violence." this is about an hour and a half. >> good evening. i am abraham foxman. i'm 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 hard-working 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. it's a real pleasure to be here first of all. don't be distracted by the terrible view that's outside. i may be but please don't. 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 neo-nazi 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 america's first neo-nazi 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 mid-1960s and they were often the victims of prejudice themselves so racism wasn't something that i'd 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 didn't 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 let's say a place that lacked diversity, a very white suburban areas of growing up i never really knew where exact to fit in. i didn't know if i was italian and didn't 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 self-esteem

and low self-confidence. 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 who's 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 self-hatred 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, don't you know that that's what the communists and want you to do, to keep the dos i'll? i was 14 and i didn't know what a communist was and had never met a jewish person and hardly knew what the words dos i'll meant. his charisma struck me. for most of my life until that point i felt very powerless. i was picked on and bullied. they didn't have any friends. i didn't 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 won't be powerless anymore. he will be powerful in my ears perked up a decent come with me and you won't 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 african-americans were moving in and immigrants

were coming into steel jobs in jewish people control the media and finances in the banking system. i didn't quite understand that but i thought this guy, two out of three wasn't 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 didn't have it tases for racism. i didn't really understand what he was talking about and i certainly didn't 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 america's first neo-nazi skinhead and i went from that kid with the haircut to one of america's first neo-nazi 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 it's fooling so many people. i'd could have been smarter than that amateurs was i was smarter than that. i didn't 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 america's first neo-nazi 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 america's 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. that's 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 didn't compute to me. i didn't 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 didn't make sense i wouldn't 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 didn't 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 14-year-old 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 that's 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. there's 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. that's 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 wasn't 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 didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. they were human beings and we shared these experiences and i'm 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 that's 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 didn't 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 couldn't 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 didn't leave the

movement quickly enough or pay them enough attention and they just had to leave. i didn't 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 didn't feel, i didn't understand exact reply i wasn't 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 don't 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.

i'm an ex-and 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 don't know the computer and there's no way that they would hire me but she said just try an entry-level 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 wouldn't 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 i'd got kicked out for the second time then you can call it faith or destiny, whatever but i was so scared. i've never been so scared of my life. i did didn't 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 i'm sorry. he stuck out his hand and i shook it and we embraced. it's pretty possible he cried. i'm 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 ex-and suddenly doing better but because he recognized what i had gone through the same struggles that i had wasn't 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 don't really understand or that doesn't 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 , middle-aged people, older people in this world right now. a lot of people searching for answers. a lot of confusion. it's 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 man's 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. it's based on fear so what's gone from this because of the internet, because it's a place where people who are marginalized can find their communities who can build an identity if they don't have one in were alive, because of his platform which i believe and by the way, because of his platform what used to look like this now looks like this, maybe like some of your daughters, grandkids, neighbors and it looks like this if they weren't giving the salute you probably wouldn't know that they were involved. it's getting younger and younger if we look at this and we say well i'm not going to be worried

about these young kids were doing this stuff. we should because what happens, the products of this internet radicalization, the result of that is so much a dylann roof who walks into a church and kills nine people based on the color of their skin art looks like alexander who walked into a mosque recently and murdered six innocent people. or it looks like james jackson who murdered an african-american because he was trying to discourage people from inter-racial relationships. these are all products of the internet propaganda. things change. when i was recruited in got a book and he got invited to meeting and you hung out with people. it was a very social movement. nowadays it's a very virtual movement and the scary thing about that, that is where

marginalized young people live and they're looking for answers and they are served these answers by people with a very selfish mission. so what we decided to do at life after hate was to live on line as well, to be reachable from the internet. we launched a program and an initiative called exit usa. this sole purpose is to help people disengage from hate groups and hateful ideologies. when i said earlier we don't do that by battling ideologically with them. we do it by listening. this is what i meant by that. we get contacted from three different types of people at exit usa. we get contacted by the person is engaged and wants help getting out. we get contacted by the bystanders and i can be parents, friends co-workers, girlfriends and we get contacted by formers, people who weren't gauging this

movement but are on their way out but for years that they were the only person on earth that had done it and they have never been able to talk about those experiences because they have never been able to talk about it and they never been able to heal fully and became fully productive. .. a word latest -- your latest

