In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Joe talks with musician Daryl Davis about his journey from being a member of the Ku Klux Klan to converting other members of the KKK and other neo-Nazi groups. He also talks about the importance of being a good human being.
00:01:57.000You know, you, for people just listening, you're a black man.
00:02:00.000You're meeting a Klansman and you strike up a friendship.
00:02:04.000You wind up having dinner at his house, hanging out with him.
00:02:07.000He's like, you're actually a really nice guy.
00:02:09.000He's like, fuck, what the fuck am I doing with my life?
00:02:12.000And just by your own personality and just being a good human, you converted him.
00:02:19.000But, you know, an interesting component to that also happens because, you know, there are people who won't talk to me, you know, and they want to fight me and stuff, all the kind of crazy stuff.
00:02:29.000But some of their buddies who are just as hateful as they are, you know, when they talk to me and they end up leaving, their life improves.
00:02:52.000So it has that component to it as well.
00:02:55.000And so it's been more than 200 now, which is really amazing.
00:02:59.000And I think just these conversations that you've had with a lot of people have sort of opened up a lot of people's eyes as well.
00:03:06.000It's like, you know, you think of someone like that's a KKK member, neo-Nazi, or whatever it is, and you go, well, that guy's got to be a piece of shit as a human being.
00:03:16.000And then you realize, like, well, a lot of these people just got fucked over in life and started off on the wrong foot and were with the wrong people and got indoctrinated to the wrong ideology and experienced the wrong things.
00:03:29.000And next thing you know, they have this rigid idea of what the world is and how they fit in.
00:03:35.000And it's all fucked up and it's all wrong.
00:03:37.000And they just don't run into anyone that shows them a different perspective.
00:03:42.000Like if you're in a small town and you're around just a bunch of assholes all the time, you're around the same assholes.
00:03:48.000Like you might think everyone's an asshole.
00:03:50.000And then you go on vacation, you know, maybe in Hawaii.
00:04:26.000You know, it's very fast-paced, et cetera.
00:04:29.000So, you know, you sign a contract and people adhere to it, whatever.
00:04:33.000My experience in the South, you know, say Mississippi, Georgia, something like that, they don't care about contracts, even though I get one.
00:09:55.000So I found them in a book at the library.
00:09:58.000I'm ordering all these books, and it was written by a sociologist or something, and they had all these addresses of everybody that participated in the book in the back of the book.
00:10:06.000So I'm writing, physically writing, not like emailing today, but like writing all these organizations.
00:11:09.000Yeah, and back then the group was pretty small, but the reason that I picked that organization, I mean, it was only in a handful of states at the time I joined.
00:11:20.000The National Socialist Movement was a continuation of the movement of George Lincoln Rockwell, who was the original founder of the American Nazi Party.
00:11:27.000So that's why I wanted to join that particular organization because it had that history because I was a fan of history.
00:11:33.000I always wanted to be as close to the German movement as possible.
00:11:38.000So that was the group that I sought out.
00:11:40.000And then there is like a vetting process.
00:11:43.000They want to know you sign up an application.
00:11:46.000And later on in the group, I was doing things like having people sign non-disclosure agreements and doing background checks on people and things of that nature.
00:11:56.000I want to point this out because this is a really crazy fact.
00:11:59.000It's going to blow a lot of people's minds.
00:12:01.000Before World War II, there was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden.
00:12:08.000American Bund, the German-American Bund.
00:12:10.000It is nuts when you see it in Madison Square Garden and you see the swastika, the whole deal, and you're like, this is before anybody had connected this with evil.
00:12:22.000Like back then, that was an ancient Hindu symbol.
00:12:25.000Like there's a Hindu temple near my old house in California, and it has swastikas all over it.
00:12:30.000And because the temple's from the 1800s, and they have to tell people, hey, this is a sign.
00:16:23.000I don't know if they were owned by the Nazis, but they were definitely a German company, yeah.
00:16:26.000That was one of the craziest things about the Kanye thing because Kanye lost his contract with Adidas because he had said anti-Semitic things.
00:16:53.000Back when the Red Cross first started collecting blood.
00:16:56.000Okay, because you know, as you know, or you probably know, Charles Drew, you know, a black scientist, right, was the one who discovered how to give blood transfusions, right?
00:17:08.000So Red Cross began collecting blood, and they would not take black blood.
00:17:13.000And then when they finally took black blood, they segregated the blood.
00:17:16.000It doesn't matter if it's black versus blood.
00:17:18.000You know, you should segregate it by O positive or OB negative or whatever it is, right?
00:17:22.000But not by the color of someone's skin.
00:20:10.000So I was going under the name Jeff Stevens because I wanted to separate my music career from the movement and also protect my family because I knew this was a movement that people didn't like and that could cause put them in harm's way.
00:20:23.000And so I'm on the air and somehow the host says, you know, your name is not.
00:20:29.000I'm spewing anti-Semitic drivel, which was pretty typical of how I behaved at the time.
00:20:35.000And the woman that was running the show, she goes, your name is not Jeff Stevens.
00:21:23.000And that's pretty common in that world when someone is faced with that kind of pressure is they double down, they become more entrenched.
00:21:30.000So it's like every lash of the proverbial whip, anybody that tried to stop me from being involved in it or tried to dissuade me, it just made me more dedicated to it and more intense in that belief system.
00:21:42.000So I'm thinking I'm going to ruin my band's career now.
00:21:45.000So I quit the band, I shaved my head, and then I put all that energy that I had put into music into the movement.
00:24:52.000It was for a film for Daryl's film Accidental Courtesy.
00:24:55.000So they had reached out and they explained the show and I said, okay, you know, because any opportunity to spread the propaganda of the movement, I'm going to do it unless it was like Jerry Springer or something.
00:28:57.000You know, Elvis Presley invented rock.
00:28:59.000So no, Elvis did not invent rock, right?
00:29:02.000I said, Chuck Berry invented rock, right?
00:29:04.000And he goes, okay, well, you know, you probably know more about music than I do.
