SPLC's Intelligence Report | Page 69

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. 66 splc intelligence report 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 t