joke and for the first time they will admit that they were sexually abused or their son committed suicide this morning and the rally because we understand each other and where we came from and we help each other through this thing called life. we've been very successful with that since we launched the program in 2015 and tony is the board chair that happened to be in new york at the same time. it's good to have him here. but we have helped people disengage and help to people that were going off to get their phd with people that are teachers and they've been able to talk about this and work through some of the issues that have broken them for many years. i want to talk about some of the

type of things we see. so this young girl 17-years-old her parents contact us because they were concerned she was making neo-nazi propaganda videos and dating a boy from idaho who was recruiting her for the video and had become her virtual boyfriend. after speaking to the parents into getting a little information i did my homework before i went in to speak with this girl and i realized that he wasn't a 23-year-old boy from idaho, he was a man from moscow and not only was he doing it to this girl with 12 others at the same time where he would become their virtual boyfriends, they would fall in love even though he'd never seen them they could send photos and he would strip

off the audio tracks and send it to them and convince them to send compromising photos and videos and when they decided they didn't want to make videos anymore he would blackmail them. that's happening quite a bit. i will also talk about a 31-year-old man from buffalo, military vet who was in islamabad like i had never seen before. he reached out after reading my book and said there are somethings i don't agree that you're talking about and i said of course, let's talk, and we talked for several weeks. i was walking my dog in the park and saw a muslim man and sent we

are coming to buffalo and flew out the next day and we sat and talked. why would i want to do that, they are evil i don't want anything to do with them i hate them. i said i had a gentle man who is a christian here that would love to learn more about your religion and he said of course, please stop by but i only have 15 minutes preparing for my prayer service and i said we are on our way. let's get some lunch and about halfway there i said we had to stop before we get some lunch and all they wanted to do this

stop, turn around and throw up a but we are going. i flew to buffalo and the least you can do is try so i went and knocked on the door and they said ten minutes we can talk briefly. after talking and hugging and crying and realizing all the similarities that we had, we left. i'm happy to say after a lot of work with john, we are now good friends and go out every friday. it's because of this connection that we have. we are so afraid of what we think we don't understand that we want to push it away and often times we push it away so far that it turns into violence.

we have two different realities and there are not enough bridges crossing realities. we have to do a better job of letting go of that irrational fear and that unconscious bias that we have come a letting go into the being formidable. the truth is most people that i've met that were part of the movement never had a meaningful interaction. i certainly didn't. most of the people we've worked with haven't. when you ask people why did you join them they say i just wanted to come along for something. and then you have to give up everything and it's hard to go back. it's in a support network and after we make people more resilient, it is amazing without are giving ideologically with

them, they hate kind of falls away because now they are more resilient and self-sufficient and they have the tool and the training they need and there is no reason to blame somebody else. there is no reason to be afraid and if you pair that with the idea we would introduce a holocaust denier to a survivor or is on october 2 and e. -- islamic there are people like me have dedicated their lives to helping dismantle what they once built, to helping build those bridges. i'm happy to tell you about a story into this wonderful museum that was a great story.

i want to give you one challenge before i leave today. leave tomorrow and hopefully every day and find someone that you think doesn't deserve your compassion but give it to them because the chances they are the ones that need it the most. [applause] i think we are going to talk for a little bit. >> it's very hard for us to really understand the journey that you've taken, and at the same time, it's got to be difficult for you to try to

explain it to us so we thank you because every time you tell if coming in live it again and experience it again. but it's for a purpose. the great admiration and respe respect. where do we start a. is it as simple as bullying and

being a social dysfunction however you decide it is it acceptable to turn into violen violence. is it huge or ignorance, and is it where i spent a lifetime dealing with these stations and i'm not sure, with listening to you now may be the targeted the wrong thing. are we occupied with the

ideologues to expose them and put a price and consequence on the bigotry whereas i listen to you and our efforts should be at the potential victims so where do we set the priority? >> i will do my best. i do believe the page that is born of ignorance and fear is its father in isolation if mother when we fear what we don't understand, we never have the opportunity to connect with and that sometimes turns into hate but i think what is underneath that is a lack of opportunity and this is not -- i'm not playing identity politics or anything like that.

