 When it comes to de-radicalizing people, when it comes to de-programming people who became, you know, involved in conspiracy theories and conspiratorial groups, I don't necessarily think that there's any magic answer or magic solution. There's no silver bullet. But what I do think is really useful is listening to people who came from these sectors of society. Listening to people who was once anti-vax but then changed their mind. Listening to someone who was a member of the far right but had a change of heart. Find out what specifically led to their de-radicalization and try to implement that on some sort of a wide scale. Or use it even in social, you know, conversations, interpersonal relationships to de-radicalize and de-program people that we know. But one person who I think is really, really interesting is Christian Piccolini. This is someone who actually is a former white supremacist. He was a leader in the neo-nazi movement and now he's speaking up. He launched a podcast. He wrote a book about his radicalization and de-radicalization. And what he says here is really, really important and he has some remarks about what is driving the radicalization that we're seeing in the United States today. But before we get to that, I just want to give you some background on who this individual is. So as David Masquiatro of Salon reports, the foul odor of fascism has become inescapable in the American atmosphere. Republican officials across the country are working overtime to undermine the right to vote, leading right-wing pundits brazenly promulgate racist conspiracy theories, and the Anti-Defamation League reports that 2020 saw a 45% increase in hate crimes throughout the Midwest. There is perhaps no time more urgent to learn from one of fascism's former foot soldiers. Christian Piccolini became a neo-nazi as a teenager in the working class Chicago suburb of Blue Island in the late 1980s, as the leader of the Chicago area Skinheads and singer in the White Power rock band The Final Solution, Piccolini was one of the most effective recruiters in the white supremacist movement. His story transformed, however, from horrific to redemptive and inspiring. Piccolini is now one of the most effective anti-hate activists in the United States. The details of his transition from Nazi to progressive, from hate leader to democratic healer are available in his fascinating and important memoir, White American Youth, My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement and How I Got Out. In the past few years, Piccolini's warnings have become increasingly severe, as he and his colleagues at Free Radicals work to preserve the promise of multiracial democracy in the United States. Piccolini worries that the nation's complacency will soon meet a catastrophic end. And what he's saying here is that the rise of fascism in the United States has been so swift. The popularity increase is so huge that if we don't address this right now immediately and substantially, it might be too late. Because you've got to understand democracies, they're never going to last forever, right? Every single democracy in the world has a shelf life. A lot of baby democracies that emerge end up reverting back to authoritarian or liberal regimes, because democracy is a really difficult thing. You have to have buy-in, you have to have institutions that protect democracy. But when you have so many people in the United States believing that the election was stolen and literally openly advocating for a military coup in the United States alongside white supremacists and fascist tendencies and beliefs, that's just a recipe for disaster. So what Christian is trying to do seemingly is warn Americans that if you don't do something now, it may be too late. If you don't save democracy, save America from itself, it may be too late. And what he points out here, which I think is really fascinating and why I want to talk about this, is this resurgence of white supremacy and the reason why it's so much more popular now. I mean, it's not like white supremacy ever fully went away in the United States of America. It's always been here, right? White supremacy is embedded in American institutions. This country was founded on white supremacy. So it's not like it ever went away, but there was indeed a resurgence. And he saw this resurgence around the time that Obama was elected president, where there was this revolt against the idea that somebody who isn't white became president of the United States. We all thought that this was the signal that America is moving on or trying to move on at least from its racist past. And, you know, people in the country, they decided to do the opposite. Many people decided to revolt. Many people didn't like seeing a black man as president. That led to the birther movement with Donald Trump and etc. But what he sees is not only the resurgence of white supremacy, but this normalization of it. This mainstreaming of white supremacy that didn't necessarily exist when he was younger. Like when he was young, he talked about, you know, the things that he would say just to his friends in his musical group that you'd never hear on mainstream media. You'd never hear in conservative circles. But the things that was confined to white supremacist circles he's saying is now mainstream. It's dominant in conservative circles. And he has a couple of examples here. First, there's the more blame conspiracy oriented language regarding the others controlling the power structure that is starting to exist in the language of QAnon in terms of talking about globalism. But also more specifically, what's penetrated the right is replacement theory or the great replacement. What I mean by that is white supremacists believe that the demographics of the country are changing rapidly and that soon white people will lose agency and power because they will be the minority. Whether that is happening statistically or not is a different story because what white supremacists believe is that it is an intentional process being put forward by global cabals of, in most cases, Jewish people who are trying to upset the balance of white power. White supremacists claim that