From Hate to Hope: The Testimony of TJ Leyden

"No one, not one single soul, was ever born into this world filled with hatred for another soul, or groups of souls.  Yet we live in a world filled with hatred, anger, and terror.  Where does it come from?  How does it fester?  How does it propagate?”  In truth, we’ve all found ourselves hating at one point or another.  We may hate a bully, a boss, a political leader, a relative, or any individual that we feel has wronged us.  Most of the time, that kind of hatred comes and goes.  Hate is like a fire, it needs fuel to burn, and there are times when people become indoctrinated, fueled by such resentment, that before the even realize it, they have opened a fuel valve that continually fuels the fire of hate within them to the point that they become completely consumed by it. Former Neo-Nazi TJ Leyden knows this as well.  He not only espoused hate, he organized it.  He targeted those who opposed the hate he embraced for harm, and he zeroed on who were either sympathetic or vulnerable and brought them into his line of thinking. 

However, after much soul-searching, TJ Leyden found the strength to break free from the trap that he had fallen into.  In 1996, he boxed up all of his Neo-Nazi paraphernalia and went with his mother to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to tell his story to two Jewish Rabbis.  The very men that TJ once despised now worked with him to bring his story to the world.  To show the youth how Neo Nazi leaders work to target them, and how to resist the intolerant hatred that they embrace.  

TJ Leyden grew up in a home with an abusive, alcoholic father who encouraged him to fight.  He was exposed to grandparents who espoused racial disdain for African Americans & Hispanics.  Feeling no sense of belonging at school or home, he fell into the famous LA Rock scene of the 1980's.  The Skins, initially just a group of rebellious young teenagers that gradually distanced themselves from the Punk Rockers who voiced for America, first passed themselves off as being Proud Americans who just loved to fight and party.  Within a few years, this shifted from rowdy pro-American teenagers to the infamous Aryan Nationalists that the world now knows as Skinheads.  

TJ Leyden reveals that contrary to popular belief, many of the "Aryan Soldiers" are not drug dealing street punks, but very intelligent people.  They're lawyers, professors, electricians, even soldiers in our military.  They're everywhere.  They know how to target our youth, to deceive them with messages promising them protection and belonging.  They know how to spend months indoctrinating them to hate, to utilize music, magazines, the internet, even video games to spread the seeds of hate.  They know how to infiltrate the military, to take their military training and apply it in the streets.  Timothy McVeigh is living proof of this.  A former soldier in the army who served in the Gulf War, McVeigh embraced the Aryan Movement, and with inspiration from the book "The Turner Diaries" (Infamously considered to be the Bible of the Racist Right), carried out the horrendous Oklahoma City Bombing of April, 1995.  Considered the worst domestic attack in history, it claimed the lives of 168 innocent people.  

TJ states in his book that in regards to the Neo Nazi threat, too many are SIC (Silent, Indifferent, or Complacent).  We keep thinking that if we ignore the threat, it'll go away on its own.  It won't.  Locking the Skinheads up isn't the long-term answer as Aryan Prison Gangs are very powerful.  Following the path of Antifa will not work either, it only serves to unify the Neo Nazis even more.  The key to stopping them is knowing their tactics, and teaching the youth not to fall for their lies.  They may claim to simply be about White Pride or Racial Separation (There are Hispanic & African Groups that preach the same message), but this is only a farce.  The leaders of the Aryan Movement are prepared to kill for their beliefs, they feel that genocide is preferable to Race Mixing, and this Movement is World Wide.  However, TJ's story is also a story of hope.  It shows us that it's never too late to do the right thing, and just as people can be indoctrinated into hating, they can be taught to turn away from it.  The first step in winning this long battle is to learn about the enemy, study their ambitions, examine their tactics, and TJ's book "From Hate to Hope" is a good place to start.

Link to TJ's Book