Introduction

 

I’m going to write a brief introduction here to explain “why,” I am writing this article because the why is more important than the “what!” Seven years ago, on the day my first daughter was born, something hit me hard and changed my world forever and that something was introspection. I began thinking outside of the bubble I was emersed in; my thoughts ran anathema to the life I’d lived for most of my youth and adulthood up until that moment. As I write this (in 2021) I have been out of the white nationalist/national socialist movements for almost 8 years and have given countless interviews, I’ve been profiled both on a “what was it like,” basis and on a psychological basis.

I have helped numerous anti-hate groups and have thousands of friends of all colors, nationalities, sexual orientations, genders, religions, and creeds today. I am always opened to lectures and speeches on what I’ve been through, what draws people to these hate groups, how they function, what they believe, and the like. This is my personal crusade, my atonement, which I will spend the rest of my life working on and helping others with. I want to end the hate, dissolve the ignorance perpetuated within the bubbles of hate groups, help others leave that life and find a new one, and help keep youth from being recruited into these groups.

So, why am I writing this if I’d already given so many interviews? Because my story is much longer than an hour on video, what I’ve learned is much more detailed than that, and because I want to assail these movements personally, on more fronts than one form of media. While I have done a great deal with others, I feel it’s time that I step out and do more work myself, personally outreaching into the communities and the very world-at-large. I am hereby writing this to set into motion and hold myself to task, forming my mission against hate in all forms, and I’m making it public so that others can help to keep me moving forward and upward in this mission.

The final, “why,” of this document’s creation is to show another side, from someone who lived it, and not the mainstream, uninformed media which emboldens these movements and gives fuel to their fire. The image of the moronic, toothless redneck who “ain’t need no education,” is long dead, today these movements are uniformed, organized, suit and tie wearing, in some cases college-educated individuals. Many are well-read and versed in their ideologies, many are ready to fight and die for their movements, and surprisingly to some, many aren’t a part of these groups because they hate another race (It’s much deeper than that).

I’m dividing this work into sections to make it easier to peruse and to reread things that one finds pertinent in its information. Though it is a long document, I hope people make a conscious decision to read it through to the end, before coming to any conclusions. This is part my story, part our story, part dissertation, and hopefully for readers, part awakening on the views and thoughts on extremism and the movements they spawn.

While some of what you read may seem fantastical in nature, I would swear in court that everything herein is one-hundred percent factual, as I lived it and as I know it.

 

 

I. A Child is Born

 

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1978 in a poor section of South Philadelphia. The area I initially grew up in was called “Little Cambodia,” and aside from no one looking like my family and being an outsider, my father left my mother when I was two years old, never to be seen again. My father told my mother that he’d be back to take his son and she’d never see me again, this weighed heavy on my mother and me my whole childhood.

Without a father, I was raised by my mother, grandmother, and two uncles, though one uncle was away at college most of the time and the other uncle was always out partying. When I was five, my best friend Tony was murdered, by eight another friend Robert died of some illness I honestly don’t remember, and in my neighborhood, I was just some weird whiteboy who didn’t fit in. When I was ten years old, my cousin and friend Kevin was hit by a car on his way home from playing pool off of Oregon Avenue and left with the mind of a small child. Meanwhile, my mother and grandmother were babysitters and cleaning ladies for the affluent throughout Philadelphia’s Society Hill section of the city.

I would sometimes go with them to babysitting jobs and was friends with many of the wealthiest families children in Philadelphia at that time, then we’d take a bus back home to Little Cambodia. The funniest thing about my childhood was that I grew up on hip hop music, I was there in the 80’s as it came up and I even wore an Africa medallion around my neck. Back then if you told me the turn my life was going to take, I might have hit you honestly or at least called you some names.

Friends kept dying, going to juvenile hall, joining gangs (namely the wolfpack bloods made up of mostly Asian and Latino kids), doing drugs, I hung out with them every day, all day. Life at school was hard, life at home was hard, life outside of the home was even harder!

Fast-track to eleven years old, my mother got together with the owner of a local grocery store I used to go to all of the time as a kid, and even though the store was closed, we moved into the house attached to it. The new house was right around the corner from our old house but was still right in the heart of Little Cambodia and closer to the park my friends and I hung out at. The man my mother dated, became my father figure, something I lacked until that time, and he was and still is the kindest and most gentle man I have ever known (he passed away February 13th, 2021).