there is a lack of opportunity for people in the country whether they are in the inner cities or rural america and i can tell yo you they have someby pulled up in the car and said you are a good artist would you like to play guitar or do you want to play some baseball i know there are some semi pro baseball players that would want to hang out and i would have done that in a heartbeat. i was angry and i found myself attaching to people that were angrier than me. i don't believe this ideology isn't a driver in the violent extremism. the search drives people to those things and then the ideology and the grievance at the trauma or whatever they are experiencing is the catalyst as the vehicle for that.

if we are going to solve the problem is people ask over time how how we solve racism and i said i don't know. but what i can tell you is we have the ability to affect the people closest to us. our family, for an us, loved one to show them compassion and beat the message. i think the people we don't know, compassion is important and being able to put yourself in their shoes and listen to them when they say really ugly things but to listen underneath that as to why they are saying those ugly things and finding common ground starting from that point instead of complete opposites is where we need to be because while we need to admit

everybody here has something in common. there are lots of things we have in common and if we could maybe start there and build from there maybe we will be able to build those bridges. they ask them to bring one thing which is a photograph of the family. regardless where they came from or how they felt about each other, if the only thing that was left behind, and most fami family, it would reduce the level of animosity.

on that premise and what you are talking about is compassion. your last dream which was so simple and basically said to all of us, you want to begin the fight, be compassionate. now we live in a world there if you don't talk to people, how do you exercise compassion. we are on the way to destroying visibility. how do we tie thi fight this mie with such unintended

consequences underlining the values for people to talk to each other. so this becomes the substitute for engaging that you're talking about. everybody probably walked past a thousand people coming here today. they also probably live online maybe some of them are fortunate enough to do that. but the truth is we do come in contact with people and we do spend a lot of our time online. he also interact with people at work. at the grocery store and walking from the train station and those are the opportunities i think that can make up for that lack of connection and in a place ts supposed to connect us more but maybe it's doing the opposite. there's enough opportunity to begin to make a difference.

>> i plan to go back to my hotel room but i'm going to pass a thousand people but hopefully i will be fortunate enough -- >> what is a more delicate question in terms of when you talked about moving to the sui suits. if you talk about this frustration and anger we just experienced an election that pushed all of these buttons. is that democracy danger? >> i believe so. i believe our understanding of democracy is the shifting. it's changing because of things that happened and we've

experienced things that nobody in our lifetime has seen. it is very fragile. we are a beast compared to the world. >> we are still trying to figure things out. we've never done it right. we've done a lot of things right but never completely right for people we stand for what we were founded on i don't fully agree with that. part of it was this class system but i do believe in american ideals and that we are built i think it was ronald reagan that said you can go to japan, england and you will never be english but you could come to

america and you will be america no matter who you are and that is true and to me that is the democratic ideal that everybody has a voice. that's always been in a question. we were happy and had a conversation early. he made a great analogy, racism always existed. donald trump invented. i don't even know that he -- i've never met the man so i won't judge but what he did do is legitimized in the country in ththese smoldering little fires that always existed.

you want to be a bigot in your heart if you act it out and pay the price. he came and broke all of the taboo. we were in your way and my way in the listen we try to teach, we try to explain to people that our society is based on certain understandings. political correct isn't a crime or a panacea but you need to keep the heat that you experience i would say in the sewer.

this last election we blew the cover and now we have to find ways to put it back on but he didn't create it. it was there. >> i want to invite them out and have coffee with them and talk with them and listen and understand why they are living in this source because there is a reason to. i could never speak for the person in rural america that lost the factory and is willing to forgive many of the awful things that he said because they have to feed their family. it's not the ideal situation but we need to listen. we all contribute to it and have a conscious and bias that i is s

simple as crossing a street if you see anybody walking down that looks threatening. it's something we deal with and have to accept. you have to left and right at odds with each other and the more extreme they become, they will become the same thing the last thing we want to do in opposition to those hateful ideas has become hateful ourselves. that is the last thing we want to do. what we need to do is find it in ourselves to say your thoughts are ugly you do is very ugly how can we find a way to connect so that i can share my experiences with you without debating you and pushing my ideas prescribing the solution.

