 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. And then we're on! And today's guest we've got T, how are we brother? Oh TM, TM, TM, TM. You've got many names, but we'll go for TM today, how are you? I'm doing great. Fascinating. Yeah, anytime. Thanks for coming to New York. Very fascinating story from a man who's Neil Nazi KKK turning changing his life and trying to help others back in the day. He had a heavy heart, probably a dirty heart, a heart full of hate. But it shows that people can change. It shows what can be done by changing the mindset that anything is possible. A man you probably thought one time you would have been died in that life. So it's very fascinating to understand that I've never had a man. I'll usually interview murderers, bank robbers, drug lords. So it's interesting to have a man who is involved in that lifestyle and how he made the changes. But first and foremost, how are you brother? I'm doing good. We have a great time here in New York. Thanks for having me. It's cold. We live in Memphis so we used to be in that warmer subtravical climate. But New York's still nice. If you think this is cold brother, you should come to Scotland. This is summer time for us. That's why I'm cutting about in shots. Before we get into everything, I always like to go back to the start with my guests. Get more about understanding about you. Where you grew up and how it all began. I grew up in Germany. Very small town in 1975. Southern Germany, very conservative. There was nothing going on. There was no shops. There was no restaurants. There was no pubs. And a very tight knit community. My parents just had moved there a year or two before I was born. They had a drinking problem and then they got divorced. And it was 1975. So that was kind of a problem. That's not something you would do. It was like, nope, you stay married. You get through this, you know. So that was one of the problems that my mom had. I was just a little mother drinking. My siblings all older than me. 7, 11 and 13 years older. So you can see the gap, you know. Nothing happened for 7, 8 years and then TM happened. Literally, my mom was like, I don't know. I don't know what to do with him. Really. Son, I think her main mission was just to get me through school. So I get a job and make it in life. How were you at school? At the beginning, good. I think I was, it was underwhelming for me. It was not really interesting. It got boring really quick. I hated homework. I was an outsider. I was bullied. So I skipped school a lot starting in third grade already. And then when I went to another school in fifth grade, first two years were great. Especially, we started learning English in fifth grade. That was my big thing. I was always this fan of the American dream. I had that emigrated to San Diego in 1956. That was my thing. I want to be here in the US. I want to learn English. And the teachers liked me. And seventh grade, it just declined. I had no interest in that anymore. Again, I was bullied. I was just different than the other kids. What did you do after school? Well, the thing was I got kicked out of school. Why? The first time I got kicked out was because I had to repeat class. I still didn't behave. I didn't do my homework. I just acted up and everything. So they kicked me out of school. So I went to another school. They did the same thing there. So they kicked me out in Germany. It's different from the United States where you have homeschooling. It's like you have to finish your nine years or ten years. And you have to go to school. So there was an electric school like a small college that they took me in. So I did that year and then I didn't go for the second year because I didn't have to. And I was just sitting at home for a while. Did you feel like an outsider? Oh, absolutely. But at that time, when this happened, I was already involved in that movement. That happened all before that. Like in school, I wasn't an outsider because I felt like I was different than the others. They had like, let's say an identity. One was a Boy Scout. The other one, they were Bert Walton in the church. Another one, they were soccer fans. You know, you're from the UK. So you know, it's a big thing there in Germany too. They're crazy about that stuff. My father was not there. He died when I was eight. They divorced when I was about two. So I grew up without a father. My brother moved out when I was six. So I actually grew up with my mother and two sisters. And the other sister also moved out when I was about seven. So taking only my mother and one sister. So there was no really male role model there. And I just was interested in learning English into music. My sister listened to a lot of music. Mostly English language music. A lot of British glam rock, the sweet T-Rex, Queen, the Beatles, also Elvis, Michael Jackson. A lot of us wrote music. Hard guitar riffs, you know, screaming guitars, loud voices. But they didn't understand anything. So it was, I liked it, but it was empty messages. And I was interested in writing short stories. I was interested in drawing comics. And I always felt my mom didn't care. You know, she had a drinking problem. So I, and I didn't really know that because she wasn't laying around drunk. So she hated it very well. And I had no idea. I just thought she doesn't want me or she's not interested really in what I want and my talents. So it was just, okay, we put them in some good fancy school clothes while the other kids had like polo shirts and jeans. I had some fancy pants and fancy shirts, you know, and kids laughed at it. And really good school supplies over the top. The other kids had just what was in and I didn't. And then about seventh, eighth grade, that was when we started learning about the Holocaust and World War II and these things. And you know, that's exactly the age when kids are in puberty, when they start growing up, you know, discovering their masculinity and they wanted to be the bad boys, you know. And so some of the kids started telling the typical racist schoolyard jokes, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, and also making fun of Hitler because it's like in a Baptist church you don't make fun of the devil, it's too serious, you can't do that. And it was similar in Germany, you didn't make fun of Hitler, it was way too serious. You couldn't do that, it was a taboo. But those kids did it and of course everybody looked up to them, they're cool and unfortunately I was also a very good joke teller. So I picked those jokes up, even invented a couple new ones and so a couple kids started coming to me because they wanted to hear those jokes. So I was somebody all of a sudden. I took everything to the extreme and I think I'm an extreme person, whatever I do, I do it with an extreme passion, extreme over the top, I don't have a stop button and I did it there too. So I invented some new jokes and I started drawing all these jokes down as a comic in a little book. And the kids stole it and of course, you know, all the kids were coming wanted to see the book and with all the bad Holocaust jokes in it but also making fun of Hitler and all this stuff and one kid stole the comic and gave it to the principal and boy, I was in trouble, really, really bad. But the thing is, from that day on I was known as the Nazi kid in school and I didn't feel like it was Nazi because we just learned in school the Nazis were hung in 1946 in Nuremberg. I didn't know anything about skinheads or neo-Nazis or whatever. I just knew about this topic, you know and I didn't understand how can you call me Nazis when there's no Nazis anymore and hey, I was making fun of Hitler too so I didn't feel like I was a Nazi but I felt like they put me in a box and closed the lid and nobody was looking at the boy in the box anymore and just labeled it. That was society does. I was labeling everything and at some point I just started to accept the label and hey, I have an identity now, I'm somebody and the bullying stopped and some instances I even became the bully so I don't know if it was respect maybe it was for some kids more fear I don't know but the bullying stopped and that was good enough for me. How big an effect is it when the figure isn't there with no discipline no understanding of life, no one to put you in check from your mistakes? How big an impact is it to come from a broken home? I think it's extremely important and it has a lot to do with that. The missing father figure not only the missing identity because in the family it's a little bit tricky too I remember the one kid had like a family tree that went back to like 1600 something and my mom was adopted and my father was from one of the parts of Germany lost after World War II you know, it's today Czech Republic so they didn't talk much about it either so I grew up with just my my siblings, my mother, a cousin and the two grandmothers and then the whole family was rather small and then my father died and there was no male role model at all there nobody who would put me in check just a mother and she often didn't even realize what was going on because one thing where I really, much later realized how little she actually observed what I was doing even though I was listening to the hate music at some point already at the beginning I started listening to hate music and a little bit to stuff like Motorhead and Saxon and British heavy metal at the same time but half of the music at least was German she could have understood that now remember I took one album to school and had the lyrics on the back and the teacher kind of skated it and my mom had to go to school and they were talking about it and they jazzed her do you actually know what kind of music your son was listening to the answer was I didn't realize the lyrics of the German music that I was listening to she was completely on track fighting her demons the alcohol problems she was working coming home in the afternoons we had fruit and everything but at night she would lock herself in her room and get drunk so she didn't really pay attention did you feel that lack of love growing up I don't think I felt unloved I felt misunderstood I felt more lack of some emotional care I didn't think they didn't love me neither my older sister nor my mother because that's all I knew and they told me they loved me and we went to places you know went to amusement parks we went to zoos and they made sure I got stuff and she made sure I got a computer when all the other kids had computers Commodore 64 was brand new I was 10 years old I got a little bit later than the other kids but my mom made sure she provides all that for me it took about 10 years to load a fucking game on the Commodore 64 but your mom was trying then listening for an addict to be trying is a noble thing as well because you don't know the understanding of the parents at that age they're not doing bad stuff either I know that now and fortunately I had the chance to tell my mother several times and said I know you did the best you could at the time yeah because they're only doing what they know and it's a sad reality because people think why can't they change, why don't they love me if they love me they can do this and that but addiction is a powerful thing where it destroys many lives and not just the person who's the addicts so you're coming from the broken home absolutely a typical story yeah but it is because everybody I fucking always say it but the gangsters the porn stars, the only fans girls the broken home they go down that certain route of craving something, whether it's respect whether it's fear, whether it's to bin a brotherhood whether it's to join the mafia whether it's to join the Nazis or the fucking KKKK it's something not right in the head it's something from an external force so see when you're doing all the Nazi stuff in school did anybody ever say look enough or enough or were you just gaining that respect where the abuser becomes the aggressor and you just knew that you had something to work with you know hurt people hurt people yeah and let's just say when the abuser becomes the aggressor the bullied kid becomes the bully and you don't even think about it it just feels good to be in charge you know to be bullied anymore you're somebody you finally have a purpose you don't know what it is you finally have an identity at least you think you do it's not right identity because it's not yourself but again it was better than the bullied kid being 13, 14, 15 years old you know you want to be the bad boy and it fits right in and that was also when I first got in touch when I was introduced to hate, hate rock it was cassette tape it was actually very prominent on the school yard a lot of kids listen to that you have to realize it was the late 80s in the 50s, 60s you had rock and roll in the 70s you had heavy metal in the 80s you had punk you couldn't shock anybody anymore with heavy metal or punk in the 80s right so the next strong thing was the skinhead music and like in Great Britain some people know that the skinhead movement not always has been racist in Germany that's for the most part completely unknown so if you think of skinhead that's equals neo-nazis and I got that cassette tape and that's the first time I heard about these people and they were singing they're misunderstood they're blamed for everything they're wrong they're just proud of their country and just defending it I was like those guys are singing about me they don't know me but they're singing about me how is that possible so I got the tape and at the beginning it was a very soft message I could identify with at the time somebody would have sung about conspiracy theories or about extreme violence like that I would not have bought that but it was a soft message that resonated and the next cassette tape was a little bit more aggressive and more aggressive and I just started shouting these slogans and I was like I want to get to know these people where are they, where are those skinheads and at some point this kid at school told me where they were hanging out and so I went there and introduced myself and became part of the gang or group what was that feeling for you was that the first time you'd ever felt like a family oh yeah absolutely it was great because I finally could get out before that I was trapped in a 500 citizen village and there was no bus going anywhere there was two buses they went to school and back and that's it and I was just 15 and I remember I got my cousin's moped and I could have that and I took the moped and drove about 10 miles to town where the skinheads were with the weekend and we got hammered and broke back somebody got stolen a moped got stolen and broke and my mom drove me then sometimes and I just walked back I didn't care it was just more important to be there to be with these people that became my family because they understood me and they also understood like those musicians those skinhead bands that were singing well the teachers they don't understand you the police doesn't understand you your parents don't understand you but we do understand you we know where you're coming from how many people was a nice skinhead gang? it was about 15 so very small? it was kind of small for the most part we were just hanging out and playing pool getting drunk playing darts and