diversity is genocide for the white race. They believe that the promotion of multiculturalism is a tool of white genocide. We've started to hear those ideas and similar ideas come out of Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host with millions of viewers. It isn't just people like me when I was hanging out in dark alleys reading pamphlets from other conspiracy theorists. People are now getting this theory in hatred from Donald Trump and various people in his orbit. They are getting it from Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman from Arizona. These are people with suits and ties. They look like the mainstream. They sound like the mainstream and in certain cases they've been elected to powerful positions by the mainstream and yet they are saying the same dangerous and outlandish things that a 17 year old Christian Piccolini said when he was sporting a swastika tattoo. It is the whole notion that if white people don't wake up now that they will be overrun. If you watch Tucker Carlson, people like David Duke and Tom Metzger in the old days said almost the exact same thing. They said white people wake up, immigration, the religions they are forcing down our throats, multiculturalism. It's all a conspiracy to destroy our white power. Sometimes they use more palatable language but they are using fear rhetoric to make white people afraid that they are being overrun by these other people and forces whether it is Islam, refugees, crime, immigrants or even the way they talk about outsourcing of jobs. It is all rooted in that same idea that white people have to be afraid. So the way that I interpret this warning from him is that it's so common now that there's been this sense of normalization of this rhetoric and people have become desensitized to it where when we hear Tucker Carlson talk about the great replacement theory we kind of just brush it aside and say yeah that's Tucker Carlson. I mean people condemn it but overall nobody is really as outraged as they should be. Like somebody on mainstream media the most popular news show in the country just explicitly talked about the great replacement theory unironically and we're just okay with it. This is a sign that things are bad. These are signs that we have to wake up and that's what Christian is really highlighting here. It's so mainstream now that it's everywhere and it's easy to dismiss it. It's easy to be desensitized and to be numb to it. But to be numb to it in and of itself is an issue that's a problem because when you're numb to it when you don't call it out and you stop being aware of all the white supremacist rhetoric that we're hearing then you know people they feel as if there's less social disincentives to use it, right? We have to make white supremacists feel ashamed to use white supremacist rhetoric to even get to this point where Tucker Carlson is brazenly talking about the great replacement theory on national television. I mean that really proves how far we've fallen and that's so horrifying. I mean a healthy society wouldn't allow for this. Tucker Carlson wouldn't feel comfortable espousing white supremacist talking points talking about the great replacement conspiracy theory if society wasn't accepting of it, right? But because people are numb to it it has inadvertently become socially acceptable again to just be blatantly white supremacist and use white supremacist talking points and Christian is saying look you've got to wake up before it's too late. All of these things are signs that we are seeing mass radicalization of lots of Americans, millions of Americans and the fact that people aren't outraged as they should be. I mean you see some outrage but I mean the fact that people aren't in mass demanding Tucker Carlson's resignation when he's talking about the great replacement, that's a sign of societal decline. That's a sign of white supremacy becoming socially accepted in America which we should have never allowed to happen. Letting Donald Trump get elected in and of itself after he was as racist as he was was a sign that you know we've allowed white supremacy to be normalized and that's something that we absolutely have to fight against vociferously so. Like Donald Trump kind of ushered in this era of blatant racism, right? Politicians aren't using dog whistles anymore, they're just saying the quiet part loud and I wouldn't be surprised if Tucker Carlson or some other right wing pundit just said the 14 words and there's only a little bit of outrage, right? I'm sure media matters would write an article about it. Left Twitter would speak out, Democrats would speak out but overall it's just another news cycle that people would move on from. In actuality people have to look at this as a sign of societal decline, as a sign of our democracy dying, of our country being captured by white supremacist extremists. So you know I want people to take Christians warning seriously and push back more fiercely against people like Tucker Carlson and anyone who's helped to normalize Tucker Carlson is absolutely part of the problem. So yeah, I'll leave that there. This is really, I mean it's not like I'm surprised by what he's saying but it's still like to hear somebody from his position who was in this world say this. It really is kind of like a really scary thing to contemplate and you know I've been thinking about this after reading Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works great book I'd recommend to everyone. He talks about the rise of fascism in Brazil, in India, in the United States and you know it's, these are all signs that we should have known to look for but we kind of just, you know people are tired, people aren't paying attention as they should and we've kind of allowed white supremacy to regain a foothold in the United States like in the public again, like it's socially acceptable again and it's hard to put that cat back in the bag and some might argue that you can't but you've certainly got to try because this is not acceptable and certainly if we want to last as a democracy, as a multicultural democracy in a pluralistic society we can't allow these fascists to be as dominant as they are now.