Now i would like to turn it over to my cohost. If you are here for the first time we are covering everyone in between. Our special guest tonight is the founder of the free radical project a Global Network of the former extremists who were they radicalizing others trying to weave the movement by providing counseling. Hes an emmy award producer. [applause] this is your second book and i flew through the 200 plus pages so quickly like a hungry child after school and because i was craving some of this truth. Before we dive into all these truths, the book does share a story from other individuals you encountered whether direct or indirect and i think that we should start with telling your story and how that encounter lead you to the chicago area and americas first organized neonazi group. Thank you so much for having me. It is a privilege and honor a privilege becausanda privilege t often times people dont look like me or have a darker skin color, sometimes they dont get the same Second Chances that i do. So, i want to acknowledge that. You know, i was born on the southside osouth side of chicagn immigrant parents who worked very, very hard and grownup come i didnt see them very often. They were working seven days a week, so i grew up kind of isolated and was searching for the sense of identity and purpose which i think most people do. And i found it in an alley while i was smoking a joint and demand that recruited me walked up to me, pulled the joint from my mouth, looked me in the eyes and says that the communists and the jews want you to do. I have to be honest i didnt know what the communists was. It was the first time i felt somebody really salty and drew me in and i didnt know it at that time, but i have just been recruited at 14yearsold to americas first neonazi skinhead groups. The reward but i was getting is this kind of agency and this brotherhood. There were questions about why he was involved in and it became increasingly hard to believe because i was afraid of going back to the nothingness that i have a 14. Of course you did leave. Can you tell us what did it for you . I dont think there was a day that i didnt question what i was involved in at least very quietly. But i also met people along the way that challenged me not in an aggressive way or telling me i was wrong but just through a lived experience and getting to know them. I opened up a record store to sell racist music i was making and importing and a small section of hiphop and punk and heavy metal never expecting anybody to come in to buy those things. It was just me saying i want to open a record store but i couldnt go in there to tell them i was going to make mafia music and people came in, people of color, people from the Lgbtq Community and it was the first time i had an interaction with people i kept out of my Social Circle and i recognized pretty quickly once that happened that actually i respected him more and liked them more and more than the people i surrounded myself with for eight years. Eventually i became embarrassed to sell the music, i pulled it from the shelves and it was 90 of my revenue so i had to close the stores. That gave me an opportunity to really disengage from the movement. My wife got married at 18 and had her first son and she never was supportive of what i was involved in. Even though i had sitting in front of me this purpose of being a father and a husband i still didnt see it at the time. You are going over that kind of fast but youre pointing out Identity Community and purpose. I think that this gets to the heart someone was able to pull you into the movement and how they were able to reach. I think its important. We here in the world today and assumed they were always like this but nobody is born a hater. They find it almost like a protective armor they put on to protect themselves from the pain they feel. They project that pain outward onto other people. But every single one of us is searching for Identity Community and purpose at some point in our lives. We have to find that. It develops or values. Its the community that we are a part of, the family. So, people who gravitate towards extremism i talk about this in my book because they are searching for Identity Community purpose, not hate. The ideology is a final component but they find that locks into place and allows them to then blame their pain on somebody else. But of course we are all not extremists. Maybe we kind of are. Maybe thats a joke, maybe not. [laughter] i think the differentiator is it is for the Community Purpose but also a broken search with what i call potholes. It can be a million Different Things com from it can be of us, poverty, the loss of a beloved one, divorce, for me it was abandonment but it could also be joblessness, poverty. But if it keeps us so isolated from humanity that could also detour us. So these are to the fringes that these narratives live and they are plenty. The extremist narrative or behavior can be anything from being a neonazi to fly into syria to join isys, to begin debate could become a shooter or drug dealer that is the manifestation of an extremist behavior, and i think ultimately this will extremism could be suicide, sort of taking your pain out on somebody else come its taking it out on your self, so i think that if we start to put out why the motivations of why people engage in these extremist behaviors, we can look at how to fill the potholes so we can bring people back. We do share all the stories s that tie back into why. I will start with you and asking you to answer why. Any time in the few years that you were a part of cash, chicago area skinheads, did you ever feel horrible, did compassion ever overcome the ideology you started believing in or the hate that was poisoning your mind and heart attacks i dont know that they passed i didnt feel guilty about what i was givin doing but it wasnte place to show or do that. It wasnt a place to be vulnerable with my peers so i suspect i wasnt the only one who stuffed those type of feelings down and embraced to the hatred even more so because there was a