We lived there for about a year and a half and finally my mom and new dad decided we needed to move into a new area of the city. They sold the house and we then moved into a predominantly Irish neighborhood, a stark contrast from Little Cambodia. Everyone in the new neighborhood was white and generally speaking Irish and there were Irish pubs on every corner, I thought, “These people look like me, sound like me, I’ll fit in great here.” This was not the case.

My family always told me, we’re German and English, so when kids would ask if I was Irish, I’d tell them that I was German and English, when they found out the area I grew up in, they were afraid, so once again I was an outcast. When my family would tell me what I was on an ethnic level, it was always sort of like they were saying, “We don’t know, we think we’re German and English,” so I never fully identified with any ethnicity. I became friends with a Polish kid at school, he was an outcast like me and his friends were becoming my friends as well. Around this time, gang violence amongst youths in Philly was at a fever pitch and me and my new friends, hooked up with some of my old friends and started a fight club for kids to settle their disputes and not kill each other.

One of the kids was named Pauly, he was also feared, not because of where he was from, but because he liked fighting a lot more than most others. I had already been studying martial arts for a while and Pauly and I fought in the fight club because I was a bigger kid than many here and he wanted to test himself and I suppose me. I beat him pretty bad and after the fight, he hugged me and said, “You should meet some of my friends, you’ll fit with them and they’ll like and accept you for who you are.” This was the beginning of the rest of this story and much of my life.

 

II. The Life of the little Nazi

 

I met up with some of Pauly’s friends, mostly skinheads, mostly punk rock kids, immediately they called me bro and brother, they used to tell me, “As long as you’re white, you’re alright.” It wasn’t anything serious, they were more of a white gang honestly and they were in no way organized. We would drink, sometimes smoke pot, listen to racist music like Skrewdriver, mosh and knock each other around, but this small simple racist group set into motion something in me, that I wanted more of. Then the HBO special Skinheads: soldiers of the race war came out and while most would have been disgusted by it, it further pushed me to read on the stance of National Socialism, read Mein Kampf, and Skinhead philosophy.

At that time the internet was limited, I had AOL and there were chatrooms for just about everything, while I couldn’t find any skinhead rooms, I did find a Ku Klux Klan chatroom run by a NY grand dragon who went by KlanmanNY and he and I hit it off. He’d invite me to go to NY, he’d let me know when he was riding through Philly on his Harley and while I didn’t really like the KKK, he used to say, “Us white soldiers need to stick together.” Mind you, I was 12-13 when all of this went down, so I wasn’t doing much but hanging around, listening to racist music, partying with them, I wasn’t serious, and hell, I was dating a Vietnamese girl Judy at the time (though none of them in the movement knew).

This went on for a few years until I was 15 years old and in high school, a black girl hit on me and asked me if I wanted to go out with her. I was still dating Judy and no one in my high school knew my friends or the movement I hung out with, so I told her verbatim, “I’m seeing someone already I can’t.” The girl told a bunch of black kids that I called her a, “N%@@!r whore,” and after school 11-13 (Everyone who saw it told me different numbers) black kids jumped me, hit me in the back of the head with a brick, and left me for dead. I had a small plate put into the back of my head, a major concussion, and I was in a coma for three days.

Once I was back home, I called Pauly and we met up and he told me, “We’ll walk you to school and pick you up, all of us because we’re family.” They walked with me to school, waited right outside of the doors of the school to pick me up and it was at this time, that I became a ride-or-die racist and national socialist. I began reading everything I could on white nationalism and national socialism, watching shoddily produced videos daily, listen to more music, and long before podcasts, I had joined a racist group called the National Alliance and received dozens of lectures on tape.

I began talking to the founder of the National Alliance, William Pierce, a funny story happened;

“Pierce: What books have you read?

Me: Mein Kampf, the international Jew, even fiction like the Turner Diaries and Hunter. Pierce: You know I wrote the Turner diaries and hunter right?

Me: Oh my god, no I did not”

Pierce loved me, he’d tell me stories of racialist legends like George Lincoln Rockwell, David Duke, Tom Metzger, and many others and we stayed in contact for years. Pierce once told me, “Skinheads are grunts, they’re fodder in the movement, don’t hang around them unless you want to get hurt, killed, or go to jail,” but I hadn’t listened. One day, I was around 16 years old, Pauly ran to my house with a box in his hands, out of breath and scared of something, he said to me;

“I was at the lakes, this black dude came over to me and started hitting on me, I stabbed him and I need to stash this here at your place, the cops are looking for me.”

