Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A stunning look inside the world of violent hate groups by a onetime white supremacist leader who, shaken by a personal tragedy, realized the error of his ways and abandoned his destructive life to become an anti-hate activist. As he stumbled through high school, struggling to find a community among other fans of punk rock music, Christian Picciolini was recruited by a now notorious white power skinhead leader and encouraged to fight with the movement to "protect the white race from extinction." Soon, he had become an expert in racist philosophies, a terror who roamed the neighborhood, quick to throw fists. When his mentor was arrested and sentenced to eleven years in prison, sixteen-year-old Picciolini took over the man's role as the leader of an infamous neo-Nazi skinhead group.
Seduced by the power he accrued through intimidation, and swept up in the rhetoric he had adopted, Picciolini worked to grow an army of extremists. He used music as a recruitment tool, launching his own propaganda band that performed at white power rallies around the world. But slowly, as he started a family of his own and a job that for the first time brought him face to face with people from all walks of life, he began to recognize the cracks in his hateful ideology. Then a shocking loss at the hands of racial violence changed his life forever, and Picciolini realized too late the full extent of the harm he'd caused.
Raw, inspiring, and heartbreakingly candid, White American Youth tells the fascinating story of how so many young people lose themselves in a culture of hatred and violence and how the criminal networks they forge terrorize and divide our nation.
Synopsis
Combining stunning insights into the origins of white supremacist ideology with the candor and insider's perspective of someone who once evangelized them, WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH: My Journey into and out of America's Most Violent Hate Group is the memoir of white power turned anti-hate activist Christian Picciolini, telling the full story of how he lost himself in the neo-Nazi movement as a teenager looking for acceptance in the wrong places, rose to the top of one of the most violent hate groups in America, and with the help of his wife and family eventually found the path away from hatred and worked to help other white supremacists follow suit. At fourteen years old, Picciolini, a bright and well-loved child, was targeted and trained to spread a violent racist agenda, quickly ascending to a highly visible leadership position in America's first neo-Nazi skinhead gang. Just how did this young boy from the suburbs of Chicago who had so much going for him become so lost in a world of violent extremism? And what were the ideologies and rationalizations that drove him forth in the face of so much well-justified criticism, thrust at him everywhere he looked outside of his small extremist group? Taking the reader through the fierce street brawls and drunken white power rallies of his adolescence, White American Youth answers these questions and many more.
As Picciolini fell in love with and married a woman who remained firmly opposed to white supremacist ideology, he began to be confronted for the first time with the flimsy lies and too-easy rationalizations that his life was built on. He realized how far he had led himself away from the person his parents raised him to be and began to extricate himself from his leadership roles in hate groups, seeking a calling that could help address some of the damage realized he had done. After years of battling the monster he created, he reinvented himself as an advocate for peace, inclusion, and racial diversity, co-founding the nonprofit Life After Hate, which helps people disengage from hate groups and learn to love themselves and others.
Following Picciolini from his darkest moments to the inspiring fight that he is now leading, WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH is a stunning examination of the hate groups surging through our nation and a deeply personal story of one man at their center who found the path toward love and harmony.