sometimes they would start going to some disco and especially the lead of the gang he was extremely violent and he always got into some fights and at the time I was a rather shy kid so I tried to stay away from the fights I was not a womanizer at the time so when the others started getting on to girls I was staying away a little bit because I was just I didn't learn that you know and I was very self-aware unsure so I tried to chicken out very often when I saw that they changed a little bit later when we went to a big big rally you have to understand at the time it was not about politics at all that is what I said the original skinheads used to be not political they don't like authorities they are in the minds like punks and they just don't want to drink and fight and they don't want to have any Nazis or parties control them or whatever we were pretty much the same in the late 90s like in 1989 then the Berlin Wall fell and the skinheads that came from East Germany they were already neo-Nazis so they changed a little bit and then you had also Great Britain the blood and honor movement coming over that was introducing a lot more politics in the skinhead movement that was actually not as known the skinheads were singing about stuff and proud to be Germans and they didn't want immigrants and everything but not really with any political concepts under the British influence under the influence of the neo-Nazis from East Germany and then in 1991 it was a big rally we went and probably 4-5 thousand people there it's actually insane how many and I remember driving a couple of hours and we arrived a little bit early and before the march started so we sat at the cafe and I remember I really had a coffee and the leader of our group all of a sudden you saw a skinhead walking by with a towel around his head it's strange and he turned around and you could see everything was full of blood and somebody told us that some antifa punks or whatever threw bricks on some skinheads and I almost shut my pants I was like I was 15 you know I was like man this is crazy stuff I don't know if I want to be here but I couldn't go home because I was in the driver so I had to stay and now later we started marching and you had like thousands of people marching and yelling the same slogans and a couple of people ran to chase some punks that were showing up and I started yelling with them and running with them you know and they started looking blood so all of a sudden the fear was gone I was like this this is cool it's mad though I know how fast you can gravitate towards something even though the football hooligans and that as well there's always something that feel like a family even the mafia guys when they want to join the mafia they're killing people they're doing bads that don't care as long as they felt part of something did you feel that when you started getting a little sense of power and enjoying the violence and the anger and the frustration when you've done anything to just be part of this movement because you're in control you're in power you're in charge and you can these were moments where you could show it off because if you grew up without being in charge you know you feel like you're not valued you have no purpose you feel humiliated you know and you can turn this around one example is true I'm actually talking about this in my book the story will be in it we were like 14 or 15 me and another kid and I was in a nearby town a punk concert and that punk band was notorious for singing against skinheads and against Nazis and we were already going in that direction and we're like why are the real skinheads not going there preventing the concert I didn't know any skinheads at the time and I was just confused how can they go and play that as punk band so me and the friend decided we are going there and waiting for the skinheads and then we just will storm the concert I don't know what we thought so we went there with our mopeds 15 years old and it was at some clubhouse or whatever and we're standing there not bald heads yet but our bomber jackets and patches and our boots and white laces in it so we were identifiable and buses of punks were coming and two really big guys were coming over spotted us and I was like and I was like oh shit they were coming over spotted my patch and said I'm proud to be a German got a knife out took it out from my jacket didn't destroy the jacket took it and kinda sent us home and we were probably so afraid but I never forgot that moment and later years later when I was out of the skinhead and was like I was in my 20s we were on a train after a drinking binge and me and him and we saw a punk on the train nobody else on the train here's my moment that's the revenge so we went there and started harassing the person you know and we also had a patch just like I had just some figure who threw a swastikana trash bin and I was like well you're gonna get rid of this patch take it off I don't know how I said I don't care use your teeth so we're standing there and watching him using his teeth chewing that patch off so we didn't beat him up that was just that was good enough for me actually I believe I kicked his leg or something when I got off the train we started laughing about it but it was like we showed him that we're in charge so these are the moments that empower you where you turn it around these moments of humiliation that you still remember what is the purpose of the skinheads back then what was the main purpose that's a good question actually fighting women fights I think the whole again at the beginning it was not political yeah there were songs about send the black people home to Africa send all the immigrants back but then I didn't have a political background that was more because we got in street fights with Turkish gangs all the time so that came from there why the Turkish Germany has a Turkish population and what I didn't understand back then Turkish kids have a hard time in Germany because their parents and grandparents came in the 50s and 60s and 60s as guest workers and they were supposed to go back after a certain time they had a contract like Germany had a contract after World War 2 with Spain, Portugal Italy, Greece and Turkey because you had a lot of Germans that didn't come back from the war and economy was booming so had to fill the void so all these foreigners came in as guest workers instead of going back a lot of them stayed never really integrated and then you have their kids born in the 70s they didn't know where they belong they're speaking Turkish at home but they were born in Germany so when they went back to Turkey there were the Germans and in Germany there were the Turks they had a hard time so I think the same problem that I had as a kid and rather than to understand them there were the enemies actually looking back they had exactly the same problem that I had See Wenya how long were you in the skinheads before because it just seems kids just getting drunk fighting pretty minor stuff when did things start getting serious so I got in the first skinhead group in 1990 how do you get into a skinhead group obviously like biker groups you've got to kind of get prospects you've got to go and do stuff no it wasn't like that it wasn't like an organized thing you had a couple groups like that coming up later like again blooded on from England was coming over or the Hamaskins from the US and they were more organized like health angels were prospect and so on and then you had to work yourself way in and they wouldn't take everybody but the skinhead group it was just a bunch of people and either you showed up or you didn't show up it was not not an organized gang or anything like that I stayed with that group for about two years until 1992 I got in a fight with the lead of the group what happened he beat me up and I was like okay screw this I don't want to be with them anymore why did they beat you up he never really liked me because I was not hard enough I was chickening out sometimes and one night I had a crush on a girl and she was his ex so I was hanging out with that girl and her girlfriend nothing happened I was way too shy but that's the night when he attacked me and he beat me up and I was like okay screw this I'm not going back I was I could have just left the whole group and the whole thing behind me but again I had nothing else that was my whole life so I just stayed at home for a while and I went to some concerts and whatever because you had skinhead groups in every town beating each other but I didn't have a problem with a lot of them so I just had other groups and then I finally found a job as an apprentice in Stuttgart which was about 50 miles away and well first day I showed up there, got in trouble too I showed up with a shaved head and full uniform and everything like my skinhead uniform and showed off and there was a Turkish guy, the Italian they were pretty aggressive and they just jumped on me and started a fight and I had two drums they went with me and were on my side so and from the day on it was just fighting and most days I would just go with a local group there and we were drinking and after a year about a year one of the skinheads well like have you ever been with the NPD? the NPD is a national democratic party of Germany and it sounds harmless but that's nothing democratic about they're technically neo-Nazis just hiding there a lot of their beliefs well actually no, they just kind of legalize it and you know it's a pretty tough hate speech loss but it depends how you say things you know, you can right, so they twisted good enough that you know they're neo-Nazis but you can't do anything about it because they don't say what they're not allowed to say and I was like, first I don't want to go there it's probably just neo-Nazis or old guys with suit and ties, I don't want that no, that's a couple skinheads there so I went there and all young people and got along with them and that's where politics came came in and I learned more about really World War II other than what I learned in school and it felt like a little bit of knowledge that other people don't know the stuff, why don't they tell me this in school that like they told me that Germany actually did not start World War II they told me that Germany defended itself and they were pushed into World War II oh, okay so my grandparents were actually not criminals they were actually heroes, right? feels much better too because you have to realize I was born in 1975 30 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and a lot of the grandparents were still alive, at least the grandmothers and learning about the Holocaust and about atrocities and seeing these pictures and these movies and everything no, I wasn't a Holocaust denier at that point yet so you know the Holocaust happened that all this stuff happened and your grandparents were around you ask yourself what did they do were they involved? I don't know you don't ask these questions these are people you love you don't want to see them as criminals so you're pushed out of the way and you ask questions but all of a sudden you hear hey, they defended the fatherland you know, they were heroes oh, that's cool, you know that dilemma was gone and that felt great and of course anti-Semitism started coming up more and more and it was different from the jokes that I used to tell them when I was 15 you know I didn't really know that anti-Semitism was there okay, what about the Jews? I don't know any unfortunately, Germany doesn't have a big Jewish community anymore and so I was like, I don't know any of them I saw a couple pictures of a couple of Jews at the temple in Jerusalem with a black hat and locks and everything that's how Jews looked from me and I don't know any what's so bad about them I knew Hitler killed them so they must be bad period, I didn't know why but you see, there was a shift from the kid that just very unintentionally did anti-Semitic things racist things not following the intention to hate was the intention to get attention, you know shifted to the skinhead that provoked and get attention there and then shifted to become a nationalist that's when it became more serious and that's also about the time when I started actually grabbing a guitar and making music when I told you I was always interested in music you know, like my sister's music the loud music and heavy metal and glam rock and electric guitars and I remember our neighbors had a guitar at some point and my sister also played guitar but nobody could really teach me anything again, I thought nobody cares I wanted to learn more, I wanted to write more short stories or draw comics or play the guitar and I just couldn't do it but all of a sudden I was like in my early 20s and I grabbed a guitar again and all these short stories or lyrics I wrote poems sometimes made them into songs and all of a sudden there were people who wanted to hear it and so I started recording songs and what was that like then when you recording songs, how was the kind of rage there and who were you hating against back then everybody who was different everybody except the Germans at that time mostly anybody who was not white anybody who was not German who was not Aryan pretty much anybody who was not straight anybody who was Muslim I didn't care much about religion I didn't grow up in a religious household I was baptized Catholic I went to church on Christmas that's it so I didn't really care but you had it in the head in the back of your head that people said Muslims are coming and taking over and I didn't know what that meant in the late 1980s or 1990s but I was afraid I was afraid it was going to happen even though I didn't know how it would look like or why it was a bad thing or why it was a bad thing if Germans would become the minority or these are about all things that have been told in 2020 or 2050 Germans will be the minority in certain cities and I was like oh my god that's bad you know it was a lot of hate tear based propaganda and well what you don't know you start to hate it you know especially when it dehumanize and this is how those groups do it we start dehumanizing you don't call them humans or people they are rats they are ticks like we always call the punks and the left rings they were ticks and germs because you could just smash them they are not even human beings and if you don't see something as a human being it's just easier to hurt them you take the humanity away at the same time you take your own humanity away too so what does a neo-nazi for people who don't know well yeah the old Nazis in the Third Reich and they were hung in 1946 at least the leaders that's what I always thought I wasn't aware how many Nazis actually were still around in Germany they were just either hiding it or just saying it when you don't pay attention or when you thought it's just a joke like people would say man all these foreigners and everything actually we would need a Hitler again just a small Hitler just a small one you know you wouldn't think anything about it so these were the old Nazis that were around in 1940 until 1945 but the neo-nazi and they existed ever since trying either to revive the Third Reich or do whatever and you said like what was the purpose of the skinheads you know and what was the purpose just acting up just