Former neo-Nazi says response to hate ideology is love

When a community falls victim to a hatred-fueled ideology, the only appropriate response is love.

That was the message former neo-Nazi skinhead Christian Picciolini gave during his “Life After Hate” presentation at a packed O’Shaughnessy Center Monday night.

Noting Whitefish’s recent struggles with white nationalist threats and troll storms by neo-Nazi websites like The Daily Stormer, Picciolini called Whitefish’s response the “gold standard.”

“You could’ve been just like them and hated them, attacked them and been violent, but instead you guys came together as a community. And you surrounded the problem with love from each other and stopped it from happening,” he said.

Picciolini’s presentation was part of a Montana-wide tour hosted by the Montana Human Rights Network. Picciolini shared his story of how he went from helping build the white supremacist movement to working to disengage youth from white supremacists groups and violent extremism through his nonprofit.

Last December, The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist website, created a call to action prompting an online “troll storm” directed at Whitefish businesses and Jewish families following an alleged incident involving the family of white supremacist Richard Spencer, who is the self-proclaimed leader of the alt-right movement and a part-time Whitefish resident. The website also threatened an armed march through the streets of Whitefish in January, though it never happened.

“I see resilience. I see a community that’s stronger and closer, and beat them by doing the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted to tear you apart, but instead you came together,” he said.

When asked what he would say to Spencer, Picciolini turned and spoke directly to the white nationalist leader, who was sitting in the balcony. Picciolini offered to talk over differences in belief over a cup of coffee, but when Spencer challenged him on the ethics of creating a state based on religious or racial similarities, he was quick to cut the talk short.

“I’m not going to get into a conversation about Israel or politics,” Picciolini told Spencer. “This is my platform.”

His own time spent as a neo-Nazi skinhead began at the age of 14, when, as a bullied and troubled teen, a man approached him and offered up ideas on who to blame for the misfortunes in his life.

“I wasn’t raised as a racist,” Picciolini explained. “I was lonely and I felt like an outsider.”

The initial draw was the sense of community he gained from the hate group, but after being beaten up and having his bike stolen by three young black men shortly after, Picciolini remembered the man’s message and the ideology of the neo-Nazis began to take hold.

“Suddenly, everything this man had told me fell into place and seemed to make sense, at least in my mind in that time,” he said. “Because this man had filled my head with this propaganda, I believed it.”

He joined a cult following of neo-Nazis, helping to recruit new members while he worked his way up the ranks. He started a band that sang songs promoting white nationalist messages, and later he started a record store that initially specialized in the sale of such music.

Then, at the age of 19, he met a girl, and within two years they were married with two baby boys. While he still participated in the skinhead group, his store had begun selling all types of music to all types of people, most of which he loathed. But the ideology began to unravel, and soon empathy worked its way past the hatred to show Picciolini that those differences he saw were only superficial.

“When the black teenager came in, clearly upset, and I asked him what was wrong, he told me that his mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. And I knew how he felt, because my grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer,” he said. “And when the gay couple with their adopted son came in, it was so clear that they loved him, I knew that that was the same love that I felt for my own child.”

“It was the compassion that I received from the people that I least deserved it from, when I least deserved it, that helped me understand that what I was doing was wrong,” he added.

His wife and kids gone after he took too long to get out of the white nationalist group, Picciolini went through a five-year period of depression and self-loathing. A friend reached out to help him, and soon after he began working at IBM, where, ironically, he was dispatched to fix computers at the old high school he’d been kicked out of as a teenager.

A devastating call in the middle of the night in 2004 reaffirmed his life’s new purpose — undoing the hateful damage he had brought into the world.

His younger brother, whom Picciolini called his only friend growing up, was driving in a car with friends when a group of black teenagers shot into the car and killed him.

“I knew at that moment that those young kids, who didn’t have opportunity, who didn’t understand how to empathize because for many decades they’d been victimized – they shot my brother because they were afraid of the color of his skin,” he said.

Helping others like him is Picciolini’s priority now. In 2010 he began Life After Hate, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping communities implement long-term solutions that counter racism and violent extremism, and in 2015 he started ExitUSA, an anonymous help website for hate group members who want a way out.

He’s also authored a book, “Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead.”

These days hate messages are a different beast, he said, thanks to the Internet and the endless propagandic opportunities it can offer its more malevolent users.

Describing the “troll storm” tactics used by hate groups and websites, Picciolini called these online users “cyber terrorists” for their ability to incite fear and damage credibility simply based on words.

However, while it’s easy to get caught up in the hateful rhetoric of such groups and begin to lose hope in the world around you, the only way to be is better, he said.

“When you leave here – today, tomorrow, hopefully every day – find somebody you don’t think deserves compassion, and do something compassionate for them,” he challenged the audience. “Because chances are they’re the ones who need it the most.”