Extremism is a dark path. Some followers of white supremacist ideology forsake it when they realise it is full of lies and distortions designed to promote division and conflict.
Crikey recently spoke to two former extremists based in the United States who regret their past and hope others can learn from their mistakes.
The neo-Nazi who realised he was Jewish
Fred Cook only learnt he was Jewish earlier this year when he went down a genealogy rabbit hole hoping to discover his origins.
That in itself would be unremarkable but for the fact that Cook had previously been a senior office bearer in the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which he joined after a period with skinhead groups. His life was spent campaigning for white nationalism and white supremacy.
He says he broke down and cried after discovering he was an Ashkenazi Jew, alongside his Irish ancestry. It turned upside-down the world of a man who was never given a clear idea of his origins or identity by his family.
“It first brought a lot of tears,” Cook said. “I was really broken because not only did I predominantly focus on anti-Semitism in my past, but it was now that I focused on anti-Semitism against my own people, the people that I could have known all this time.
“It was really earth-shattering because all of the anti-Semitic work that we did — from fliers that were, you know, ‘the Jews do this, the Jews control this industry and that’s why there’s an anti-white agenda there.’ All of that sort of hits you like a tonne of bricks.”
He then began to read extensively about Judaism and its food and culture, and is in the process of converting to Judaism.
The surprise discovery of his origins comes almost eight years after Cook pulled the plug on his membership of the NSM. He says the day his daughter was born eight years ago was the last day he was officially a member of the group. His exit was in part a reaction to hostility he was getting from people within the NSM because he was working with members of the online group Anonymous to track down paedophile websites, to expose members and have the sites shut down.
“On the day that my daughter was born I get a phone call from another high-ranking member,” he said. “He said: ‘I hear you’re working with the hacker group Anonymous. You’re working with the enemy. Does this mean you are an enemy now?’ That was basically it.”
Cook now writes prolifically on the dangers of extremism and is encourages people to disengage from the movements.
The white supremacist who said no
A conviction for murder saw Ed Schofield serve 12 and a half years in prison before his case was overturned on appeal. In that time he was immersed in a world of white supremacist ideology which he has now come to reject.
He attributes this exposure to friends who were in jail for crimes that involved supremacist activities.
“They had committed bank robberies and murders and various other crimes,” he said. “These two gentlemen started to feed me white supremacy propaganda, basically telling me that the only reason I got arrested, and the only reason I wasn’t given self-defence, was because I’m a white guy and I killed a cop’s kid who happens to be part-Jewish. It’s not that I did anything wrong, but it’s because I did something to the wrong person.”
Schofield was 19 at the time. “I’m almost 50 now and I look back on that and that just sounds ridiculous,” he said.
But it made sense to him at the time, he says. He was gradually introduced by friends to other far-right ideas such as Holocaust denial.
Schofield had made up his mind to fully turn his attention to white supremacy and form a prison gang. He had written to various leaders in the white supremacist movement for their blessing to form a group within the prison system, one which became known as State Prison Skinheads.
“We had gotten a sanction from Aryan Brotherhood. They told us that … ‘we will back you up,’ ” he said.
His reputation grew along with the gang’s size, and violence was never far away, but Schofield learnt over time that the propaganda, fake science and historical revisionism were “all lies”. He began trying to get recruits out of the movement he had helped create.
Some of those lies were spouted to Schofield by members of the “religious movement” and hate group The Creativity Movement, of which he was a member at one time. Its representatives were uncomfortable when Schofield began questioning their core beliefs.
He left the white supremacist movement in 2012, a move that has resulted in death threats and assassination attempts. Now he devotes time outside work and family to helping people leave extremist movements.
Tom Ravlic, former extremist Jeff Schoep and academic Lise Waldek will discuss the fight against right-wing extremism at a Crikey Talks event next Thursday. Register here for the free event.
Why is all the reporting on white supremacists violence and criminal focused? Like the recent Fairfax expose focusing on the losers of the movement.
