Introduction

JEANETTE

I didn’t set out to raise a skinhead. It just happened.

Okay, it didn’t just happen. Like most parents, my husband and I had the best of intentions, planning to instill good manners, respect, decency and kindness into both our children. I thought we’d done a fairly good job. But when your last thought before going to sleep is “Will my daughter commit an act of violence against another human being?” you know you’ve missed something along the way.

There was a time when I worried Lauren—right-wing extremist, skinhead, white supremacist—was capable of violence and racism, the kind that garners front-page headlines, the opening story on the evening news. The sobbing parent crying, “She was a good girl. How could this happen?” could very well have been me.

I knew absolutely nothing about extremism or white supremacy when Lauren first dragged us on this journey. In 2008 I couldn’t find articles, groups or forums to help me understand what she was involved in, either in print or online. It wasn’t as simple as typing “hate” into a search engine; I really had no clue what I was researching, what keywords to use nor what questions to ask. The police couldn’t help either. One constable I contacted told me, “We don’t monitor any of the groups operating in and around Toronto.”

“Back then, white power groups were probably perceived as a bunch of pissed-off kids,” Lauren explains. “Nowadays, it’s much worse. Extremists are something to be afraid of.” According to Dr. Barbara Perry, the Director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, there were approximately one hundred right-wing extremist groups in Canada in 2015; as of 2019 that number had risen to nearly three hundred. Six Canadian groups and/or individuals involved in organized hate, including a one-time Toronto mayoral candidate, were banned from Facebook and Instagram early in 2019, and in June of that year the neo-Nazi group Blood & Honour and its military wing, Combat 18, were added to Canada’s terror list. The federal government has partnered with non-profit organizations and other countries to identify and remove hate speech from the internet, chiefly under the guidance of Tech Against Terrorism, a UN-based group supporting the tech industry’s battle against extremism. Unfortunately, most white supremacists now blend into the mainstream, their Doc Martens, shaved heads and violent rallies replaced by business suits, professional haircuts and carefully coded content.

What I’ve learned since Lauren’s descent into extremism is that recruiting is often done online. Hate music like National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM), Aryan Black Metal and Neo-Nazi Black Metal offers a potent mixture of anger, aggression and hatred while celebrating violence. Extremists also use video games such as World of Warcraft, various social media platforms and dedicated websites to lure new members. One of the best known is Stormfront, an online blog posting “issues of interest to Canadian White Nationalists” since 1995. Forced to shut down briefly in 2017, it soon resumed its promotion of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and Islamaphobia.

Recruiters seek out those who will fall under their spell, targeting kids who are bullied, marginalized or from abusive homes. They’ll redirect their rage into racism, then use violence to release the resulting hatred. Tony McAleer, author of The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), maintains that childhood trauma is what drives recruitment, not ideology. Another former recruiter, Christian Picciolini, recounts his own experiences in his book, White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—And How I Got Out (Hachette Books, 2017):

“It took little skill to spot a teenager with a shitty home life. Somebody without many friends, looking confused or lonely, angry or broke. We would strike up a conversation, find out what they were feeling bad about, and move in with the pitch.” (p. 109)

Like alcohol, drug or gambling addiction, hatred is a symptom of a deeper problem, not the problem itself.

But there are positive stories as well. Derek Black, son of the founder of Stormfront and godson of David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, renounced hate in May 2019 and is now committed to being a catalyst for change. He joins Picciolini, McAleer and others who work to provide the compassion and empathy white power members need to walk away from hate. Life After Hate forums and outreach specialists, including Lauren, support “formers”—people who’ve left or are leaving extremist groups—and their families. Their website, lifeafterhate.org, features stories of those who’ve successfully exited white power.

This is the story of Lauren’s journey from ordinary kid into the world of hate and white supremacist ideology, but it’s also the story of a newly-widowed single parent who had to learn the most difficult lesson of all—how to keep the door open.

Writing this book has been a blessing for our family. Lauren and I, having been brutally honest with one another, are closer than we’ve ever been and she and her brother now coexist as normal siblings, talking easily without the anger and strain that once dominated our lives. It’s our hope that, in sharing our story, parents will recognize parts of it as their own, and will be able to steer their children away from extremism before it’s too late.