00:29:07.000You know, so but what difference does it make, you know, what color the musician is?
00:29:12.000I said, well, it doesn't make any difference to me, but obviously it makes a difference to you because, you know, in our history books, we talk about Ben Franklin.
00:32:11.000And then the following year, 2017, he was involved in that large white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly.
00:32:23.000And I knew a lot of the people who were involved in there, including— That was the one when the guy in the car ran over people in the crowd?
00:33:20.000I can tell you about how I meet them and how I go about it.
00:33:23.000But as far as what they think about stuff, I can tell you, but that'll be secondhand.
00:33:27.000I say, if you want, I can bring people because every now and then I bring a former Klansman that I took out of the movement or whatever to talk, you know, answer questions.
00:33:35.000I said, well, how about if I just bring somebody?
00:33:37.000He goes, whoa, you know, we got to clear that with the sponsors or whoever.
00:33:43.000So they got back to me and said, yeah, you know, who do you want to bring?
00:33:46.000I said, well, you know, let me give you some options or whatever.
00:34:26.000And that was the last gig either of us had before everything got shut down for COVID.
00:34:32.000Now, when you said this is an ad by BetterHelp, we have a lot of big holidays coming up.
00:34:37.000But before you start preparing for trick-or-treaters or make plans for travel for Thanksgiving, there's one other big day you should focus on.
00:36:07.000He realizes that, you know, what he had experienced for 25, for 25 out of the 27 years he was a member, he no longer wanted to do.
00:36:16.000And so when exactly was that shift for you?
00:36:19.000So I broke free from the movement in early in March of 19.
00:36:24.000But I was going through this process for several years.
00:36:28.000So typically you want somebody in like the work that we do, we want someone to disengage from the movement and then we work on the de-radicalization part.
00:36:38.000So I'm de-radicalizing while I'm still involved.
00:36:40.000Now, if somebody would have told me that while I was involved, those would have been fighting words, you know, but it was basically like the mind wasn't catching up with what was going on.
00:36:50.000So that's when I was starting those last years when I was involved.
00:36:53.000I'm saying this is a white civil rights group.
00:37:07.000So when I was involved, every girl that I was seeing, and I was seeing quite a few different women, just about everyone that if they would come and check out the movement, they would say, whoa, this is like a cult and you're like a cult leader.
00:37:20.000And I'm thinking in my head, what is wrong with these choices I'm making in women?
00:38:17.000It's about asking questions and sharing different perspectives.
00:38:21.000And that curiosity and that sincerity, it can help restructure the way someone thinks and the way they see people.
00:38:32.000So like Dia says to me, and this is actually in the film White Right Meeting the Enemy, you can see the change.
00:38:39.000Like I showed a clip a lot of times at my talks and I'll tell the audience, I'll say, take a look at my eyes in that clip because you can see it.
00:38:45.000The cameraman caught it, zoomed in on my eyes.
00:38:48.000She's saying, you know, the ideology that you, instead of telling me that I was wrong, she showed me, she says, the ideology that you stand for, the things that you believe in, they made me feel less than ugly, not worthy as a child growing up.
00:39:03.000That's how your ideology made me feel.
00:39:43.000It's like, this is not this noble, grand cause that I believed it was if it's causing that kind of pain and suffering to other people.
00:39:50.000So, what were the steps that you had to take before you were ready to leave the move?
00:39:55.000I hate to try everything, and I beat myself up over that a lot.
00:39:59.000But I kept saying, it's a white civil rights group.
00:40:02.000I'm telling every press outlet I'm sitting down with when they're in it, don't call us a Nazi group.
00:40:07.000It's a white civil rights organization.
00:40:08.000Of course, most of them wouldn't publish that because it is what it is.
00:40:12.000But I'm going through these different changes.
00:40:14.000I'm having rules put into the organization where the last couple years they changed from the swastika in the public view to using an old runic symbol, the Odol rune.
00:41:12.000Different groups operate different ways.
00:41:14.000What I was involved in was above ground, so it was mostly legal.
00:41:19.000You've got underground groups that operate a little bit differently.
00:41:22.000They'll come after you and things like that.
00:41:24.000You can leave, but if you walk away and you speak out against it, you're deemed like a traitor, basically, to that cause.
00:41:31.000So I knew that was going to happen when I started speaking out.
00:41:34.000So I didn't speak out immediately, but by the end of late 2019, it was August or September of 19, I started speaking out and denounced the movement, denounced racism.
00:41:45.000So this is before you did that event with Daryl.
00:41:50.000And so how were you denouncing the movement and where were you doing this?
00:41:54.000I did a press release and a website and made it public because that would be seen and understood.
00:42:02.000Now, were you concerned at all about retaliation?
00:42:06.000About you being attacked or them coming for you?
00:42:09.000You know, there's always those concerns, but I don't try to dwell on those things.
00:42:14.000You know, I was in a high-stress, dangerous environment for a lot of years.
00:42:18.000So this is just another kind of high-stress environment.
00:42:21.000But I don't want people to be afraid to leave.
00:42:25.000There's no reason to be afraid to leave.
00:42:27.000I mean, obviously, you've got to be aware of your surroundings and wise to it, but I'm always prepared.
00:42:34.000And when you were leaving and when you were on your way out and changing your ideas about the movement and then leaving, did anybody come with you?
00:43:30.000And then, you know, we would work with other organizations.
00:43:33.000So I spoke at Klan functions, skinhead functions, other white nationalist organizations' functions.
00:43:39.000So because I was that high-profile in that world, and I was the most high-profile white nationalist to ever walk away in the United States.
00:44:32.000And we're helping people all the time.
00:44:34.000Daryl and I both are helping people all the time get out.
00:44:37.000And it's because of that presence that I had there.
00:44:41.000A lot of people will say, you know, I knew him then or I knew of him.
00:44:47.000So they'll feel comfortable in reaching out.
00:44:49.000So it's kind of like street cred, I guess, you know, like if you were an alcoholic for 20 years and you have more of an ability to help other people else.
