Violence. This is about an hour and a half. Good evening. I am abraham foxman. Im currently director of the center for the semitism and from time to time i have an opportunity to welcome some of our guests particularly in the area of prejudice and engage with them with conversation. After our guests speaks and makes his presentation i will begin with some questions and make the floor available to you to ask him, argue with him whatever makes you happy. Microphone. I will. We are delighted to welcome to, memoirs of an american skinhead with its author who lived through those experiences, Christian Picciolini. Christian is here to shed light on his unlike the path as the sun up to hardworking immigrants and becoming the leader of the chicago area skinheads when he was still a teenager. After leaving the Violent Movement he was part of during his youth he began the painstaking process of rebuilding his life. 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 a book and be published a book called romantic violence memoirs of an american skinhead. Following his talk i will ask him some questions and you will have an opportunity to engage with him. Thank you. [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 Skinhead Movement that i helped to build almost from the very beginning. I was 22 years old at the time but i had already spent eight years, every single one of my formative teen years as part of americas first neonazi skinhead gang. But before that i was a relatively normal teenager. I had a thing for the chukchi haircut, happy days. It was the 80s so forgive me but i was a normal teenage kid. My parents were italian immigrants who came to the United States in the mid1960s and they were often the victims of prejudice themselves so racism wasnt something that id grew up with. In fact it was quite the 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. They opened a small beauty shop on the southside of chicago and that kept them busy seven days a week, sometimes 14 hours a day and i didnt really see my parents very much. I had lived in a very a tie and part of chicago but when i was born my parents moved me to a very lets say a place that lacked diversity, a very white suburban areas of growing up i never really knew where exact to fit in. I didnt know if i was italian and didnt understand if i was american because of the traditional culture that kept me in a very close bubble. I had a lot of struggles growing up that i had low selfesteem and low selfconfidence. I was bullied. 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 whos struck out as a child of immigrants. I started to for being immigrants and are 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 the community in a sense of purpose which is really a fundamental need that everybody searches for i have this grievance, this kind of selfhatred and at 14 i was standing in an alley and i was smoking a joint and this man drove up and in 1968 firebird and he screeched to a hault a few inches from me and he got out of the car came over to me and he looked me in the eyes and said as he grabbed a joint out of my mouth, dont you know that thats what the communists and want you to do, to keep the dos ill . I was 14 and i didnt know what a communist was and had never met a jewish person and hardly knew what the words dos ill meant. His charisma struck me. For most of my life until that point i felt very powerless. I was picked on and bullied. They didnt have any friends. I didnt have a community and when this man came up to me he start to promise me. Ice could he said, come with me and you wont be powerless anymore. He will be powerful in my ears perked up a decent come with me and you wont be alone and i will give you this community. I got very interested and that he started to tell me about the dangers that existed in my community that africanamericans were moving in and immigrants were coming into steel jobs in jewish people control the media and finances in the banking system. I didnt quite understand that but i thought this guy, two out of three wasnt bad and i was willing to join the group and not he alone anymore and feel powerful. I started to learn this ideology to stay a part of this, too belonged. I didnt have it tases for racism. I didnt really understand what he was talking about and i certainly didnt see the things happening in my neighborhood that he claimed were happening. But i was lonely and a 14 years old i pledge my allegiance to this man who happened to be americas first neonazi skinhead and i went from that kid with the 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 fear rhetoric to scare us to believe being in doing harm and other people stop that from happening today look back now and i think how could i have fallen for those lies because now i see the same conspiracy theories in the same propaganda going around and its fooling so many people. Id could have been smarter than that amateurs was i was smarter 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. That search for identity, community and the sense of purpose drove me to this movement when i was the most marginalized and the most vulnerable. Two years after i was recruited i was 16 years old and 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 this crew who had been seen standing at a bus stop with a black man. They went to her apartment, the whole group and they kicked in her door and they pistol whipped her until she was within an inch of her life and before they left they painted a swastika on her wall. Luckily for that they were arrested and sentenced to prison unlucky for me that propelled me into the position of leadership for this organization because i had now been around two years. I had learned how to recruit. I was fully immersed in the rhetoric and ideology and i started to draw in kids that were younger than me and oftentimes the bullies that picked on me. I would bring them in. So now because there was a void in leadership everybody recruited after me suddenly looked to me to find out what to do. Two years prior to this powerless kid who had no idea how to lead, who had no idea how to even have a relationship in real life because i wish i was suddenly propelled into leadership position of americas first neonazi skinhead gang and by this time groups have started to pop up all over the country. One thing i realized was that music was a very powerful recruitment troll. It was also very good vehicle for propaganda so i started in 1990, one of americas first white power skinhead fans and 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 and i think how ridiculous that must have sounded better resonated with people. It was the use of fear rhetoric that made 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. I sang these lyrics that really encourage people to go out and commit acts of violence and hurt other people based on simply the color of their skin or who they love. This was the First Experience were erected nice but the consequences of my works really were because after these concerts these 4000 skinheads went out to beautiful historic former east german town that produced artists thinkers philosophers and musicians and they essentially destroyed this town. They walked into shops, and looted. They broke into pubs and stole beer and debuted at the townspeople who happened 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 commit acts of violence but i started 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 questions in the back of my mind. When i heard things that didnt make sense i wouldnt stand up and question them but i would have this internal struggle on whether it was right or whether i believed it or whether i was capable of things that i was telling people to do. 