Dear folks: I wrote this story a couple of days ago and now it’s been bracketed by the very courageous words of the Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn’s son , who stated:

For the extremists who believe my father is a hero, it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. To physically force your beliefs onto others with violence is not brave, but bullying. Doing so only serves to prove how weak those beliefs are. It is simply desperation, reminiscent of a temper tantrum when a child cannot get his way.

More controversially, Erik von Brunn also said:

I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns [the slain museum security guard], and not my father who lost their life.

It may well be that nothing could have stopped James von Brunn, and that no one–friends or family–could have reached him. But there are some people in hate movements or who are extremists/supremacists who can be reached… I offer my experience below.

It’s normal to want to close ranks when we see extremism turn deadly. Here in the U.S. we have had, back to back, the murder of Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, both by dangerous, alienated men who made no secret of their (multiple) hatreds. If you want to raise your fear factor even higher, you can turn on the television and see coverage of the slaying of an anti-Taliban cleric in Pakistan…. or remember that the President-select of Iran is also a Holocaust denier.

But some of the most enlightening moments in my life have come from talking to men and women from hate movements, and I’ll tell you why.

Let me start with a story. One winter many years ago, after a blizzard that closed workplaces and schools, I drove from Washington, DC, to a park-n-ride lot in Frederick, Maryland. In that lot were piles of fresh, white snow and exactly one other car. I walked to the car and met the Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon of a local klaveren of Ku Klux Klansmen. Make that Klansmen and -women. I specifically connected with him in order to speak to one of his followers about her role as a woman in the hate movement.

She was not the first Klanswoman I’d spoken to, but the first I’d met face to face. And so we, two women, one black and one white, stood eye to eye in the cold and I got as much information as I could about her life and beliefs.

Life had not been kind to her. She was worn out, with some missing teeth, lined skin, scraggly hair. I bet she was much younger than she looked. To her, being a part of the Klan — which of course not only rejects racial equality but espouses anti-Semitism — was part of her attempt to save America (and her family) from what she saw as the social, ethical, religious, and economic ravages of a racially mixed America.

While I certainly did not cotton to her views, I looked into her eyes and saw not just a member of the Klan, but a member of the human race. I do not say that with sentimentality. Humans are wonderful, transcendent… genocidal…loving…hateful. We are human precisely because members of our species can be all of these things. We are often fearful, which the Klanswoman was. She found solace in a place where she was validated for her fear and anger.

Yet another time I talked to a female leader of an armed, racist skinhead compound in the West… by phone… and revealed only at the end of the call that I was black. I asked what she would have done if she had known (or even asked) first. She said, “I wouldn’t have talked to you.”

That would have been a shame. I learned so much from her. She’d left her wealthy, priveleged family (whose name is in the Social Register) after feeling alienated and ignored. Judging by pictures I later saw of the skinhead leader, she was youthful and vital–the physical opposite of the Klanswoman I’d met. She’d spoken to me proudly over the phone of winning an athletic competition at an Aryan Nation gathering. In some ways, she seemed the gleaming, Amazonian superhero of hate. But inside, there was still that wounded girl who told me that she joined the hate movement because she wanted a family who loved her. She believed she had found it in white supremacy.

I feel grateful that I had the mix of reporterly curiosity and youthful bravado (or perhaps foolishness) that allowed me to do this reporting. It forever changed how I look at extremists, and how to I listen and talk to them.

I listen with an ear for degrees of hate-in-action. Sometimes I will go to white supremacist sites and blogs to see what’s being discussed. (You better believe they are reading broadly as well.) I read up via organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center on incidents and demographics of extremist groups. But I also, in some circumstances, will talk to hate-mongers themselves. I listen for subtext. The narrative of supremacy is domination. But the meta-narrative of the lives of many supremacists and extremists is a longing for belonging.

So, when we as a society begin to tune out or shy away from people who already have borderline extreme views, these people often turn deeper into their fears. At a time of social and economic upheaval like ours, there will be many people whose genuine need for security and community will go badly awry. Social isolation helps fuel paranoia. Paranoia is the best recruiting tool that supremacist groups have.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:
I am not asking people to “hug a Klansman.” That may get you a beating, or worse. Some of the Klan groups in Maryland had murdered black people… and white rivals. I became convinced I could talk to these particular racists in Frederick face to face after interviewing musician Daryl Davis, author of Klan-Destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan

. He played rock, country, and blues in local bars, and found out that his fans included white supremacists. One of those supremacist-fans was Roger Kelly, who Davis first observed and later, of all things, befriended. I met Kelly in the snowy parking lot years after he’d met Davis. And then years after Kelly and I spoke…he renounced his membership in the Klan. (I guess having a black friend and being in the Klan was just too much cognitive dissonance.)

If this were a movie (and someone should make a movie about Davis and Kelly), you would cue music and do a little fist bump of joy. While I believe listening to the nuances of extremist dialogue can prevent some deadly incidents, it will not prevent them all. We cannot listen to extremists with the expectation that they will change. We can listen with the expectation that we will change. Perhaps if we become less fearful, we will remain in dialogue with people who are on the margins… but not yet at the barracades of hate. 305 online download