00:44:58.000And another thing, you know, people like Jeff and people of that status, the high status, it takes, while they may change themselves, it takes them a while to figure out if they can leave because that's their job.
00:45:15.000In Jeff's case, that was his job for 25 out of the 27 years he was a member to lead that organization and build it and recruit and bring people in.
00:45:46.000And then, you know, that is your full-time job while you're in there.
00:45:51.000You know, the money you make is from selling Nazi merchandise, t-shirts, you know, armbands, you know, whatever else you have, medallions, et cetera.
00:47:09.000Let him know, hey, Daryl Davis is not an exception.
00:47:13.000Because what I need to do, I find oftentimes is when I become friends with these people, the mentality becomes, Daryl's okay for a black guy.
00:47:25.000It's all those other black people or all those other Jewish people, that kind of thing.
00:47:30.000So when I feel I can trust that individual, they're not going to bring harm.
00:47:36.000I'm not concerned about myself, but I know that they're not going to bring harm to friends of mine or other people.
00:47:42.000Then I will invite them to my home, invite some of my Jewish friends, some of my other black friends, some of my white friends who look just like them but don't agree with them.
00:47:51.000So that way they can see I'm not the exception.
00:47:54.000Maybe they are the exception because now they're being exposed to people who think the same way I do.
00:50:06.000If Werner von Braun, the head guy from NASA that got us to the moon, if he was alive today, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity.
00:52:16.000So, you know, this goes to show, Joe, I mean, we all, you, Jeff, me, anybody we know, when we were kids, were told a tiger does not change its stripes.
00:52:29.000You know, so why would we think that a Nazi or neo-Nazi or a Klansman would change their robe and hood or their swastika armband or something?
00:53:45.000You don't agree on everything, but you have found more in common that you have in contrast.
00:53:50.000And the trivial things that you found in contrast, like skin color or whether you go to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple, began to matter less and less because it's caused a cognitive dissonance.
00:54:01.000And so when the first person left, I thought, well, this person, this is a fluke.
00:54:07.000This guy probably wasn't invested in it fully.
00:54:10.000But then it happened again and again and again.
00:54:13.000And I thought, okay, well, now, something I must be doing when I'm interviewing these people.
00:54:17.000This is back when I was writing my first book.
00:54:21.000And I narrowed it down to about five core values that everybody wants.
00:54:26.000Between traveling with my parents as a child in the U.S. State Department, Foreign Service, as diplomats, and now traveling as an adult musician and lecturer.
00:54:37.000I told you before, I've been to all 50 states.
00:54:39.000I've been to 64 countries on six continents.
00:54:42.000And I can tell you this, no matter how far I've gone from our country, right next door to Canada, right next door to Mexico, or halfway around the globe, no matter who I meet maybe around the world, they don't look like me or speak my language or worship as I do or not worship at all.
00:54:57.000I've always concluded that every person I've met is a human being.
00:55:01.000And as such, every human being wants these five core values in their lives.
00:55:11.000We want to be treated fairly and truthfully.
00:55:13.000And we want the same things for our family as anybody else would want for their family.
00:55:17.000And if we can learn to apply those five core values or any of those five values, when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation or in a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I'll guarantee you that your navigation of that society, that culture, that situation will be much more smooth, much more positive, and much more productive.
00:55:40.000And so that's what was happening because these people have been interviewed before, but they didn't leave.
00:55:45.000So that, you know, is how you talk to people, more so than what you say to people and how you listen to them, you know.
00:55:52.000And when I say respect, it doesn't mean that I respect what they're saying.
00:55:57.000I'm respecting their right to say it, right?
00:56:00.000And so I think, you know, that's been one of the key things that worked with Jeff and worked with other people.
00:56:06.000And when it started happening more and more, I realized I stumbled onto something and I needed to keep doing this.
00:56:12.000And that's why I'm still doing it today.
00:56:15.000And Jeff and I go out, you know, oftentimes.
00:56:18.000You know, we just came back from Indianapolis a few weeks ago.
00:56:21.000We were in Orlando speaking to the Holocaust Center there and wherever else.
00:56:26.000When you look back on your life and you think about the enormous amount of time that you spent in the movement and now being essentially of a completely different mindset, like what does that feel like for you when you look back on yourself?
00:56:43.000So like a lot of times when I'll speak about that life, I'll say that was my past life.
00:56:49.000You know, I know it's not my past life, it's still the same life.
00:56:51.000But it is like looking back at a different person.
00:56:55.000Like when I started doing work with the Wiesenthal Center, one of the things was after talks, a lot of people in the Jewish community were like, I don't get it.
00:57:48.000So I think that drives the work, a lot of the work that I'm doing now is to help others and to repair some of that damage that's been done.
00:57:56.000Well, I think your perspective is very important for people to understand that someone can shift their mindset.
00:58:05.000And that just because someone has a hateful, evil ideology they've attached themselves to, doesn't mean they're a hateful, evil person inherently.
00:58:18.000And this is the problem with human beings, is we're incredibly malleable.
00:58:22.000You know, human beings are, we follow the leader and we adopt ideologies and we're also very tribal.
00:58:31.000So you become a part of a group, whether you call it a family or a team or whatever, you hate the other people because they're the enemy now.
00:58:39.000It's us against them and we're all in this together and that unites everybody that's a part of the movement and it makes you feel like you're a part of something bigger.
00:59:10.000I think you're 100% right for the most part, but the tribal thing never, never came into play with me, and nor did it come into play with other people who were raised the way I did.
00:59:36.000And my first introduction to school was abroad.
00:59:40.000The State Department assigns you to the American embassy in some foreign country for two years.
00:59:44.000And then you come back home at the end of the two years.
00:59:46.000You're here for a few months, maybe a year, and then you're back over to another foreign country for two years, back and forth, back and forth.
00:59:52.000My dad's job as a U.S. diplomat was to foster better relations between a foreign country and our U.S. government, right?
00:59:59.000So, which is why, you know, we're overseas.
01:00:01.000So, my first introduction to school was abroad.
01:00:04.000I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different schools in different countries.