getting drunk just like the punks what's the purpose of rebelling in society that was mostly what it was about and a little bit like like the brown shirts that Hitler had you know the storm of Thailand what was their purpose they were in the beer broths they were out there on the streets fighting until they got rid of them it's a little bit like that with the skinheads and the neo-nazis thought they have the political solutions and they can take over at some point and I guess it depends what group it was some groups had the vision of install a 4th Reich a copy of the 3rd Reich for some groups it will look completely different for some groups it would be just a direct continuation of the 3rd Reich some groups had no idea they just were dreaming of day X some groups called it also day of the sword because of the day of the sword this is when you would start violence you would kill the traitors the traitors in your group the traitors in the government everybody that you want to get rid of the Jews the communists everybody and you take over the day of the revolution and a lot of the groups had no idea how it would look like once you get there because most of these groups fortunately would be completely incapable of running the government or taking over fortunately when did the Nazi start what year? the real Nazis technically they always been around but it was like in the early 1920s they had actually groups like the Ostauer society and the Thule society and when Hitler actually came from Austria many people forget that he wasn't really German he was Austrian so you see the Germans don't really want to own the guy but they voted for him when he went in World War I he fought for the Germans and he stayed then in Munich because he tried to actually be a painter and the university kicked him out they didn't want him so he went to Munich and that's when he hang around with a couple people of the Thule society who were promoting a lot of anti-Semitic propaganda including the early 20s the myth that it's the Jews fault that Germany lost World War I and that they have to pay all these reparations and so on that they pay a lot of money after World War I and Germans are completely devastated they didn't know what was going on and that's where Hitler started to prosper and rise to power because he unfortunately was a very good speaker and everything and so he was used by these people that were already in the Nazi party he didn't start the whole thing that already was there how many Germans died and was and there was to be honest I don't know the numbers anymore I used to know them but you had a lot of soldiers that died you had a lot of civilians that died you had a lot of the Americans and the British they bombed a couple cities where a lot of civilians died we always used that of course against the British or the Americans look they were much worse than the Germans but the Britons invaded over 90% of the world Britain are fucking ruthless they are ruthless for me all wars murder and I'm only saying that from the outside but people are so easily manipulated could there be another war possibly you get Russia and Ukraine like I say I'm not intelligent enough and I have enough information what's going on but I watched Putin do an interview and he was talking about Natoes coming closer he did war and he wanted a peace they were going to sign a peace agreement and America says no but then you've got the media who portray him as a bad guy like I say I don't care for people in government I genuinely don't care I concentrate on me in my life and when you talk about fear fear is what controls the world if you're full of fear you'll be manipulated into doing anything and accepting it same as Iraq no weapons of mass destruction over a million Iraqis died people got a question everything like I say with Germany and the wars and when you've been taught at school you've been taught to hate you've been brainwashed to hate others who are not German and everybody has good choices and they've transitioned in so many ways that they're so dumbed down that they don't even understand that but that's exactly what happened people can be programmed that's what happened with the music there was just a kid in the box like I said nobody looked at the human being in the box anymore they just looked at the label it's a Nazi kid and from that point I was deprogrammed or wired and that's what our brains do you know neurons and everything the brain is forming neural pathways and you form habits and what you hear over and over and over again you'll learn to love what you see everyday that's a famous quote from Science of the Lambs it's the same thing you start to like what you see and hear every day if it makes sense or not and it's like you're a trusted source if your parents you grew up around your parents and I trusted my mother again I never thought she doesn't love me and I never thought she would lie to me why would she I trusted her so she's my trusted source and if she's starting telling me some part of my French bullshit let's say some ideology which fortunately did not happen that were indoctrinated by the parents why would your parents lie to you so they always said the truth so the next thing you're telling must be the truth too it's also how all these QAnon people here in the US came to be because they started telling a little bit that resonated that was true so you trust them and then they feed you with a little bit more and they start coming up with the stuff that's not true and you start believing you start believing every word they say because it's slow radicalization is always happening slow for some time after I got out of the hate movement I always thought how did my mother not see what was happening because I imagine myself how it happened I came home at some point I came home with a bald head I had like I looked more I dressed like Miami Vice and Dungeons that's a little bit how it looked like and the next day I came home with a bald head, a bomber jacket and boots on and my mom must have thought I'm out of my mind I mean she was like oh my god what happened it's just here it will grow again well I cut it again when it grew but my mom was not as shocked because it happened gradually the bald head that happened over night but my behavior didn't happen over night it happened slowly I radicalized slowly when did it consume you when did it become 100% of you and that life and hate and rage how long did it take for you to be truly brainwashed to be leaving everything that says and done I believe a little bit after I started making music which I was in my early 20s was involved in the stuff for about 6-7 years already and if you write those lyrics it's your own stuff it's different than singing it or just copying or singing along you know because it's not your stuff you just get drunk and you yell what they yell or you yell slogans what the others yell or you read what but if you start writing this stuff yourself and then at the beginning we often wrote stuff that we didn't believe in because imagine we finally were somebody we could be little rock stars and to be honest it feels great of course you're on a stage and they cheer to you and they're singing your lyrics and we of course copied or covered songs of other bands that were notorious you know that had really the most radical lyrics just because we knew that's what the crowd wants to hear so we're singing that even though I didn't believe in half of it what they were singing sometimes these bands are also writing something just because the crowd wants to hear it but at some point you start to believe your own stuff you know you start to believe what you're writing there so it's very unintentional with a different intent you know you're writing with a different intent after a while you just start believing it and you don't question it anymore that was in the mid 90s I started recording albums I toured and I was still a skinhead and at the same time but also a member of that political party almost like 97 98 and then a couple things happened that radicalized me even more one thing was the internet I call it the advent of the internet in 1997, 1998 all of a sudden everybody had a computer with a modem that sounded like a fax machine and nobody could pick up the phone anymore because you blocked everything it took you like 20 minutes to download something but it was still faster than to order something and smuggle it into the country those two things that changed drastically with the internet one thing was people from all over the world in chat rooms and at that time already new people from other European countries because those skinheads travel they want to listen to the bands from other countries so we had a lot of people that came from Great Britain from Italy, from France and so on but you only saw them so often and mostly at a concert where you got drunk and you didn't talk much really about politics or anything with a deeper background but in those chat rooms well, you're sitting in your living room with a computer and you have time to talk so you talk about all kinds of stuff and I met people from all over the world and up to that point I was the nationalist who thought Germany's an attack we have to defend ourselves it's the Muslims coming in the communists are trying to take over and so on and so on and all of a sudden people from all over the world took me the same story oh man, the communists are trying to take over and they're flooding us with all this abnormal stuff abnormal music abnormal art abnormal TV and Hollywood and all this stuff I heard it from everywhere and I was like it's not Germany under attack it's the white race that's under attack oh wow something but an attack by whom by whom well, it's not the black the black people are just pawns just like us we don't want to mix with them but they're not doing it by themselves they're not that smart, that's what they told me there's one book that they told me to read and you have to see until that point it was extremely hard to get your hands on certain literature in Germany because Germany has learned from the Holocaust they banned a lot of the literature you would go to prison if you denied the Holocaust and so on and so on and so on so you had to smuggle it into the country and there was a mail order from the US that smuggled it in and it was well, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't if the post office didn't or the customs didn't keep it and a mail order from Scandinavia and they brought in most of it really, really bad stuff but it took a while until either somebody physically brought it in but with the internet, one mouse click and you had it on the computer and the book they told me to read was the Protocols of the Elisa Zion which is now I know that it's a pamphlet that was made up in Russia in the early 1900s to discredit Jews they made it look like it's a meeting of the Jewish World Congress where they talk about how to take over the world the blueprint of how the Jews are taking over the world I was like wow, this is why Hitler didn't like them the Nazis knew about this this is why they wanted to get rid of them so the Jews are the enemy they are causing all this they're behind the banks, they're behind the media just look at the Hollywood movie one guy always said watch a Hollywood movie and watch watch the names at the end of the Hollywood movie it reads like the phone book of Tel Aviv and yes you had a lot of Jews in Hollywood, they still do but we used that as a proof they're controlling everything and all of a sudden I felt like my grandparents knowing or thinking there were the heroes well, I have to defend my country I have to defend my race I have to defend everybody from that big enemy I can be a superhero actually like in which young man doesn't want to be a superhero especially nowadays everybody said, yeah, give me the cape of course, I want to be the hero who can save everybody who can save my people the Jews I really was convinced of that so I became a white supremacist and a really hardcore anti-Semite that changed especially in the year 1998 and I incorporated that into my music into politics the NPD that I was a member of they were not hardcore enough for me I got approached by a KKK group this is when that happened in Germany and yes they exist, they also exist in many other European countries fortunately very very small and was actually a group of people that followed me to my concerts I did a lot of acoustic gigs and they came to a couple and I knew that they were in the clan but I didn't know much about it it was for a long time there was nothing to do with it because I didn't know how real it is I heard a couple bands singing about it there were movies like Mississippi Burning where you can see them beating up like people or lynching people this is stupid this is not how we solve this problem we need to take over the government we need to really do this in a big scheme not just take people in the streets and beat them up but I was convinced what we had to do you know I personally only committed the violence when I was with the skinheads the street gang when we fought the Turks or whatever or in these instances as soon as I got higher up in the ranks and as a musician also in the party or as a neo-nazi I was like I'm not making my hands dirty because it doesn't do much I was also convinced either we will end up dead or in prison well I'm not good dead in prison I've never been to prison we were like when we were drunk they caught us often put us in a cell and we could go the next day and one time we had an illegal march without a permit and that's when they brought us to a real prison over the weekend I guess they just wanted to mess with us maybe they didn't have enough room with their police department I don't know but they brought us to a real prison we had to spend the weekend there and that was weird and I was like that gave me a taste of that and I was like I don't want to go to prison because at the time I already had three kids and I was like if I'm in prison I'm not any good for my kids I'm doing a disservice to my country actually because I can't do anything from prison and I felt like it's a very scary place I was just afraid to go to prison so I was like we have to reach our goals another way either like Hitler did it he was voted because he did it he tried to coup and they sent him to prison a lot of people forget about this just look at how things sometimes repeat itself when people start storming the capital that's what Hitler tried in the 1920s they had a march in Munich and tried to take over the government they were stopped and he was convicted and he spent one and a half years in prison that's why he wrote Mein Kampf and then he realized this is not the way and he realized well he has to run for office and it worked and that's what we thought too we a coup won't work the day of the revolution we didn't think that will happen I was that aware already that I was like these fantasies of those skinheads or neo-nazis all we are taking over and the day acts and the revolution and we will just take over and execute all our enemies it's not happening see the skinheads and neo-nazis the KKK is all under the same umbrella or is a different levels to them the skinheads