I Was a Neo-Nazi Skinhead and Joined the Ku Klux Klan: How I Left | Erasing the Hate

this photo was taken in may 2000 it was a clan rally i was there as a musician i played there a couple acoustic sets so i was pretty on the height of my neo-nazi carrier there so almost a turning point i have seen pretty much everything at that time and when i decided i have to get out [Music] i think part of my work is maybe a little bit self-therapeutic because i want to maybe make up for it i think being a former member of a hate group or extremist group that we all being those people have a great responsibility regarding our past we can't ignore it [Music] and we have to admit this is what we did and we have to reflect on it and everybody who comes out of such a group should be aware of this responsibility and own it i grew up in a very small town in southern germany very conservative 500 citizens yeah that's me christmas i guess i've been five years old on the picture i hated those glasses and that haircut so that didn't make me very popular either if you see but i was bullied a lot um i spent a lot of time playing alone and at some point i found something that would make people listen that's that attention that i crave him what i was craving for and it started with a couple kids they were telling each other racist jokes inappropriate jokes about anybody there was no respect but i actually realized that it gives me the attention that i wanted so i kept running with those jokes and and after that it was just known i was the nazi kid at school which i hated i didn't like the label but all of a sudden i wasn't bullied anymore and it felt like all of a sudden i am somebody i'm not a nobody anymore and then the kid gave me cassette tape at school and it was rock music hard rock music and they sang about things that sounded very very familiar to me they sang about that they felt misunderstood that people would call them nazis but they're not that they're just proud of their country i felt like they're singing about me and with every cassette tape i got it just got got worse it was first it was a little bit more unpolitical and then it got harder and harder and more hateful and that influenced me and the more hateful the music got the more hateful i became it was really first acting up and then the music radicalizing me well i picture i already was a skinhead then hair was super short that was already my beginning of my bad times i must have been 16 on the picture photo was taken in 1997 that was the band i had our drummer and the bass player i played guitar and sang mostly german lyrics about our pride and we have to save the country and it was already about saving the white race and that we want all the foreigners and immigrants to be gone time went on and the internet played a big role then late 90s so i made more connections to other skinheads and also new nazis worldwide i left that nationalist movement a little bit and was focusing more on the white power white supremacy movement and that is also where i met some people that were involved in the kkk and at some point they actually asked me if i want to join the kkk joining the kkk was never an an issue for me or i had never thought i never thought i would ever join the clan because i had no relations to it at all but i thought they have maybe secret knowledge and they're exclusive and that in the us once they were governors and judges i thought maybe we can realize our goals and dreams through that like segregation white supremacy to preserve the white race in that case in germany all the other european countries that i was about to recruit so we decided to open another clan group with the support of a kkk group in mississippi they supported us and i flew to mississippi was appointed there in a like a cross lightning ceremony ceremony how we call it and went back as the grand dragon for the realm of germany and imperial representative for europe and started building up this new clan group and we thought we weren't chivalric we thought we were the good guys what you see tonight what you experienced tonight you will never in your lifetime forget to teach what you learn pass it on to those who are parts of your organization [Music] we're really convinced we're fighting for a noble cause i was convinced it was not about hate it was about love for their own race but at the end it was about hate of course you can see me here i have actually my hand in front of my face not to hide it i believe somebody made a joke and i started laughing but you can actually see the tattoo on my hands that was the boots i had there i became a religious fanatic and that identity part became so much bigger and became like 80 percent of what i believed in while the racism part became small and smaller maybe 10 20 and i think the other members with the idea of kkk they wanted to be the racism part to be much much bigger and the jesus part much much smaller that there was a lot of infighting things didn't add up for them and also to me and the government all of a sudden had us on the radar too they visited our homes and told them hey we're looking we're looking at you we're watching you we know what you're doing i told them i'm not doing anything illegal you can't do anything and they were telling me what if one of your members is doing something maybe killing somebody or become violent or whatever won't you be responsible that made me think again and i decided that's not worth it there was a lot of fighting and everything i just no that's that's not what i want that's not how i want my life to be and i picked up the phone and called one of my trusted members and told him that i'm gonna resign and i told him i would not come back me and my family back then we decided to move shortly after that because we wanted to just disconnect in 2002 we just moved to another town in germany we had nothing it was christmas eve and moved in the first best place we found and the place was owned by a turkish landlord he was a turkish muslim and he must have overheard that i do some id work and he knocked at the door and asked me if i can help repair his computer he would pay me and i was like it was already a big step that i moved in a muslim's house because a couple months prior to that i would never have set a foot in his house but i was broke i was super broke i had to get some software went upstairs and got a uh the software from the internet put it on a floppy disk so you can tell how many years it's been since then and brought it downstairs and since it took a little bit longer he prepared some turkish tea and pancakes and put it there and i came downstairs and saw it and first i didn't want to touch it because i just didn't want to eat it because he touched it or i don't know i just refused it first and then i thought ah but in that culture i heard they may be offended if you don't accept the food that they're offering i didn't know what would happen if i refused the food if you would turn into the muslim terrorists or whatever i don't know it was just it was i was judgmental and to avoid that situation i just went ahead and ate at the pancakes and drank the tea actually it was pretty good i enjoyed eating it and uh it kept happening his computer kept being broke he brought i bought a computer for his son same thing and he kept putting pancakes there and tea i kept eating it at some point i refused to take the money he asked me if i want to come to join them for dinner [Music] and i thought about it wasn't sure if i should accept the offer or the invitation but i did and went downstairs and i remember there was not even like a turkish traditional turkish food on anything it was like baked chicken oven fries and fish soup and it wasn't like the pancakes that i could just get over it i just don't like fish soup at all i despise it it makes me gag and i had the fish soup in front of me and thought i don't know what i'm gonna do this time i can't just eat it to avoid the so i had actually to tell him i'm sorry i can't eat it but i was still afraid i was so judgmental and and was expecting some kind of bad reaction from him but i told him him it i'm sorry i can't eat it i don't like fish soup and this wife came took the fish soup and brought chicken and smiled everything was okay they were not offended at all and i was like dang what what did just happen here i was sitting here so judgmental expecting that bad stereotypical reaction that i was taught and it did not happen they were just nice and i realized that i was wrong i felt so ashamed small and wrong because i thought he had a facade that he had like a mask on and just tried to be nice and actually i was the one with the mask on and here i just realized i was the one that had the bad thoughts not only the six months like for 15 years that broke the rest of the hay the 10 20 that i still had left [Music] when i moved here to the us i became very active on the internet social media putting my story out there so a lot of people approached me and saw actually an opportunity for them or saw me maybe as a help to leave their extremist hate group or whatever they were in so i started helping people because even if somebody gets out out of a clan group or skinhead group or extremist group whatever and they just return into society and deal with that judgment some just fall back they said that's not what i want to deal with this is what i've been taught while i was in those groups this is a hateful society that does not want me for what i believe in and now they still don't want me even though i try to change and i saw people going back for that and this is why it's so important that they're somebody with a helping hand this is why i try to be that helping hand to lead them in the society to show them yes those people are out there those judgmental people will be out there but there's other people too there's people that will not be judgmental and i can get you together [Music] [Music] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,425,805

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, neo-nazi, how i quit the kkk, kkk, klu klux klan, tattoos, removing tattoos, covering up tattoos, hate, bigot, racism, evil, white supremacy, TM Garret, ku klux klan

Id: wnNeH1aVHCM

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2019