reward and not from our peers. Being violent was the price of admission. Its what kept us there, this kind of feeling of respect for each other even though there was no respect. We didnt even have selfrespect. I mean, i really think its a tough thing to think people can leave those movements. I know its hard to believe maybe if we are nice to the bad people that they might change but i cant argue over 300 people disengage and it really is the compassion they receive when they least expect it from people believed to serve it from thats the most powerful thing ive seen. Story number one in the buck which i think speaks to a lot of the questions at least i have as a 38yearold woman from california that grew up in poverty and those around around me into this program here at the Commonwealth Club trying to address the political challenges were facing. We are facing. The book opens up with the book of cassandra, a younger girl from new jersey who gets deep into an internet relationship. Im going to let you tell the story because theres so much there, and i think that you would understand why it captures someone at my age maybe not everyone in the room but especially someone like myself. Cassandra was a 17yearold girl when her parents contacted me, which is often the case a bystander will contact me for help. She is a twin living in new jersey who struggled with social anxiety the whole time her sister was socially active. There was a dynamic between them that was difficult for cassandra to get beyond that and 2016 she had been recruited by an online boyfriend, a 21yearold man who said he was from idaho and had blond hair and blue eyes and recruited her for propaganda so she was 17yearsold making Holocaust Denial videos getting a significant following of the people and was dating this guy that kept coercing her to do these things and when her parents contacted me after about a month or so in my investigation i discovered her boyfriend wasnt a 21yearold man from idaho with blond hair and blue eyes but it was two people, one a russian man in st. Petersburg who was 31 and another one being a National Living in the city of california working together essentially to catfish her pretend to be somebody else. And this is part of my investigation before the president ial election to thousands of other internet and social media accounts that were not see pro trump anti hillary but they were russian control accounts of course nobody knew that. So i turned over 22 gigabytes of information to the fbi the first week of november before the election. Im not exactly sure what i found but i have these accounts from russia pro not see him pro trump and anti hillary but they are not americans. I think we have a problem because i was also tracking the accounts and discovered there were changes to black lives matter and then they became feminist and other became lgbt account and the goal was they were flooding the internet against these others that they were creating to put americans as the debate. You stumbled across the biggest story of the country. Because then the fbi and cia came out to say we discovered russia and meddling and collusion on social media through facebook. And then they never contacted me back after i turned over that information. And with the Hillary Clinton campaign. They asked for more information and i gave it to them. At least they sent you a request for funds. I wish i could tell you that was the truth but instead around that time the nonprofit i had cofounded under the Obama Administration want to grant 400,000 to combat privacy online a patiently waited for the money and then the administration changed and then the grant had rescinded we were the only group focused on White Supremacy everybody else was focused on radical islam we were the only group that was rescinded without reason. What is the reason that they give you for this grant you thought you would get . Was at a tweet . [laughter] that is something else. I got an email from the administrator that i did not know and said im sorry we we reviewed all the grant winners and your organization does not qualify. Right around the same time i had tweeted something which was not right and shared my feelings and the day the muslim than and that i said f you or something. [laughter] and the head of the nfc at the time denied the grant first and then said lets go find information on this group before we justify to take this away and then they found that afterthefact. There is something important to that for the work you would have done having a lot to do to focus and to protect young people as part of abuse. The Antidefamation League and the extremist related violence the Southern Poverty Law Center with the same percentage of increase in the year 2017 and if so there is something to be said about the murders and violence especially but to point fingers but you talk about your thoughts of the internet impacts of activities in which the premises propaganda. I grew up before the internet to go standing in an alley somebody approaches me of something of that nature. I was a delinquent kid at that time but now we have millions of alienated people who are online their only reality is Virtual Reality there only connections to other people and chat rooms and these people that are drawn to these narratives. And from these foreign actors with community and purpose online. It doesnt have to jive with the reality. But unfortunately it is spilling out to the real world. And then attributed to this movement and then there is the whole transnational component that most people are not aware of that this is an american problem and it exist although i have to say never in my lifetime did i ever think what i said 30 years ago would be coming out of a twitter feed or the person in the highest office and to me that is very scary because they do feel that somebody has their back. That grant that we lost was completely focused with online the radicalization we were ready to launch a network because that is where most people are radicalized and it was pulled for weeks before