From: slider@anashram.com

"I've been at war for 30 years," Christian Picciolini says, intensity
widening his eyes, "I'm ready to go home."

His homeward journey involves leaving the work that has consumed his life
for the past two decades: disengaging white extremists from neo-Nazi organizations or similar groups. Physically and emotionally exhausted, wrestling with PTSD and panic attacks, and dealing with death threats on a regular basis, Picciolini says he has no choice but to stop working
one-on-one with white extremists attempting to reform their lives.

"If I don't stop doing this, I could burn out and be no good to anybody,
or I could die," Picciolini said, explaining that it's not just his own
psyche he is trying to save, but also multiracial democracy in the United States. "There is a greater danger on the horizon, and I'm going to focus
on that full time," he said.

https://www.rawstory.com/neo-nazis-2655840279/

As former leader of Chicago Area Skinheads (CASH) and lead singer of the hate-rock band the Final Solution, Picciolini has devoted the past 21
years of his life to anti-racism advocacy and outreach young extremists.
He makes no excuses for the brutal reality of his past. "I hurt many
people, and the music I made as a teenager influenced people like Dylann
Roof" — the young white man who murdered nine Black worshipers at a South Carolina church in 2015.

"I'll have to live with that," Picciolini said. What began more than two decades ago with asking for forgiveness directly from the people he had harassed or assaulted, along with their communities, eventually grew into
the world's most successful effort at disengagement or "deradicalization"
— a word Picciolini avoids — effort in the world. That work has given him an up-close view of how the political and legal institutions of the United States are failing, he says, to adequately address the rising tide of
white hate. Democratic politicians and most mainstream media reporters and commentators, he believes, are also frozen in denial regarding the
escalation of fascist politics in the Republican Party.

Citing his experience, observations and research, Picciolini offers a devastating rebuttal to those who believe American democracy is
indestructible.

I recently sat down with him for an interview in a quiet restaurant in
suburban Chicago, where we both grew up. I asked how he feels about
America's future, particularly Donald Trump's apparent consolidation of
power within the increasingly autocratic Republican Party, and Trump's
likely candidacy for the presidency in 2024. He said, "I'm terrified."

In 2017, Picciolini spoke to an audience in Hungary: "I told them, 'Based
on everything I know and everything I've seen throughout my life, you are
in big trouble." Three years later, the international nonprofit House of Freedom demoted Hungary from a "semi-consolidated democracy" to a "hybrid regime," reflecting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's autocratic assault
against the nation's remaining democratic institutions.

Picciolini recently spoke with the House committee investigating the
events of Jan. 6, and sounded the same theme he has repeated to American officials and voters for decades. There is perhaps a painful irony here:
In some ways, American society has gone the opposite direction from the trajectory of Picciolini's life.

At age of 14, in the late 1980s, Picciolini met a charismatic neo-Nazi recruiter in a dark alleyway of Blue Island, Illinois, a working-class
Chicago suburb. Within a few years, he would rise to the top of his
recruiter's violent, white supremacist organization, recruiting other
members, committing hate crimes and even exporting "white power"
propaganda on a trip to Europe. Picciolini tells the fascinating details
of his redemption story, and how he renounced the white power movement, becoming both antiracist and anti-capitalist, in his memoir, "White
American Youth: My Descent Into America's Most Violent Hate Movement — and How I Got Out."

The most heartbreaking element in Piccioini's chronicle of transformation
is the murder of his younger brother. They were 10 years apart in age, but Picciolini says when they were young, they were inseparable: "We were each other's entire world." he said. Then Picciolini's world became the white
hate movement, and his brother's world fell apart. Two of his close
friends became members of the Latin Kings, a criminal street gang on the
South Side of Chicago. Picciolini, having left his own violent gang, tried
to warn his brother what lay ahead. "I told him, 'I've been on the road
you're on, and it is going to end badly,'" he recalled. But his brother's
anger over Picciolini's earlier abandonment of the family undermined any
advice he could offer.

