Making Sense - Sam Harris - #121 — White Power

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.760 Today I'm presenting the audio from the event in Dallas I did with Christian Picciolini.

00:00:52.280 Christian's written a wonderful book, White American Youth, which recounts his experience

00:00:58.060 as a neo-Nazi and leader of the Hammerskin Nation.

00:01:04.020 In this podcast, we talk about how he got out of the movement, and we talk about the

00:01:08.700 cult-like dynamics of white supremacy, and just the state of things on the extreme right

00:01:14.480 in the U.S. and Europe at the moment.

00:01:17.440 Many related issues, a very long Q&A with the audience.

00:01:21.300 I thought it was a great event.

00:01:22.620 So, without further delay, I give you Christian Picciolini.

00:01:27.000 Thank you very much.

00:01:45.460 Thank you very much.

00:01:55.920 I've never been to Dallas before, so it's an honor.

00:02:01.820 Thank you.

00:02:02.420 I can only say that once, so you won't hear me use that line again.

00:02:09.300 Really, it's an honor to be here, and I'm so happy all of you came out.

00:02:14.160 I really think this is going to be a good one.

00:02:15.500 I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time.

00:02:18.600 My guest tonight became a white supremacist at the age of 14.

00:02:22.840 And, yes, well, he agrees with you.

00:02:28.320 He became a leader in the Hammerskin Nation, which is one of the most violent hate groups 1.00

00:02:33.600 in the world.

00:02:35.000 And after leaving that, he founded a group called Life After Hate, which was a non-profit

00:02:41.340 dedicated to countering racism.

00:02:44.140 He's given a TEDx talk.

00:02:45.760 He's won an Emmy for his role as a director and executive producer of an anti-hate video

00:02:50.400 campaign.

00:02:50.940 He's the author of a really wonderful book, White American Youth, My Descent into America's

00:02:56.440 Most Violent Hate Movement and How I Got Out.

00:02:59.280 And he's been profiled on 60 Minutes.

00:03:01.460 He is a guy you should hear more from.

00:03:03.920 So please welcome Christian Picciolini.

00:03:11.600 Christian, thank you for coming.

00:03:12.860 Thank you.

00:03:13.240 I would have booed myself, too, I think.

00:03:25.280 It's good to be back.

00:03:26.700 Really.

00:03:27.040 Well, I've just spent an hour with Christian, and he is like the nicest guy in the world.

00:03:33.300 And when you read his book, which you really must do, you will be astonished at how, I mean,

00:03:42.120 you would basically live like a violent psychopath for many years.

00:03:47.680 Let me pour you a long glass of water.

00:03:50.120 Thank you.

00:03:50.700 I appreciate that.

00:03:51.580 Honestly, like the level of violence described in this book is quite intense.

00:04:00.440 How, I mean, so you're obviously not a psychopath.

00:04:02.960 I am.

00:04:04.280 How do you explain that chapter of your life?

00:04:07.660 Well, I was recruited in 1987 into America's first neo-Nazi skinhead group when I was 14

00:04:17.880 years old.

00:04:19.440 And, you know, most people, I think, think that people who do that come from broken homes

00:04:24.980 and, you know, deeply traumatic lives, and they do.

00:04:29.800 But my life was pretty normal.

00:04:31.760 My parents were Italian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 60s from Europe, and they

00:04:39.140 were the victims of prejudice when they came.

00:04:41.200 So it wasn't, you know, the way I was raised.

00:04:43.860 But because my parents were immigrants, they had to work seven days a week, 14 hours a day

00:04:49.280 to run a small business, and I never saw them.

00:04:51.280 And at that age, growing up, I wondered what I had done to push them away.

00:04:56.140 So I felt very abandoned, and I was very bullied, and didn't have any friends.

00:05:00.760 And so I was searching very desperately for an identity, a community, and a purpose.

00:05:07.100 And one day, at 14, probably at my lowest point, a man drove his car in an alley when

00:05:15.220 I was smoking a joint.

00:05:17.020 And he got out of the car, and he pulled the joint from my mouth, and he looked me in the

00:05:21.300 eyes, and he said, that's what the communists and the Jews want you to do to keep you docile. 0.74

00:05:26.960 I was 14.

00:05:27.820 I didn't know what the hell a communist or a Jew or what the word docile meant.

00:05:32.040 It's true.

00:05:33.800 But it was the first time that I felt like somebody, he was twice my age, and he, like

00:05:39.400 somebody accepted me, like somebody was drawing me in, because he would make me feel proud

00:05:43.600 of who I was, and I certainly was proud.

00:05:46.800 But I was angry.

00:05:47.860 I was angry at my parents, and I was angry at the world.

00:05:52.940 This is inadvertently the best pro-marijuana commercial ever.

00:05:58.280 You should just have kept smoking that joint, and none of this would have happened.

00:06:05.260 Oh my God.

00:06:05.960 So, actually, this story even puts more of the onus on you, because you were not from

00:06:16.080 a broken home.

00:06:16.720 No, I wasn't.

00:06:17.260 So you're like a normal kid who just had a single conversation.

00:06:22.140 One single conversation, but 14 years of feeling very marginalized and very much on the fringes.

00:06:28.420 But there's so many kids in that position, and the thing that one doesn't often think

00:06:34.140 about when one has no connection to groups like this is this phenomenon of recruitment.

00:06:39.660 And we'll talk about this, because this is something that you're now trying to counter,

00:06:44.240 and it's easy to picture if you take five minutes to think about it, but these movements

00:06:51.820 do function very much like religious cults.

00:06:55.300 I mean, recruitment is a major feature of what's happening.

00:06:58.420 And fear rhetoric, right?

00:07:00.600 The idea that if you don't do something, you're doomed.

00:07:04.140 And it was very much that.

00:07:05.880 You know, it didn't start out that way.

00:07:07.540 At first, when I was recruited, it started out with instilling the sense of European pride

00:07:12.700 that my ancestors were, you know, great warriors and artists and composers.

00:07:17.520 And, you know, I grew up in an Italian bubble, so I was very proud of being Italian.

00:07:24.080 But then it would kind of morph into something a little bit more sinister.

00:07:28.420 It would morph into this idea that somebody now wanted to take that pride away from me.

00:07:33.280 And then it started to go into naming who those people were.

00:07:37.360 You know, and of course, you know, in the white supremacist movement, they will blame Jews,

00:07:42.640 African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, basically anybody who's not white. 0.88

00:07:46.420 And they will even blame white people.

00:07:48.180 So what did you actually believe and how quickly did you ramp up into believing those things?

00:07:55.780 Well, I literally went from trading baseball cards that week to, you know, shaving my head,

00:08:01.380 getting a pair of boots, you know, probably tattooing a swastika on me very quickly.

00:08:09.880 You know, at first, I faked it.

00:08:13.440 I didn't know what the hell anybody was talking about.

00:08:15.780 I was not political at 14 like young people are today. 1.00

00:08:20.500 And I just kind of nodded my head and went along.

00:08:22.920 It was a group of people to hang out with.

00:08:24.860 But the way I got my, most of my indoctrination was through music.

00:08:27.800 There, there's a brand of music out there that, that at that time was very new to America.

00:08:34.160 So we were listening to bands from Britain and from Germany of racist music made by white 0.89

00:08:40.100 supremacists that was propaganda.

00:08:42.020 It was education.

00:08:43.560 And that's how I got most of my education early on until I took over leadership of that

00:08:49.480 organization at 16 years old, because the man who recruited me, who was America's first

00:08:54.320 neo-Nazi skinhead leader, went to prison for a series of violent crimes.

00:09:00.540 So, yeah, and again, it's very difficult to exaggerate the level of violence you guys

00:09:05.680 were involved in.

00:09:06.800 So it really is kind of a miracle that you didn't go to prison for what you were doing.

00:09:10.520 Are we talking about dozens or hundreds of assaults?

00:09:14.100 I mean, how much?