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 a trip to germany things changed again for me. I met a girl, fell in love and at 19 years old we were married and we had our first child. I could tell you and if you are a parent may be understand this, when i held my child for the first time in my arms there was a bit of magic. I suddenly reconnected with that innocent 14yearold who was lost and they regained my innocence. I started to at least catch a glimpse of what it meant to be innocent. And i started to shift my priorities. My identity, my community, my sense of purpose were no longer as a skinhead, as a leader. It was as a father, as a husband and all i wanted to do was support my family and provide for them. So i began to question very aggressively the ideology that i believed and that i had passed along to hundreds and maybe thousands and maybe tens of thousands of other people both through meetings and my music and i knew that thats not what i wanted for my own family. I never asked my wife who 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 that music and i decided to open a record store. The purpose of the Records Store for me was not only to support my family but to stay a part of this movement because it was so difficult to leave despite abandoning the ideology day by day. Was so difficult to leave the identity and the community because i had a family around me that i never experienced before and it was difficult. I went and opened the store to sell white power music. Thats all i knew how to do. Very quickly, this was before the internet, very quickly the white power music became 75 of my gross revenue. People were driving from new york and california to buy this music. Trying to be a Good Business person, being greedy and maybe a little selfish i decided i wasnt going just to sell white power music but i was going to sell at the musics i started to stock heavy metal and punk rock inconsequential differences. It didnt really matter in the grand scheme of things. They were human beings and we shared these experiences and im thankful for those people because that was the first time i was allowed, that i allowed myself to somebody else because before that they were monsters and they were garbage and cockroaches. I kept as much humanization not out of it so was easy to hate the other because thats what the movement was always about the size about laming somebody else for that drop bombs that existed rather than reflect internally to see if maybe you were the contribution to their problem. Blaming that invisible person for everything that was going wrong in your life for all the perceived wrongs happening in the World Without actually knowing those people. When i began to meet these people i started to realize that there was nothing to hate. They didnt match what was in my head and now i was starting to think emotionally i was connected. I had lost the fear and then everything crashed. My life fell apart. When i left the Movement Type close the store and pulled the music from the shelves. There was so much revenue and of course i couldnt sustain the store tomorrow so i had to close it with a lost my livelihood. I also lost my family, my community that i had 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. Eventually when i left i lost everything and i went through period the five years until 1999 for almost every morning i woke up and i contemplated taking my own life because i didnt feel, i didnt understand exact reply i wasnt feeling better. It was treating other people with respect. I was showing compassion but i was still dying inside. Five years 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 that she said well i just got this job at this Company Called ibm, maybe you have heard of them. You can go and apply their progressive you are crazy. I have tattoos all over my body. Im an exand i went to six high schools and got kicked out of all of them, one of them twice but it never went to college and i dont know the computer and theres no way that they would hire me but she said just try an entrylevel position and i will vouch for you. I wrote my first resume and i lied on my first resume. And i got the job. On my first day ibm has millions of customers. On my first day where did they put me . My Old High School come the same one i got kicked out of twice. I was terrified. Here i was this grown man at the time and i was nervous like it was my first day of school and how could i change my appearance so people wouldnt recognize me . I knew the minute i walked into those hallways that they would say, get out. Of course i walk in and the first five minutes who do i see facts the old black Security Guard that id got kicked out for the second time then you can call it faith or destiny, whatever but i was so scared. Ive never been so scared of my life. I did didnt know what to do. I was shaky so i decided i was going to chase them to the parking lot, probably not the best move but one i found him getting into his car at tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and when he recognized me he took a step back in fear. I knew i had to do something. All i could think to say was im sorry. He stuck out his hand and i shook it and we embraced. Its pretty possible he cried. Im not quite sure. It was a long time ago. We talked and he made me promise one thing. Made me me promise i would tell my story to other people not because of being in exand suddenly doing better but because he recognized what i had gone through the same struggles that i had wasnt something that was unique to me, it was something that every young omar bole marginalized person goes through and the lessons that i learned also are lessons that other people can learn. 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 they 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 and identity for sense of purpose. We have a lot of marginalized and disenfranchised young people , middleaged people, older people in this world right now. A lot of people searching for answers. A lot of confusion. Its very easy for a savvy recruit or to place something in your view that tries to solve those problems for you by blaming somebody else. So i decided because it was so hard for me that i was going to write a book. I was introverted and i was just going to write a book and take this mans advice until the people my story. 10 years later i finally did it and it really is a cautionary tale for young people who might be searching for something. And in 2010 i cofounded an Organization Called life after hate with the purpose of helping people go through that transition where they are scared to leave these movements because of the identity, because of the community and because of the purpose. They may not have something they have is another special purpose in their lives and we help them transition out of that and disengage from hateful ideologies and hates and hate groups not by battling ideologically with them, not by arguing with them or debating with them because that just low raises people further. In our Political Climate what we do is we listen and we listen for what i call potholes. Before i talk about that i want to talk a little bit about what the state of the movement is today. When we think of the far right or hate groups we tend to think of skinheads and kkk and militia people and they still exist but they are not what they used to be. This movement has gone from what they called boots to suits for this was a concerted effort for us. This is no surprise. 30 years ago we had a leaderless resistance where our goal was because we recognize that we were scaring away the average american racist with their swastikas and shaved heads that we were not going to do that anymore. We were going to not get tattoos and we were going to go to universities and then we were going to get jobs in Law Enforcement and we were going to run for office. Here we are, 30 years later and what i was skeptical about 30 years ago we are starting to see some of that happening and a metastasizing of that cancer. They have gotten very smart. They have learned how to massage the message but the ideology is the same. Its based on fear so whats gone from this because of the internet, because its a place w