An opportunity to welcome some of our guests, particularly in the area of the country and prejudice and engage with them in conversations. Wed like to do it two ways today. After our guest speaks, i will begin with questions and then make the floor available to you to ask and argue with them, whatever makes you happy. When he was still a teenager. After leaving the violent far right state movement that he was part of during his youth, he began the painstaking process of rebuilding his life. And in the year 2009, he cofounded an Organization Called life after hate. A Nonprofit Organization helping people to disengage from hate and violent extremism. In 2015 christian decided to share his journey from hate to understanding in the book, and he published the romantic, a book called romantic violence memoirs of an american skinhead. So following his talk ill ask him a few questions and he will have an opportunity to engage with him. Christian, the floor is yours. [applause] thank you, abe. Its a real pleasure to be here first of all. Dont be distracted by the terrible view thats outside. I may be but please dont. My name is christian picciolini, and my journey here actually started not in 1973 in november on a snowy day 43 years ago, but 22 years ago in 1995 when i left finally the organization, the american neonazi skinheads movement that helped build almost from its very beginning. I was 22 years old old at the time but id already spent eight years, every single one of my formative years as part of americas first neonazi skinhead gang. But before that i was a relatively normal teenager. I had a thing for tchotchke, haircut, you know, happy days was the 80s so forgive me. But i was a normal teenage kid my parents were italian immigrants who came to United States in the mid1960s. And theyre often the victims of prejudice themselves. The racism wasnt something that i grew up with perkins act is quite opposite. We always had people of different cultures and religions visiting, and i became very comfortable with that. But because my parents were immigrants they also had to work very hard in this country. So he opened a small beauty shop on southside of chicago, and that kept him busy seven days a week, sometimes 14 hours a day. So i didnt really see my parents very much. I had lived in a very italian part of chicago but when i was born, my parents moved me to a very, lets say a place with lacked diversity. It was a very white suburban area. So growing up i never really knew what exactly i fit in pic i did know if i was an italian. I didnt quite understand if i was an american because of their traditional culture that they kept me in very close bubble. So i had a lot of struggles growing up. I had low selfesteem and low selfconfidence. I was bullied pretty severely because of my name and because i was different. I was also very short. And i started to really want to be very american. I got tired of being this person who stuck out as a child of immigrants. And i started to resent my parents for being immigrants and for also not being there for me. I felt very abandoned by them. So one day when i was going through this search for an identity and a community and a sense of purpose, which is really a fundamental need that everybody searches for, i had this grievance underneath, this kind of selfhatred, and a 14 i was standing in an no smoking a joint. And this man drove up in a 1968 firebird, 80 screeched to a halt a few inches from me and he got out of the car, came over to me and you looked me in the eyes and he said as he grabbed the joint out of my mouth, dont you know that thats what the communists and the jews want you to do to keep the domicile . Well, i was 14. I did know what communist was. I did know if id met a jewish person and he hardly knew what the word hostile mid. Its true, still dont really know, but his charisma struck me. Me. For most of my life until that point i felt very powerless. I was picked on and bullied to. I didnt have any friends. I didnt have a community. When this man came up to me he started to promise me paradise. He said come with me and you wont be powerless anymore. You will be powerful. My ears perked up and he said come with me and you wont be alone, and ill give you this community. And i got very interested. And then he started tilting tell me about the dangers that existed in my community that africanamericans were moving in, to commit crime that immigrants are coming into still jobs and the jewish people control the media and finance system and the banking system. I didnt quite understand that but i thought that this guy, two out of three wasnt bad and i was willing to join the group. And not be alone anymore and feel powerful. I started to learn this ideology to stay a part of this, to belong. I didnt have a basis for racism. I didnt really understand what youre talking about. I certainly didnt see the things happening in my neighborhood that he claimed were happening. But i was lonely, and at 14 years old i pledged my allegiance to this man who happened to be americas first neonazi skinhead, and it would from the kid with the chachi haircut to one of americas first neonazi skinheads in 1987. As i was involved in this organization, i started to learn the rhetoric and the conspiracy theories and they would use their rhetoric to scare us to be leaving and doing harm and other people to stop that from happening. And i look back now i think to myself how could i follow for that . How could i follow for those lies . Because now i see the same conspiracy theories and same propaganda going around and it is the links only people i think i couldve been smarter than that. The trick was i was more than that. I didnt question the propaganda that i was being fed but ultimately i chose to swallow it and eventually i let it become a part of me because i wanted to belong so badly. It was that search for identity, community and sense of purpose that drove me to this movement when i was the most marginalized when i was a most vulnerable. Two years after i was recruited whenever 16, the, the man who recruited me went to prison for a series of vicious and heinous hate crimes. One of which the final crime was going to the apartment of another skinhead girl who was part of his crew who would been seen standing at a bus stop with black men, and it went to her apartment, the whole group, and a kick in her door and a pistol whipped her until she was within