Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
LIFE AFTER<br />
HATE<br />
Staffed by former racists, an ‘exit’ program aimed at disillusioned<br />
white supremacist radicals in the U.S. is picking up steam<br />
There is a life after hate. And there are people who know the road there.<br />
The first of what have become known as “exit” programs developed in the 1990s in Sweden,<br />
based in part on the ideas of Tore Bjørgo, a social anthropologist interested in helping racist<br />
activists abandon white supremacy. The Swedish program also found ideas in a pre-existing<br />
Norwegian program, Project Exit: Leaving Violent Youth Gangs, not specifically tailored to<br />
people on the radical right, according to the London-based Institute of Race Relations (IRR).<br />
In 1998, the idea was exported to Germany, which like the Scandinavian nations had experienced<br />
a dramatic upsurge in neo-Nazi activity in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet bloc<br />
early in the decade. In the years since, similar programs have appeared in Italy and Australia.<br />
In 2011, an international network called Against Violent Extremism with complementary<br />
aims was inaugurated by Google Ideas, and in 2013, 26 organizations from 14 members of the<br />
European Union formed the Europe Network of Deradicalisation, the IRR reported.<br />
Last year, a major gathering was held in the United Kingdom to explore the possibility<br />
of building an exit program in that country, the IRR said. And also in 2014, the European<br />
Commission recommended that all European Union members set up programs of their own,<br />
aimed at transforming radicalized individuals.<br />
Now, a Chicago-based group called Life After Hate is starting an American program. The<br />
group’s recently inaugurated ExitUSA program (www.exitusa.org) is mainly staffed, like most<br />
exit programs around the world, by former racist activists. “At ExitUSA,” the group says, “we<br />
are dedicated to helping individuals leave the white-power movement and start building a<br />
new life, just like we did.”<br />
Some of the older exit programs have come under occasional criticism for ignoring the<br />
social basis for racism, for glorifying former extremists as newly minted “experts,” for failing<br />
to root out participants’ ingrained racism and anti-Semitism, and for being used by state<br />
security apparatuses. But there seems to be little question that in at least some cases, they<br />
have done important work.<br />
To better understand the significance of exit programs and in particular the work of<br />
ExitUSA, the Intelligence Report talked to five people. Three of them — Christian Picciolini,<br />
Tony McAleer and Angela King — are former white-power activists and principals of Life<br />
After Hate. Two others — Pete Simi of the University of Nebraska and Kathleen Blee of the<br />
University of Pittsburgh — are academics who have investigated the radical right. Both Simi<br />
and Blee were funded by the National Institute of Justice for an ongoing study, “Research and<br />
Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research to Support Exit USA.”<br />
64 splc intelligence report