closed the store.
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I didn't have a great relationship with my parents, even though they tried.
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And my wife and children left me,
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because I hadn't left the movement and disengaged quickly enough.
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And suddenly,
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I didn't know who I was again,
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or where I fit in
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or what my purpose was supposed to be.
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I was miserable inside,
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and I often woke up in the morning
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wishing that I hadn't.
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About five years in,
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one of the few friends that I had was concerned about my well-being,
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and she came to me and she said,
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"You need to do something, because I don't want to see you die."
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And she suggested that I go apply for a job where she worked,
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at a company called IBM.
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Yeah, I thought she was crazy, too.
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(Laughter)
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Here I was, a closeted ex-Nazi covered in hate tattoos.
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I didn't go to college.
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I'd been kicked out of multiple high schools multiple times.
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I didn't even own a computer.
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But I went in,
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and somehow, miraculously, I got the job.
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I was thrilled.
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And then I became terrified to learn
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that they'd actually be putting me back at my old high school,
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the same one I got kicked out of twice,
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to install their computers.
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This was a high school where I had committed acts of violence
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against students, against faculty;
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where I had protested out in front of the school for equal rights for whites
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and even had a sit-in in the cafeteria
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to try and demand a white student union.
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And of course, as karma would have it,
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within the first couple of hours,
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who walks right by me but Mr. Johnny Holmes,
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the tough black security guard I had gotten in a fistfight with,
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that got me kicked out the second time
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and led out in handcuffs from the school.
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He didn't recognize me,
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but I saw him,
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and I didn't know what to do.
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I was frozen; I was this grown man now, years out of the movement,
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and I was sweating and I was trembling.
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But I decided I had to do something.
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And I decided I needed to suffer under the weight of my past,
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because for five years I had tried to outrun it.
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I'd tried to make new friends and cover my tattoos with long sleeves,
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and I wouldn't admit it
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because I was afraid of being judged
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the same way I had judged other people.
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Well, I decided I was going to chase Mr. Holmes out to the parking lot --
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probably not the smartest decision that I made.
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(Laughter)
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But when I found him, he was getting into his car,
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and I tapped him on the shoulder.
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And when he turned around and he recognized me,
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he took a step back because he was afraid.
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And I didn't know what to say.
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Finally, the words came out of my mouth, and all I could think to say was,
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"I'm sorry."
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And he embraced me,
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and he forgave me.
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And he encouraged me to forgive myself.
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He recognized that it wasn't the story of some broken go-nowhere kid
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who was going to just join a gang and go to prison.
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He knew that this was the story of every young person who was vulnerable,
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who was searching for identity, community and purpose,
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and then hit a wall
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and was unable to find it
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and went down a dark path.
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And he made me promise one thing,
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that I would tell my story to whoever would listen.
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That was 18 years ago,
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and I've been doing it ever since.
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(Applause)
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You might be asking yourself right now:
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How does a good kid from a hardworking immigrant family
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end up going down such a dark path?
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One word: potholes.
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That's right. Potholes.
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I had a lot of potholes when I was kid.
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We all had them --
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you know, the things in life that we hit
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that invariably just kind of nudge us off our path,
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and if they remain unresolved
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or untreated
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or not dealt with,
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sometimes we can get dangerously lost down pretty dark corridors.
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Potholes can be things like trauma,
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abuse, unemployment,
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neglect,
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untreated mental health conditions,
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even privilege.
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And if we hit enough potholes on our journey in life,
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and we don't have the resources or the help to navigate around them
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or to pull us out,
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well, sometimes good people end up doing bad things.
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One such person who had potholes is Darrell.
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Darrell is from upstate New York.
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He had read my memoir,
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and he was really upset about the ending.
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You see, I'd gotten out of the movement
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and he was still in.
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And he emailed me and he said,
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"I didn't really like the way that turned out."
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And I said, "Well, I'm sorry."
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(Laughter)
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"But if you want to talk about it, we could certainly do that."
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And after a couple of weeks of going back and forth with Darrell,
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I learned he was a 31-year-old military veteran who had been injured
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and was really angry about not being able to go to Afghanistan
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to kill Muslims.
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And one day on the phone,
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he told me that he had seen a Muslim man in the park praying,
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and that all he wanted to do was kick him in the face.
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I flew to Buffalo the next day,
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and I sat down with Darrell,
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and I asked him,
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"Have you ever met a Muslim person before?"
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And he said, "No!
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Why the hell would I want to do that?
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They're evil. I don't want anything to do with them."
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I said, "OK."
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So I excused myself, and I went into the bathroom
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and I took my phone out in the bathroom,
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and I Googled the local mosque,
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and I called them very quietly from the bathroom,
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and I said, "Excuse me, imam, I need a favor.
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I have a Christian man
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who would really love to learn more about your religion."
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(Laughter)
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"Do you mind if we stop by?"
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Well, it took some convincing for Darrell to go,
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but finally we got there,
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and when I knocked on the door,
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the imam said he only had 15 minutes left for us,
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because he was preparing for a prayer service.
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I said, "We'll take it."
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We went in,
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and two and a half hours later, we came out after hugging and crying
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and, very strangely, bonding over Chuck Norris for some reason.
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(Laughter)
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I don't know what it was about that,
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17:53
but that's what happened.
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And I'm happy to say now that Darrell and the imam,
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17:59
you can often find them at the local falafel stand,
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18:02
having lunch together.
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(Applause)
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You see, it's our disconnection from each other.
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Hatred is born of ignorance.
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Fear is its father, and isolation is its mother.
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18:21
When we don't understand something, we tend to be afraid of it,
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18:25
and if we keep ourselves from it,
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that fear grows, and sometimes, it turns into hatred.
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18:31
Since I've left the movement, I've helped over a hundred people
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18:34
disengage from extremist movements, from white supremacist groups --
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(Applause)
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18:46
to even jihadist groups.
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18:47
And the way I do that is not by arguing with them,
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18:52
not by debating them,
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18:53
not by even telling them they're wrong,
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18:56
even though, boy, I want to sometimes.
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18:58
I don't do that.
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19:00
Instead, I don't push them away.
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19:02
I draw them in closer,
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19:05
and I listen very closely for their potholes,
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19:10
and then I begin to fill them in.
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19:12
I try to make people more resilient,
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19:14
more self-confident,
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19:16
more able to have skills to compete in the marketplace
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19:20
so that they don't have to blame the other,
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the other that they've never met.
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I'd like to just leave you with one last thing before I go.
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19:32
Of all the people I've worked with, they will all tell you the same thing.
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One, they became extremists
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19:40
because they wanted to belong, not because of ideology or dogma.
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19:44
And second, what brought them out
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19:48
was receiving compassion
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19:50
from the people they least deserved it from,
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19:53
when they least deserved it.
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19:54
(Applause)
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So I would like to leave you with a challenge:
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19:59
go out there today, tomorrow -- hopefully every day --
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20:04
find somebody that you think is undeserving of your compassion
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20:08
and give it to them,
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20:10
because I guarantee you,
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they're the ones who need it the most.
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Thank you very much.
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20:15
(Applause)
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1963
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