01:00:10.000The in-between grades I would do back home here, right?
01:00:15.000My classmates abroad, now we're talking about the 1960s, my classmates abroad were from all over the world.
01:00:22.000Because anybody who had an embassy stationed where we had our American embassy, all of their kids went to the same school.
01:00:29.000So, this little girl sitting at this little desk here might have been from Czechoslovakia, that kid from Nigeria, that kid from Italy, that kid from Japan.
01:00:36.000You know, if you open the door to my classroom and look in, you would say, oh, you know, this is a United Nations of Little Children.
01:00:43.000That became my baseline for what school was supposed to be.
01:00:47.000But every time I'd come home, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated.
01:00:56.000And just because desegregation was passed four years before I was born in 1954 by the Supreme Court, schools did not integrate overnight.
01:01:19.000And that's why I didn't understand racism.
01:01:22.000Because, you know, now if I had grown up here my whole life and my first experience with somebody who did not look like me was having bottles and rocks thrown at me at the age of 10 in a parade, maybe I wouldn't be doing this work today.
01:01:35.000Maybe I would be, oh, I'm going to stay away from those color of people.
01:02:09.000So black kids had to play with little white dolls.
01:02:11.000There was nothing that looked like them.
01:02:13.000Today you have all kinds of color of dolls and nationalities and ethnicities, which broadens the scope of these children.
01:02:22.000So when they see the real deal walking down the street, well, that's my favorite doll.
01:02:27.000So I'm okay with that person, rather than you reinforce that tribalism by buying your kids the dolls that look like you and your parents.
01:02:37.000Yeah, well, that makes sense, and it also sets you up to be uniquely qualified to do what you do.
01:02:42.000You know, like as a person who did grow up around so many different people.
01:02:47.000So I try to share that, I guess, you know, vicariously with people.
01:02:51.000Jeff, did you grow up around, I mean, other than when you moved to Detroit, were you around mostly white people?
01:02:59.000Yeah, so growing, where I grew up is like in the middle of the cornfield, basically.
01:03:03.000I grew up in a little town when it was barely a thousand people, all white, basically.
01:03:08.000The only interactions you had with other races was typically in the summertime, like when farm workers would come up from Mexico and things like that.
01:03:16.000And a lot of times people just didn't talk to them.
01:03:18.000So I didn't really have any, hardly any interactions with people of other races.
01:03:23.000So where did the negative ideas about other races come from?
01:03:31.000Nope, I did not have bad personal experiences.
01:03:33.000In fact, even to this day, most of the bad personal experience I had with other people, I mean, I've had assassination attempts, I've got scars from attacks, all white people.
01:03:59.000It was they infiltrated the organization, and we had went to a, and this is in my book, American Nazi, by the way, but we had went to Rochester, Minnesota, and to pass out leaflets.
01:04:13.000And it was myself and my roommate, and then two other guys that had infiltrated.
01:04:18.000And at the end of the night, to make a long story short, I'm reaching into the trunk of a car, and as I'm reaching down into the trunk of the car to pick up this box of merchandise from the record label, The guy pulls out a tire iron and smashes me across the back of the head and says, we're here to kill you.
01:04:43.000The whole back of my head was scalp was hanging down.
01:04:46.000And I just, I wouldn't get knocked out.
01:04:48.000I would have been killed if I would have been knocked out.
01:04:50.000I just remember stumbling, putting my hand across the back of my head, and it felt like a wet sponge and just kind of staggering.
01:04:57.000And my roommate blocked another hit because the guy tried to hit me again because I didn't go down.
01:05:02.000And by that time, I'm just kind of, you know, stunned, staggering, concussion, whatever you want to call it, and started stumbling into traffic in the middle of the street.
01:05:12.000And then, you know, he had gotten away from the guy and pulled me off to the other side of the street.
01:05:36.000So people that had just found out that you guys were Nazis and they just tried to shoot you?
01:05:40.000Well, we were, I mean, we were wearing the symbols everywhere.
01:05:42.000Like, I mean, flight jackets with swastika patches and stuff like that.
01:05:46.000So, I mean, that was going to be, that was pretty volatile, especially in different neighborhoods.
01:05:52.000When you talk to other people that have left the movement, do they have, like, is there a pivotal moment in a lot of these people's lives where they realize that this was the wrong path?
01:06:04.000Is it an accumulation of other people's experiences that they take into consideration?
01:06:31.000So they're going through this shift in thinking, kind of like I was, and they're questioning it.
01:06:37.000They're questioning, like, well, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance.
01:06:41.000There's a lot of confirmation bias that takes place.
01:06:43.000And they're having experiences sometimes with people of other races that helps, you know, where it doesn't fit the narrative of the movement, what's being spewed.
01:06:52.000So they're fighting with this in their head for a long time.
01:06:56.000For different people, it's different things.
01:06:57.000Sometimes it's just seeing the humanity in the people that you once dehumanized.
01:07:05.000Daryl, this is such a heavy path you're on.
01:07:08.000Does it, I know it must feel very rewarding, but interacting with so many people that have been indoctrinated into hate, does it sometimes feel overwhelming?
01:08:53.000But when they compare their life to their buddy's life, and now he's superior, he's living superiorly and getting along fine, you know, I want that.
01:11:36.000But improving race relations is my obsession.
01:11:39.000And I would much rather, much rather be on stage playing my piano with my band, seeing people smiling and dancing and clapping their hands than going to a Klan rally and watching people in robes and hoods march around at Burning Cross yelling, white power.
01:12:00.000It's crazy that you do that and have any feeling of safety while you're there.
01:12:07.000Well, I mean, there are people who don't want me there and they resent it and they get into it with their leaders and their leaders end up banishing them and stuff.
01:12:16.000But Jeff can tell you, you know, because he's been to a lot of Klan things as well as his own organization, it's run kind of like a paramilitary.
01:13:15.000Okay, you know, we can have the rally on my farm.
01:13:17.000Well, you just can't walk onto somebody's farm unless you're invited.