how can we sit down and humanize each other because there isn't a lot of work that needs to happ happen. it is applauding and embracing it, supporting it. in your experience has that changed in your appreciation, perception, value of freedom of speech? use all that hate that caused

violence and death. you've engaged in it. does the society needs to protect itself? >> i believe in freedom of speech but i also believe in freedom of speech is not free of consequences. while you may have the right to say whatever you want, if what you say or what you do affects somebody else negatively, you must be held accountable for that. >> okay. thank you. the floor is yours. >> i think you need a microphone. >> [inaudible] i wanted to know how the other people reacted when you left and did they question the war treat you badly or were you able to

humanize them in some way and bring some of them along with you? >> there were some who did come along later and i was able to reach back to them otherwise i could have been a turncoat or somebody that they wanted it is still continues. i still receive even 22 years later death threats and threats against my family. but i can tell you that there was one point in my life from the time i was 14 until i was 22 and i was willing to give my life for something i didn't understand or know anything about. you can bet i'm going to do that now. i've planted a lot of seeds of hate in those days and 22 years later i'm still pulling up the wii that are sprouting from

those seeds. i'm also a bit of a gardener, but yes it is part of the business i could be hit by a bus but i know i'm living my passi passion. this is what i meant to do because i'm one of the few in the world have this experience with this unique knowledge and the will to be able to help people and sometimes it is very uncomfortable situations but i also know it is my duty because i have that information to do what i want to do. >> i read your book. it was fascinating and infuriating. i grew up we were not run and we

always see this as a thousand people and a hundred skinheads intimidating piece crafts. we are seeing a big resurgence here in new york. they are attacking people in the bars, and i appreciate the work but how do you think people should intervene? in some ways you are waiting for people to spin out because of personal issues or the movements when people are looking for the next thing. how do you suggest people intervene in the movements when they are in full swing?

>> the last part is true, we do retroactively wait for people to come to us, but the bystanders are also pointing out people that don't want to leave the movements so it's not just people that have an excuse to leave. and i would say that is part of my answer. understand that this is not full swing. it's something that has completely come up to the top again and has momentum. it is recruiting hundreds of thousands of young people in this country and abroad. it's probably just as dangerous if not more in europe because there is a sense of historical nationalism. and we need to speak up and not being afraid to speak up but also know where to draw the line where that becomes an ideological battle because at 18-years-old if you told me i

was wrong or if you had canceled my gym membership for anything that's happening for some of the people today, i would have come back with a gun. it wouldn't have deterred me or change to buy was. so, we have to find a way to connect with the people that are sometimes the ugliest account. and i know it's not for everybody. i know it's not something there are groups that are on the left that are anti-racists to try to solve it with violence and what i see happening is the right becoming more violent and growing because now they are killing more marginalized and they are using that as ammunition to grow. so, when i see a nazi walking down the street, i probably want to punch them, too but i know that is not effective and it wouldn't have been for those

that we worked with so we have to find a way and i know this isn't a popular idea but we have to find a way to show compassion because almost every person we work with will tell you that the changed because somebody they didn't expect it from or didn't deserve it on showed compassion when they least deserved it. what level of compassion would work there, yes ma'am. more people are becoming radicalized that this is a battle for good and evil. we lived in the middle. there is definitely evil people

but most of us we go back and forth depending on the situation and the mood and nothing but people can change and they can come over to the site to be exposed. >> what is going on in your personal life and in the politics? >> my little boys are now 24 and 42 and amazing human beings who i have a wonderful relationship with as well as my parents. my mother does call me too much. she hasn't figured out how to text message, so i'm okay fo i a little while. she called me and said how are

you doing. i have a wonderful relationship with my family. once i was able to forgive myself i became a better father and husband and friend and employee and human being. i'm not going to rule out the chicago mayor. you never know. >> how was the reaction? >> i think it took my parents about a year to figure out what i was involved in a. i was hiding it a lot in the first year. once they figured it out, they were terrified. they were concerned about my safety. they didn't understand and there was even one point that my mother said, go for somebody

