4

Recruitment Is a Bait-and-Switch

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At that point, other people's race was still an afterthought -- I'd never even met a Jew before, let alone developed a deep-seated resentment of their control of Hollywood. It wasn't until I was already in that they explained to me that the reason for everything wrong with my life was other races and Jews, and it suddenly seemed like a good explanation. After all, the only thing I'd ever heard about Jews was my older brother saying "He Jewed me!" after he got ripped off by someone. So it made sense. After all, why would so many people say that if it wasn't true?

And once I started recruiting, I learned that trickery is just how you do it. I don't care how charming you are, if you walk up to random kids and say "Hey, wanna be a Nazi?" they're gonna say "no." They've seen Indiana Jones movies, nobody wants to be those guys. So instead, you pretend it's a positive thing: You can always dress up hatred of minorities as "pride" or "rights" for the majority (the Westboro Baptist Church doesn't hate gays, see, they're just standing up for Christians). So, my skinhead group would go up to kids and say, "Hey, you want to feel good about who you are? Be proud to be a white Irish-American? Then come to our meeting."

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"White Power Bill makes the best gluten-free cupcakes!"

3

There Are Non-Racist Skinhead Gangs (and We Hate Them)

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And here is where my story starts to get stupid.

I needed money to finance my fistfights and drinking, so I got a job in construction. The guy who employed me wasn't a racist -- in fact, he was a stoner Oprah Winfrey fan, which is pretty much the opposite. In retrospect, my every interaction with him was hilarious: He asked for my Social Security number and I didn't know what that was, so I gave him two phone numbers in a row. He said that was too many numbers.

"How too many?"

"Four too many."

"Well, take two off the front, two off the back," I said. Then I mocked him for smoking pot, because (and I quote) "that shit's destroying the white race."

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"Did you know the Chinese have been stockpiling Cheetos? You're creating a munchies gap!"

One night he bought me a pack of beer, and I got drunk and tried to kill myself (again, I was convinced the pot smoker was the one destroying the white race, and I'm the one who ended up in a mental hospital). That night, my skinhead buddies came to bust me out, and I wedged all my furniture against the door to keep the orderlies out while I climbed out the window. The orderlies showed up, and right then I realized the door pulled open, meaning that my barricade accomplished all of jack and shit. "To hell with it," I thought, and I jumped out a fourth floor window.

2

Somehow, Jail Is Less Racist Than the Outside World

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In prison, they were worried about me getting messed up by non-Nazi inmates, so they stuck me in solitary. And this is where I found God: "Dear God," I'd pray, "please kill all the guards and let me escape." When that didn't happen, I started fasting, because I had it in my head that if I fasted for a week, God would show up and kill everyone and I could leave. I was so confident that when they asked me when I was gonna start eating again, I'd say, "Yeah, I'll start eating on Monday." And I said it in the most ominous way possible, because I figured that by Monday they'd have all been killed by God.

1

All Racists Make Exceptions, and Some Actually Learn From It

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Now, if you're expecting some corny story where I meet a member of a minority who shows me kindness and changes my life forever ... that's good, because that's what you're going to get.

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And goddammit, you're going to feel moved.

Finding work is tough for any ex-con, but it doesn't get any easier when you have a swastika tattoo on your neck. The only guy who would hire me was, ironically, this incredibly Jewish guy named Keith -- if we made a sitcom about my life, he'd be played by Jerry Stiller. He hired me to move furniture for $100 a day, and after I worked for three days, I was ready for him to screw me over. I remember standing there, just thinking over everything I'd ever learned about how cheap and deceitful Jews were. Then he walked up, counted out the money, looked at me, and said, "You know what? You're a damn good worker, Frank. Have an extra $100."

I was even more pissed than if he'd tried to cheat me. But the worst insult was when he hired me full time. This all made me angry because, frankly, I didn't know how else to react. Kindness was new and scary. Here's an important secret: All us juvey kids grew up thinking we were dumb. I was told I was dumb my whole life, by my stepdad, by the cops, by myself, and it stuck. I believed it, so whenever I'd mess up working with Keith, my first reaction was to say how stupid I was. Until one day I broke this big expensive marble-top table, and I said to Keith, "I'm sorry, man, I'm so stupid, I'm sorry."

And he interrupted me: "Stop saying you're dumb, you fucking idiot."

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"Besides, have you seen that fucking thing? You did them a favor."

Then he started talking about me. He said I worked hard. He said I was reliable. He said I was smart. And I was blown away, because all I could think about was how much I looked up to this guy, how much I wanted to be like him someday -- this old Jewish guy who was everything I'd ever taught myself to hate. I was blown away by this entire speech he gave about how much he respected me -- me -- and then he ended it with: "You know who you remind me of, Frank? You remind me of me."

That's when I knew I was done beating my head against the wall. What you have to understand is that every racist, or anyone who belongs to some kind of hate movement, makes exceptions. Because you make stereotypes about people, and then you meet one, and that one is always the exception: "All women are bitches, except Jessica, she's cool." Or "All black people are n*****s, except Ronny, because I work with Ronny and he is a good guy -- oh yeah, and Maurice, I went to school with him, and he was just like me, too." For a while Keith was my exception. And then he just ... wasn't.

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And that's how you really stop feeling dumb.

The driving power behind these movements is fear: fear of inadequacy, fear of being forgotten, fear of not mattering. And as hard as we tried to scare people, no one was ever more scared than we were. Hate is just repackaged fear, and if you tear away the layers of a hateful person, you'll usually find a scared little kid in there.

For more insider stories, check out 8 Terrifying Life Lessons From a Former Terrorist and 5 Insane Things I Learned About Drugs as an Undercover Agent.

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