Sure, white supremacists can do damage but typically in the last few decades they haven’t managed to kill more than a few hundred at a time in a bombing. Meanwhile non-violent white supremacists in the elite do far more damage by holding back economic and social progress for minorities. Report on them.
I went to an elite residential college alongside tonnes of budding elite young white supremacists who now are on their way into careers that have impact. I am sure some of these people have moved on from youthful edgy views but I also think plenty were set on the belief white men are superior. They are just not stupid enough to go out shoot people over it. Why do that when you can simply subtly hold minorities down by controlling the levers of power in politics, government and sport?
I am more afraid of politician white supremacists than I am of some unemployed idiot who if they had a gun wouldn’t get further than maybe 50 people before being shot dead.
You are right; but Crikey does do plenty of reporting on “elite” supremacists as well. It’s just that that’s not what this article is about. It’s two particular of deradicalisation.
*two particular *stories*
This article was introduced in Crikeys daily email as “The world is full of hateful men”. Are Crikey honestly wanting us to believe there arent lots of hateful women out there too? While women tend to vote slightly more left than right in both Australia and US, the extreme right transcends gender. Sugar and spice and all things nice… is that what your saying? I call bullsiht.
The overwhelming majority of these extremists are men. If you look at the mass shootings, ramming of people by vehicles and other violent acts that have occurred, it is hard to think of an instance where a female was the perpetrator. Instead of asking why aren’t we including women in this, we should be asking why the perpetrators are almost always men?
You are talking about the physical violence which is overwhelmingly committed by males. I’m taking issue with the line that its only men who are racists and full of hate. Thats pink washing of reality.
Ah no, Nowhere does it say it is only men who are racist and full of hate. I’m glad you acknowledge the reality that it is usually men who commit hate based violence. Plenty of women are racist and full of hate too – they just tend to keep it in their trousers.
“The world is full of hateful men” is a pretty strong statement to as the opening line. If we all agree that there are plenty or racist and hateful women out there that don’t (physcially) act on that hate, then we are all on the same page.
So given what you are saying, shouldn’t the opening line have been “The world is full of hateful people“? Isnt this the sort of gender stereotyping that we are trying to stamp out?
Lets apply the reverse gender test …. “the world is full of incompetent women”.
Is that acceptable or deeply offensive gender stereotyping?
Thats a bit like saying German women were not culpable in the Holocaust because the actual nazi soldiers were pretty much all male.
Thats a bit like saying German women were not culpable in the Hlocaust because the actual soldiers were pretty much all male.
Which seems to be similar to what several commentators said in a recent article, arguing that only white MAN was responsible for the dispossession and enslavement of Aborigines. I called bullsiht on that too.
I doubt that most people know whence, and from whom, the slave trade acquired its cargoes.
In my 50s school atlas, when most of the world was Empire pink, the section of the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, in Africa, extending approximately from the Volta River in the west to Lagos, in modern Nigeria, or, alternatively, the Niger Delta in the east (in the present-day republics of Togo, Benin, and Nigeria).southern west Africa, was called the Slave Coast.
Interesting but how do you describe middle class educated white collar professionals espousing the same but slightly different lines or narratives?
This suggests that there is even a stereotypical ‘look’ of an extremist that deflects from the mainstream, but sharing the same ideology and obsessions?
Almost ten years ago one was hearing the ‘great replacement theory’ in Melbourne aka ‘brown people are going to outnumber white people’ by using mainstream media eugenics based obsessions on refugees, immigrants and ‘population growth’ wink wink (also cited more recently by the Christchurch mosque terrorist).
Like one of the chaps featured in the article, an acquaintance, white collar professional shared the same views and ignorance, he was a Greens voting British immigrant, but Oz citizen (for employment apps), who complained about both Australians being dumb and too many brown immigrants, while lacking any insight, as his own wife and daughter are Jewish….. think also some narcissistic personality disorder is needed to hold such views, firmly?