for me just like was it the skinheads in the mods back in the day stuff yeah they kind of there was nothing to them their fights and their partying but who was the most extreme extreme in case of violence or in hate I think it's a matter of intent because you seem more political of like a chess player very calculated towards I became that way on the way how I radicalized myself or how I was radicalized but I was radicalized myself because I was the violent skin at first the almost innocent schoolboy who picked all this up and unintentionally did all these anti-Semitic and racist things but just for the sake of attention not for the sake of hating I didn't want to hate I actually wanted to be liked I felt liked actually when kids came and wanted to hear those jokes I felt liked they liked me for that when they saw the comic that I drew with all these holocaust jokes and everything I felt liked because they liked me I didn't want to be hated I didn't want to hate either that came later so it's all about intent the skinheads, the hate they have for the most part it's like you have a lot of unpolitical skinheads they still exist they're not haters they just want to have fun they listen to music, they go dance and women and whatever and get drunk they're more like violent hippies maybe but you know what I mean that's for the sake of hate but the racist skinheads clash with all these gangs and whatever and they hate them for a different reason and then you have the the nationalists they say they don't hate they just dislike or very often all these people say they don't hate anybody it's like a lot of American groups came up with that it's heritage, not hate we just love our own people we do not hate anybody just leave me alone and I don't have a problem with you like if you go, take your immigrants home if you take a black people home and it's just us Germans or just the Brits or just the white Americans then we don't have a problem with you so defend yourself we actually just love our people but yeah, there's nothing wrong with it you know so you actually tell yourself whenever you have doubts whenever you hear the music and whatever hate music or people using the N-word or other words for discreeting words for immigrants and whatever and especially if you're not that radicalized yet you're still more receptive to the other side you know and you're like, I don't know about this group they're saying all these things they listen to this music, that's the propaganda but they're saying, yeah that's that's a little harsh, yes we know but actually we only love our own people and if they just would go away we wouldn't they make us do this and the skinheads that was the same thing, sometimes we went to town with our whole outfit and we knew the parts where the Turkish gangs were and we just walk through and we knew they would come attack us and then we would fight back so we could say, look how they behave in our country we didn't do anything they attacked us we just defend ourselves justifying it's the same with things like the N-word or other things you would say or what you would do I'm actually not like that but they make me feel like this if they just would go away I'm fine I'm not a hater I just love my own people but they make me do this what about the left wing if they were German how was it hatred for left wing as well oh yeah absolutely because it's like there were the communists and Hitler hated the communists the communists hated Germany they were not patriots and therefore they were one of the sworn enemies of course what were you taught from the world was what were you taught from Hitler's movement like when I was in school when I was in school we learned that Hitler started the war we learned the Nazis were the bad guys we learned that the holocaust happened and some of that it must never happen again so we learned about these things Germans are very well aware of that it took a while but how do we know even is the truth anymore because for me looking at the outside all the people in wars there's companies who fund both side of wars now is the people pulling the strings behind that the greedy men in suits who are then getting young boys to fight in wars that don't need to fight in for me the people in suits should be going fighting if they've got issues and problems going to fight yeah it wasn't in Germany with World War II the same I mean the people that were in charge they weren't the people going out fighting you know when germany already had lost the war pretty much the Russians were already in Berlin you know they still convinced young people 10, 11, 12 year old boys to grab weapons and go out there and fight the Russians that were already in Berlin and those kids did it because they grew up in this environment they didn't know anything else this was just the environment and they had to defend their country their furor you know that's they're completely indoctrinated they didn't even have to be radicalized because that's how they grew up and this is where after World War II you know germany was was divided in four parts you had the Russians had the eastern and you had west the bridge the french and americans had the west also cut into three pieces so and the allies and the allies had the problem what are we going to do with germany after World War II you know but all the nazis are dead the soldiers that were out a lot of them were dead a lot of the leaders committed suicide or were hung in Nuremberg a lot of the scientists well the Russians cut them or the US cut them, look at Werner von Braun he was a director you know so all the scientists were used and then you had the regular population you know that was left that was indoctrinated as well that either grew up and the Hitler was radicalized on the Hitler you can't kill all of them what are you going to do with all these nazis you know that's why everything was banned to start with when my mom wasn't school she was born in 1945 and she told me they learned in school that World War II started in 1939 ended in 1945 and that's it period they heard the stories but it was just forbidden to talk about it it was bad, you don't do this anymore anymore if you do it you go to prison period you had technically to wait until the real nazis, the old nazis died and the next generation which was me and my siblings and my mom was already also next generation but they were indoctrinated so my siblings and I were the generation then in the 70s 80s that you could actually really educate what happened you know so in the 1980s 1990s most of the germs didn't want any nazis they knew Hitler brought nothing but doom and destruction none of them had really a problem with Jews or with immigrants or whatsoever so Jews were taught to then hate Hitler we used to talk to hate why? I mean he brought nothing but doom and destruction so was the fucking UK they're still causing it yeah but the germs they were very aware it just happened and the guy it was just a now go period but you couldn't talk about it really you couldn't even make fun of it and the funny part is the person who broke that it was a Jewish director Daniel Cohn I would have to look it up he made a film about Hitler where they made fun of Hitler so it was a Jewish director because of course as a Jew you would be allowed to make jokes but Hitler while the regular germ was like we can't touch this topic this is a little bit too much and it was much much easier to reflect on the topic you know the regular germ didn't want any neo nazis the regular germ didn't want any skinheads they didn't want a KKK they just wanted these people to go away as well so the regular germ was also our enemy either you're on our side or you're on their side so who the fuck are you fighting against then everybody the whole world it was exhausting you were waking up and hating everybody and fighting the whole world it's like you were the elite group that had the secret knowledge that nobody has and we can fix the world we know how to do it the small group and how was that obviously with Britain and America because there's a lot of rights, wing extremists in these countries so how was that when there's a sort of partnership between Germany UK, America when people are in the KKK we always had it we always were in touch with these groups why if they were the enemy also at one point just because they had the same beliefs as you and we had the same enemy at that time I believed that there's a Jewish world conspiracy okay, the Jews are taking over the world they have taken over the world we have to or they're about to take really over and the only thing that stands between the Jews and world domination is the white race and this is why the Jews are trying to take the white race down this is why they're promoting race mixing they're trying to bring Christianity down, bring all these Muslims into Europe and flood Europe just to make the white race weaker to mix them up so that just a mixed race who can defend themselves anymore that has no own culture that's what they're trying to do and we are the only ones who are standing in between them and world domination so we have to team up with all the white people worldwide the stuff you're saying no, people still say no the stuff that you're saying and the stuff that you believe does people still have those same conversations? nothing fucking changes people still going on about immigrants are still going on about wars are still going on about right wing, left wing it's never ending fighting do you see that as well? yeah, because the problem is that we're always afraid that somebody is taking away from us and I think that's a normal human emotion the Jews are white though the Jews are white no the Jews, yeah so why would they want to take away whites if you know what I mean so the Jewish people are right yeah we thought of them as the Jews are actually an ethno-religious group I don't know that's why I ask you have a lot of black Jews from Ethiopia they just now in the last 20-30 years came into Israel for example the Jewish community is in India in China and everywhere and then you have different like a lot of Israeli Jews and Jews the state in the area of the state of Israel for the last 2000 years and then you had other tribes Eastern Europe and then into Europe so they come Ashkenazi then you have tribes that stayed in North Africa that came into Spain and they're Sephardic Jews so you can see different racial differences there so a lot of Jews are not white but that's not the issue that's how Jews identify themselves it's not about race there are people there but we always said because of that the Jews are actually even worse because they would mix up they have no own identity and while the white people would try to keep their their race clean and the heritage and whatever while the Jews they don't that's the only way how to win to take the integrity of white people away and to mix them up too so they can stand up against them anymore that's what we believed in at the time how many albums did you write? 5 or 6 what was the names of them? I don't need to promote it here that shit is unfortunately still out there you can even buy it neo-nazis don't care about copyrights I could sue them they would still put it out there which would just put attention on those songs I don't want to do that you can buy them, you can download them they're on YouTube, they're freaking everywhere this is one of the big regrets that I have that this stuff is still out there and I can't do anything about it things I've written, lyrics essays and so on that I've promoted that is still out there there's a couple of people that I groomed there's no leading positions that are still out there like monsters that I created and nothing I can do about I can do something about what I did wrong I can do about something about damage that I have done and I can do things too, to make it better to make up for it because I have to, because I want to and because it's just the right thing to do these things that I can't change it hurts it's not cool because the music you're listening to groomed you and conditioned you and programmed you for your certain beliefs so now that you obviously made changes trying to clean the heart and do the right things people are listening to your music to this day and then following that kind of path that you went down yeah, and that's that's what's bothering me on the other hand it's mostly people mostly people of minority groups who tell me say TM stop beating yourself up over this you've done so many good things now stop bothering about this you know, but it's hard because I know it's out there, you know that's a guilt that I can never get rid of you know and there's a lot out there when I joined the KKK it was not about violence either we did it was the same thing I saw it as a secret organization a secret brotherhood that has influence Internet was all around at the time started to look it up and in the US in the 1920s in certain states like Indiana for example the governor was in the Klan it was the Grand Dragon there and there was in politics you couldn't get around the Klan at the time you know it was crazy that 6-7 million members it was like in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue you had 10,000 of Klan's men with their white hoods and everything marching there in Washington DC and I'm like they were really in charge, you know this is how we have to do it not with violence, not with the DX not with the revolution not even trying to get in there in a political party and get voted because Germans are so much smarter for the most part and at least if it's real Nazis or real radicals that they say no we don't want them to be in charge we don't vote for you guys but if we infiltrate society without people then it doesn't matter what party they're in if we put key people our people in key positions cops, judges in political parties that run for office then we can have them in five different parties then it doesn't matter which party is in charge because we have our people everywhere and this is what I wanted to do then and unfortunately we recruited really really good we really managed to have police officers as members business people it was a small group the first year we were just busy I was in one group that I left after about two years and then I started an old group I was encouraged by a group from America, from Mississippi or like you need to start your own group with this concept you need to build this up we were going to help you and so on so I started that group and the first year we were just busy writing the whole doc train writing a website and print material and I had like overhead projectors at home so we could really have classes and everything I had a copy machine at home we printed our own magazine at home and send it out we had about a couple of hundred supporters they didn't want us members I was like you can send out your money but the people they emailed us I would do like people and call them whatever and reply to these emails because that was the same things skinheads and bedsheets doesn't lead anywhere but you can send us your money you can be a supporter you can get a certificate I don't care, a magazine but not as a member so we had within two years a small group of people