ARYAN NATIONS DEFLATES ‘SOVEREIGNS’ IN MONTANA

So for you, anger was very much a
driving force?
I believe that unresolved anger always
expresses itself as violence. And because
of that, I chose a youth subculture, I
chose a music scene, and ultimately I
chose a radical ideology that gave me
permission to justify my anger.
What led you to finally leave?
My daughter. The interesting thing about
young children is it’s safe to love them,
it’s safe to open up, it’s safe to allow yourself
to feel again with them, because
they’re not going to shame you, they’re
not going to ridicule you, they’re not
going to reject you. That started a process
of thawing and opening up the heart.
ANGELA KING
LIFE AFTER HATE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR
Do you think having personal experience
in the movement has helped you
better understand how to help people
disengage from hateful ideologies?
I think so. We are uniquely positioned
to draw from our experiences, being
“formers” ourselves. We are able to
look back in retrospect at the catalyst
that drove us into the far right,
whether that be specific experiences or
a shared misunderstanding.
Was there also a catalyst for your
leaving the movement?
There was, actually: Timothy McVeigh.
After Oklahoma City, I decided I didn’t
want to be responsible for that kind of
destruction. But at the time, I was still
at a point in my life where I very much
needed to belong somewhere. And as we
know from experience, being involved in
far-right extremism isn’t something that
leaves someone free to wake up one day
and say, “See you later. I changed my
mind. Have a nice life.”
The turning point came for me when
I was doing time in a federal prison for
my part in an armed robbery that was a
hate crime.
How so?
When I was first incarcerated, I went in
with the mentality that I was not responsible.
I just sat in the car [during the robbery].
But I very much thought I was going
to be in there fighting for my life every
minute, with my back against the wall.
The most ironic thing happened in
there. Women of color, women who
I never would have met, who I never
would have shown any type of respect
or human kindness toward, showed me
kindness and compassion even knowing
that I was a skinhead and serving time
for a hate crime.
Up until that point in my life, I dealt
with everything pretty much with anger,
aggression and violence. And to be shown
kindness, it completely disarmed me. I
had no idea how to react to that. Once I
started to kind of re-form the bonds of
human connection and started actually
finding the human being in myself again,
the fallacies, the stereotypes, those white
lies that are told by the far right, it started
to kind of just crumble away on its own.
Are those types of transformative
experiences critical in getting
someone to leave the movement? And
what are they?
A transformative experience can be anything.
It doesn’t have to be a large-scale
event. It could be something as simple as
witnessing an act of kindness. Having a
family, starting to grow up a little bit and
take responsibility and do some critical
thinking about what we see around us.
Even the smallest thing could be
enough to plant a seed in a person’s mind
that may not sprout that day. It may not
sprout in a week or even a month, but at
some point that experience, that thought,
is going to come up and that person is
willing to think about it.
KATHLEEN BLEE
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, DISTINGUISHED
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
Why do you think programs like
ExitUSA are important?
They’re important because leaving a racist
group is a process. It’s a process that
requires people to rebuild their identity,
rebuild their social network, often
rebuild their economic livelihood.
For all those things, people need a
great deal of support. If people are going
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