I was in shock and freaked out and told Pauly no and he ran out from the house and that was the last I saw of him or the skinheads. I told Pierce what had happened and he told me I did the right thing, and though I felt like I betrayed Pauly and the old crew, Pierce’s words were ringing true about the skinheads. At seventeen my best friend from kindergarten till then Neil died of a heroin overdose and that hurt me so bad that I could hardly get out of bed for days after the funeral. Pierce told me, “It’s the life where you are, this is why we need a clean white homeland,” and that struck a note with me and cemented that thought in my mind for years to come.

I started talking to notable figures, such as David Lane, Tom Metzger, alongside my talks with Pierce… none of whom actually liked each other funny enough. This further cemented and hardened me in the racialist movement, I was in it, I lived for it, and I would die or kill for it.

 

III.From Boy to Man

 

At eighteen years of age, I met a girl who lived in Arizona, she seemed so cool and was a tattoo artist for the skinheads in Tucson. A year later we got married, but she was mentally and physically abusive (knowing from conversations that I’d never hit a woman), I couldn’t tell anyone, after all, I was the white butcher of Philadelphia, feared because I was fearless and fought for fun sometimes. I just sort of sucked it up and went through life as I had done for years now.

Pierce remained a friend, though our contact was a bit more limited for a few years, then when I was 21 years old, he had a mission for me, he wanted me to meet with David Duke and function as his security during an event he was hosting in Philadelphia. I jumped at the chance and better yet, it would be televised on CNN I thought, and the day before the event I met up with Duke and went over security needs and he had me write a list of questions he’d answer the next day at the event as if the audience had asked him. It was all well-scripted and organized and the event went off without a hitch.

 Though I would not count Duke amongst those I considered friends at the time, it showed those I did consider friends in the movement, my seriousness. Metzger would ask me to type something up for him for one of his projects, Lane would ask me to pass out flyers for him here in Philly, Pierce remained a confidant and friend and would ask me to distribute tapes of his lectures to local friends and groups. I was putting in a lot of work, for various figures and factions in the movement, I felt like I was making a difference in the world, doing good.

I was 23 years old when my wife at the time wanted to move back to Tucson, Arizona and during the move I lost a lot of my things, including my phonebook, and thus, I lost contact with many in the movement. I took up the mantle of being a lone wolf, as I refused to hang around most skinheads and that was a majority of what comprised the movement in Arizona. Then came the culture shock!

We moved to a barrio, Southside Hollywood barrio to be exact and I quickly realized two things, I needed to learn Spanish for one, and two, that a lot of Mexicans in Arizona idolized Adolf Hitler. There were two schools of thought there, one, that Mexicans were white, or two, that they were brown and didn’t like many white people, it was quite shocking and very confusing. There was a skinhead group out there with a Mexican leader, that really blew my mind!

I stayed outside of the movement while in AZ, just keeping contact with those I knew from back in Philadelphia. I separated from my wife in 2008/2009 and met my current wife online and a year later I moved from Arizona to Gastonia, NC so that we could be together. Honestly, I missed being active in the movement and began looking for a serious organization to join and begin working with. I researched several groups and if anything I was extensively thorough in my work to find a group that was active, had a decent roster of members, and who did a lot of work.

I found the National Socialist Movement (the N.S.M.) headed by then Commander Jeff Schoep!

Several emails back and forth with the N.S.M. and I knew that I wanted to be a member and help in any way I could. The N.S.M. was the largest and in fact most active national socialist organization in the USA, I applied for probationary membership. I was invited to a meet and greet in Georgia and I’d met a bunch of individuals, including Jeff, the head of the organization. It was very warm and welcoming and at that time I was only a probationary member without a full patch.

I was working for several hours a day with the N.S.M. moving from member to regional leader, finally, I became the Chief of Staff, the second in command of the organization. My rise through the ranks was quick, this was due to my loyalty to both the ideology of national socialism and the NSM and my willingness to work in any capacity called to. We’d go on flier campaigns throughout the southern U.S., I set up numerous rallies, I had a website promoting national socialism, I came up with numerous ideas and concepts to help move the organization forward, managed members lists and contact information… I was very busy!