00:09:15.260 Well, I would say hundreds of altercations, fights.

00:09:20.540 Some of those were, you know, our group against other groups that were protesting our group.

00:09:25.340 Yeah, people who knew they wanted to get into a fight with you.

00:09:27.800 Right.

00:09:28.500 Yeah.

00:09:28.800 I mean, we had our version of Antifa then, you know, they weren't called Antifa, which

00:09:33.600 is, you know, who is typically protesting these white supremacist groups these days.

00:09:38.680 We had gangs of anti-racist skinheads that we would fight quite often.

00:09:43.300 In fact, we fought white people more than we fought anybody else. 0.94

00:09:46.160 But there were absolutely, you know, dozens of violent attacks against people solely for

00:09:54.740 the color of their skin or who they prayed to or who they loved.

00:09:58.920 I mean, it was, we were pretty brutal.

00:10:01.880 But I could tell you something.

00:10:03.020 I never met a white supremacist with positive self-esteem.

00:10:06.820 And also, I never met a white supremacist that didn't hate themselves and then used that

00:10:11.920 self-loathing to project it onto other people so that they didn't have to deal with their

00:10:16.660 own pain.

00:10:17.860 They, if they could make somebody feel worse than they felt, that made them feel better,

00:10:21.560 more superior.

00:10:22.600 So now how much of this was analogous to just being in an ordinary gang and getting off on

00:10:28.620 the tribal component of power and violence?

00:10:33.140 Quite a bit of it.

00:10:34.040 I would say, you know, for our, during the mid-80s and early 90s, it was very much like

00:10:40.860 a gang.

00:10:41.900 You know, there were, there was an identity, an outfit that we wore.

00:10:45.960 We had our colors, you know, we wore patches to identify us.

00:10:50.740 And we operated in different cities and we were very organized.

00:10:53.960 But then as the years progressed, and I think we're seeing a lot of this now, is it became

00:10:59.680 much more organized.

00:11:02.380 It's when it started to infect a little bit more of the mainstream with a more palatable

00:11:06.980 message.

00:11:08.840 That's, that's when I think it became much, much more dangerous.

00:11:12.380 Now, did you, have you gotten tattoos removed?

00:11:14.980 Is that, that's a component of getting out of this life, right?

00:11:18.640 I am almost completely covered in tattoos, but I don't have any of my old tattoos remaining.

00:11:23.300 I've never gotten them removed.

00:11:24.640 I've had them covered over.

00:11:26.340 Right.

00:11:27.340 I'm glad to notice that you're not one of those geniuses who got a swastika on his forehead

00:11:32.120 or.

00:11:34.700 I can't tell you how many geniuses I've had to help remove swastikas from their foreheads. 0.97

00:11:39.940 That seems like a, that's, that's, you have to be especially certain of your ideology that

00:11:45.520 to know that you want it on your forehead for the rest of your life.

00:11:49.060 You know, if you have to tattoo a swastika on your forehead, you probably don't know very

00:11:52.980 much about your ideology to begin with, I think.

00:11:56.200 I know a very prominent scientist who has the Apple logo tattooed on his bicep and.

00:12:02.100 Is it in case he forgets?

00:12:03.320 Yeah.

00:12:03.580 I got, I got to think he's, he regrets that now, but someday I'll have him on the podcast.

00:12:08.060 Yes.

00:12:10.880 So, but you, you do downplay the role of ideology, at least in this context, right?

00:12:17.280 It is a lot about male bonding and disaffection from the rest of the world and getting off

00:12:24.880 on violence and not, but clearly belief plays a part because you wouldn't know who you hate

00:12:31.240 if you didn't have certain beliefs about white supremacy or the significance of race or.

00:12:36.680 The ideology is, is kind of the tie that binds them together.

00:12:40.460 It's the license to be angry, to be violent.

00:12:43.920 It's the projection of, of purpose.

00:12:47.460 But I don't believe that ideology or dogma are what drive most people into hate movements

00:12:54.160 or extremist movements.

00:12:55.300 I really do think it's a broken search for identity, community, and purpose.

00:12:58.800 And those are three fundamental needs that every human being has.

00:13:02.900 We all want to know who we are, where we belong, and what we're supposed to do with

00:13:06.820 our lives.

00:13:07.880 And I, I have this theory that I call the pothole theory.

00:13:12.460 If in our lives we hit potholes in the road of life and we don't have the support or the

00:13:19.280 guidance to navigate around them, like a family structure or friends.

00:13:23.080 Sometimes we get stuck in those potholes or we get detoured down a really dark alley.

00:13:28.500 And those potholes can be anything from trauma, could be unemployment, could be mental illness,

00:13:33.740 it could be, you know, seeing your father commit suicide at six years old and never dealing

00:13:39.380 with that trauma.

00:13:41.060 If we step in enough potholes, our search for identity, community, and purpose becomes very

00:13:47.420 broken.

00:13:47.740 And we, you know, hurt people, hurt people.

00:13:51.800 So if we are broken people, we tend to attract other broken people.

00:13:58.300 So how did you reform yourself?

00:14:00.240 What was, what was the path out of this?

00:14:02.900 Well, I was involved for eight years.

00:14:04.580 So from the time I was 14 until I was 22, I'm 44 now.

00:14:08.840 So I've been out for almost 23 years.

00:14:10.700 And it wasn't one epiphany.

00:14:13.700 It wasn't one, you know, magic moment where I, you know, I woke up, I went to sleep, you

00:14:19.520 know, seek highly and then woke up saying, I love everybody.

00:14:22.160 It didn't work out that way.

00:14:23.760 It was a process of many of those moments.

00:14:26.980 But ultimately what it boils down to is I began to receive compassion and empathy from

00:14:31.700 the people that I least deserved it from when I least deserved it.

00:14:34.780 People that I thought I hated, who I'd never in my life had a meaningful interaction with

00:14:39.900 or a conversation with, began to, even though they knew who I was and what I had done, began

00:14:46.240 to approach me with compassion.

00:14:48.140 And they began to listen rather than talk at me and tell me I was wrong.

00:14:53.000 And over time, the demonization that I had in my head, the prejudice, started to become

00:14:59.480 replaced with humanization.

00:15:00.580 And I realized that we had connections that were more similar than they were different.

00:15:07.140 And that culture and language and food from all over the world are things that add beauty.

00:15:13.240 The differences are actually what, you know, make us who we are, but it doesn't mean it makes

00:15:18.020 us different than each other.

00:15:19.600 Do you remember a first moment when doubt about your worldview became conscious?

00:15:24.620 There were a lot of those moments, but one of the more powerful moments for me, or the

00:15:30.400 more compelling moments for me, was when I was, I believe, 19 or 20 years old.

00:15:36.580 And it was after a night of drinking, there was always drinking involved, because we didn't

00:15:41.680 really have the courage to do anything if we weren't drunk.

00:15:43.960 But I was at a McDonald's late one night with some friends, it was after midnight, and

00:15:51.460 there were some black teenagers standing in line when we walked in.

00:15:55.440 And I remember walking into that McDonald's and screaming that it was my McDonald's and

00:16:00.100 that they had to leave.

00:16:01.220 Of course, my language wasn't that kind.

00:16:04.340 And of course, they were intimidated by us, so they ran out, and we chased them.

00:16:08.360 And as the teenagers, black teenagers were walking across the street, or running across the street,

00:16:14.460 one of them pulled out a pistol and started to shoot at us.

00:16:18.640 And on the second round, the gun jammed.

00:16:22.940 When we caught that individual, we beat him almost to within an inch of his life.

00:16:32.180 And I remember looking down at him when I was kicking him, and his eyes were swollen, and

00:16:39.180 his face was covered in blood.

00:16:40.560 And I remember, in one instant, one of his eyes opened, and it connected with mine.

00:16:46.920 And I felt empathy.