an inch of her life. And before you left and teaches dead, they painted a swastika on her wall in her own blood. Luckily for that, they were arrested and sentenced to prison. Unlucky for me, that propelled me into a position of leadership for this organization because ive now been around two years that i learned how to recruit. I fully was immersed in the rhetoric and ideology, and i started to draw in kids that were younger than the and oftentimes the bullies that picked on me. I would bring them in. So now because there was avoiding leadership, everybody had been recruited after me suddenly looked to me to find out what to do. And two years prior to this powerless kid had no idea how to lead, who had no idea how to even have a relationship in real life because i was shy, was suddenly propelled into a leadership position of americas first neonazi skinhead gang. An infamous organization in the United States because by this time group said start to pop up all over the country. One thing i realized was that music was a very powerful recruitment tool. It was also a very good vehicle for propaganda. So i started in 1990, one of americas first white power skinhead bands. And in those songs i would essentially use propaganda to teach people to hate, to commit acts of violence, and to be proud of something that was manufactured. Because what we said was that diversity was contributing to a white genocide, that the more we allow diversity and multiculturalism to take place, that white people would bear the brunt of that and be pushed out of this world. Of course i look back at that i think how ridiculous that must have sounded but it resonated with people. It was use of the rhetoric to make them afraid that really kicked them into action. So this picture is from 1991 at a concert in germany. Thats me on stage singing to about 4000 skinheads from all over europe. And i sang these lyrics that really encourage people to go out and commit acts of violence, to hurt other people based on simply the color of their skin, the god that they break you or who they loved. This was the First Experience where i recognize what the consequences of my works really were because after this concert, these 4000 skinheads went out into weimar, this beautiful comp store pharmacies at germantown that has produced artists and thinkers and philosophers and musicians, and they essentially destroyed this town. They walked into shops and looted. They broke into pubs and stole beer, and they beat up the townspeople who happen to be german. That didnt compute to me. I didnt understand why we could say one thing and do another. And i started to realize not only the consequences that my words would have to encourage people to go out and commit acts of violence, but i start to question the ideology, and if it was something that i was really in tune with. Because for these eight years that i was involved i always had questioned in the back of my mind. When i heard things that did make sense i wouldnt stand up and question them, but i would have this internal struggle on whether it was right or whether i believe it, or whether i was capable of things that i was telling people to do. Yet i did them. And i know now that for eight years that i was involved, i hated other people because i hated myself. I hated my situation so much that i was willing to project my own pain onto other people so that i didnt have to deal with it myself. When i came back in 1991 from the trip in germany, things changed again for me. I met a girl and i fell in love. And at 19 years old we were married and we had our first child. And i can tell you come if youre a parent may view understand this, when i held my child for the first time in my arms, it was a bit of magic. I suddenly reconnected with that innocent 14yearold who was lost and i regained my innocence, i started to release such a glimpse of what it meant to be innocent. And i started to ship my priorities, my identity, my community, my sense of purpose were no longer as a skinhead, as a leader. It was as a father and as a husband. And all i wanted to do was support my family and provide for them pics i begin to question very aggressively the ideology that i had believed and that i passed a law on to hundreds and maybe thousands and maybe tens of thousands of other people, both through meetings and my music. And i knew thats not what i wanted for my own family. I never asked my wife was not a part of this movement to become involved. I never thought that i wanted my child to be a part of the movement. And i started to really question what i was doing. But i got a little confused again and i said okay, i need to support my family. Theres not much else i know but music, and i decide to open a records store. And the purpose of the record store for me was not only to support my family but to state a part of this movement because it was so difficult to leave, despite abandoning the ideology day by day. It was a difficult to leave the identity and the community because i had a family around me that i never experienced before. And it was difficult so i went and opened a store to sell white power music. Thats all i knew how to do. And very quickly, this is before the internet, very quickly the white power music became 75 of my gross revenue. People were driving from new york and from california to buy this music, but trying to be a Good Business person and being greedy, maybe a little selfish, i decided i wasnt just going to sell white power music, i was going to sell other music so i started to start heavy metal and punk rock and hiphop. And what happened next i never would have imagined. The customers who came in to buy that at the music, even they knew who i was, showed me compassion. In fact, they showed me compassion when i least deserved it, and they were the people that i least deserved it from. And at first i was very standoffish. I was happy to accept their money and sell them their music and if they tried to start a conversation i was very short, i really did want to engage. They kept coming back. And every time they came back the conversation became just a little bit more personal, and engage just a little bit more. And one day when a black teenager came in and he was clearly upset, i asked him what was wrong and he told me that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. And suddenly i was able to connect with them and understand how we felt, because my grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer just before that. And when i saw the gay Couple Holding and loving her son, i recognized that was the same love that i felt for my own son. And the conversations got to be more personal, and i started to realize that with more similarities than differences, and that the differences we had were superficial. We all had the need for love and for acceptance and for success and to be able to support our families. Those are the fundamental needs that we all shared, and that all the superficial differences that i had magnified and amplified to separate myself from them were just that, they were superficial, inconsequential differences that didnt really matter in the grand scheme of things. We were human beings, and we shared these experiences. And im thankful for those people because that was the first time that i was allowed, that i allowed myself to humanize somebody else. Because before that they were monsters, they were garbage or they were cockroaches. I kept as much of the humanization out of it as possible so it was easy to hate the other, because thats what the movement was always about. It was always about lending somebody else for the problems that existed rather than reflecting integrally to see if maybe you were the contribution to that problem. It was about blaming that invisible person for everything that was going wrong in your life, for all the perceived wrong it was happening in the World Without actually knowing those people. And when i begin to meet these people i started to realize that there was nothing to hate, that they didnt match what was in my head, and now i was starting to think emotionally. I was connected. I hai have lost the ego and the fear. And everything crashed. My life fell apart. When i left the movement i close the store. I pulled the music from the shelves and because theyre so much revenue, of course i couldnt sustain the store anymore so i had to close it. I lost my livelihood. I also lost my family, my community that i built for eight years. My wife and my children left me because i didnt leave the movement quickly enough or pay them enough attention, and they just had to leave. I didnt have a great relationship with my parents, even though they tried, and essentially when i left i lost everything. And i went through a period of five years until 1999 where almost every morning i woke up and i contemplated taking my own life. Because i didnt feel, i didnt understand exactly why i wasnt feeling better. I was treating other people with respect. I was showing compassion, but i was still dying inside. At the end of that five years a friend of mine, one of the few friends i had came up to me and she said, you have to change something. I dont want you to die. I said okay, what do you suggest . She said i just got this job at this Company Called ibm, maybe youve heard of them. You can go apply there. I said youre crazy. I said i cannot fault to his all over body, im an ex nazi. I went to six high schools. I got kicked out of all of them. One of them twice. I never went to college. I dont own a computer by the way, and theres no way that the retirement it she said just try it, its an entrylevel position and i will vouch for you. Just tell them youre good with people. Okay, i guess i can say that. [laughing] and i wrote my first resume, and i live on my first resume. And i got the job i lied. And on my first day, millions of customers come on my first day, where did they put me . My old high school, the same what i got kicked out of twice to install all their computers for the store district. I was terrified. I was this grown man at the time and i was nervous, like it was my first day at school. I didnt know like how could i etched change my pants of people could recognize me. I knew the minute i walked into those hallways that they would say get out. And, of course, i walk in and the first five minutes who do i see but the old black secre secy card i got in a fist fight with that got me kicked out for the second time. You can call it fate, destiny, karma, whatever. Gods will. But i was so scared. I have never been so scared in my life. I did know what to do. I was shaking. I decided i was going to chase him to the parking lot, probably not the best move, but when i found him as he is getting into is, i tapped on the shoulder and heturned around and when you recognize me, he took a step back in fear. And i knew i had to do something, so all i could think to say was, im sorry. And he stuck out his hand and i shook it, and we embraced. Its pretty plausible we cried. Im not quite sure, it was a long time ago but im pretty certain we did. And we talked and he made me promise one thing. He made me promise that i would tell my story to other people, not because of being an ex nazi and suddenly doing better, but because you recognize that what i gone through compassing the same struggle that i had wasnt something that was unique to me pick something that every young vulnerable marginalized person goes through. And that the lessons that i learned that also the lessons that other people could learn. And maybe he had some intuition about why young people may join isis. This was way before then, because there are parallel reasons why people join gangs, why they join movements of hate and why do might travel to syria to fight for a cause that they dont really understand, or that doesnt make a whole lot of sense. The parallels are that we are searching when we are the most vulnerable for Identity Community and a sense of purpose we have a lot of marginalized young people, middle aged people, older people this world right now. A lot of people searching for answers. A lot of confusion. And its very easy for a savvy marketer or savvy recruiter to walk in front of your path or to place something in your view that tries to solve those problems for you by blaming somebody else. So i decided that because it was so hard for me that i was going to write a book. I couldnt talk to people. I was introverted or ar ashes gg to write a book and take this mans advice until the people my story. Took me ten years to do it but i finally did it. And it really is a cautionary tale for young people who might be searching for something. And in 2010 2010 i cofounded a session called life after hate, with the purpose of helping people go to that transition where they are scared to leave these movements because of the iden