01:13:21.000So you have to be invited by one of the higher-ups.
01:13:23.000In his case, the commander, in the Klan case, the Imperial Wizard or the Grand Dragon.
01:13:28.000And so it's like Assimon says, if the leader invites somebody, then all the members have to respect that you don't bother that person, whether you like it or not.
01:13:41.000Otherwise, you'll suffer some consequences.
01:13:43.000And why would those leaders invite you?
01:14:00.000Like, if you're going to write a book on football, you can go to the library and get tons of books and research it and write it and have never gone to a football game.
01:14:40.000They are, depending upon the individual groups, because I don't want to say that a white supremacist of any group or even individual racist is stamped out of a standard cookie cutter.
01:14:51.000They come from all different walks of life, all different educational backgrounds, reasons for joining, etc.
01:14:58.000But the Nazi movements, not so much the skinheads.
01:15:02.000The skinheads are very disorganized, disjointed.
01:15:07.000They don't listen to anybody, within their own command or whatever, where the Klan does have some respect for their, or a lot of respect for their higher-ups, the Great Titan, the Grand Dragon, the Imperial Wizard, etc.
01:15:21.000But the Nazi movements, a lot of the larger ones, like his, his former movement, it's very militarily run, and there are quick consequences if you step out of line.
01:15:34.000So, you know, I don't like Joe Rogan on my rally ground, but my Grand Dragon wants him here.
01:15:42.000I'm just going to stand over there because I know if he gets in my face, I might say something and then I'm going to get banished or whatever.
01:15:48.000So it's very much run like a military in a lot of ways.
01:16:02.000So people like the military and it was very, very controlled in that sense.
01:16:08.000When you say paramilitary training, what were you preparing for?
01:16:12.000In these movements, they believe that the United States government is going to collapse, whether that's through a race war or civil war or anything like that.
01:16:40.000So now, interestingly enough, right, he mentioned the word militia, okay?
01:16:45.000So when you have very subtle nuance here, when you have a bunch of white guys who go out in the woods and practice shooting and they're in their camouflage and practice survival skills and all that kind of stuff, they're called militias.
01:17:03.000But when you have black guys, black groups that do the same thing, they're not called militias.
01:18:21.000Today, I mean, these groups have always, you know, since the beginning of time, or the beginning of their inception, have always recruited law enforcement and military people into the ranks of the group.
01:18:35.000But now it's even more concentrated where they really are going after a lot of law enforcement and military, especially those people, veterans, who've only been in the military, Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, whatever, for two years.
01:18:53.000They feel that if somebody's in there for more than two years, they've become loyal to the government.
01:19:02.000And then at the two-year point, these people have training.
01:19:06.000They have training in weaponry and bomb making, explosives, and survival skills, all that kind of stuff, which is what these people want to prepare them.
01:19:16.000So you all served overseas and fought for the country over there.
01:19:23.000Now, why don't you come fight for our country right here?
01:19:26.000Because this is going on in our cities.
01:19:27.000Look what's happening in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
01:19:30.000The Jews and the blacks are taking over and da-da-da-da.
01:20:44.000But anyway, George Lincoln Rockwell was murdered by one of his own Nazis, a guy named John Palter.
01:20:51.000It was founded about 35 minutes from my house in Arlington, Virginia.
01:20:56.000And John Palter shot and killed Rockwell out there on the street on Wilson Boulevard.
01:21:01.000So Rockwell's right-hand guy was a guy named Matt Cole, K-O-E-H-L.
01:21:07.000And on this day in 1974, Matt Cole and his right-hand guy, they're the heads of the American Nazi Party now after Rockwell, came to my school, to my class.
01:22:41.000And so Matt Cole talked about the race war.
01:22:45.000Well, I graduated two years later, 1976, from high school.
01:22:50.000I graduated from college in 1980, four years after that.
01:22:55.000And like I said, racism became my obsession.
01:22:59.000I did not confront Matt Cole in school because, you know, my peer group back then, you know, we were raised, you have respect for your elders as figures of authority, whether you accept them or not, you still respect them.
01:23:13.000And so, you know, I didn't confront him like that.
01:23:16.000But now I've graduated from college, right?
01:23:26.000I developed contacts with different people.
01:23:28.000I knew where some of these groups were, etc.
01:23:31.000I found out about a demonstration, an unpublicized demonstration by the American Nazi Party that was going to take place in front of the White House.
01:23:39.000There is a park right across the street from the White House called Lafayette Park.
01:23:43.00024-7, 365 days a year, there is somebody in that park protesting something.
01:23:49.000Nuclear weapons, the environment, abortion, you name it, they're there all the time.
01:23:54.000And they face the White House with their billboards and whatever.
01:23:57.000So I found out the American Nazi Party was going to have a silent, unpublicized demonstration, which means nobody knows about it, not even the police, right?
01:24:07.000So I'm going to go down there and see them.
01:24:10.000Now, back then, you could drive up and down the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is where the White House sits.
01:24:16.000And I only live like about 30, 40 minutes from there, 15 minutes from D.C. on a non-rush hour day.
01:25:15.000I guess maybe the White House might have known who they were.
01:25:18.000So anyway, once he got them all lined up, I walked right over to Matt Cole and I said, Matt Cole, he like jumped, like, who is this black person calling my name, you know?
01:27:35.000So you had about 50 of them show up, and there were tens of thousands of people that came to protest from New York, Richmond, Virginia, Baltimore, all over.
01:27:45.000So you had every police department was there to, and there was rioting, all kinds of craziness going on, right?
01:27:52.000You could not get to, I went there with my secretary.
01:27:57.000I saw Matt Cole and them, and now, of course, they're wearing their Gestapo uniforms with the SS insignias, flying swastika flags, and all that kind of thing.
01:28:06.000But you couldn't get to them because if the police have their shields and their batons and pushing people back, right?
01:28:13.000So then people, they came with bricks and all kinds of stuff and began throwing them over the heads of the police to land on the Nazis gathered in this opening in the park.
01:28:23.000And so the cops began tear gassing everybody, and then it came a full-blown riot.