00:16:50.160 I felt like this person, who I didn't even think was a human being, suddenly could be my

00:16:57.800 brother, or my mother, or my father, and I thought that it wasn't just about this person

00:17:03.480 or this thing.

00:17:04.300 It was about affecting so many people, what I was doing to this person.

00:17:09.220 And I believe that that was the last time I was violent, even though I stayed in the movement

00:17:13.920 after that.

00:17:15.980 That moment stuck with me.

00:17:17.280 And it was a moment where, you know, for years, I had kind of denied myself of empathy

00:17:22.800 and compassion.

00:17:24.040 And for whatever reason, that moment, it came back to me.

00:17:28.600 And it had a very profound effect on me.

00:17:31.440 And I wish I knew who that person was.

00:17:33.120 I don't.

00:17:34.780 Did you subsequently meet any of your victims, or was there kind of a backlog of suffering

00:17:44.620 that came to clear its account with you?

00:17:47.440 Yes.

00:17:48.080 And it happened years, about five years after I left the movement.

00:17:51.280 And it was, you know, pretty serendipitous.

00:17:56.940 When I left in 95, I went through a pretty dark depression.

00:18:01.160 Even though I had internally denounced my beliefs, I was running away from my past, and I was

00:18:10.720 miserable.

00:18:11.620 And even though I was treating other people with respect, I wasn't treating myself with

00:18:15.660 very much respect.

00:18:16.600 And I remember in 1999, a friend of mine, a girl came to me, and she said, you know, I

00:18:23.060 don't want to see you die.

00:18:24.460 Because there were mornings where I would wake up wishing that I hadn't woken up, because I

00:18:28.840 didn't know who I was anymore.

00:18:30.800 And she encouraged me to go apply for a job where she just started working. 0.98

00:18:34.920 Small company called IBM.

00:18:36.960 May never have heard of them. 0.93

00:18:38.100 And I told her she was, you know, crazy.

00:18:41.500 I said, you know, I'm covered in Nazi tattoos. 0.93

00:18:44.780 She knew.

00:18:45.540 And I said, I'm a former, you know, Nazi.

00:18:47.480 I went to six different high schools.

00:18:49.740 I got kicked out of all of them, one of them twice.

00:18:52.460 I didn't go to college.

00:18:53.660 I didn't even have a computer.

00:18:54.940 Like, what the hell would IBM, you know, want to do with me?

00:18:57.600 And she said, just go in there and tell them that you're good with people.

00:19:01.140 And I was like, okay, sure.

00:19:02.680 You got it.

00:19:05.960 It's not the first quality that comes to mind.

00:19:10.360 Granted, it was five years after I left.

00:19:12.340 I was a better person.

00:19:13.540 But I didn't believe I was a good person.

00:19:15.460 Anyway, I went in and I had a couple of interviews with IBM and I miraculously got the job.

00:19:22.320 And I was so, so thrilled because I was going to learn how to network computers and install

00:19:28.040 computers at a large school district and until I found out where I would be going for my

00:19:34.460 first day of work.

00:19:35.960 It was my old high school, the same one I got kicked out of twice.

00:19:40.800 IBM had no idea.

00:19:42.880 No idea about my past.

00:19:45.780 And suddenly I felt like a nervous first grader going to his first day of school because I

00:19:50.720 thought I'm going to walk in.

00:19:52.900 Somebody's surely going to recognize me.

00:19:54.620 I mean, I had held protests.

00:19:55.860 I had tried to form white student unions.

00:19:58.520 I had tried to do, you know, a disrupted life.

00:20:01.020 But you had had violent altercations with teachers.

00:20:03.260 Oh, yeah.

00:20:03.720 Security guards, teachers, everybody.

00:20:05.440 I mean, I was a terror at that school.

00:20:08.740 And who walks by me within the first hour of me being there?

00:20:13.760 But Mr. Johnny Holmes, the old black security guard who I got in a fist fight with that got

00:20:18.820 me kicked out for the second time and let out in handcuffs.

00:20:22.000 And he didn't recognize me when he walked by, but I recognized him.

00:20:26.200 I was kind of, you know, skulking around dark corridors trying to avoid people and looking

00:20:31.060 out.

00:20:31.900 And I just knew that I had to do something at that moment.

00:20:34.860 There was something inside me.

00:20:36.000 I didn't know what that was going to be, but I decided I was going to, you know, follow

00:20:39.380 him to the parking lot.

00:20:40.480 Probably not a smart idea.

00:20:45.520 And when I saw him getting into his car, I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, I'm

00:20:51.200 sorry.

00:20:52.000 It's all I could think to say.

00:20:53.280 It's like all I, you know, could muster.

00:20:56.800 And he looked at me after taking a step back because he was afraid when he recognized who

00:21:02.580 I was.

00:21:03.000 And, uh, he approached me with an extended hand and I finally found some more words to

00:21:08.820 explain to him what I, you know, had done and how I felt and, you know, how sorry I was

00:21:13.620 for, for the terror that I caused him.

00:21:16.200 And, uh, and he hugged me and we cried and he made me promise that I would tell my story.

00:21:22.200 And that was in 1999.

00:21:25.440 That's when I started writing my book.

00:21:27.800 It just came out.

00:21:29.100 It took me a long time to write that book.

00:21:30.500 Uh, but he was the first person to, to kind of pull the courage out of me to one confront

00:21:37.400 my past because I started talking about it pretty immediately after that.

00:21:41.480 I've been doing it for now almost 17 years.

00:21:44.260 Uh, and, um, he was the first person I think that recognized that this wasn't just a story

00:21:49.740 of some messed up kid who joined a white supremacist group.

00:21:53.040 It was the story of every young person who's searching for identity, community, and purpose

00:21:57.320 that if we don't give them the right support, you know, and our young people are our most

00:22:01.520 vulnerable, that they could, you know, be deviated down this path because there are people looking

00:22:06.120 for vulnerable people like, like I was.

00:22:08.520 Yeah.

00:22:09.420 So how do you think about forgiveness in this case and, and redemption?

00:22:15.180 I mean, both with respect to yourself and with respect to other people, the kinds of

00:22:19.580 people who you're trying to, whose minds you're trying to change, um, I have to think there

00:22:23.920 are people who are beyond the reach of empathy, right?

00:22:27.840 There, there must be people who you encounter who don't have, I mean, that they don't have

00:22:32.140 the handholds that you apparently had where, you know, the right look in the eye or the,

00:22:37.200 or, or the extended hand can be the bridge to a new life.

00:22:40.940 I mean, there are, there are people who are genuine psychopaths who are in these movements.

00:22:44.480 So what, how are you, how do you think about that?

00:22:47.640 It's a tough question because if I were to deny empathy for anybody else, that means I

00:22:52.580 would have denied it for myself or that I would have denied somebody else showing me that empathy.

00:22:58.700 Um, so, and I've also worked, I've, I've helped, uh, over a hundred people, uh, disengaged

00:23:04.320 from neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups over the years.

00:23:07.160 And, um, I've worked with some of the hardest, scariest looking, you know, people that nobody

00:23:14.920 would give a chance to, you know, people who were born in the Klan families who, you know,

00:23:19.140 have that swastika tattooed on their forehead.

00:23:21.580 I wasn't kidding about saying I've taken many people to have swastikas removed.

00:23:25.820 Um, and these are people that, you know, the whole world has given up on, uh, and in many

00:23:30.620 cases they've given up on themselves.

00:23:32.180 And I can tell you there's, these people are some of the best human beings that I know

00:23:37.540 now they've committed their lives to helping other people not go down the same path that

00:23:42.180 they've gone.

00:23:43.380 Um, it's a hard question. 0.93

00:23:45.440 I mean, trust me, I sit, I sit across the table from neo-Nazis and white supremacists all 0.69

00:23:50.520 the time. 0.79

00:23:51.380 And there are moments where I want to jump across the table and I want to, you know, shake

00:23:55.080 them and grab them and, you know, smack them.

00:23:57.560 But I know that I can't because that pushes them further away.