italian, like al capone or something like that. [laughter] she would have tried anything possible to get me away from what i was involved in. but thanks to mike &-and-sign here today because they never gave up on me. that's the white house calling. [laughter] >> i'm very grateful for the fact my parents didn't give up on me even when i didn't have a good relationship or i wanted nothing to do with them and thought why can't you understand what i'm trying to tell you. if they would have given up on me i don't know if i would be here. >> because of somebody like a chump who believes that it's

okay to want to punch the person in the face how does that make it right and how do we get to change because that is huge. we vote but we did not. let's talk outside because we could talk for hours on that subject but we need to understand we live in a broken society and have a lot of things to fix. things that we kept in the sewer and put the lid on the need to realize they didn't keep because they would grow and fester eventually come out and start to impact other people so we need to not be afraid to deal with these tough conversations with.

this could potentially be a big reset for us to realize that this still exists and people are living in a post-racial society. you could probably ask the people in this room is that existed and they would tell you no never look at post-racial society and that is the truth. >> it sounds so wonderful, take them out and embraced them. if you got up one morning and had a revelation and came into your group of followers instead embrace them they would have punched you and could have even killed you because they would have suspected something

horrific. it's one thing to reach out but it's quite another, we are talking about people that are bigoted type police by profession and so to spend time, i would rather that we spend time in changing our society which removes the leadin bullyid unemployment and the teachers respect because everything on top of this they would have nobody to recruit.

we treat those that are sick but we have to inoculate the population from that disease. we bring an opportunity to the people that have this problem because going down to the depths that i was, it was an ideological, it was a self-hatred like how can i hurt other people more than i hurt myself so we have to deal with the trauma and equipped them at a younger age to be more inclusive and understanding and more accepting of diversity and

other people in general. i was in montana a couple weeks ago and they had a terrible situation. i didn't see one person of color the whole time i was in a state we were there for six days and i said who do you hate here? native americans they are number one because that is what they have. if we are marginalized or disconnected from each other it doesn't matter who the other person is, black, white, brown, purple but i know we can get past it because as unfortunate and terrible as 9/11 was, but one day tha day the face of amea unified it didn't matter who you were or where you came from, it was number 12 and that gave me hope for just a minute, but i know we could get back there.

>> we have two here and one in the balcony. >> your message is fascinating as well. based upon your experience and examples you brought up, it seems like you're organization and efforts are grounded in the work like supremacists. is there any outrage or are there any efforts to to name an example of the muslim extremists and percentagewise, how much of your efforts are up to that point? >> i like to use the word isys inspired because i certainly don't reflect any ideals.

we focus on the far right because that is our background. however, i also know that what we do transfers over to gangs, transfers over to isys inspired extremists or geologist jihadis. we have a large network of the former that we work with that i personally have worked with people when i was in belgium a few months ago, a man reached out to one of these municipalities that i was speaking and he was to return fofor inviter that came back and had done his prison time and was having a hard time doing that because he had nobody to talk to. some of those people thought he was a traitor. he couldn't talk to the community because they would want to associate with him

because they thought they may think i'm a terrorist. he has no network and he sought me out and said i was going to speak. we met in brussels and walked out anhad walkedout and spend tt seems to be the magic number we spent three hours together in our stories were so strikingly parallel but it was mind blowing. both of our parents were immigrants and they both settled in areas where people were not really friendly to immigrants. his brother had been killed, my brother was murdered after i left the movement and we struggled with that identity and sends of purpose because we believed we were doing at the time of the righteous thing to do that we were saving the world and we couldn't understand for the life of us white people couldn't understand that. so, i do think that some day in

our future when we have the ability to scale in that direction we would like to offer our services to the. of 2 28 28 did pontiac make a firebird -- [inaudible] >> i loved the book, i go on it all the time at whatever time i have a.