01:28:28.000People were turning over police cars, breaking out the windows, kicking out the headlights, setting buildings on fire in Washington, D.C. You can find it on YouTube.
01:28:36.000And so anyway, this is before internet, right?
01:28:43.000My secretary and I go home, we watch the news.
01:28:46.000And there's Matt Cole sitting in the studio of one of the network TV stations, NBC, CBS, ABC, whatever it was.
01:28:54.000And he's talking to the anchor person, and they're showing footage of the riot in D.C. that day.
01:28:59.000He goes, you see, you see, it's the blacks and the Jews who are turning over the police cars and trying to attack us.
01:29:05.000You don't see the Nazis turning over the police cars.
01:29:08.000It was then that I realized what he was doing because he was a pretty smart guy, just smart in the wrong direction.
01:29:16.000I couldn't figure out why would he have his national recruitment rally to recruit people into the Nazi Party in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is two-thirds black.
01:29:27.000There are no black people in D.C. who want to join the American Nazi Party.
01:29:30.000There are no Jews in Washington, D.C., or Jews anywhere who want to join the American Nazi Party.
01:29:41.000And he has the official footage from CBS, ABC, NBC.
01:29:46.000He takes that footage, goes out there to Cordelia in Iowa, Idaho, or Washington State, the Pacific Northwest, and says, you see what's going on in our nation's capital?
01:30:08.000And so he shows this rioting of all these people who he alleges are blacks and Jews destroying and denying people their right of freedom of assembly, freedom of speech.
01:30:25.000And I've seen the Klan do the same thing.
01:30:26.000They will go somewhere where they know there's going to be some kind of a riot.
01:30:30.000That's why they want to march in Skokie, Illinois, which was an all-Jewish neighborhood, because they knew it was going to create a disturbance.
01:31:08.000So they're out there filming that, and we would put out those clips.
01:31:12.000So immediately, especially if there was violence, if there was actual clashes and the police weren't keeping people separated, those always turned into recruits.
01:31:20.000That's how these groups would utilize that stuff.
01:31:23.000So you'd have people that were being like, oh man, I'm sorry, I missed it.
01:31:26.000I didn't know we'd be fighting with the Reds.
01:31:30.000And then you'd have applications coming in from new recruits that would see it on the news.
01:31:34.000So these groups are always manipulating the media.
01:31:38.000Some of the rallies that I organized were at places like Valley Forge, Yorktown, Virginia, historic places that you could use those elements and it would guarantee the press, or downtown LA at the city hall, or marching on D.C., places that would guarantee a lot of press.
01:31:54.000And just like Daryl said, it wasn't necessarily to recruit people in those areas.
01:31:58.000It was to whip up chaos because that would benefit these groups.
01:32:06.000How do these groups use the media or rather social media and the internet to radicalize people?
01:32:14.000Nowadays, it's a double-edged sword, the media, because these groups before, like I was discussing earlier, you had to kind of search them out or a recruiter had to find you or something like that.
01:33:24.000Does it grow based on like the things Daryl was talking about, like riots and stuff like that, where they'll use that, maybe Black Lives Matter riots from the 2000s or 2020s rather?
01:33:35.000Well, one of the things that's causing it to grow also, which I was going to leading up to when I talked with Matt Cole, what I learned in 1982, was that these people, meaning the movement, the white supremacy movement, are fearing.
01:34:04.000When I was, it doesn't matter how old you are, how old he is or whatever, when we all were children, the black population in this country was 12%.
01:35:47.000Today you got the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the skinheads, the Patriot Front, the Vanguard, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the National Alliance, on, on and on, whole slew of groups.
01:35:59.000And they're all saying, come join us, come join us.
01:36:01.000We're going to take back our country, right?
01:36:03.000So people out of fear of their identity being erased, as they're saying, because they're trying to keep the races pure, because what they tell me is, Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown.
01:36:15.000They call it the Browning of America, or white genocide through miscegenation.
01:36:20.000So these people out of fear of their identity being erased, because they truly believe that they are patriots, and it's their job to save this country.
01:36:29.000We built this country, we wrote the Constitution, and now people are coming into our country who don't look like us and squeezing us out of our own country.
01:36:38.000And as Jeff points out, they're surrounded by an echo chamber that keeps repeating that, so then it becomes the truth to them, right?
01:36:44.000So they run and join these groups to take back the country.
01:36:49.000But when the group does not act fast enough to take back the country, they get antsy and get frustrated and say, you know what?
01:36:55.000If the Nazis can't do it or the Klan can't do it, I'll do it myself.
01:36:58.000And they walk into a black church in South Carolina, boom, boom, boom, boom, and murder nine black people doing Bible study or the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, kill off 11 Jewish people.
01:37:09.000The Buffalo grocery store in New York.
01:37:11.000The Sikh Indian Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin murders seven Sikh Indians doing religious service.
01:37:18.000The Walmart in El Paso, Texas, 23 Mexican people were murdered by white supremacists a few years ago.
01:37:27.000And every time one of them gets taken out by law enforcement or gets arrested and their property gets searched, law enforcement always finds a cache of automatic weapons that are being stockpiled for Rahoa or the Boogaloo because they're looking to have this redo of the Civil War to preserve their lifestyle.
01:37:49.000And so 2042 is going to be a pivotal year.
01:37:53.000And we're only, what, 16, 17 years away from that right now.
01:38:26.000It's just such a disturbing aspect of society that you would think there's going to come a point in time where there's enough education, enough understanding, especially with the access to information we have with the internet, that this would all go away.
01:38:42.000But it doesn't seem like that's helping because it seems like the more access to information, the more people settle into these echo chambers.
01:38:51.000That and also a lot of the old guard realize, you know, this is happening, and if we want to preserve Our culture, our whatever, we need to pass this on to young people.
01:39:05.000We need to get more young people involved.
01:39:08.000And they began recruiting young people to disseminate this information and galvanize more of their peers into this ideology.
01:39:19.000And back to the recruitment of military and law enforcement because they know this is going to happen and they're going to want those people on board to be on that side.