it was only 25 people with different applications we we teamed up we took over a whole group from Sweden that joined our group because they liked the concept from Austria we had a realm in France one in Belgium we had actually a couple of people from Ireland that wanted to join and and everything for the one leader in Mississippi because I came up with all these concepts and everything so I started helping them with their stuff and again we really managed it to have police officers and I thought we're safe because there was a shift about the year 2000s I radicalized from 1998 2000 and radicals exploded and then being in that first KKK group splitting off from that NPD because they wanted radical enough and they didn't like that I was in a Christian group because most Germany and Nazis are anti-Christian and in 2000 I had a shift I almost went to prison actually again Germany has a very harsh hate crime and every time we wrote lyrics for our music we would have a lawyer look over it so we don't get in trouble at least when we published it in Germany when we published it somewhere else we didn't do that because we couldn't get in trouble if you put it out in Denmark because we didn't break any law there if somebody smuggles that stuff in Germany you can't do anything so I got in trouble I was a mistake and I thought I could get out of it and I couldn't and the government already wanted to get rid of me and they were like ok they pushed me into the corner and said ok if you don't change anything you're going to prison I was like shit no I'm like and I was thinking about that again either I will end up dead or in prison and I didn't want either so I decided ok I'm really cutting any contact to the skinheads in the neo-nazis we think hey that's a great thing right no because I still had the plan group that I just opened I was like I don't need the skinheads I don't need the Nazis I have a secret society I have a secret brotherhood that I can use so the cops don't bother me anymore I just keep the whole thing secret and we start infiltrating society everything will be fine yeah of course not we were watched from day one they infiltrated the group we had one guy who worked for the intelligence service he came to meetings with a bug in his backpack and filming stuff and whatever and of course they found out that we had police officers as members and whatever so they completely freaked out police officers as members of a KKK group in Germany in 2002 this is freaking insane if that becomes public there's a real scandal out there so they tried really everything to push me out of the position out of the leadership position because they knew if they get rid of me from the top of the organization that the organization will just crumble away and which which they could actually there was one key moment actually that made me think and I realized we were we were monitored that we were investigated and that we had a spy at the time I didn't know who it was and the intelligence service visited us actually all of the members we had a big rally and all the members that visited were attending the rally were visited by the intelligence service and we came out to my house you know we were watching you and said well now I know so what are you going to do we're not doing anything illegal well no but what if one of your members is committing a hate crime what about that and I was convinced hey we're getting cops we're getting whatever but if one of them is committing a violent crime it's your head that's on the plate right hard thing nah my members are not doing anything I brushed it off they left and it gave me time to think a lot of other things happened too that gave me time to think and that was just a moment where I was like man this is insane actually I don't know what these members are doing you know at the end we're promoting a hateful message we're promoting actually hate and the only reason why we didn't promote violence is because we would have been in prison you know so I wasn't really sure that none of the members would go out and commit some violent crime it's the Klan after all it's the KKK you know you just have one of them watch Mississippi burning and takes out or something you know and I was like yep I will go to prison and I was just a point where I was like okay I can do this anymore just the sheer fear to go to prison pushed me so much in the corner that I said I need to stop all activities I can't do this anymore I was also so tired from hating from like you said we hated everybody yes we hated everybody like you're waking up you're like crazy it was so bad that during the time I was so paranoid that I took my computer and my mom lived right next door in the house there was a staircase and I would hide the computer under the staircase in the morning like 2 am and I knew the cops come and kick in my door to confiscate stuff and raid my house you know they would come at like 6 or 7 o'clock so now I would sleep until 10 and I knew okay I'm safe the cops aren't coming anymore got my computer back did my stuff you know and I would hide it again so that's how paranoid of us you know you're waking up and you're like oh my god the race war is starting or the Jews are taking over the world or whatever it's like crazy it's like exhausting and I just was too exhausted I couldn't do it anymore I didn't want to do it anymore but I was still a hater the beliefs were still there it was just I didn't know what to do with it and for a while I started to get used to the group because that's all I had that's all I had for the last like 15 years you know I didn't know any normal people and I was like man I already stepped back from my duties I even left the group I said I'm gone I'm not coming back and I told them you hold an election next year in spring you will vote a new leader I'm not coming back I was still hanging out with them I was like oh if something happens and I'm hanging out with them then they might think I'm still pulling the strings you know just not officially we have to go back then me and my ex-wife and the kids decided to move into another town where I knew where no neo nazis were and the lease was about to be over so we had to move out anyway and the only apartment we could find was owned by a Turkish immigrant I was like really I remember when I picked up the phone and he picked up the phone and you could hear the exit and I was like oh come on really only one apartment that we could find I was like hey I don't need to marry the guy so we moved there and moved in he lived downstairs we lived upstairs and I really really cut ties with an old group I didn't talk to them anymore and I was like I need to protect myself because I didn't want to prison it was the only reason why I did this and I moved in and it was so absurd how this happened I tried to avoid any contact with the Turkish guy with my landlord because I didn't have anything to do with him it was in 2002 a year after 9-11 so all Muslims are like or someone been laden and wanted to kill me in my bed at night so he's probably coming upstairs and stabs me at some point or something I don't know what I thought I was like so I don't want it, he's bad he must be a terrorist, he's probably going to mosque and that's the plan and all that stuff and he seemed to be a nice guy and he asked me if I could help him he said computer problems whatever and I was like whatever so I helped him a couple of times and he paid me at the beginning so I went downstairs helped him, he paid me back upstairs it was a job you see I always found this curious you know what I mean it was the same time in the movement too whenever we met somebody of our enemies that was a nice guy exception there was a reason for it we even had sometimes left-wing people that we met and they were cool that wouldn't fit in your ideology it's messing with your head I'm supposed to hate these people, why are they cool well I suppose just either they're naive or whatever or they're good hiding or they have an agenda you always had something it's the token black guy the one black guy you know and wrote down his name or whatever he's cool but not the others exception that's the same what I thought about him and at some point he got a new computer and that didn't work so I helped him at some point I didn't even take the money anymore and I was like I found myself sitting sometimes an hour there trying him to help him I'm not thinking about the name or that I should be supposed to hate him and we're talking about stuff and one time he asked me if I want to come downstairs for dinner and I don't know if I've thought long about it or not I can't remember but I said yes and I was going downstairs I was by myself and it was just weird the wife didn't speak much to him and you know the kids and it was like when I was now laughing or whatever weird stuff I don't want to eat this and it was actually the appetizer was fish soup and apparently that's not even something Turkish or whatever it was just where he was from I don't know and I can't send fish soup it's not going down my throat period and I was like okay this is what I expected anyway so now I was already like you know these cultures when you tell them you don't take their generous invitation or whatever you would offend them you don't take their food if I tell him that I don't want the fish soup he will probably be offended actually could test you know because then he will probably grow fang so he will I don't know beat me up or turn into Osama bin Laden I don't know I can unmask him because he was so good in hiding hiding his real beliefs you know Mr. Nice Guy or Muslim terrorist face and I was really so I told him I like fish soup and I thought come on show me guess what happened nothing the wife came took the fish soup and brought the entree I was chicken and fries I was like where's the kush kush and falafel and I was like that seems that seems so normal who are we to say what's normal food wise so I was like man he's struggling just as I do with finances, with his kids, with his job he's worrying about the country that he's living in what's becoming out of that you know he likes the same things that I like music, food movies he even likes chicken and fries you know like that was nothing I left that I was supposed to hate over a freaking dinner you know and I felt like my hate was just crumbly it was laying in front of me all that hate was laying in crumbs and I had made a decision what am I going to do with this with this whole situation you know and of course I had a lot of time to think in the aftermath of that and I decided I need to find out how all the Muslims are are they like him I didn't see him as the landlord anymore I didn't see him as the Turk anymore I saw him as him and that was his name the others they also have names you see I started humanizing them again seeing them as human beings not as the landlord, not as the Turk not as the enemy I cared for their names you know what they think about this country how they came here, how they struggle how maybe their kids struggle why all these kids were in Turkish gangs you know that we used to fight there was a reason for that and I realized no they're not terrorists they're just fathers and mothers and kids and they worry about the same shit that I do and they like the same things I do and I just realized what else has been wrong that I believed in and this is when I really was like okay this is I have to unwrap all this hate you know I got my hate my head out of the hate but I had to get the hate out of my head too that was the slowly slow process of deradicalization you know imagine you walk into a forest and you're 10 miles into the forest guess how long it takes out to get out of the forest the same 10 miles you know and I had to do it by myself there was no groups at the time that were helping there was a lot of struggles I still had tattoos and stuff and I remember I had the words skin had tattooed on my upper arm and it was just one year after all this happened you know I just was still dealing with all this mess in my head and I remember with my son and I went to a water park and I was at the water slide and I went with my son on the hand and we went up the stairs so you can get down and go down the water slide and there was the Turkish woman behind me also with her child also on the stairs and she looked at me and I already had just a regular I could just like you there's not much left anymore back to being a skinhead yeah and my hair looked normal you know but I had just swim trunks on you know and you could see the tattoo and she saw that tattoo and I could see the fear in her eyes because she identified skinheads as neo-nazi which means hate Turks and there's a lot of things that happen in Germany over the years so skinheads like burning Turkish family houses you know women and children diet and stuff and I saw just the fear in her eyes and I felt so helpless I felt so freaking helpless that I didn't know what to do because should I now tell her and apologize or should I say I'm not like that anymore I couldn't say a word you know all I could see was the fear and my child here she had her child there and I was like where are we different but she's afraid of this just that word that I have tattooed here you know and I was like this needs to be gone so and I decided to cover this tattoo up and started to look for tattoo shops was really really important for me from that time on every time I went to water park I used to Sharpie and drew something over it or with duct tape remember one time I put a whole thing of duct tape around it and it was hurtful for myself and then also to see myself as this person and I wasn't anymore and it was just one year after it I wasn't even fully de-radicalized yet it was already hurtful and then I started to sweep everything under the carpet I was out of the movement I just claimed okay I realized this was wrong I realized okay if all this was a lie what about holocaust denial because I had become a holocaust denier too you know well no the holocaust happened I mean we have proof it happened so I'd never been to a concentration camp in school there was no money for it when we were in the movement I didn't want to go and see the lies that I thought they were there and then when I was finally out of the movement I didn't want to go because I felt like you don't have to prove it to me anymore I do now believe that it happened okay so I was like okay I don't want to have anything to do with this person that I used to be swept it under the carpet didn't talk to many people about it just scratched the surface a little bit just that I used to be a right wing idiot period not the whole extent not that I was the leader of a group musician and all this stuff and for almost 10 years I lived this life until I finally even started again you know but not not talking about that at all until I had to because I was brutally outed by the media and so it was like coming out and I was not in charge of it and if you're not in charge of it coming out it's not good and first I was completely in defense mode because I was like I don't want to talk about this this is not me anymore anyway you know but it was still an extremely bad situation see the KKK obviously in Germany, America when