IDAHO, USA — This is the second part of a series on extremist hate groups in Idaho. In part one, after discussing the rise of extremist hate groups in our state, we left off with a question. “What in the world would convince a person to embrace these sickening ideologies?” It most often has little to do with the ideology itself.
RELATED: Extreme hate in Idaho: Part I of III
Tony McAleer is the President of The Cure for Hate Consulting Group, which helps people respond to the threat of violent white supremacist groups in their communities. He is also the author of the book “The Cure for Hate,” an international speaker, and has more than 10 years of experience helping people leave white supremacist movements behind.
He believes, "Polarization across the board is on the rise."
So, how did Tony become such an expert on white supremacists? He used to be one. McAleer remembers, "I said at the age of 20, I'll be dead or in jail as a white revolutionary by the time I'm 30."
He had, what from the outside looked like a normal childhood, a middle-class family in an affluent neighborhood in Vancouver. While he says he doesn't blame anything on his childhood, he did point to pivotal moments that shaped his future, like abuse at school and walking in on his father having an affair.
He said he lost faith in authority figures and developed not just a need to rebel against everything, but a pervasive anger, "That sort of that anger and defiance and mistrust of authority, sort of primed me for first becoming a skinhead and later joining the Aryan Nations."
The same Aryan Nations that plagued Idaho throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s from its headquarters near Coeur d'Alene.
He deeply regrets it now, but at the time, "It was exciting," he says. “The notoriety, the taboo nature of it, the guard towers and guys with machine guns and stuff. To a 19 or 20-year-old brain and in the full throes of rebellion and defiance to authority, that was the ultimate place to go."
It was in that Idaho compound that not just the Aryan Nations, but neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other white nationalists came from across the country to convene and spread hate and violence. McAleer even moved on from this group to the more radical White Aryan Resistance.
But why was he so attracted to it all? He says he was able to get something back that he lost as a kid, "There were always these older father figure types in the movement. Whether it be Pastor Butler, or Tom Metzger, or any of these guys that gave me the attention and acceptance and approval that I couldn't ever get from my dad." He added, "I got a sense of brotherhood and community, I got that attention. I felt visible. I got acceptance when I felt unlovable. I got power when I felt completely powerless and weakened."
So, if all that turned an average kid into a white supremacist, what turned that white supremacist into a crusader for love, acceptance, and compassion? He says it was the birth of his daughter and later his son that forced him to confront who he really was, "They saw this great, magnificent human being that was taking care of them. I didn't see that when I looked in the mirror."
He left those white supremacist groups and started working to get others out too, after finally confronting his childhood trauma. It's a trauma that he says is very common in those groups, which causes the members to hate themselves first, before hating others. It's called, "toxic shame."
“I truly believe the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mere reflection of our own internal disconnection and dehumanization,” says McAleer. “And we feel that we're not good enough, we're not worthy enough, we're less than human, we're not smart enough, pretty enough, and unlovable. Whatever set of beliefs we pick up as a result of trauma, we project onto others as a way of dealing with it."
And the recruiters for these hate groups understand this, partly because this violent sort of coping mechanism isn't unique to American hate groups.
Royce Hutson PhD is a Boise State researcher who also has years of experience in the Middle East working to understand why so many young men were joining Hezbollah and al Qaeda. "There are a lot of commonalities between sort of Islamist inspired terrorism and domestic terrorist groups in the United States."
He says there's often a strong religious component: a warping of the scriptures, just like we see with hate groups here that claim a Christian identity (even though they're far from it). But mostly, they offer that same feeling of belonging, like what drew McAleer to the Aryan Nations, to people who have been excluded socially, economically, and culturally.
"They feel like somehow their community and themselves are being attacked," explained Hutson. “Then when they do hear narratives coming from other terrorist or violent extremist organizations that say, 'Hey, look, you're not to blame for your particular lot in life. It's this group over here, it's that group over here…’ It's these invaders coming from across the border, and it's Islamists coming across here and trying to invoke Sharia law. So, it's the same sort of narrative, it's just flipped around."
But what can we do as a community to stop all this? You'll hear from local leaders about exactly that, in the final installment of this series.
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