charlottesville. And throughout the book as you keep sharing other stories i was reminded of things in the 1970s there was quite a number of years there are people did not buy the idea of mind control people of the cold. And with the idea to the program and a lot of the same thing to catch a Vulnerable Person alienated and alone and hurting in some way to divide the community. And it is a big issue all the things youve been involved in. So are you optimistic we would get over this . The tide is rising. We need to be very careful. If we have a problem with White Nationalism to say its a folks and blown out of proportion sometimes multiple requests per day from parents and people involved in these movements. Never in a life have i got a request from a ten yearold ki kid. But im getting that now. We have seen a rise in violence and propaganda distribution on college campuses. And they know which narratives to pitch. And to be very effective while we are still debating if there is a problem. And that has been forged for decades. But then on the threepiece suit. But he actually lived in moscow 1999 through 2003. That he saw blooded his apartment to another supremacist they have been building these alliances for a long time. And that base which they call themselves the base a little translation for al qaeda there is white g hardware they tried to take those tactics of how they kill they drive their car cars, small groups the propaganda video. The narrative in the Mainstream Media in of which Mental Illness is cited for the reasons why in the book and with that autistic spectrum disorder and that after serving two tours but it is a little dangerous to fault and point fingers and on the dangers of that. Off to the alienation and disconnection from society. The bullying to establish intimate relationships with friends and things like that. And 75 percent of the people are dealing with an emotional disorder everything from depression to bipolar and schizophrenia. And those that dont become extremist but we have to break that equivalent. And those Multiplayer Online video games. For who knows where in the world taking them from the call of duty scenario and then the nword gauging of people respond to that and then sometimes thats from a nervous five yearold. And those that respond positively to a Smaller Group and then it ramps up from there. What we need to understand the bridges and roads are fine but we have our people in the best things we can do is offer Early Adolescent Mental Health care. To make sure people are set up with opportunities. And as adults we have to learn to be vulnerable with our children. That they have to impress and then they will never learn to be vulnerable. And then we need to build up. We see these stories of the technological anger. And how people are increasingly communicating mostly through social media. And to spend more time because the human infrastructure is not there. The individual work you are doing so what about these millions of kids . We can do it absolutely. Im a guide with that identity and purpose in guiding people and for the ways to fix this we can all do that. So why list the seven steps that it takes to disengage. I dont even tell people whats wrong or listen for the potholes. And then if i just have to infer that to figure out the motivations. And trying to repair that to offer that positive sense of identity. So talking about the evolution how that has changed over since you have left it. And where it is at today. And i would love to hear your thoughts and with those buzzwords like patriotic. To exercise freedom of speech we dont hate anyone now we are pro white. [laughter] were you reading my mind 15 years old . Dont like to use the term outright or White Nationalism because those are there marketing terms actually said what can we call ourselves . It is true. Back in the eighties and nineties we wanted to scorch the earth. But we call that white pride because we knew we had to do that for those who were too extreme to alienate the average american racist. Because they were patriotic in some cases. We were waving swastika flags. And that is the long wolf concept. Dont get tattoos dont shave your head. Dont use the same words like the evil jews instead of the global elites because it was a way for us to communicate. And then the average american picked up on it but the whole idea we dont want to alienate the recruiting pool so david duke getting rid of the clan robe and elected to the house of representatives that really was the beginning of this normalization which people recognized as extreme to make people afraid. So the person that came up with the modern look of the polo and the khaki. Vladimir putin. [laughter] i am not joking. Looking back 2012 we see the exact same tiki torches in ukraine during the revolution. We see the exact same imagery and other parts of eastern europe. This was a transplanted plan in fact many of the people who were instrumental had actually trained in paramilitary camps in ukraine which started off as the neonazi militia that was folded into the National Guard of ukraine a very important part of the fight of crimea and that is such an important part of the world because if anybody has seen the movie 300 those spartan held off because ukraine is like that for europe. Russia really wants to destroy democracy. So that is the entree in. Its interesting because these neonazis are fighting for the ukraine freedom but they are promoted by russian propaganda. In the book you start off with a brief history of racism in america going from institutional slavery to be recreated and jim crow that could be attacked legally but the people who are supporting and enforcing and mobilizing had control over someone else. Talk about the Younger Generation it sounds the violence itself is just the goal. What do they want . Chaos is the goal. Excrete extremism flourishes in times of uncertainty right now america is a tinderbox the world is a tinderbox of uncertainty where the fires of extremism are prime with millions of 11 young people about their futur