I think of the KKK in America when you see the movies it's just as if they hate black people but you hating Jews you're hating Muslim, you're hating black you're hating left wing is that the same in America? they seem more ruthless though with the hangings and the burnings yes and no it is like that's not the KKK I'm just trying to keep it really short the KKK as itself was the first era was from 1865 when it was founded in Christmas Eve in Tennessee until I believe 1876 or something it was actually forbidden and banned and it's called the Ku Klux Klan Act it was forbidden and banned forbidden and banned as a terrorist organization in 1877 I believe and it was revived in 1915 it was a book that was made into a movie Birth of a Nation unfortunately it is a cinematic masterpiece and is used by a lot of filmmakers as an example because how the camera work is done it's a really important film unfortunately but it's like two and a half hours long and it's glorifying the KKK how it's saving white women from black rapists after the Civil War the freed slaves that all of a sudden like wild animals jumping onto white women that's how it was depicted and the Haroi Chevaler Klan is coming and helping 1915 in the middle of World War I and well pretty much all of white America was racist at the time but it was by white supremacists so it just reflected what society thought anyway so some guy revived the Klan it was the second era and then the third era during the 2030s 40s and then the Klan was disbanded because of tax reasons because they couldn't pay their taxes that millions of members didn't pay their taxes and then they were almost dead in the 50s revived again then there was in the 60s when the most violent times of the Klan actually happened because of the civil rights movement and a lot of people in the south that were involved in the Klan just went and did like the Birmingham church bombing for example and six little children murdered or amongst others from the Mississippi burning murders for example it was to Jews and the black guy were murdered in Mississippi by the Klan and so on and that happened really and the cross burnings when they went and put a burning cross in your front yard that happened to Dr. King several times the time existed in the Klan in the 60s and actually the death of the influential Klan came in the 1960s when the government when the FBI came down from Washington to the south smacked down on the Klan and send a lot of the leaders to prison and then all the people that were in power like Sheriff's and whatever they were like okay we can't be in these groups anymore because it's too dangerous we will be held responsible even though they didn't do the crimes but if some members of the group are doing the crime you're going to prison it's like what the cops told me you're responsible for your group and that was the death of that violent Klan from the 60s was revived again after Vietnam a lot of Vietnamese fishers came immigrants you had a lot in Texas and Louisiana Vietnamese people were attacked by groups and that revived the Klan in the 1980s in general skinheads and trailer pike trash the Klan so you have different eras there and even after the 1960s 50s already since the Klan couldn't operate under the old name anymore because they had to tax debt whoever would use the same name had to pick up the tax debt so they split up and everybody it's great if you go to an organization everybody can be the leader that's what happened all these small leaders state leaders could be the imperial wizard the nationwide leader all of a sudden because they all opened their own group you know it was not the knights of the Ku Klux Klan anymore then you had the magnolia knights and these knights and the Mississippi knights and everybody had a prefix united clans of America and so on how many different levels are there for the KKK you have on the top you have the imperial wizard who's like the president and then you have imperial officers which you have like a vice president and a scribe and you have a treasurer and so on and security officers and so on and a couple of religious positions as well then you have the state level it's handled by the grand dragon and then you have the grand officers and then you have under that it goes you have great titans they cover dominions which is for whole area in a state and then on a county level you have your clever that is led by the exalted cyclops what's that? the exalted cyclops that's the local leader that have all these names all these mystic names just to make it even more interesting more secretive and so on what's the meaning behind the abandon of the cross? they say at least it comes from the scottish clans when they signalized that it was about danger or whatever you put on the highlands you burn the cross to signalize the other clans of the danger that's where it was inspired from but a lot of people say too it's also because of Christianity when emperor Constantine converted Christianity he saw the lit up cross in the sky and it was his calling to convert Christianity so I can win this battle so there's difference the clan assess their Christian so that's why they're using the cross and you have a difference between the burning cross and the lit cross you have a cross burning which is used for intimidation which was put out by the night riders and put out in the front yards to intimidate people and you have the cross lighting which is a ceremony that's when the clansmen wear their robes and everything stand around the cross and light it what's the meaning of that why wear the robes the white robes well originally it was just to pretend to be ghosts and they were scaring black people the freed slaves and so these six confederate soldiers that started the clan in 1865 riding around and just scaring a couple freed black slaves that oh we are the resurrected dead confederate soldiers and did stuff like holding a bone out of the from under the robe just pretending to be a skeleton whatever and thought the night black slaves will fall for that intimidate them and then they just started creating titles and whatever and later they claimed it's also to hide your identity but not in form of hiding your identity to escape responsibility but to claim we are all the same under the robe no matter what what social status you have either then or whatever under this robe and under the hood and under the mask we are all the same see when you were full of your hate and you became a father how was that obviously it had been different when you started making changes but when you were full of hate did you try and be a normal father or were you still angry at the world trying to protect your kids or were you feeding your kids with the same information you had at life that time when my kids were born all of us on the height of my hate and sometimes you took them to events and whatever I never thought yeah it's absurd things I never taught my children all the stuff I never told them you have to hate somebody I never told them this they were fed with all the stuff they heard the music and I took them when I had some acoustic concerts my oldest son he was five six at a time he would come a couple of times when we had people at the house they saw them I mean they heard all the stuff but I always thought if I teach him that if I push it too hard on him what do kids do when the parents tell them what they have to do they're the opposite so I thought well I'm trying to be smart I'm not telling him anything he will just find out and funny anecdote here I was like the leader of the clan group I was like 20 clansmen in my living room we had this big window just imagine here it was twice three times as big as just this whole front here and we're sitting there and my son had befriended the neighbors kid who was a mixed kid the mother came home from the Dominican Republic with a child you know the little town and then the black kid there and who wants to be his best friend my son the grand dragon of the clan okay and I was the same like if I tell him not to play with him he will do it anyway right I have no chance I can't win this battle okay so I just let him do whatever and we're sitting there with 20 clansmen like in this thing and all of a sudden you can see my son is coming down on this bicycle and the black kid is behind him on this bicycle and all the clansmen are like what the F is this I was like I said look look again you know if I push everything too hard on him he will just do the opposite anyway and I just let him be his friend because he will learn it the hard way the black kid will probably start stealing stuff break his bike and be an asshole to him he will just learn it first hand how it is okay you're smart that's good so whenever my kids were all much smarter than I they never got into the stuff so I'm really glad they're all grown up well you're concerned that they follow the same footsteps oh yeah yeah I mean I mean especially after not long after this happened with my Turkish landlord this famous dinner scene you know that made me think and everything I separated from my ex-wife because she did not change her beliefs for a longer time it was one of the reasons there was other stuff too I mean it wasn't the worst period but I wasn't in touch with my kids for a longer time and I was very concerned that they get into this stuff and into the movement because of that mom not also because of me because I mean at least until my son was like almost 10 and my daughter was 7 and my youngest son was 6 you know they've seen all this stuff you know I could have blamed her partly for that you know because she stayed longer and I didn't know she was pushing it on them but for the first 10 years of my son's life I was around I mean I was nobody else to blame but me in this case and I was really concerned for a while and I found out okay they're all fine so they were much smarter than I really happy about that see when you were full of hate when you seen a black person what was that rage was that anger inside or a rage that they shouldn't be here you shouldn't be here but I was smart enough also beating the person up doesn't help anybody you know it's just okay I was convinced we had to get rid of these people and I saw a mixed couple I was extremely in rage in younger days because I was just fed and taught that it's a no-go later when I was the clan I backed it up with some bible quotes we said we're against race mixing and all this stuff and so I was extremely outraged and I was like hey we have to do something against this this has to be outlawed and then and sent all the black people back and I even talked to my members and said we don't need to hate black people okay we don't like them but are you concerned about them and then Africa no say so you don't really hate them right just send them back to Africa and we're good we just love our own people we just want to be here amongst ourselves and being charged so this is how we lie to ourselves you know of course we hated them but it was just like like you said what was the goal taking over in this case with the clan infiltrate society put them in positions of political power and again we were there I mean we business people we had cops and so on okay now we just need this if I can convince business people and cops to join our group you know I can convince other people like judges or politicians or groom our members that we already have to run for office to join regular parties not ridering parties just the socialists or the Christian democrats or whatever it doesn't matter names don't matter we infiltrate them we run for office and we will have the power that was the plan and how many people would you have needed the power for your plan and what was your whole outcome the plan to then change the world the whole world being white but what was the whole plan I think most people in the realistic now realistically most people in this movement don't think that far it's the same like like with the skinheads you know they were always like for some time a lot of the skinheads were like the foot soldiers of the neo-nazis like after the Berlin Wall fell you know a lot of skinheads got into this trap of the neo-nazis you know became foot soldiers even though they knew what happens because the neo-nazis told them sometimes you know when we take over what will happen to you skinheads think what Hitler did with with the storm up Tyler you know with the brown shirts they were disbanded the leaders were killed and there was only the SS left the black shirts you know we'll do the same with you or you go to the concentration camp work labor camp that's where you will go we don't need you you're anti-social as socials we don't need you how many people were in the Klu Klux Klan again our group was all around again yeah I think now it's worldwide in the US there's probably a number of in the lower thousands probably dying off every time you spoke it seems as if it can come back again it can come back again but the problem now is it always when it died back it came back something revived it like a war like 9-11 so Bin Laden is that an excuse to then black people are Muslims are trying to take over the world Obama was president was also an excuse oh we don't want we need to take our country back again there was one Klan leader and she said Trump is the worst thing that ever happened to the Klan because everybody's just voting Trump like nobody needs to Klan anymore that's what they literally said we need somebody like Obama that we can be against so we get more members so they're not even concerned about what happens when you win you know that's like all these groups that you don't even think that far you don't have a plan they're always waiting for the excuses to yeah like with the one neo-nazi party we had like classes whatever we're talking about we're talking about when we take over how do you form a government there were thoughts about it but most groups are really not thinking that far you know most groups thinking just just what happens in the next day you know it's because you're like we did it too because we were waking up in the morning it was just exhausting you didn't even have time to think what happens next week you know so you're going through your changes then you end up meeting a Turkish man who you thought would be the enemy full of hate waiting for the telltale signs why you hate him you never found him you realise that people will believe the same yes there's arseholes in every colour on this planet there's arseholes in every religion there's arseholes in every race there's just it's just the way it is but when you started making the changes how hard was it to get out could there have been a chance of you being killed off because of the information that you had or was that too far fetched I never thought about it for 10 years because I swept it under the carpet I didn't want to talk about it just form a self self protection did you stay in it for another 10 years or did you come out how did you get out of it well I got out when I met the Turkish landlord and all this stuff happened can you just leave easily that movement is like a revolving door the fluctuation is so high that you're so busy recruiting new members that you don't have time to keep