IV. Awakening

 

A little over seven years ago (as of 2021) I began noticing things that began shattering the illusions I had about the white power movements as a whole. We, as in all of the groups and affiliations I had, always touted unity, brotherhood, and the like, yet most groups didn’t like one another, most leaders hated other leaders, even within the same group members would suspect people of being cointel, informants, race traitors. A day did not go by that I didn’t hear from a member saying something along the lines of, “I was one so and so’s Facebook and they had some black friend on there,” or my personal favorite, “Their last name sounds Jewish.” It was utterly ridiculous…

With the first illusion destroyed, I began wondering what else wasn’t exactly true, was a half-truth, or was a complete lie. Several weeks I struggled to try to come to grips with the realizations falling into my brain like a million drops of rain, and soon enough there was a deluge.

I began deeply delving into retrospection and introspection on my every belief. I wrote a list of everything I held as true, every belief that led me into the life I was in, and then investigated each one rationally and without bias. I went onto Facebook and began making friends of every race, religion, creed, nationality, sexual orientation, gender etc… My list of beliefs, upon researching, if it was anything other than the truth, verifiable, undeniable truth, I got rid of it. I talked to friends of each demographic about some of them and they helped dispel a bunch more. If certain things were true (which were very few) I weighed whether the belief served to make life better, or hurt others.

It was a concentrated effort, stepping outside of my comfort zone, exposing myself to cultures and people I’d spent a good deal of my life demonizing. It took genuine work on my part to defeat the beast I was, to find love, empathy, and genuine compassion for all types of people. To destroy every stereotype I held, and to learn to treat every person as an individual, instead of as a type. I’d like to say I did this all alone, but honestly, a black friend of mine Brian “Bee” Stevenson played a major part in it. We talked every day, about everything and had an agreement, no getting mad, no fighting or arguing, just talking and breaking the beliefs down.

Bee got me back into listening to hip hop, he helped me to find who and what I am, outside of my past, and in all truth, he helped me to have the strength to slay the old me and to be my genuine self. I have a lot of friends of all colors today, but you’ll always hear me mention Bee, because he was a best friend of mine. He died about 3-4 years ago, he’d gotten a divorce and his ex-wife wouldn’t let him see his child, so he killed himself, and when I found out, it was the first time I’d cried over the death of someone not white.

I left the NSM seven years ago and took a good friend with me, who was the region 3 leader of the organization and we haven’t looked back since.

 

V. Recent Revelations

 

Since leaving the movement, I’ve gotten a handful of others to do so too, and have been on a personal crusade against hate, hate groups, and extremism. I’ve done interviews, have written articles, and am always trying to atone for the decades of hate and animosity on the people I’d demonized. Then, all within the last 3 months, my life has truly changed…

In January I received my Ancestry DNA results and they were quite shocking to me, to say the least. Firstly, I found out I’m a majority Scottish and Irish, 52% in fact, therefore all of the time feeling like and being treated as an outsider living in an Irish neighborhood, was for nothing. Secondly, I’m estimated at 15-20% Ashkenazi Jewish!

The feelings that flowed through me when I read that was powerful, I felt worse for my past, as I was demonizing my own people, causing woe to my own race. Since then, I’d begun talking to numerous rabbis and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, all of whom I’ve talked to and been interviewed by and I’ve been reading… a lot of reading. The kindness shown to me has been amazing, even with a past like I’ve had, a past I will spend the rest of my life trying to heal others from. Through my studies of my Jewishness, I’ve learned a lot of history, a lot of what makes someone truly Jewish, and about the religion of Judaism.

I’ve fallen in love with all things Jewish!

From the food to the culture, to the religion (Which my family and I are planning to convert to), it is absolutely a feeling of coming home. Every time I learn something, it just makes me want to learn more, every book I read just makes me want to read more. It’s become my obsession, my identity, my religion, my home…

I’ve also rekindled an old friendship much to my surprise, you see, when I left the NSM I refused to talk to anyone there again, this included Jeff Schoep who became a great friend, as well as the commander of the organization. In 2020 I found out he’d left all hatred in the past and was working toward ending extremism, much along the path I am. I contacted him and we’ve since reconnected in friendship and I am now helping with his anti-extremism project, Beyond Barriers in any capacity I can.

 

VI. So what have I learned?

 

I’ve learned more than I could ever have from anyone outside of the groups and movements could ever teach me. That is, through my own journey from hate, I’ve garnered an amazing understanding of what made me tick, and what makes these groups appeal to people… I know because I was one of them and I helped recruit others!

First, if you’ve read this far and know anything about human nature or the human mind, you’d realize I was a person without an identity and that made me an outsider in every place I lived growing up. The movement gave me a false identity, I was white and I was a brother to all of those within the groups, this was my initial lure to it all. I was white, it didn’t matter if I knew what ethnicity I was, white was good enough and they gave me a place I fit in. I also lacked any form of community, those groups became my foster community, with a culture based around whiteness and perpetuating an ideology and what amounts to myths about every other race.

