Cries of “Nazis, go home!” and “Shame! Shame!” filled the air as Angela King and Tony McAleer stood with other counterprotesters at the “free speech” rally in Boston last weekend.
They didn’t join the shouting. Their sign spoke for them: “There is life after hate.”
They know because McAleer and King were once young extremists themselves, before they co-founded the nonprofit Life After Hate to help former white supremacists restart their lives. To hear them talk about their pasts hints at what may be in the minds of those inside the far-right fringe groups whose actions have ignited raw, angry passions across the country. What are people thinking when they spew hate? Are they all true believers? What’s more, how does someone get that way?
The uncovered American faces of white supremacy and neo-Nazism were broadcast on TV and the internet for all to see at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., this month, which ended in violence and with one person dead. The forces that drew them there are not new.
[For more of this story, written by Sharon Jayson, go to http://khn.org/news/childhood-...n-minds-toward-hate/]
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