all these other sites cannot. now we are talking my language. first of all i want to touch on the topic of algorithms i think that is very important, so, what happens when you go online whether it's social media or

google, there are algorithms that exist for papers that say you should buy huggies. the news is the same way so when you start reading these propaganda stories, it will keep recommending them because it thinks that is what you want. the danger is you go down into a silo with very little crossover and this happens on the left and right. this is not exclusive. it's hard to distinguish what's propaganda, fake news, patty. there's so much information. we've lost our sense of critical thinking because we've become so reliant on the powers that be. so now to talk about some of the dog whistles that they use were

some of the subtle branding of things they use when they are talking about things i know exactly what they are talking about. they use the term globalization describing things like the international bankers and the jewish controlled finance system. that is really what they are talking about. they become really good at massaging the message so they are not saying they control the media they are calling it liberal. the star of davi star of david t to a picture of hillary clinton and when the voiceover was talking about the globalist pictures of george soros and the

famous prominent jewish people, when i saw the video the first thing i said was this is a white power video. i would have made this for 30 years ago. i could have written the the sph is that he's saying that what they've gotten really good at doing is they massage the message. they've toned it down for the average person. if you go to the average stat ty say that is racism that you get a confederate flag or something else, so they've gotten very good at marketing and packaging. they have the same haircuts andt since, it's just the progression of something that's more easily

palatable for the average american that has the grievance waterside the comments because you know what, i've got to feed my family in this town of 42 people where i cannot find a job. it's not right. that's the reality. >> at the same time, you don't have to be so sophisticated and look for euphemisms. i don't know if you understand the algorithms, it is part of the site ends of the technology that continuously raises and measures pro, con and every issue. so, the biggest whatever issue

operates 24/seven. so the measures if the traffic is such you will get anti-jew first and that is the way the messages are floating in the system. the same thing with holocaust. because they are updating on those networks and that is what they are feeding. we went to paul alto and said thank you for all these wonderful things you've given us that there are unintended consequences of your genius and

it's that you now give a preeminent. there are antidotes to the algorithms and we see it now if we where the issue arises it hurts the commercial value of that server. so they deal with the algorithms and. one of the meetings we went to.

by the way, we did it. there was a campaign and within a month, we did change it, but that's not our job to protect it so it is a serious problem not only sophisticated than the crude manner as well. >> and it's fighting a losing battle because they are using technology accounts, artificial intelligence. a conspiracy theory like them. >> i'm sitting here at the museum of jewish heritage a living memorial to the holocau holocaust. my mother was in auschwitz and

is going to be 90-years-old next month. i am here for the first time to visit this museum because i like the topic. i want to tell you i love you. i'm named esther after my grandmother who was exterminated. all of my mother's brother and sisters were exterminated. my father out of 12 children six of them survived.

>> i hope that you are going to end with a question. how could you wish for the events going on right now with whatever you think of mr. trump or president trump, thank you for your compassion because i want to bring compassion to the room whether you are to the left or the right. he believes he can make a difference. the question is how can you sit here and not recognize the fact that right now the american leadership in the is meeting with the three different major religions and their attitude in the thinking is how can we bring

peace to the world and fight the evil in the world making fun and it's the best mission you can think of in this world. i am not here for any political. you are right. compassion and education is what we need to do. so thank you for coming. i hope you read his book. thank you. the last thing respectfully i need as a holocaust survivor is someone else to tell me how i should act, believe, stand in terms of our tradition.

you have a view and i respected. it doesn't necessarily have to be our view and begin respectfully it is out of place. your comments are out of place. this isn't a discussion or conversation whether we like the president would agree with his politics, he's going to bring peace or not, come to another lecture where it is. to better understood th understs of hatred, bigotry and prejudice in our society. our environment is part of it. our system and what happened is part of it. but what you are talking about with all due respect has very little to do with what we are about. come to another lecture where that is the subject. let me conclude.

>> [inaudible] >> the words thank you are for us to say to you to have the strength and courage. i used to speak about the experiences and it was very difficult. so to say thank you isn't enou enough. that is the best that we value and appreciate.

we know it is painful. and it is a moment of despair and ugliness in your life for a greater purpose. everything we've heard and argued etc., the request because all the other things are difficult. how do you change society and to change people, one society at a the time, one people at a time. you want us to be nice to somebody we don't know. it's so little and get it is the whole world so god bless you. come back and be strong. [applause]

>> i believe they are selling books in the library. i would love to sit and talk with all of you if we could meet over there that would be great. thank you. i appreciate