01:39:34.000And I mean, you can probably talk about military and law enforcement inside your organization.
01:39:39.000I can talk about it in the Klan or whatever.
01:39:41.000Yeah, as far as the military was concerned, we were actively trying to recruit military.
01:39:46.000So early on in the organization, it was like 10% maybe of the members.
01:39:50.000By the time I left, it was about 50% then.
01:39:54.000Well, on their applications, we were asking what branch they were in, what rank they achieved, because we were looking at all that for potential leadership.
01:40:03.000So anybody that had military experience, especially in the higher ranks, those people would be naturally looked at for leadership positions in the party because they had those.
01:40:13.000Right, but how did they try to recruit military people?
01:40:16.000So using the same tactics as everybody else, but as far as the organization specifically, having that military structure, like we discussed earlier, having that structure gave them, so somebody that was coming out of the military that was retired or something like that, it would provide that structure that they were missing.
01:40:35.000So a lot of times for people that are involved in this stuff, it's fulfilling a psychological need.
01:41:03.000But if you understand the psychology of it and like why someone's involved in it, that's helpful to help pull them out.
01:41:10.000And also when someone's coming out of these organizations to have a new mission, have something else.
01:41:16.000So for a lot of people that might be learning to play guitar or doing an extreme sport or getting involved with the church or just, it could be anything, but there has to be something because if they're missing that, that's when they really struggle.
01:41:33.000Like, how do you handle, like, say if someone is leaving and they contact you and say, I know you left, I want to leave too.
01:41:40.000What are the steps you take to make sure that they do find some sort of a new purpose?
01:41:45.000A lot of times just kind of asking them questions, you know, asking a lot of questions and seeing what they're interested in and finding those things, trying to help them find that sense of purpose and that because that's missing.
01:41:57.000So I've had a lot of people say, like, when they've left, they're like, I don't have that.
01:43:37.000So even though these people might have been friends with somebody who later became a white supremacist or whatever, the stigma of it, even now that they're out, they still are a little leery and want to stay clear because you're judged by the company you keep.
01:43:53.000So it's always, you know, ex-con, you know, blah, blah, blah.
01:43:55.000You know, instead of just saying so-and-so is working here.
01:43:58.000Yeah, but I mean, there's very few people that even want to believe that someone's capable of being able to do it.
01:44:10.000Yeah, and it's crazy because I had a reporter one time, and I won't say who or anything like that, but he had said, you know, I visit a murderer in prison, and I'm okay with that, but I'm not so sure about your journey.
01:44:25.000Like, I mean, like, he, basically what he was saying in so many words was he was more comfortable with the murderer than somebody, and this is a reporter, you know, somebody, a journalist.
01:44:36.000And they were more uncomfortable speaking with a former neo-Nazi.
01:45:13.000If you want these people to leave and reintegrate into society, you have to have forgiveness.
01:45:18.000I mean, you know, prison is a penal institution, not a reform institution, which is why this country has the highest recidivism rate of any country in the world, right?
01:45:30.000People go in there and they don't get reformed, and they learn from better people than they were at their crime, and they go back out and they do it again, and people don't accept them because they have that stigma that follows them.
01:45:42.000Well, I can't hire an ex-con, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
01:45:48.000An interesting side note on that, you know, we talk about like some of the hate that I had, and I was a raging anti-Semite, more than a racist by all points.
01:45:59.000And the irony of today working with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, I mean, there's just so much irony there.
01:46:04.000And like the Jewish community was the community that I dehumanized and villainized the most.
01:46:09.000And Joe, they have been the most accepting and welcoming as far as since the change has happened.
01:46:27.000How am I going to, you know, what is this going to be like?
01:46:30.000I'd never been in a synagogue before, and this took place in Skokie, Illinois.
01:46:35.000And I tell you, after speaking there, I got more hugs and more love and compassion than I'd probably any other place I could ever remember being.
01:47:18.000So it's like when I speak with kids at schools, you know, I said, you know, you guys remember in elementary school when you had opposite day and your shirts backwards and all that kind of stuff?
01:48:34.000They run the banking systems and all that kind of stuff.
01:48:38.000And so people begin believing in that.
01:48:42.000And they become persona non grata, even though they may not even know any Jewish people.
01:48:48.000And that's why I say, you know, when I feel I can trust some individual who trusts me or whatever around my friends, I will invite them over or whatever, and I bring in some Jewish friends of mine and other black friends or white friends so that they can see something outside the echo chamber.
01:49:05.000Another former neo-Nazi, who's a very good friend of mine, was telling me that when he was in— That's a funny sentence.
01:49:58.000And so then he tells me that, you know, when he got out and other people were getting out, turns out they were doing the same thing watching the game.
01:50:40.000What do you mean you didn't realize you were black?
01:50:43.000And he's like, well, of course we realize we're black, but you see, in the United States, or where we're from in Cameroon, we're Cameroonian.
01:51:31.000Okay, so, you know, we have a unique thing here called slavery.
01:51:37.000And Jewish people have a unique thing called the Holocaust.
01:51:40.000So if you're a white guy and you're walking down the street, the sidewalk, and some other white guy is coming up the sidewalk, you don't know him, just a stranger, you know.
01:51:53.000You guys are going to pass and not say a thing to either one of them.
01:52:11.000They both have experienced racism at some point in their life or whatever.
01:52:14.000If two Jews pass who don't know each other, they're going to go shalom because of that commonality, that experience.
01:52:22.000So unless you've had that experience, you don't react to it.
01:52:28.000So when I lived in Africa, on the continent of Africa for 10 years, I lived in Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, and Senegal, and visited many other countries in between because of my dad's job.
01:52:39.000So I can tell you, all black people don't look alike.
01:52:43.000All black people don't know each other.
01:52:57.000Now, at one time, in a city, all black people probably did know each other, okay?
01:53:04.000Because they had to go to the same school.
01:53:06.000And there was only one black school in the town, right?
01:53:09.000They couldn't go to different white schools.