00:24:01.400 That the reasons that they even gravitated towards a movement like that is because they

00:24:06.660 already felt marginalized.

00:24:09.240 Um, but I also, yeah.

00:24:10.580 Actually, that brings me to a related question here.

00:24:13.140 So what is the role of shame versus empathy?

00:24:16.900 Because I think I've heard you talk about this because it's natural to want to shame people

00:24:22.520 who are in these movements.

00:24:24.220 If it's revealed that, you know, so-and-so is a closet Nazi on Twitter.

00:24:29.220 Everybody tries to get them fired.

00:24:30.440 Yeah, it seems like, it seems like the sane response is to penalize them for, I mean, just

00:24:37.100 at minimum communicate how reprehensible that is and, and how the rest of the world sees

00:24:42.240 it for good reason.

00:24:43.240 And then there should be some consequences for having deviated from the norms of, of

00:24:48.880 tolerance that fully.

00:24:49.860 But you, you're very wary of you, of pulling the shame lever.

00:24:54.560 Or I don't ever pull the shame lever, uh, but I do hold people accountable, uh, for their

00:24:59.900 actions, for their words.

00:25:01.020 I make them, you know, go through a process of making amends.

00:25:04.820 You know, when I work with people, um, they don't, they, they don't always want to work

00:25:12.380 with me.

00:25:12.820 Right.

00:25:13.820 Uh, sometimes it's a referral that I get from a parent or a loved one that says, you know,

00:25:17.980 my son or daughter is really into this.

00:25:19.480 Will you talk to them?

00:25:21.140 So, so just what are the logistics there?

00:25:22.800 How does that, I mean, are you just sitting in the living room when the kid comes home

00:25:26.240 from school?

00:25:29.920 Uh, let me try and think if, no, it's, it's always voluntary.

00:25:33.920 So I'm not deprogramming.

00:25:35.360 I'm not doing interventions in a traditional sense where I'm like, you know, surprising

00:25:40.080 them in a room full of their family and saying, all right, we need to talk and we're going

00:25:43.720 off to treatment after this.

00:25:44.940 It's not like that.

00:25:45.700 You know, I really, I try and build rapport, right?

00:25:48.700 I try and build trust.

00:25:50.440 Um, the fact that I, I understand their language because I used to say it, uh, is helpful.

00:25:58.200 Um, I may be a little desensitized more than the average person to some of the things that

00:26:03.280 they say.

00:26:03.640 That doesn't mean it doesn't make me angry, but you know, I can sit and maybe listen just

00:26:07.260 a little bit longer, but that's the key is I listen rather than tell them that they're

00:26:11.760 wrong rather than debate them or argue with them, which never solves anything.

00:26:16.000 Nobody's ever, you know, changed because of, you know, a shouting match.

00:26:20.360 But, uh, I listen and I listen for those potholes and then I become a pothole filler.

00:26:25.640 Uh, so when I hear, you know, chronic unemployment, I, I pair them up with a life coach or a job

00:26:31.840 trainer.

00:26:32.180 When I hear trauma or abuse, uh, it's, you know, mental health therapy or mental illness.

00:26:37.940 It's mental health therapy and I'm trying to make people more resilient and it's fascinating

00:26:42.940 when you start working with somebody and they feel, start to become more resilient and more,

00:26:48.760 have more self-esteem.

00:26:49.980 They have less of a reason to blame the other for something that they feel is taken away

00:26:54.540 because now they might be a little bit better equipped to deal with life.

00:26:58.300 But I don't stop there because I do challenge the ideology.

00:27:01.060 Uh, but I do that in an, in a non-aggressive way.

00:27:03.380 I will introduce people to the people they think they hate.

00:27:06.880 I've spent hours with Holocaust deniers and Holocaust survivors, Islamophobes and, you

00:27:12.880 know, Muslim families just to, to allow them to humanize because nine and a half times out

00:27:17.540 of 10, they've never ever in their lives met the people that they think that they hate.

00:27:21.280 So the demonization becomes replaced with the humanization and, uh, and it works.

00:27:27.120 Uh, it's the only thing that works.

00:27:29.080 Yeah.

00:27:35.120 It's, it's, it's somewhat ironic that it always seems to be the Jews and none of these people 0.99

00:27:40.940 have ever met Jews.

00:27:42.140 I mean, it's like there's 15 Jews in the world and it's, uh, I think they're all my friends.

00:27:48.660 Yeah.

00:27:48.720 Yeah.

00:27:49.140 And half of them are Buddhists now.

00:27:50.680 Um, so, so, so I want to talk about the status of, of this movement now in the U S and Europe.

00:28:02.360 And so maybe let's start with the, the alt-right, which is a phrase that I don't know when it

00:28:07.140 was coined, but you know, none of us knew it, but for a year ago.

00:28:11.660 That phrase or, or the phrase white nationalism, because I know that those are phrases that

00:28:16.980 they literally sat in a room and said, what can we call ourselves to make us seem a little

00:28:21.940 less hateful?

00:28:23.100 And this is good to nail down.

00:28:24.920 I mean, clearly I think there's, there's, there has to be a spectrum of belief and a spectrum

00:28:28.920 of, of ideological commitment.

00:28:30.640 And there, there must be people who are happy to be a part of something, but they don't know

00:28:36.480 what they're a part of.

00:28:37.380 And you and I were talking backstage, it's kind of analogous to Scientology where you can

00:28:41.440 become a Scientologist.

00:28:42.780 And I mean, it's not so true now after South Park and all of these outings of the actual

00:28:48.000 doctrines, but before South Park and before, uh, going clear and some of these other books

00:28:55.000 and movies, you could have been a Scientologist for a very long time without knowing just how

00:28:59.360 crazy the doctrine was.

00:29:00.800 So there, there, there are analogous situations in the white nationalists or white power movement

00:29:06.720 where you just, you've been indoctrinated on into something that's like white identity

00:29:12.380 politics, for lack of a better word, just like just pride in your whiteness and not, not

00:29:17.080 liking affirmative action, say.

00:29:19.500 And you, you might not even be self-consciously a racist.

00:29:23.520 And you were among these people who at a certain point had formed a conscious plan to be, to

00:29:30.080 go under the radar, right?

00:29:31.700 So just to, well, at first it wasn't a conscious plan to go under the radar.

00:29:37.580 At first it was very much like a cult where you detach yourself from everything that was

00:29:42.940 important in your life.

00:29:43.860 You know, your friends, your family, your hobbies, and you go down a rabbit hole of

00:29:49.160 information, uh, misinformation, uh, and conspiracy theory that becomes your reality.

00:29:55.440 And I can tell you that 30 years ago, we recognized exactly what you're saying, that we,

00:30:01.100 you know, we were a small group that was too visible.

00:30:04.480 And we said, you know, these, these average American white racists who we want to recruit

00:30:09.680 are getting turned off by the fact that we have swastikas on our foreheads, right?

00:30:14.560 Or we have boots or shaved heads and we're talking, you know, very, um, you know, much

00:30:19.100 about foreign kind of politics and, you know, national socialism.

00:30:22.880 So we've made a very concerted effort, uh, 30 years ago to normalize.

00:30:28.340 We said, we're going to ditch the shaved heads and the Klan robes.

00:30:32.260 And that's still around, but for the most part, not.

00:30:34.940 Uh, and we're going to trade in our boots for suits.

00:30:37.240 We're going to go to college campuses to recruit where people, um, are away from their

00:30:42.720 families for the first time, are forming new opinions, may feel marginalized.

00:30:46.820 We're going to get jobs in law enforcement.

00:30:48.880 We're going to go to the military and get training and we're going to run for office.

00:30:51.940 And that's around the time that, you know, we see David Duke kind of get rid of the robe

00:30:55.780 and wear the suit.

00:30:56.800 And here we are 30 years later and it's, it's very much that is the representation of, of

00:31:02.480 the white supremacist movement that we're seeing today.