the leaving ones unless they have really really high knowledge of something illegal then you might or if it's like here in the US if it has to do with prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood for example prison gangs that are organized like that I have a similar structure because there's often money and drugs involved and when these members are leaving well that puts your empire in danger you know so you try to keep those from leaving but of groups like the Klan or political groups or whatever you don't even have time sometimes you just let them go because somebody is just not showing up to the meetings anymore and you will have excuses the wife, the kids, whatever and work and this and this and at some point you just don't ask anymore you just don't well ok he's gone he's not coming back and for the most part if you don't speak out then nobody cares anyway you're just gone if you start speaking out it looks a little bit different but most of the groups still don't do anything it's not like a prison gang that comes after you it's not really like this there were incidents where it has happened but in general it really doesn't unless you have really knowledge or cooperate with the FBI and really bust a group that would be different but I didn't have these concerns especially not in those 10 years I was out of the movement I tried to pretend in society I just don't want to talk about this until I was forced to one reason why I never talked about it was also fear, fear of rejection if they find out about my past will they believe me society, whoever I tell whoever I tell it normal people could be society, it could be family it could be every family knew about it that I used to be the person but everybody, my new friends and I had a lot of Turkish friends all of a sudden I ran two companies and I had an organization that helped a young Turkish teenagers that got in trouble with the law getting back into society and get them apprenticeships and stuff like that just because I thought it was the right thing not even to make anything up or whatever or make up for what I did bad but if all these people find out about my past will they believe me will they still want me as a friend as a boss, as a co-worker, as whatever who believes in Nazi or who wants to talk to Nazi who believes people like that can change and I still had like two or three dead, dead troops knocking the whole table over here you know it's a very emotional topic the ah then you have a couple tattoos you just you don't want to admit that to yourself that you have been a person just a fear of rejection and when I was outed because I was all over the newspaper what actually caught up was a long story short they dug out that the cops and had cops as members it was one of the big things and there was other things that happened in Germany with a national socialist underground that was discovered there and so on and they of course were crazy and looked at everything that had to do with the movement and whatever and so they wanted to know who the man who led this KKK group and that was me and all of a sudden I was like an all newspaper son front pages and whatever and I was like oh just leave me alone and also a lot of people didn't believe it you know here in America it's easy America lost redemption Germany sometimes but it's getting really hard when it comes to Nazis neo-nazis for a very good reason look at the history you know it's a little bit tricky so very often people don't believe you when you leave the neo-nazi movement that you have changed it's like oh once in Nazi always Nazi people don't change and so on so I felt like I'm fighting a battle that I can't win it's like really really hard and at some point it was just I was so pissed off by that country that I decided well I always wanted to be in the US and I had a friend in the music industry now calling me up and said look I already wanted to come last year I had a job offer that didn't work out as a music executive but now now this is the situation I'm done I'm coming so I invested some money wanted to open up a music recording studio and I was like okay I'm emigrating and that's where I then met my wife a little bit later married her and then after a couple of years somebody dug the whole story out again and I was like will this ever stop I don't want to be connected to this person that I used to be anymore this is not me anymore I don't want it I don't want the person I don't want to think about it I don't even understand at the time how I got into that mess I don't even understood at the time how I got out that took all time of reflection to understand all this package you know and I was out of the big newspaper and my life is over again why is this happening all the time and I realized well it's like it's like poop it always comes up to the surface and if you got it on you it will stink you can wash it off so and so often but it will stick on you okay and that's my past I have to deal with it I just have to and I realized when it came out here in the US that people compared to Germany where they were like oh we don't know if you believe you people here were applauding me and like oh this is cool that you left and how did you do this we want to hear a story what is wrong with you people you know but it encouraged me and then I got in touch with groups that helped people leave that movement even though I didn't need to help anymore but it encouraged me to talk about it to reflect on it to write about it and then finally you know and I moved to Memphis 70% black population in Memphis so I had the chance to get in touch with a black community I realized well those kids are just the same as my kids you know the parents are just as concerned as I am they're just people and guess what they like chicken fries too I was like dang they're just like you and me and when I got in touch actually with some of the real life changing my first time in LA some students found me and made a film about me they just thought I'm interesting enough for their for their film and flew me out there and I went to a museum there it's run by the Sam and Louise and Toll Centre so if you're ever in LA go to the Museum of Tolerance it's really really great and I went there and they have a holocaust exhibit there and I told you I've never been to a concentration camp for all these reasons I pushed it away and I went through there and of course a lot of pictures I had seen on TV and whatever but they have also this kind of replica of a gas chamber at the end of their exhibit it's called the Hall of Testimonies it looks like a gas chamber and it's a little dimmed light and they play a couple of films of people that made it through the holocaust and I was when I got out there I talked to the guy who worked there who is by the way also a real Nazi hunter what's the different story and I said I need to I just realised I was a Nazi hunter and that was somebody who had real Nazis he was responsible that a real war criminal was caught in Buenos Aires he went undercover to Germany and to Buenos Aires until the guy was able to be caught convicted in Germany and had to go to prison so these are really freaking heroes you know and I met the guy there and he was working for the museum and I said I realised I never reflected on my past in Antisemite because I never had a chance to and I was like this visit did something with me I need to work with you guys so and after I don't know after that was in 2018 2018 and we didn't exactly know what we were going to do and then in Pittsburgh the synagogue was attacked there and 11 people were killed in Pittsburgh it was a really big deal and that was kind of the wake up call and Sam Wiesenthal said that was like GM we're going to do something you're going to start telling your story and you're going to universities within two days I was up and in my first lecture at the university in Boston I started travelling with them and started getting to know the Jewish community and I was like dang what happened they look all so different because I remember the picture I remembered from elementary school at the temple in Jerusalem with a black hat and locks just normal people you know and I was like they're just like you and me and guess what they also like chicken and fries every time I just learned something and the people that I once hated I was taught that I was wrong and this is just crazy and I just had to realise I have to do so much more this is also when we created the tattoo campaign we have a campaign now after Covid it's not as big anymore but in the years from 2017 to 2020 we started teaming up with the tattoo studio and offered to cover up hate tattoos for free hate and gang tattoos because I remember the story when I saw the young Turkish woman you know with a child seeing my tattoo the fear in her eyes and then me struggling with tattoos you know not wanting to be that person anymore having other people who left hate groups struggling because they have a swastika on their chest and they can't go to the beach they maybe don't want to show it to their kids you know they have it on their hands go to a job interview and you have a swastika on your neck do you believe that job recruiter will look at your resume you already have lost you know we decided to help those people but like don't use the money you need for your light bill to do this stuff and cover it up we're doing it for free we're helping you to get back into society and start working with you when was that like bulb moment because when people make changes there's always a big cloud that pops at the top of the head when it realises the shit that you done and the shit that you hated what was that moment obviously you spoke to the Turkish guy again like you say 10 years walking and if you want to change it go to 10 years back when was that like bulb moment where you realised how fucking what your mind was and how dirty you were thinking I didn't have that one moment just a process it was a process it was many little moments after every little moment I thought it was the big moment okay I think a lot of other people have that too they have that big moment when they stop thinking and then they on their hold the 10 miles they have to walk out of the forest again they pass a lot of trees and all these trees are like moments that they have to pass you know and when it pops again another cloud pops and they're like this too and this too and gay people are normal too and these people are normal too and what was I thinking you know and there's no conspiracy and these movies are actually cool oh I can actually start watching watching Seinfeld again it's nothing bad about it all this stuff you know why was gay people hated on? because society tells you to society in general I guess and also gay people are depicted as feminine not masculine enough so it's abnormal I guess and I don't know I guess it's not even that much of a movement problem or hate group problem I mean look at the USA how they behave they try to cover like that was a bible you know so how did then how long it took now how long that process been to kind of cleanse from that hated that heart of blackness and that kind of void how long did that take to really cleanse where you started believing that you were changing yourself I think that was pretty quick I think that was like in the first year that I really really genuinely could say to myself I don't hate these people anymore um sometimes in all these years there were flashbacks and now with everybody who has been in these groups and I know you have interviewed a lot of former gang members of other things and they always have these flashbacks where they have to deal with stuff they know we have to reteach themselves or or you see something that fulfills stereotypes you know when you see the black guy that fulfills all the stereotypes that we said about them and yes they exist of course they exist I mean there are some people that fulfills stereotypes that Chinese people have about them you know so therefore you have black people for example that fulfills stereotypes that we believed in them and yeah and they run across these people it happens well that's just some people that fulfill a stereotype that doesn't represent a whole race or a whole culture you know that's when you see these people think oh that's exactly what we're talking how we know it's not a problem because I know it's one case where I can have 10 cases who are white people who behave the same way you know what I mean where I know it's not a racial thing it's not a cultural thing just one person that fulfills those stereotypes who happens to be black or somebody I mean I'm in the Jewish community so I met a lot of people in the Jewish community and I converted to Judaism myself last year and yes I met stereotypical Jews that fulfilled all the stereotypes that I had yeah because these people exist but you know I have 10 white people or 10 yellow people or 10 whatever people that fulfill the same stereotypes as well just because one of these 20 people that fulfill all these stereotypes as a Jewish doesn't mean he represents the whole Jewish community doesn't make sense there's a few of them same as anything people are getting told what to do in brain washed and groomed every Muslim man is bad and every colour is bad because one person does a shitty thing how do you feel do you get a motion of a black man a gay man does something good for you and you think like I hated on you do you feel a sense of guilt or that no I used to have a lot of guilt about that and I was like I don't deserve this why are you doing this to me why just the why I think for the most part I'm over it I'm just sometimes amazed because it's always always black people or Jews or whatever or that help whenever we need help or whatever people I hate it am I just a magnet for that or is it just the kind of people that like to help and I just never wanted to see it back in the day these are of course things that I that I see but I don't think anymore that I don't deserve it but I had these times that I thought I don't deserve this and I had one thing actually that helped me with it was in the black community in Memphis and there's a museum and I was asked they knew about my past and it wasn't 2018-19 and they had actually a podiums event a discussion event it had to do with colleges it had nothing to do with white supremacy racism or whatever my past whatsoever and I was asked to be a speaker on there because I used to be a job recruiter it was about job recruiting and colleges I said sure why not and it felt good to be asked for something else not talking about my past all the time so this is cool and so I talked to the organizer and she was like the next day we talked about something and she was like you know she said she talked to her husband last night and he asked who's on the panel Dr. AC blah blah blah and a former white supremacist and I was like okay I said yeah but it's a problem I said why she was like because I don't even know if you want to be labeled as such and I was like here's what it is I mean that's what I am but she said it has nothing to do with the event and she just labeled me as such and she said there was a first time when somebody asked me as what I want to be