In 2004, at the age of 20, Picciolini's brother, riding in a car with his friends to an apparent drug transaction, was killed by members of a rival
gang. "For a long time, I felt like my brother got the bullet that was
meant for me," Picciolini said. "I've tried to be the guy for other young
men that my brother needed before he died. I've tried to be the guy who
can help people like my brother. When everyone else sees the monster, I
can still see the child, and I try bringing that child back."

Since Picciolini's disavowal of white supremacy, he has worked as an
advocate for hate crime prevention, racial equity and progressive
politics, through books, speaking tours and a three-episode documentary
series for MSNBC, which shares the title of his second book, "Breaking
Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism." Picciolini now describes himself as a "white nationalist translator," saying, "I still understand
their language, symbols and movements. That enables me to go to law enforcement, policymakers and journalists and explain what is happening."

As Picciolini has transitioned from hate leader to democratic healer, he
has watched significant sectors of American society, including a major political parties, defend, excuse and sometimes embrace the ideology of
white supremacy.

"Everything happening right now is the skinhead's dream of the 1990s
coming true," Picciolini told me. "Donald Trump's ideas are not new, but
he has made people in influential positions comfortable in expressing
racism. In a relatively short time, we've gone from not talking about
these things, even if they were always there, to no longer feeling shame
about it. Tucker Carlson, other right-wing pundits, congressional representatives like Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks, are saying exactly what I
was saying when I was a Nazi. They are using softer terms, but the message
is the same."

Picciolini says he understands how this strategy has played out. "We
advised infiltration," he said, "infiltration of law enforcement, the
military and political offices with low barrier of entry, like the school board, town council, county election positions. And that's exactly what we
are seeing now: a widespread, coordinated effort for the far right to take power at the local level."

He specifically means the use of racial paranoia and panic, through
invented culture-war issues like "critical race theory" and "voter fraud,"
as a pretext for far-right political victories.

What hangs in the balance is the survival of American democracy.
Picciolini sees all the political momentum on the right, aided by
disruptive foreign agents who manipulate social media to encourage hatred, division and extreme partisanship. Meanwhile, the combination of voter suppression and the "big lie" subversion of faith in fair elections has
brought America, in his words, "to the edge of disaster." At the more
immediate level, Picciolini joins many experts, such as genocide scholar Alexander Laban Hinton and political scientist Anthony DiMaggio, in
predicting the possibility of mass violence.

White supremacists, according to all the available data, are already responsible for more political violence than any faction since the 9/11 attacks. Hate crimes from lone actors or small groups have steadily
increased over the past 12 years, and Picciolini warns, "With people
becoming more radicalized, it isn't a big step for these groups to
coordinate larger attacks, especially with leaders like Donald Trump
giving encouragement."

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He worries that law enforcement's tactical approach is the equivalent of "fighting the war on drugs by going after addicts, and maybe a few street-corner pushers. The traffickers are still out there, and there is
an endless supply of addicts and pushers."

But with the U.S. at a flashpoint, Picciolini stands at a crossroads. For
the past 14 years, as he chronicles in "Breaking Hate," he has counseled members of hate groups on an individual basis, pairing them with
psychologists, teachers, clergy members, life coaches or anyone else who
can give them the mental health assistance and treatment they desperately
need to reform their lives and, even more important, stop them from
hurting other people. As he told Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer —
the antifascist protester killed in Charlottesville in 2017 — "We need to work so other mothers don't lose their children." But the grueling
requirements of that work, along with the "endless supply" of people who
need it, have left Picciolini exhausted.

Picciolini officially shut down his disengagement services organization,
Free Radicals Project, in early November. Meetings with those who have
suffered at the hands of American hate, such as Bro, capture the conflict
of Picciolini's decision. "Frankly, I'm tired of helping white men,"
Picciolini said before adding that when he has done so he has also
insisted on measures of accountability. "I have no interest in being their laundromat," he said, explaining that members of extremist organizations
may begin as victims, but morph into victimizers. Picciolini believes
American society must "spend more time discussing and helping the
victims," which mostly means people of color, Muslims, Jews, immigrants,
LGBTQ people and members of other marginalized groups.