00:31:04.540 You know, the polos and the khakis and the hair, and the haircuts.

00:31:07.480 And, and we, we decided to even take the language and make it more palatable.

00:31:11.760 Right.

00:31:12.400 So instead of saying, you know, the global Jewish conspiracy that controls us all, we

00:31:17.580 just started calling it globalization.

00:31:19.720 Uh, and we started saying things like, you know, the liberal media instead of the Jewish

00:31:24.280 media terms that now some people are calling dog whistles.

00:31:28.880 To me, they're a bullhorn.

00:31:29.700 I hear these things and, and in context, um, I know exactly what's being told when, you

00:31:34.880 know, they're showing a picture of George Soros's face, who was like enemy number one

00:31:39.080 to the far right.

00:31:40.420 Um, but it's, has seeped into mainstream society where I think a lot of people are identifying

00:31:46.800 with some of the same things that, that these white supremacists are, but don't know that

00:31:50.940 they're being led down that path.

00:31:52.560 Right.

00:31:53.000 Because it is a ramping up process, uh, you know, a normalization and then bam, once you're

00:31:58.760 in, you know, you've already got the stigma.

00:32:00.940 They know you can't leave.

00:32:02.180 They know that you'll, that you will get the threats, that you will be outed.

00:32:06.400 So what do you have to go back to?

00:32:08.440 It's like drugs.

00:32:09.560 It's like a drug dealer.

00:32:12.500 So, so let's talk about the gradations of commitment here.

00:32:16.440 I mean, so what is the landscape of, of white supremacy look like in the U S now?

00:32:20.460 Um, it's hard to say because it's, it's hard to see.

00:32:24.120 Um, we have people like Richard Spencer who's been in the news and we have kind of the pseudo

00:32:28.700 intellectual, you know, Richard Spencer's and the Jared Taylor's of the world who, you

00:32:33.140 know, wear the Brooks brothers suits and look like professors and, and, uh, you still have

00:32:38.780 skinheads, you know, like I used to be.

00:32:41.240 Uh, but in between there's like this whole, you know, I can't see the audience right now,

00:32:46.300 but they probably look a whole lot like you.

00:32:48.380 I mean, there are dentists, there are some of our police officers, they're certainly in

00:32:52.780 our military.

00:32:53.680 There was a recent study, uh, of active, uh, service, uh, members that were polled about

00:33:01.100 the instances of white supremacy that they saw.

00:33:03.500 Like I'm not just talking about racism, but like organized white nationalism, as we would

00:33:07.220 think one in four people in the military said that they see it on a regular basis.

00:33:12.480 It's 25%.

00:33:13.380 Uh, I mean, there's so many people that I've worked with that were recruited in the military

00:33:18.040 by people like me.

00:33:19.840 Um, and I can't tell you how many people from my old organizations actually became police

00:33:26.480 officers and prison guards and things like that.

00:33:29.380 It's absolutely.

00:33:29.780 And, and did that not having reformed themselves?

00:33:32.960 That wasn't their way out.

00:33:34.140 They were just, they had the same beliefs and they were.

00:33:35.940 They were, they're still the same people, just much older.

00:33:40.120 Huh?

00:33:41.200 Yeah.

00:33:41.800 So how does Europe, there's, there's a, there's a kind of marriage between these movements

00:33:47.920 in Europe and it's a kind of a global phenomenon.

00:33:50.260 What's happening there?

00:33:51.680 It's very similar.

00:33:52.740 I mean, it's certainly, uh, Europe has a longer history with this.

00:33:57.080 Uh, obviously, you know, after World War II, you know, there were many years of kind of

00:34:02.660 resurgence of nationalism and then kind of the tamping down of it.

00:34:06.980 But now we're seeing a massive resurgence in populism and nationalism, uh, that, you know,

00:34:12.300 is using the refugee crisis and immigration as, as kind of the crux of, of their message.

00:34:17.480 And, and they know that it's an easy message to spread, to spread, uh, because the minute,

00:34:23.240 you know, a brown skinned person does something horrible, it's terrorism. 1.00

00:34:27.820 And we scream about it and every news is covering it for, you know, days on end. 0.88

00:34:32.080 Uh, but how often have we ever heard, you know, white supremacist, uh, killings being

00:34:38.100 called terrorism?

00:34:39.060 Never.

00:34:39.840 Right.

00:34:40.520 I'm not aware of any time where white extremism, maybe except for the Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma 0.58

00:34:45.220 city bombing where white extremism has been called terrorism.

00:34:48.920 And most people don't know, but Timothy McVeigh was very much a white supremacist.

00:34:53.300 He hung around at Aryan nations and, and, uh, was found with a copy of the Turner diaries

00:34:57.700 and one of the vehicles, which is a Bible for white supremacist revolutionaries.

00:35:02.920 Um, but we just don't call it out as that we call it, you know, mental illness, which many 0.92

00:35:06.940 times it is.

00:35:08.160 Uh, but we don't call it terrorism, uh, even though it's ideologically based, it's, it's meant

00:35:12.820 to incite terror, uh, and, uh, has all the same hallmarks of, of, of ISIS.

00:35:17.820 In fact, there's really no difference between ISIS and, and American neo-Nazis, except for 0.93

00:35:23.200 the fact that white supremacists in America kill three times more people than any kind 0.93

00:35:30.860 of foreign or domestic terrorist group does on American soil. 0.99

00:35:33.560 74% of all extremist killings in America since 9-11 have been, uh, committed by white supremacists.

00:35:40.520 So, how is Oklahoma City viewed in the white supremacist community?

00:35:48.160 I mean, is that, is that just a unambiguously good thing to have happened or is that going

00:35:52.260 too far?

00:35:52.920 I mean, is that, I mean...

00:35:53.480 No, they celebrate it.

00:35:54.740 They celebrate it and they've tried to copycat it many times and have been stopped.

00:35:58.940 Uh, coincidentally, it was on April 20th, uh, April 19th, actually the day before Hitler's 0.79

00:36:04.540 birthday, which is a very, uh, special day for white supremacists.

00:36:09.160 Uh, a lot of school shootings happen on April 20th.

00:36:12.540 I believe Columbine happened on, on April 20th.

00:36:14.780 Uh, it's a, it's, it is a, those types of stories are what a lot of people who've been

00:36:20.640 moved further down into the movement, who've lost a lot, kind of aspire to do.

00:36:25.520 Uh, you know, we were trained and we were training people to become these race war revolutionaries. 0.76

00:36:32.080 We were stockpiling weapons.

00:36:34.100 We were going into training camps to, to get paramilitary training.

00:36:37.860 Uh, you know, there was even at one point, um, uh, where, uh, a group from Tripoli, from

00:36:45.560 Libya had come to contact me or so I thought to, uh, to set up a meeting between me and

00:36:51.680 Muammar Gaddafi because he wanted to funnel money to American groups who were fighting Jews

00:36:55.800 in America.

00:36:56.320 Uh, so it's just a matter of time and I've been predicting this for years.

00:37:00.480 I believe it's just a matter of time before we see white supremacist groups, uh, from Europe

00:37:04.820 and the U S starting to work with, uh, with extremists from the Middle East.

00:37:09.920 Because if you think about it, while it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you'd think they'd

00:37:12.780 hate each other.

00:37:13.560 Um, they have a common enemy that is greater than their hate for each other.

00:37:18.680 It just gets better and better for the Jews, doesn't it? 1.00

00:37:20.720 I'm going to have to call some of my friends.

00:37:24.960 We're going to have to turn up the pressure on that Zionist banking conspiracy. 0.93

00:37:31.220 You know, that doesn't exist, right?

00:37:33.000 Check your bank accounts, people.

00:37:36.880 So, yeah, so what's the, what is the connection to Russia?

00:37:40.560 This is, you know, half of what you say here or, or all of what you say may sound like a

00:37:45.480 conspiracy theory to anyone who's on the right wing here.

