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Former Neo-Nazi: President Trump May Be Complicit in Growing Threat of White Supremacy

posted 5 years ago by [deleted]
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https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/18/former_neo_nazi_president_trump_may

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Christian Picciolini into this conversation, founder of Free Radicals Project, the nonprofit that helps people disengage from hate and violent extremism, leading neo-Nazi skinhead and far-right extremist himself in the ’80s and ’90s. Talk about your response Friday, when you heard what happened in New Zealand and heard about the white supremacist, the white nationalist, who opened fire, killing 50 Muslim worshipers.

CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Well, Amy, this tragedy was similar to the hundreds of tragedies that have been happening since the ’80s and ’90s. This is not an isolated incident. This is not a fringe problem. This is a transnational terrorist alliance. You know, dating back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, there have always been connections to overseas white supremacist groups connected to the United States, and this is no different.

But this is also another example of how words matter, especially words from a president, because this is now the third or fourth time, just in a matter of months, where violence has occurred or almost occurred because of words that the president said. What’s happened now is the internet has created a platform where propaganda and conspiracy theories are being spread to the farthest reaches of the internet, and it’s reaching some of our most vulnerable, marginalized, broken individuals, who are unstable but are taking these narratives, and it’s fulfilling them. It’s empowering them to a certain degree. But the end result is always violence. It’s always death. And we just saw another example of that in Christchurch. And I suspect it’s not going to be the last one we see.
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CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Well, I think the president is either uninformed or he’s complicit, because this is a problem that has been very visible in our country, you know, for the last five or six decades. You know, it started with Timothy McVeigh and, really, with the Oklahoma City bombing, and it really hasn’t stopped since then.

In the '80s and ’90s, the white supremacist movement had a very concerted strategy to mainstream. We recognized back then, when I was involved, that we were too edgy. Our shaved heads, the tattoos were putting off the average American white racist. So we decided that we needed to look like them, sound like them and go where they were. So we encouraged people to grow their hair out, to trade their boots in for suits, and to get jobs in law enforcement and to go to the military and get training, and also to run for office if they had a clean record. And the fruits of that labor are now coming to fruition. But I can tell you that even 30 years ago I never would have guessed that we'd be in this position today. But I can tell you also, 30 years ago, we didn’t have a propaganda center and a command post on Pennsylvania Avenue.
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CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Well, you know, I think a president’s words don’t just have immediate consequences; they’ll have lasting consequences for all the young people who are being born now into this environment of pure extremism.

And, you know, as far as the internet goes, let me paint a picture of who may be on the internet. It’s not just our friends and dog pictures, but there are millions of marginalized, alienated, broken young people who are looking for identity, community and purpose in real life and can’t find it there, but they can find it online. And the internet has become flooded, since the 2016 election and even just before that, by propaganda and conspiracy theories coming in from Eastern Europe and from Russia. And it’s very difficult to not land on some of this propaganda. But they’re also going to some of the most—the places where some of the most vulnerable people are—depression forums, online autism forums. They’re talking to our children over headsets when they’re playing multiplayer gaming, and they’re trying to recruit them with these narratives that are mimicking what the president is saying. And because there are so many people online who are not able to potentially establish those relationships in real life, they can build whatever identity, community and purpose they want. And the narratives are being given to them. And this has become the fastest-growing underground social movement that I’ve ever seen in my life.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, online autism forums?

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: So, discussion forums where people are discussing, you know, living with autism, or even Facebook groups. But it doesn’t stop there. They’re going to where vulnerable people go to find help, to talk to other people, or even where young people might go where they’re looking for that sense of identity, community and purpose. This is really no different than what I used to do 30 years ago, when I used to look for vulnerable people outside of arcades or outside of punk rock concerts or skate parks, because the idea is, you are banking on the fact that somebody there is going to feel marginalized, is going to have what I call potholes that deviated their path, those things that appear in life, like trauma, abuse, poverty, mental illness, that maybe alienate them from the rest of society. And then they promise them paradise.
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CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Yeah. You know, I think, just like hatred, white supremacy is born of ignorance. Fear is its father, and isolation is its mother. When we don’t understand something and we become afraid of it, sometimes that turns into hate.

I think a lot of, you know, policies that have come out of this administration have mimicked things that 30 years ago I would have applauded. In fact, white supremacists today are applauding this president’s policies and even his words. And in return, you know, on occasion, the president will retweet a conspiracy theory from a white nationalist.

This is a problem, because, one, we’re not calling it out. We obviously have very open wounds in the United States that deal with racism, that’s still affecting people. And it’s something that we shouldn’t really take lightly, because now it is turned into direct action against people of color, against Jewish people, against Muslims, and against even the media and politicians. And this is something that—you know, words really have consequences.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I can tell you, Amy, 30 years ago, I wrote racist music and racist lyrics, and I performed those and sold that music. Well, I never really thought that it had gone anywhere, but, 30 years later, that music got into the hands of Dylann Roof, who posted my lyrics on a white supremacist message board just four months before walking into the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. And that is the power, and those are the consequences, of our words.

And like I said earlier, President Trump’s words are going to have lasting implications for our democracy, for our children growing up, and for citizens now who are in fear of their lives, because we can’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem, let alone we’re not prepared to address it. In 2007, Daryl Johnson with the Department of Homeland Security called out the fact that white supremacy was on the rise. And that—under President Obama, that was shelved. So this goes back a long period in our history. This certainly isn’t just President Trump, but I can tell you that for the first time in modern history, our president’s words are actually causing people to murder each other.
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[–] Satan2016 (23580) 5 years ago

Going on fake-news Democracy Now display TDS pretty much destroys his credibility.