Second, I had no purpose in life, the movement gave me a purpose, albeit a bad one, based around a simple phrase called, “The 14 words,” by David Lane, which read; “We must secure the existence of our people, and a future for white children.” This made it seem less like a hate group and more noble a cause. We felt as though we weren’t hurting others, we were protecting our race from all of the degeneracy and evil in the world. In the radical realm, this fueled our work, in the extremism realm, this gave justification to commit horrible acts on others, such as we have seen in the Oklahoma City bombing and in numerous anti-semitic shootings and actions over the years.

Thirdly, I learned that extremism fuels extremism; nothing brought us all together more than when Antifa was around, nothing made us feel more like we were soldiers in RaHoWa or the Racial Holy War. When Antifa would find our meeting locations, hotels etcetera, we’d all quickly gather, go out armed and ready, and at times patrol the area all night long in shifts. This united those in our movement unlike anything else!
Fourth, those joining non-KKK groups, often do so not out of hate, they’ll join for many reasons;

• From a feeling like things in the world are changing too fast
• To wanting to protect their kids
• For “Americanism,” and a feeling like America is losing itself
• Preferring to live in a bubble without anyone different
• For fear of anti-white sentiment and a fear of “white genocide.”
• Feeling like being in a group gives them a sort of pseudo personal army

 

In truth, many join these movements out of fear, not hate, fear of change, fear of “their,” America becoming different, fear of their kids being hurt or influenced by others, fear of feeling disconnected and being without an identity or friends. Hate is often bred within these groups, but is seldom the reason so many people initially join them. While the media and other outsiders only see hate, those interested in actually stopping hate groups and extremist groups should look deeper. When I first heard the fourteen words many moons ago, I didn’t think about hate, I feared for the future of white people, for my future kids and their future. Fear is a much more powerful feeling than most give it credit, it makes the irrational seem rational, it makes evil seem good, and it makes hate feel natural.

Fifth, the movement is not unlike a cult, in-fact it has more in common than not with being in a cult. You dress a certain way, think a certain way, you live in an insular bubble and cannot truly express who you are, you cannot be emotional, you have to stay on guard always, you cannot have friends or family of another race who you stay in contact with, you cannot question ideology, you must believe the myths (such as the Jews run everything and hate gentiles). If you show emotion, you’re seen as weak, if you aren’t on guard or ready to fight at the drop of a dime, you’re seen as a coward. Everything you hear and see is filtered to fit the narrative of the ideology, from news to the media you digest, this just reinforces everything that is believed within the movement.

Trying to leave these groups can also be difficult (like in a cult), people who a week before called your brother, will call you a traitor, you’ll be asked if you’re some government informant, you’ll be threatened, etcetera. Those who leave that life, do so at their own potential peril, as those who once “had your back,” now may see a target there. Long-time insiders often require starting life over from scratch, giving up friends, connections, identity they once had, and much more.

Sixth, many who join these groups are poor and thus an ideology saying the government wants whites to be poor and attributing the individuals suffering to generally speaking, the Jews (who they see as controlling the government). There is a deep well of poor whites who when they are given boogeymen to scapegoat their problems onto, quickly latch on. This ideology from a normal perspective is ridiculous, when you’re poor and given that boogeyman and told all the ways that the Jewish people control everything, you forget that Jewish people have poor people too. If I told you 2=1, you’d laugh at me, now if I said 2=1 because 3-2=1 (3 being one number, 2 being another) well that’s exactly how the ideology is spread and substantiated among these groups.

The other thing that’s told to poor people which gets them riled, is that immigrants are coming here and taking all of the American jobs. This coupled with what I’d already mentioned above, is enough to quickly recruit and radicalize the average individual into the movement.

Seventh, the media and news often radicalizes individuals with their sensationalization of just about everything. Any publicity is good publicity and often when major networks covered something about a group or organization, even if it’s disparaging, calls and emails asking to join came in. Many news outlets will write their stories and reports in a way that demeans the individuals involved, instead of anything that might call out to these people to change (They don’t want them to change, they’ll lose content to write about). The fact is, none of the media or reporters care to learn the “Why’s,” of them, they don’t care, all they care about is the bottom line, readers, viewers, and ratings. As Malcolm X said, “M.E.D.I.A. most effective devil in America!”

