When i was ten, i walked in on my father with another woman. That really started a series of events that had me a spiral. Punk seemed because it vibed with the anger i was feeling,. And from there, i got into the skin head thing. White power and white supremacy wasn't just what i believed in. It was who i was. The badges on my clothes. It was what i listened to. It waswhat i talked about.
“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.