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| Former white supremacists, Greg Withrow and Thomas James (TJ) Leyden have much in common. Both men denounced racism, left the movement and now speak out against hate crimes - helping the government and anti-hate organizations understand the inner workings and motivations of hate groups. Reflecting on their individual journeys from "racism to redemption," Withrow and Leyden speak about their dissimilar upbringings, rage, alienation, group identity and transformation. |
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 Greg Withrow |
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 TJ Leyden |
'You don't want the weekend patriot - you want his kid.'
Childhood
Greg Withrow: "I was taught to fear long before I was ever taught to hate. And I wasn't taught to fear blacks or Jews. I was taught to fear my own people." Withrow was raised in San Francisco, California by his abusive father, a member of the American Nazi Party. He recounts the story of when as a child, he brought home an African-American classmate. His enraged father scolded him, "You don't have any nigger friends and you don't bring any niggers to my house." Withrow said, "At that point, he had [a pot of] boiling water and held it over me and he says, 'If you don't get him off my lawn, go out there and hit him right now, you're in serious fuckin' trouble boy.'" After Withrow went outside and hit the boy, he received his father's praise.
TJ Leyden: "I grew up in a close-knit Catholic family in Fontana, California. My mother has described us as 'Middle America' - a working class, well disciplined household... When I was 15 years old, my parents divorced. This left me angry, lonely and most important, vulnerable. On weekends, I would escape the shouting in my home by running off to concerts where I could vent my rage by slam dancing and fighting. I could release anger against people and they wouldn't care...
I now realize that I was the perfect target for neo-Nazi recruitment. Members of the white supremacy movement look for young, angry kids who need a family. I thought these were good guys, that I was being patriotic. I believed we were cleaning up America by drinking and fighting."
Psychologist and New York Times contributor Dr. Daniel Goleman writes, "[Hate crimes of youth] reflect the primal emotions of group identity. These deep feelings of group identity are particularly vivid in times of economic and political uncertainty and among people who suffered emotional neglect as children."
Where are my people?"
Belonging
Kicked out of the house at age 14, Withrow spent his days in the library and his nights sleeping in the bushes. When he was 16, serving time in juvenile detention hall, a guard handed him a Ku Klux Klan pamphlet and he joined. "I hooked up with the Ku Klux Klan...and I said this is it. This is my true family." Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) said, when reminiscing about the young Withrow, "He actually became sort of like another one of my kids."
In his early twenties, while serving in the Marines, Leyden, like Withrow, was enlisted by Tom Metzger and his group. "I dedicated most of my time to recruiting new and young followers for the Aryan movement. I targeted junior high schools in particular by instigating fights between white and non-white kids. Often I used the tactic of asking the white kids, "Shouldn't there be a group for you?"
When Withrow went to college, he started the White Student Union, which was later replicated in 400 schools. "There was a black student union, a Chicano student union, a handicapped student union and after a while, I began to see myself as alone... Where are my people?"
Transformation
Leyden married a woman who was part of the hate movement. Together they had two children. He recalls, "Our marriage began to fall apart and I found myself in emotional turmoil. Our two sons kept me from hitting the edge. They also made me re-think the value of my involvement with the neo-Nazi movement... I thought of the saying we often hear in the movement: 'You don't want the weekend patriot - you want his kid.' I realized that my sons will some day become members of the Order and murder people based on their skin color, religion or sexual preference. My kids will be sacrificed due to my example - that idea hurts. All the stuff that I had been perpetuating was coming out in my son. He's not going to be a doctor finding a cure for cancer. He's not going to be a lawyer on the Supreme Court. He's going to be a mindless bum beating people.
When Withrow met Sylvia, the daughter of non-Jewish Germans who had fled Nazi Germany, his life was changed. Rejecting his racist notions, Sylvia saw Withrow for who he really was. "It just never occurred [to me] that anybody would ever like me. I had accepted the fact that nobody ever will." Withrow abandoned his hate-filled lifestyle. "I said to myself, I just want to live a normal life. I realized that none of these people (other white supremacists) had ever really cared anything about me, and I really never cared anything about them. It was like opening up a hallway that I couldn't begin to describe. It was scary. To leave the racist movement was a frightening thing."
Leyden also understands how frightening it can be to leave the movement. "I realize my actions have put my family at risk. We frequently receive obscene phone calls, but I refuse to let these threats scare me. I was involved in this and I know things happen. I am prepared for things to come back my way. Skinheads love to hate. They feed on anger. When you're in the movement, you don't care about how much pain you inflict on anybody."
Read TJ Leyden interviews at the Simon Wiesenthal Center site
Photo of TJ Leyden, courtesy Simon Wiesenthal Center