introduced and I just labeled me and she came up well actually you're a human rights activist okay that's cool I like this and I was like why is this black person so concerned about me how I feel about being labeled as a white supremacist or former white supremacist absolutely the truth I'm a former white supremacist so it is what it is and she said because this is how black people feel all the time they're labeled for something that they're not that doesn't represent them it might be a stereotype it might be a fact or whatever but it doesn't represent them as a person but labeled and she apologized that she labeled me again what to introduce and she was like it's a typical problem minorities have and this was also a moment that changed my thinking about this topic where I thought okay I need to stop feeling guilty you know I need to stop feeling guilty or if I deserve it if somebody does something good for me who's one of the minority groups that I used to hate there was a teaching moment as well what and your own opinion what do you think needs to happen for racism to stop I think one or two more generations I think we're on a good way I think with the internet with education that's out there if you look at young people they're really open they're really open for this world they see the world as it is and I think especially with my generation I'm not 48 years old we still have to re-roll models and not give up the fight for that and still fight against racism we just can't give it up and think our kids and their kids will fix that if they don't see us fighting for it they don't need to see the reason to fight for it but I think that the next upcoming generations will be walking through this world with much more nice yeah you've got to think a lot of people what helps as well a lot more people now are a lot more travelled they travel more so they can see for themselves that people ain't bad the media can portray so much of what they want you to think but once you actually travel I've been everywhere around the world and everybody's been so friendly it's unbelievable from where you came from to what you're doing and it's important for people these are educational because I'm learning I genuinely don't know and like I say I'm not left wing, right wing I couldn't give a fuck about politics wars, religions for me I'm very open minded to it if you're happy by doing that and choosing that by all means I support you I'm just open minded to it all because there was a time I loved cocaine I loved alcohol, I loved gambling that was normal for me then I think how fucking deluded I was so when people choose different religions different beliefs and whether they want to be straight, gay, bi I have no issues with nothing as long as you're not harming anyone as long as you're leaving the kids alone as well don't fucking force your agenda and your own beliefs and your own sexuality and whatever it is you want want a kid because kids let them play, let them get into nature let them fucking enjoy their life, make the mistakes and by all means if they're confused at 16 and 18 they think something's wrong speak to them, they can be open minded but just keep shit away from kids because like you say people can be brainwashed you were brainwashed at 14, 15 and it's easy done, human beings are vulnerable we are very vulnerable and sensitive towards anything and we're always looking for a leader every human wants to be guided because we don't know really what the fuck is going on in life we genuinely don't know what kind of just going through it thinking am I doing it right so we're kind of easily manipulated to follow something but just make sure you're following the right thing that's a problem, humans need to be leaded and they want to be lead and they want to be lead problem is because you think only so far because you're busy with the old stuff things you just don't understand and the regular peasant, you know doesn't understand a lot of things that's a perfectly fine and okay but it's much easier to fall and a lot of leaders are just taking that to their advantage people just to be in power we see that every day in this world in almost every country on this planet yeah when you started speaking out how did you start feeling the more you've done it the easier it became absolutely it also helped me reflect on my story because my story as I told it to you today has changed from when I started in 2018 to now there's different aspects that are more important aspects that I haven't told before things that I reflect different on that I point out now because they are much more important I could have probably talked for another hour you know and point out certain things that are important but it has helped a lot what's your biggest regret the music that is still out there that I can do nothing about it some of my teachings are still out there nothing I can do about it and a couple of people that I groomed that I'm leading positions still today monsters that I created nothing I can do about it that's what I regret everything else it made me the person I am without those things I couldn't talk about it today I couldn't keep doing what I'm doing I probably wouldn't even try to make this world a better place maybe I was supposed to be the person just to do this now I'm now out of the hate movement longer than I've been in that was also a moment when that year happened now I'm out longer than I've been in that was great and when people told me stop beating yourself up over it things stop and that's when I stopped regretting that part only the things that I can't make good anymore that's what I regret because your whole life has been full of hate the more you overthink it you start hating yourself so you're no different from hating someone else to hating yourself so it's the case of listen the past is a past I don't give a fuck what your past is or who anybody's past is what I care about is what you're doing with your life now what you're doing good and if you're trying to rectify the pain of the past and the mistakes that you've done I think it's an amazing thing and I'm proud of you and it's it takes a lot of fucking balls and I know what it's like to change everything everybody's got different levels of trauma and everybody's got different levels of beliefs and addictions and whatever it is and how they see the world but when it comes down to that some serious shit and some serious hate you were involved in but to then try and clean your heart and do talks and help others and help other white supremacists and other neo-nazis to then try and help them change their life and say listen you're full of hate and rage and it must be scary for people as well to be caught up in something and then trying to look for other avenues to get out because it's scary changes scary what do you think the biggest thing is for change time it takes time it takes respect it takes people that respect you this sounds maybe crazy especially when it comes to not only hate groups but look at these QAnon people that you had here in the US or any extremists or anybody you talk to you can have a husband wife if you have two different opinions if you tell your spouse the whole time you're right and they're wrong and you show no respect how much will your spouse listen to you zero turn the back on you and not listen and at some point probably even file for divorce your spouse will only listen to you when you show respect and also careful they have to say even if you don't agree and this is what happened to me a lot of people have listened to me and what I said about the things I've believed in without trying to change me just okay I can I don't agree with it but sometimes you can see through it for example you would realize that a Nazi for example that the hate comes from fear if you would listen because they're afraid of something it's like then the fear is real it's like a child that is afraid of the monster under the bed what do you do as a parent do you tell your child you're stupid there's no monster did you watch too much TV or whatever no you hug your child and show compassion right because you know that fear is real but it's not substantial because you know there's no monster and it's the same with Nazis and right wing people their fears are real when I was in there my fears were freaking real you know they were real but not substantial I didn't know that I thought they're substantial the people are smarter they know they're not substantial you know but nobody acknowledged the fear that the fear was there because no who wants to talk to a Nazi and there's one person I encourage everybody including you look him up Daryl Davis a black man a musician who goes to clan rallies befriends clan people and pulls them out of the clan he's done it with the clan leader and the message actually he doesn't pull them out he talks to them until they decide to leave you know unbelievable and he sees a friend of mine oh yes so he sees oh bro you need to get to see if he'll come on the podcast oh absolutely I put in touch with him he's awesome and he says the same we say it's walking across the cafeteria talk to somebody who seems different even then it's what he did he met with a clansman he actually came to one of his shows he found out that the person's in the clan it was like why do you hate me if you don't know me but starting talking to each other and respecting the other person it made it almost impossible for the clansman to disrespect him because you don't behave the way that the other person is expecting you to behave it's like you don't behave like the other black people I know all this you think to know and you're like you're just a person why are you listening to what I have to say and then you start respecting your enemy you know when two enemies are talking then they'll fight the world would be a better place if people could communicate better communication is key for finding results and we don't because like you say we're full of hate, we're full of ego we're right, we're wrong it's all bullshit because we're all right and wrong we all fuck up, we all do good we all do bad for me communication is key I know you wrote a book as well how many books have you written I wrote one book about business a year ago and I wrote one book in German about part of my history unfortunately it's not available anymore and I'm about to finish my book now with a whole story ending in last year called Rewired and I'm just finishing it we're editing it, looking for a publisher by the way if anybody where can people get in contact with you and I'm hoping to put it out there soon for anybody that's watching where can people contact you absolutely you can go to TMGarad.com the website is back up I'll send an email to TMGarad.com I should just put my name into Google I'm all over the place where do you go forward for the future brother I'll keep doing what I'm doing when people approach me and need help to get out of hate groups I try to be a helping hand as much as I can you cannot work with too many people at the same time because you need to invest some time just trying to be a good person just trying to help other people encouraging others to do the same I hope the book will make an impact and the book will teach some people and follow the same path what's the biggest life lesson that you've had or you've got since you've been on this planet the life is actually very very simple treat others the way you want to be treated and don't hate people I mean it can be so simple let's just treat other people the way you want to be treated pure it life is simple men are simple but we're confusing as well we confuse ourselves we over complicate things how do you get, just before we finish how do you get rid of hate how do you get rid of rage for a man who's hated hated many things hated fucking politics at times hated gays, hated blacks, hated anybody except his own little belief system like how do you get rid of hate in your heart I think it takes a loving person to team up with them and also do the same thing what I said before just have them talk, just accept them each other and leading by example respect bring the humanity back maybe humanize the hater this is also important humanize the hater because that person dehumanizes others including themselves and it's not easy when I tell you go and humanize a hater go talk to somebody who you think is a hater or whatever but this is what it takes over and over and over again this is what we do don't try to convince them just listen, show some respect it's hard it's hard and it's also hard and I don't say tell black people to go to talk to white people haters no it's actually the job of white people to do that we have the responsibility we have to go to talk to other white people who are hating and lead by example but show respect they're still human beings their hate is fear driven that fear is real and you have to talk to it over and over again it's repeating our brains that's machines it builds neural pathways and builds habits and it takes habits like 30, 40, 50, 60 times until we just learn to drink a glass of water in the morning you know now imagine you want to convince somebody they're wrong and you expect I talked to him once it didn't work of course not, if you tell yourself I start drinking water every day starting tomorrow and you're only telling yourself tonight you're not going to do it you have to repeat it repeat it this is what we have to do with these people lead by example how did your wave act when you told her who you used to be it was our second date I believe it was a second date where I told her because I had to I mean it's a big package because I knew I actually didn't want to marry anymore but when we met it's one of those things the first marriage then I had a long term relationship I almost married and I was like oh no it's too much nope I didn't want to do it anymore but we met and it's one of those things when you know and I just knew this is it and I knew I had to talk about this part of my life as soon as possible before we get too much involved it might be a deal breaker and I need to know now it's a deal breaker and that's what we did what did she say well she said that's not the person you're now anymore she accepted that how was that being accepted it was good being unconditionally accepted and that there is what it's all about unconditionally a love understanding of people and that there's a true source of what would make the world a better place thank you just before we finish up brother for anybody that's in a life of struggle right now what advice would you have for them talk to somebody about it and for those who are on the other side also talk to those people about it go talk about it there's always somebody who will listen and if you go out there and you're struggling somebody is there this or go online look who can help you there's groups that can help you or just look me up on the internet and send me an email tea lesson for coming on a day I thoroughly enjoyed it I think it's unbelievable from where you came from to what you're doing now it's totally night and day I wish you nothing but the best for the future would you like to finish up on anything else unconditional love that's it bye brother bless and god bless you