"Taking bad white men off the street and stopping them from doing bad
things stops the cycle of abuse, and does help the victims," Picciolini
said, "But radicalization happens very quickly, and so-called
deradicalization takes a long time, sometimes years. There is no way that
it can work long-term to prevent extremism throughout the United States."

Picciolini's emotional turmoil was palpable as he discussed his change of direction. In his 14 years of disengagement work, he has rarely taken a personal paycheck, instead directing all the funds he receives from
speaking fees, donations and book royalties into his organization. He says
he is fortunate: His wife has a professional career that can support them
both. More debilitating than the material cost, he says, is the pain of constantly contemplating, discussing and dealing with trauma.

Among members of hate groups, he says, a traumatic disturbance of the
psyche is perhaps the single most significant commonality. "Trauma creates potholes, and those potholes take a person off the road to a healthy and
happy life," Picciolini said. "I'm a pothole fixer." Picciolini said. He
began to suffer from panic attacks for the first time two years ago, he reports. Now in therapy, and feeling spiritually depleted, he is no longer
able to relive trauma on a daily basis: hearing stories of abuse and heartbreak, and revisiting experiences in the white power movement that
still darken his memory with shame, guilt and regret.

He does feel gratification for his successful interventions, which number
in the hundreds, and that compounds the difficulty of closing down the
Free Radicals Project. Picciolini said he recently convinced a young
member of Identity Evropa, a neo-Nazi organization, to repudiate white supremacy and rebuild his life. On Jan. 6 of this year, the young man sent Picciolini a text message saying, "Just want to let you know the reason I
am not in D.C. now is because of the opportunities you gave me."

"When I leave, there is going to be a void," Picciolini says. "No one else
is really doing what I do right now."

That assertion might surprise many Americans, given the newfound focus on
white supremacy after Charlottesville and Jan. 6. There are certainly
other organizations ostensibly committed to "deradicalization," but
Picciolini expresses suspicion about their authenticity and efficacy. He
says he has heard from some hate group members that when they reach out to recently created nonprofit organizations, they hear nothing back.

"After 9/11, there was a cottage industry of terrorism prevention and
so-called deradicalization of militant Islamists," he said. "Just a few
weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security gave $20 million in grant
money to organizations claiming to fight homegrown extremism. My worry is
we are going to see an ineffective but lucrative 'deradicalization
industry.'"

Some organizations he declines to name, he says, have become "grant
machines" by looking for "poster boys," whether sincere or otherwise, to
herald as conversion success stories. The grift, he suggests, is
transactional: The organization obtains the grant and a flashy news story, while the supposedly repentant extremist "gets his reputation laundered."

Those who are genuinely interested in assisting extremists in leaving white-power groups can follow the "blueprint" Picciolini has established,
he says. But his concern is that even for those with the best intentions,
"It cannot scale to meet the need."

"It is like I've been sent to a hospital emergency room, and there are
hundreds of people about to flatline, because they've been poisoned, and
I'm supposed to save them all," he said. "In the meantime, the poison is
still out there, and I know that within days, another hundred patients are going to come into the ER."

Picciolini's former organization, Life After Hate, received a grant during
the final months of the Obama administration only to have the incoming
Trump administration immediately revoke it — a devastating early harbinger
of a presidency that internally passed along articles from white
nationalist websites, complimented white supremacists as "very fine
people," and asked the Proud Boys, a violent hate group, to "stand by."

Picciolini says he will now focus on administering the antidote for the
poison of racism, white supremacy and far-right violence" "long term prevention." Cultivating a society that diminishes the viability of hate organizations and demolishes the ideologies they promulgate, will require
a mass political movement, he believes, to reorient public policy toward

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