ARYAN NATIONS DEFLATES ‘SOVEREIGNS’ IN MONTANA

to successfully leave racist groups, they
need people they can turn to for advice,
people who have been through the same
process, people who can help them build
a new set of friends and a new set of supporters
outside of that racist world.
So the process is a long one?
People are not in the group one day and
out of the group another day. Leaving a
racist group is like leaving any kind of a
world that people are in. It can be a real
back-and-forth process. People can start
to leave, go back, pull out again, go back
and forth for a long time.
Also, people have to exit on many
levels. They have to exit in the sense of
breaking their ties with people, changing
who they’re hanging around with.
They exit in terms of leaving the lifestyle,
maybe the criminal actions or the violent
actions they were associated with. And
they exit in terms of changing their ideas.
How do individual departures affect the
overall white power movement?
We have to go after the groups by attacking
them at their base and their leadership.
One of the things that exiting does
is it shows people who are currently
in the group that the group has weaknesses.
One of the reasons these groups
hold together is because there’s a sense
of invincibility. It’s an us-against-them
mentality. Watching people exit can be a
really powerful message both to potential
recruits and to people in the groups.
PETE SIMI
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
OF SOCIOLOGY
Do exit programs work?
As a social scientist, that’s a very sensitive
question and one that should be taken
very seriously. When we talk about the
“effectiveness” of exit programs in common
conversation, we use that word far
too loosely.
I mean, we still use Scared Straight
programs in our juvenile justice system.
You walk into any [juvenile justice] program
anywhere in the country and there’s
bound to be some project, some program,
that is based on the logic of Scared
Straight despite decades and mountains
of evidence that shows that Scared
Straight programs don’t work and actually
might even be counterproductive.
Effectiveness is a tricky thing.
But is there something to experiencing
transformative moments?
We have to be careful about assuming
that people, after the fact, when they
look back, are identifying these critical
moments. Interviewing people who have
left not through a program but usually
though some naturally occurring set of
events, I find that it seems like it’s a very
gradual process. They’re experiencing
doubts at various points along the way.
They have a lot of personal dissatisfaction
with the things that are happening
while they are involved.
But it is possible?
Yes. The movement’s not really fulfilling
their needs the way that they thought.
They had these expectations going in,
and then their expectations really aren’t
being met. It’s a learning curve, really.
At some point you get to where you
realize, “Oh, wait a second, now I’m kind
of banging my head against the wall.
I was hoping that I was going to have
this brotherhood, and there was going
to be excitement and all these things. I
was going to be fighting for this cause.”
Then, at some point in time, they realize
they’re going to wind up dead or in
prison. Enough of those things pile up
and they’re like, “This doesn’t make
much sense to continue.”
So what’s your conclusion about
exit programs?
Everything always has to be considered
part of a larger toolbox. There’s never
any program that’s ever going to be your
catchall. But I think it is an important
tool in the toolbox. We just don’t know
which way to exactly formulate the tool.
I think having programs that try and
address these issues is critical, but we
have to figure out how to best do that. ▲
spring 2016 67