00:37:49.900 But what, what was, what has your, what's been your experience looking for a connection

00:37:54.340 between white supremacy and Russia in the U S?

00:37:58.200 So I, I believe I have, I may have been the first kook screaming about Russian collusion

00:38:03.840 way back before the words Russia and collusion were put together.

00:38:08.040 Um, I was, uh, I was working with a 17 year old girl.

00:38:12.840 The parents had contacted me because they were concerned about this girl who was making their

00:38:17.260 daughter who was making, um, you know, white supremacist propaganda videos, recruitment videos,

00:38:22.420 and she was becoming quite popular online.

00:38:24.220 Uh, so they called me in and they said, you know, we're, we're really worried.

00:38:27.740 We just discovered this.

00:38:28.840 And we, we know that she's being influenced by this 23 year old boy who lives in Idaho.

00:38:33.940 She was in Florida and he was in Idaho.

00:38:35.700 And, uh, you know, supposedly he was a German American, uh, boy who, you know, was a devout

00:38:43.100 neo-Nazi and had recruited her and was her boyfriend and had started to get compromising

00:38:50.200 photos from her.

00:38:52.180 And, uh, he was not, I could tell you after many hours and days of research, not a 23 year

00:39:00.480 old German American living in Eagle, Idaho, he was a 35 year old Russian man living in

00:39:06.200 St. Petersburg.

00:39:06.900 Uh, and he was not only befriending this girl as her boyfriend, but he was doing it to at

00:39:14.040 least a dozen other young girls as young as 14 years old trading, you know, getting photos

00:39:19.880 from them that were inappropriate, uh, and then using it to blackmail them.

00:39:24.280 Uh, so I started to get really seriously into this because there was a crime being committed

00:39:28.260 and, and this is 2016 or this, this was October, I'm sorry, this was August of 2016.

00:39:34.580 So before the, you know, before the election.

00:39:37.400 And as I started to dig into this guy, uh, I discovered that he was part of a ring of people

00:39:43.720 that were very connected.

00:39:44.900 And I found connections dating back to like 2010 that proved this, uh, that had created

00:39:50.340 tens of thousands of fake social media profiles.

00:39:53.620 And, uh, you know, they were all very neo-Nazi and pro-Trump and I started to really just track

00:40:01.260 them and I'm like, what the hell is this phenomenon?

00:40:03.420 Why are all these like Trump voters, like all of a sudden, like, you know, having make America

00:40:07.280 great again hats with a swastika on it and, you know, having avatar or names like Himmler.

00:40:12.720 And so I started to track them and I started to see this group form.

00:40:17.020 And then I started to notice that their screen names and pictures were changing from white

00:40:23.580 supremacist accounts to ISIS accounts.

00:40:27.120 And then some of them would change to Black Lives Matter accounts.

00:40:30.320 And then some of them would change to feminist accounts with, and I started to see that the 1.00

00:40:35.040 intention was just to put as much hateful information against these other groups out there to create

00:40:41.040 this discord.

00:40:42.220 And I started to pinpoint people.

00:40:44.020 I actually found who the Russian guy was.

00:40:45.960 He made a mistake in 2009 where he made a post using a screen name that he was still using,

00:40:51.720 but it was attached to his real name.

00:40:54.060 This was before apparently he went to go work for the FSB in Russia, where he graduated in

00:40:59.460 linguistics from the University of Moscow.

00:41:02.880 So I went to the FBI in October of 2016 and I said, you know, there's something weird going on.

00:41:08.360 I'm not quite sure what the hell is going on, but everything was pointing to Russia because

00:41:12.700 at that time I had presented this information to the parents and to the girl.

00:41:16.360 And I said, first of all, this guy is not who you think he is.

00:41:18.860 He's a bad guy.

00:41:20.200 And he's this guy.

00:41:21.380 His name's Mikhail, you know, whatever his last name was.

00:41:25.340 And she didn't believe me.

00:41:27.220 So she leaked the information to her boyfriend.

00:41:29.900 Within three hours of me leaving that house, 75 domain names that I own, that I run for

00:41:37.220 my, you know, nonprofit, for myself, my parents and, you know, their restaurant were all hacked

00:41:42.920 by Russian malware.

00:41:44.300 Within three hours, 75 domain names.

00:41:46.640 And I went to the service providers and I said, you know, what is going on?

00:41:50.740 And they said, we've never seen an attack like this.

00:41:53.420 Um, so at that point I went to the FBI, this again, still October, 2016.

00:41:58.380 And I said, you know, I've got 33 gigs of screenshots, videos, chat conversations, you

00:42:05.460 know, phone calls, because now it was starting to antagonize these people to try and get more

00:42:09.340 information.

00:42:10.040 And I handed it over to them and they said, thank you very much.

00:42:12.920 We're busy reading Hillary's emails right now.

00:42:15.400 We'll get to it.

00:42:16.860 We'll get to it when we get to it.

00:42:18.940 And then, you know, I said, really, you should really look at this before election day.

00:42:22.760 Cause I think there's something going on here and, uh, I still haven't heard from them.

00:42:27.140 So who knows?

00:42:27.660 But now it's starting to come out that all that information that I found is actually,

00:42:31.120 you know, being validated.

00:42:33.840 So, yeah, they love Russia.

00:42:40.860 I don't know why.

00:42:41.760 So what is this connection with Russia and Putin?

00:42:44.420 So, you know, the white nationalist or alt-right movement that we see today has a very strong

00:42:49.500 connection to Russia.

00:42:50.460 They revere Putin.

00:42:52.320 He's a strong man.

00:42:53.660 You know, uh, they see him as, as like this ethno-nationalist, uh, dictator.

00:43:00.660 Um, and in fact, many neo-Nazis from Europe are going to train in paramilitary style in Russia

00:43:06.500 and then going to fight on the Ukraine border.

00:43:09.380 Um, funny enough, and this, you know, I don't, I can't substantiate it, but coincidentally,

00:43:14.620 so many of the propagandists for the American white supremacist movement are really beautiful

00:43:21.520 Russian girls who speak perfect English, who, um, are now starting to be found out. 1.00

00:43:28.460 There were, there was an article published today.

00:43:29.860 There was another one yesterday about a teacher, uh, teaching grade school who was teaching

00:43:35.160 kids about white supremacy.

00:43:37.220 Uh, and then she had a double identity where she was bragging about the fact that in school

00:43:42.720 she was teaching kids.

00:43:43.740 She was found out to be, have a third identity, which was Russian.

00:43:46.960 Uh, but yeah, it's, I don't know what it is.

00:43:49.940 I don't know if it's so much that Russia is supporting this ideology or if they're just

00:43:55.940 trying to create this movement of discord that they know is our weak spot.

00:44:02.360 Frankly, racism in America is something that we've never really dealt with.

00:44:06.740 Every, every society that's faced a genocide, let's say, like slaves or African-Americans 1.00

00:44:11.700 did during slave times have somehow dealt with it, right?

00:44:15.480 They've acknowledged it and they've worked through it.

00:44:17.620 But we've never, I don't believe, really acknowledged that we have, have had that problem in our

00:44:22.380 country.

00:44:23.320 Um, at least not from the top.

00:44:25.740 I mean, I think we, you know, you go to the South like here and tell me if I'm wrong, but

00:44:30.100 I think we learn about, uh, the civil war a little bit differently than we did in Chicago,

00:44:34.520 right?

00:44:35.300 In Chicago, in the North, y'all were the bad guys, right?

00:44:41.420 And to you down here, it was Northern aggression, right?

00:44:45.200 We learn about it differently.

00:44:46.460 So even in our own country, we're like propagandizing our history.

00:44:51.120 So I don't know that we've ever fully dealt with the issues that our country's had.

00:44:56.740 What do you think the solution is at the level of our public conversation at this point?

00:45:01.100 And we take like social media and the fake news problem and the, and the way in which

00:45:06.160 this phrase fake news has been weaponized against real news.