Eighth, there’s extensive media within the movement, everything from videos, DVD’s, music, books, and more, all of which can and does find its way into the hands of new recruits and even children. Those who are already impressionable or have already read something that they liked by one of these groups, will be more apt to buy the media put out by them and be further emboldened by it. The internet is nearly flooded by the media of various movements, which makes it more difficult to de-escalate someone already radicalized.

Nine, all changes in the American landscape, especially if not understood well, is used to demonize groups and subgroups. Large or growing minority groups, refugees, gay and transgender people gaining acceptance, people taking pride in their cultures that are outside of the homogenous American landscape (unless non-Jewish European), these things are all demonized. There is little to no understanding within the movement, nor desire to understand anything about those changing the portrait of America, but America is a constantly changing landscape and has always been. Even within the European trope throughout history, Germans, Irish, and Italians have faced resistance to their being accepted into American life, often forming insular communities to look out for one another.

Once one learns to see through the eyes of those they don’t understand, fear of the changing landscape dissipates and acceptance can be manifest. This is easier writ than done, especially when these movements frown on members having outside contact with people unlike them. In my honest opinion, youth need to be targeted to be educated on acceptance of that which I mentioned above, adults already involved in the movement need to be taught how to use their empathy towards others. The entirety of this can be done through open and honest dialog, without the threat of violence or yelling (which shuts down dialog).

 

VII. What should we do?

 

Knowing what I know, I have some ideas about how we can end the hate, how we can move forward, and further marginalize these types of groups. In the existing American society, whereas everything is consistently and rapidly changing, we need to combat extremism with equal fervor. This must come about in a way that appeals to the base human empathy and curiosity, or else it will be met with extreme resistance. As a united American people, separate but equal, united but also apart, this is the mindset that will forge understanding. A nation of many identities, a nation of pluralistic culture (both American +), but in the end, American.

So, the question I’ve heard asked quite a bit over the past 7+ years is “what can we do,” and I’ve thought long on this, as someone who had a spontaneous epiphany and what truly broke me and rebuilt me as the man I am today. Here are my ideas…

• Exposure to other cultures and people through open and honest dialog, helping people to express themselves and their feelings freely and without judgment. This can be made fun by the inclusion of cultural food exchanges, songs, traditions from the various cultures being celebrated together.

 

• A safe place to discuss all things race and culture, this would need to be a physical location (possibly combined with the first point on this list), as online lacks the expression of human contact. One thing I’ve wanted to do since leaving the movement is to open a cultural exchange center, where it’s fun, educational, and a safe place for expression of all forms. A place devoid of hate, whereas even if someone is a “Nazi,” they would be welcomed to come without being called names, without the threat of violence… this is how you wake people up. The only difficulty herein is getting people to come to it!

 

• Less media coverage unless something serious occurs during an event, this is whereas I previously stated, a good deal of recruitment comes from. There is no bad publicity, only publicity and even if a headline says something like “Racist neo-nazi group to hold a rally,” it will get those who have an inkling toward that interested. If something serious like a riot or shooting occurred, of course, that should be covered, but on average that is not the case.

 

• Appeal to logic and reason, not degrade. Let me ask you something, if I said, “you Nazi pigs need to die,” or if I said, “we’re all human facing our own internal and external struggles and crisis,” which would gather more empathy or calm attention and less resistance?

 

• Have a lifeline open for those who leave the movements to enter into and to break the cult-like indoctrination. Create the camaraderie and feeling amongst those involved, like when they were in the movements, but working towards the opposite aims. Oftentimes a person will leave one group for a time with the intention of getting out, only to join another, give them the option of joining something better.

 

• Dissolving the fears and realizing everything in the movement comes from a place of fear first and foremost. Once fear has been eliminated, the walls of the bubble crumble and with it, much of the ideology of the movement.

 

Much of what I mentioned above is a dream of mine that I’d like to see come to fruition in the form of a cultural center, with all of those aspects combined. I lack the funds at present to see this come about, but I have been looking into alternative means to make it a reality (such as donors or grants). Once this community cultural center is opened, it can serve as a jumping-off point for cultural centers across the U.S., and that unto itself, will eliminate most extremist and hate groups in our nation!

Anyone wanting to help on this project would be more than welcomed, I’d also like input from anyone who reads this, feel free to email me at dlux18@gmail.com.

Our kids deserve better!
Frederick Cook
Associate Director/interventionist
Beyond Barriers