Tony Hancocks is the author of a book called life after hate. He says we have an incredible ability to influence and inspire people around us. The question i have is, just how we do that at scale? And if technology either supports that or doesn't, how can it privilege those kinds of choices? Well, tony, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I really hope people check out your bookand your work at life afterhate.
“You can binge watch an ideology in a weekend,” says Tony McAleer. He should know. A former white supremacist, McAleer was introduced to neo-Nazi ideology through the U.K. punk scene in the 1980s. But after his daughter was born, he embarked on a decades-long journey from hate to compassion. Today’s technology, he says, make violent ideologies infinitely more accessible and appealing to those who long for acceptance. Social media isolates us and can incubate hate in a highly diffuse structure, making it nearly impossible to stop race-based violence without fanning the flames or driving it further underground. McAleer discusses solutions to this dilemma and the positive actions we can take together.