00:45:10.160 So that you can say fake news about anything that you don't like.

00:45:13.000 And it seems to be an adequate retort to whatever's being expressed.

00:45:18.360 I even hate using it, even though it's true. 0.98

00:45:20.860 It exists, but I hate even calling it what it is because of that.

00:45:24.400 You know, I think the biggest thing under attack right now is truth.

00:45:30.000 And once we lose it, it's gone because what do we, what's our, our benchmark?

00:45:34.940 And I'm terrified of that because, you know, the truth has to exist.

00:45:44.440 There has to be something that we can hold on to.

00:45:47.560 But, you know, what's happening in America today?

00:45:49.840 What I would suggest is, you know, we're at a point where we're screaming from the extremes

00:45:54.040 right now.

00:45:54.460 We're, we're being made to choose a side really.

00:45:56.660 And screaming to try and get to the middle doesn't work. 0.99

00:46:02.300 I think we need to start in the middle and acknowledge the things that we have in common.

00:46:06.380 The fact that we're Americans, the fact that we love our children and want them to be healthy

00:46:10.240 and have a good education, that we want, you know, fellow Americans to have jobs and we

00:46:15.600 want to have a good account.

00:46:16.500 Those are all things that we can agree on.

00:46:18.480 Pretty much anywhere in the world where you go and you ask them what's the most important

00:46:21.080 thing to you, that's what they'll say.

00:46:22.920 I want a job.

00:46:23.520 I want my health.

00:46:24.500 I want my kids to be happy, but you could, you could actually even start a conversation

00:46:29.400 with a current white supremacist and get agreement on those values.

00:46:32.440 Oh, sure.

00:46:33.200 Absolutely.

00:46:34.060 And if we start there, eventually we'll go off track, but we will have established that

00:46:38.440 humanization that we can always go back to.

00:46:40.960 If we start from the extremes and try to get to the middle, we never get there.

00:46:45.360 We have to find a way to start in the middle again.

00:46:47.760 Let's acknowledge what we have in common, what we want America to be, and then let's work,

00:46:53.700 let's work from there.

00:46:54.960 Let's listen to each other more than anything else.

00:47:02.440 Well, I'm increasingly worried that the left is fully capable of making a catastrophe of

00:47:08.220 this.

00:47:08.660 Oh, yeah.

00:47:09.160 Because the swing into identity politics in many cases seems to be all the justification

00:47:16.500 a white supremacist would need to indulge his or her own white identity politics.

00:47:23.280 Oh, absolutely.

00:47:24.080 When, you know, somebody on the left attacks, first of all, you know, can we just stop calling

00:47:29.800 Republicans Nazis because they're not Nazis?

00:47:35.540 That word has a very powerful meaning.

00:47:37.800 Ben Shapiro gets called a Nazi.

00:47:39.200 Ben Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew and he gets called a Nazi.

00:47:43.580 That said, I can't tell you how many parents email me and say, we're Jewish, but my son

00:47:51.220 is involved in this and I'm worried he's going to be the next Dylann Roof.

00:47:55.040 Like, I'm seeing signs of this and that.

00:47:57.300 It's a social movement, folks.

00:47:58.820 That's why I don't believe it's about ideology.

00:48:01.060 It's about this identity, community, and purpose.

00:48:03.480 And let's face it, our young people right now, we're failing them.

00:48:06.240 You know, they can't afford college if they're lucky enough to even be able to attempt to

00:48:12.180 go.

00:48:12.800 There's no guarantee of a job after graduation.

00:48:15.780 Our whole country is in a state of, you know, division and turmoil right now where, you know,

00:48:20.640 people who used to get along can't even look at each other.

00:48:22.800 And I'm talking about relatives even in some cases.

00:48:26.240 What is there to look forward to for them?

00:48:28.420 And I'm confused.

00:48:30.100 As an adult, I can't imagine what a 14, 15, 16 year old is going through.

00:48:34.220 Um, so I think we are failing our youngest people and because they feel lost, many of

00:48:39.720 them are gravitating to some of these very ideological movements because they're idealistic.

00:48:45.180 They're passionate, but they may have marginalization issues and they may, you know, hear something

00:48:51.280 that resonates to them.

00:48:53.040 Um, and it's a scary time because I am seeing a lot of young people who normally wouldn't be

00:48:59.140 attracted to these types of, of, you know, extremist ideologies, uh, start to go there and,

00:49:04.060 and I'm talking about, you know, a young white girl from middle America who flies to Syria

00:49:08.180 to join ISIS and also the young, you know, white boy who decides to walk into a church

00:49:13.780 and, and murder, you know, nine innocent people because of the color of their skin.

00:49:18.100 Um, well, what was the significance of Charlottesville?

00:49:21.580 Has that been amplified just because of our current political obsession or was it as significant

00:49:28.020 as people who are worried about it seem to think?

00:49:30.900 I, you know, I spent a week in Charlottesville just recently and I, and I spoke to really

00:49:35.720 all the players that were involved from community members to, uh, Heather Heyer's mother, the

00:49:41.020 young woman who was killed, uh, to, uh, the white supremacists in town, to the law enforcement,

00:49:46.940 to, I spoke to everybody and, you know, very much what you said earlier, and I don't think

00:49:51.180 we touched on it, where the left is maybe enabling some of this, uh, right now the fear

00:49:56.800 from the community, even though it's a progressive community is, you know, of the protesters and

00:50:01.620 not the white supremacists.

00:50:03.620 Uh, I don't know that that's very grounded in reality.

00:50:07.300 Uh, but, you know, the left shoots themselves in the foot when they adopt the same tactics

00:50:15.320 that of the people that they're, that they're protesting against.

00:50:18.180 So when we see violence come from the left, or when we see attacks of hate come from the 0.94

00:50:24.440 left, or, you know, their only mission is to destroy white supremacists' lives, that's 0.90

00:50:30.720 not helping the situation. 0.98

00:50:32.140 You know, I, I tend to want to draw them in closer because they went that way because they

00:50:36.780 felt pushed away to begin with.

00:50:38.600 Pushing them away is not going to, is not going to make them any happier.

00:50:41.560 It's going to make, actually entrench them more into this ideology and this, and this

00:50:46.220 fear of, of having lost something.

00:50:48.180 And they use that as a narrative.

00:50:50.280 They spin it.

00:50:51.160 So when they're attacked, they become the victims and they use that.

00:50:55.160 You know, we were just there for a free speech rally.

00:50:58.260 We were just there for a unite the right rally.

00:51:00.660 See these really innocuous terms that they like to put on rallies.

00:51:03.360 It was not about free speech.

00:51:04.940 It was not about Confederate monuments.

00:51:06.580 It was about going into a progressive place intentionally to elicit a violent response.

00:51:13.640 Right.

00:51:13.740 Because they knew the tension was there and they got it.

00:51:16.160 And the minute that they were attacked, they became the victims.

00:51:19.600 You see how our rights are being taken away.

00:51:21.900 You see how white people are being treated in this country.

00:51:25.600 That's their intention.

00:51:26.780 They go to progressive places on purpose.

00:51:28.500 That's why we heard about the Berkeley rally.

00:51:30.160 That's why we heard about Charlottesville.

00:51:31.740 That's why they go to college campuses.

00:51:33.600 That's why they went to Skokie and marched in a Jewish neighborhood in the 1970s.

00:51:37.480 You know, the American Nazi Party.

00:51:39.160 They do that to provoke violence.

00:51:43.320 Two things that they love.

00:51:44.320 Silence and violence.

00:51:46.060 When we're silent, sweep it under the rug, they grow.

00:51:50.080 When we're violent, they use it as a narrative.

00:51:52.440 Yeah, there's another even more insidious aspect to this, which is something that Steve Pinker pointed out recently.