01:53:11.000Okay, so yeah, you know, they can only shop in a certain store.
01:53:14.000They couldn't shop in every store or restaurant.
01:53:16.000So yeah, they would run into each other more often.
01:53:18.000But today, no, but the stigma is still there, the sentiment, especially with older people.
01:53:23.000So anyway, if I'm walking down the street and I've had this happen, and some black guy from Africa is coming up the street, I go, hey, man, what's up?
01:53:45.000Well, this is the only way these movements like the neo-Nazis work is if you don't know a lot of people from all over the world and realize we're all just people.
01:53:59.000This is, you know, and it is very fear-based, right?
01:54:28.000But that has no bearing on your character, no bearing on your intellect, no bearing on any of the things that we find fascinating and attractive about people.
01:54:35.000It's just the color of your skin, which is the dumbest fucking thing on earth.
01:54:40.000And, you know, and we all may engage in it somewhat.
01:54:45.000Like, for example, if I like Chinese food, and if I go to a Chinese restaurant, I don't want to see a bunch of white college kids or black college kids for that matter in the kitchen cooking it for me.
01:55:01.000You know, I want the authentic real deal.
01:56:48.000And so it was likely that this was taking place in multiple areas of the world.
01:56:54.000Just like there's different animals in multiple places of the world.
01:56:57.000There's different primates in multiple places of the world.
01:56:59.000And there's a bunch of different kinds of human beings, of course, right?
01:57:02.000There's Denisovans, which have just recently discovered.
01:57:06.000And then there was the Hobbit people on the island of Flores.
01:57:10.000When it comes to the evolutionary history of human beings, it's very, very odd.
01:57:15.000But when you talk about the cultural history of human beings, that's when things get really crazy because it was just a lot of people traveling all over the place and just settling into the climate.
01:57:27.000And the reason why white people are white is just because there is no sun.
01:59:07.000I think that thing too, that exposure that you had to that Nazi coming to visit you, even though it's negative exposure, it's probably good to see.
01:59:15.000You know, like when I was a kid, I was in high school and I was 14, Barney Frank, who wasn't openly gay then, but he was like one of the first openly gay members of Congress.
02:00:26.000It's good that they see someone with a very narrow-minded, bigoted perspective, and then someone who is more intelligent, has a much better vocabulary, smoother in their ability to disseminate information and to dissect the bad arguments of the other person.
02:00:47.000And then, you know, I remember talking about it with my friends, like, yeah, that guy's a fucking moron, that first guy.
02:00:54.000But nowadays, instead of that, you would only get one.
02:01:00.000You would only get the one person talking.
02:01:02.000But the one person talking without the other person talking is not as good.
02:01:06.000And this idea of protecting kids from bad ideas because they don't want these kids to be indoctrinated by bad ideas, it doesn't work with human beings.
02:01:14.000The way to get rid of bad ideas is to confront them with better ideas.
02:01:48.000And if you don't allow people to make those distinctions on their own, if you just baby them and treat them like you can't expose them to these negative ideas, you miss out on the possibility of accepting nuance and an understanding of how a less sophisticated, less educated person can fall into these traps of these stupid ideologies.
02:02:10.000You just nailed it right on the head, man.
02:05:17.000And so now I'm really dialed in because I'm trying to figure him out.
02:05:21.000And that's when it, and it was soon after that that you explained the story about how the Cub Scouts and how racism affected him growing up.
02:05:29.000And then all of a sudden I'm thinking about, what if somebody would have done that to one of my kids?
02:05:35.000And I saw Daryl's humanity in that moment.
02:05:38.000So that's how he cracked that window open.
02:05:41.000Jeff just made a very point that I see a lot of times, okay?
02:05:46.000Because when things escalate, okay, when you come in to meet your adversary, you know, you know this person has a different viewpoint than you do.
02:05:55.000And you're not going to let them try to change your viewpoint.
02:05:57.000You're going to be stealed into what you believe, right?
02:06:00.000So your ears are going to be blocking out anything that does not agree with your philosophy.
02:06:28.000He's not reacting the way most black people would react when I say whatever.
02:06:32.000So as the wall comes down, the curiosity on his end rises.
02:06:38.000And so now his ears are unblocked and he's ready to hear what I have to say.
02:06:44.000But if I'm escalating and telling him my story while I'm escalating about getting thrown rocks, he'll probably say, oh, well, it wasn't me that did it, you know, so what's the deal?
02:06:53.000Well, that's almost all conversations you have with people when you disagree.
02:06:58.000If you elevate your language and start yelling and they start yelling, nobody figures out anything.
02:09:08.000And that stranger, total stranger, who you don't know what color he was, what religion he is, who he voted for, who his daddy was, whatever, that person saved you from getting that ticket, right?
02:09:18.000So as you slowly cruise by the cop, he doesn't pull you over or whatever, you know, you're going to start flashing your lights at the oncoming traffic to save them.
02:09:30.000But let's say, you know, you're coming up the hill and people are coming over the hill and nobody's flashing the lights.
02:09:37.000There he is, pulling you over, you know, license registration, remain in your car, be with you in a moment, comes back, gives you that $150 ticket until you have a nice day.
02:10:47.000Are you hopeful with all the work that you've done and all the people that you've removed from the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan and seeing how your message resonates with people?
02:10:58.000And like, I know every time I have you on, I get all these messages from people who go, wow, that guy's amazing.
02:15:45.000So contact the prohumanfoundation.org.
02:15:49.000Contact Beyond Barriers, Parents for Peace, which I'm a part of as well, you know, and we'll talk about how you can get involved in being pro and dispel.
02:15:59.000You know, don't be against the person, be against the message, you know, if you want to disagree with something.
02:16:05.000I think that's a beautiful way to end this.
02:16:16.000And Jeff, thank you for, you know, first of all, just spreading this message and having the courage to accept these bad decisions that you've made and how you got trapped and just to let people know how a person like yourself, who does seem like such a nice and intelligent guy, could get sucked into such an awful ideology.
02:16:37.000And I think that's going to help a lot of people.