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