00:52:00.420 Actually, this is an amazingly compounding irony because his pointing this out, so he was on a panel somewhere and he made the point that I'm about to make. 0.96

00:52:10.540 But then that got chopped up by some leftist imbecile to make him sound like he was endorsing the alt-right. 0.93

00:52:17.880 And, you know, I mean, it's this sort of compunctionalist vilification of people that is the real virus here. 0.97

00:52:24.640 But so Steve's point was that the problem with silencing free speech on the left, which is why, you know,

00:52:33.380 if you hear that there was some demonstration at a college campus tomorrow that forced some invited speaker to not give his or her speech

00:52:42.520 and that people were spit on and that the event couldn't happen, it's like 99% a leftist phenomenon now.

00:52:49.160 I mean, this is what the left is doing on college campuses.

00:52:51.260 And Steve's point was that the problem with not letting conservative and even right-wing views get expressed on college campuses

00:53:02.240 is that you don't, and any taboo view, whether it's, you know, intelligence and race and, you know, the gender differences,

00:53:12.440 I mean, whatever is considered a third rail in intellectual life now,

00:53:16.100 the problem with not letting these views get discussed honestly and at length is that people, first of all,

00:53:23.060 certain truths are being concealed and certain conversations are being deemed off-limits

00:53:29.780 and people aren't developing intellectual antibodies to the bad ideas that get accreted around these topics.

00:53:38.300 And so if for the first time in your life you're hearing what seems like perfectly honest talk,

00:53:46.100 about IQ, say, but it's coming from someone like Jared Taylor, right?

00:53:51.460 Well, then you're on this grease slide into being indoctrinated into this kind of racist worldview.

00:53:57.580 And so it's, the primacy of free speech has to be such an obvious value for the left.

00:54:03.080 And the fact that we're losing sight of it is really the most worrisome thing here.

00:54:07.620 Yeah.

00:54:08.300 It's disturbing to me that in many cases the left is adopted, and when I say the left, I mean, that's a pretty vague term, right?

00:54:21.120 We're talking about like radical left for the most part.

00:54:25.620 When they adopt the same tactics of their enemies, do they really become any different than those people?

00:54:33.780 In many cases, what you're seeing is the door on the left is closed to anyone who makes any kind of sense on taboo topics.

00:54:48.380 I mean, the classic case is, and this, you know, perhaps we should spend a moment on this,

00:54:55.000 because this is a sign, a very troubling sign of the moral confusion that the left is capable of.

00:55:01.380 So you take a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which used to be, I'm sure they imagine they still are,

00:55:08.860 this flagship organization, which is like the last bulwark against the white nationalism and Christian identity

00:55:15.080 and all of this craziness we've been talking about.

00:55:18.140 You know, they're the people who sue the KKKs and destroy these chapters of their organization.

00:55:24.180 But now they have put people like Majid Nawaz, who you know, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on lists of anti-Muslim extremists.

00:55:34.860 And they just put Christina Hoff Summers, this slightly right-of-center academic philosopher, on some list of bigotry. 1.00

00:55:43.940 This is, I mean, this is completely confused.

00:55:46.880 And when you challenge them, I mean, you know, Majid is suing them, but prior to announcing anything about a lawsuit,

00:55:53.960 I mean, suing them first, we should acknowledge, because it's dangerous to put Muslim reformers and ex-Muslims on lists of any kind,

00:56:01.160 but a list of anti-Muslim extremists, you know, it's putting a target on their backs.

00:56:08.260 And it's just incredibly pernicious, because journalists use the SPLC as a resource.

00:56:14.340 I mean, like, they're just trying to figure out who's who.

00:56:16.620 You know, is Richard Spencer really a Nazi or not?

00:56:20.080 The first call goes to a group like that.

00:56:22.860 So this is not only objectionable, it is dangerous behavior.

00:56:29.640 And the problem is, no one admits errors here.

00:56:33.480 It's like, the person who did this at the SPLC has been contacted endlessly.

00:56:39.840 I mean, I tweeted this, and Majid tweeted this, and Ayaan tweeted this, and it continues.

00:56:44.220 And people just double down.

00:56:45.900 People do not admit.

00:56:47.520 I mean, you have to spend five minutes on Majid before you realize this is not an anti-Muslim extremist.

00:56:55.200 First of all, he's a Muslim.

00:56:57.800 He's not even an ex-Muslim. 0.90

00:56:59.600 And we have the luxury of both knowing him personally, and didn't know that until tonight.

00:57:05.080 But, yeah, no, I would agree with that.

00:57:08.020 I mean, Majid is a, his story is a lot like mine.

00:57:11.480 I mean, he's a former, you know, extremist.

00:57:14.900 Not only a former, not only not an anti-Muslim extremist, he was a former Muslim extremist. 0.57

00:57:19.780 Right. 0.91

00:57:20.320 You know, he has a long way to go before he becomes an anti-Muslim extremist. 0.56

00:57:24.960 Sorry.

00:57:25.360 You know, I think part of the problem, you know, let me just preface this.

00:57:32.920 You know, I've respected the SPLC's work, because I do trust their work.

00:57:38.700 But I think that the kind of the arena has gotten so blurred now that it's easier to call somebody, you know, a member of a hate group,

00:57:47.420 or to call, you know, an organization a hate group, if they're talking about something that maybe is uncomfortable to talk about.

00:57:55.380 I know Majid.

00:57:56.580 I know he doesn't hate anybody.

00:57:58.560 I know he's not, you know, running a hate group.

00:58:01.340 And it's unfortunate that he was added to that list.

00:58:03.500 I really, you know, I was very surprised, and I even communicated to him when it happened that, you know, it was, like, astonishing to me that that could happen.

00:58:12.480 And, you know, I don't know what to say about that other than it's a mistake that they made.

00:58:19.160 He should be added to the list of extreme dressers.

00:58:22.000 He is a great dresser, isn't he?

00:58:24.440 Whoever wears a pocket square should be on some list.

00:58:28.480 It's that British colonialism, I think, that rubbed off on him.

00:58:33.540 He's a sharp dresser.

00:58:35.800 But, yeah, no, it's tough.

00:58:36.880 I mean, there are a lot of groups out there.

00:58:38.940 The Anti-Defamation League, I think, you know, is a pretty trusted source for monitoring hate groups.

00:58:44.280 And, you know, they make mistakes, too.

00:58:46.180 I mean, they came out when the attack in Parkland happened at first with Nicholas Cruz.

00:58:52.400 And they were essentially fooled by far-right trolls into believing that he was a neo-Nazi.

00:58:59.300 And then it came out that he really was a neo-Nazi, that, you know, there was a swastika carved on the cartridge of the magazine.

00:59:05.380 And, you know, there were posts in Instagram chats that were.

00:59:08.920 So, in that case, they made a mistake that ended up being correct.

00:59:13.240 But, you know, it's hard to say, you know, what went into that decision or what goes into decisions.

00:59:19.780 All I can look at is history of what they've done.

00:59:22.840 You know, they've managed to bankrupt white supremacist organizations like the white Aryan resistance.

00:59:28.620 And, you know, they've done amazing work to try and dismantle white supremacy in the country.

00:59:32.940 But, you know, it's clear that they're also fallible.

00:59:38.460 Yeah.

00:59:39.000 Yeah.

00:59:39.240 Well, on that note, I want to open it up to questions from all of you.

00:59:42.560 Because, in my view, the reason to do these events is to make it a proper conversation.

00:59:48.580 There you are.

00:59:49.420 Oh, yeah.

00:59:49.900 Awesome.

00:59:50.900 Nice to see you all.

00:59:51.420 Ah, there's people up there, too.

00:59:52.360 So, there are two mics.

00:59:53.780 There should be two mics, left and right.

00:59:55.620 And, um, sorry to anybody who had a hangover and just had bright lights up.

01:00:03.740 And I should say, so before we start, uh, I, uh, would encourage you to make your question actually a question.

01:00:11.580 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org.

01:00:19.120 Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content,

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 25, 2018

#121 — White Power

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