In counter-extremism, our job is made much more difficult by information that is wholly untruthful, this is especially true of violent white nationalist sects. Each and every piece of misinformation given to the public sets back the work of those who are actually combating racialist organizations and ideologies. The media is especially culpable in doing this, most often they attempt to demonize those groups and ideologies with little to no actual knowledge of them. I’m sure some reading this are saying, “They should be demonized,” but is that actually helping anyone or anything? If it isn’t helping, it’s hurting.
If we followed the mainstream media’s narrative of these groups and their ideologies, all we would know is that they hate everyone and not much else. We would have no information on the ideologies, none on how they operate or why, which in turn would give no one anything of value in the fight against them. It is because of this, that the general public is entirely uneducated on what to look out for and how they can combat extremists in their midst. Unarmed intellectually to the nature of the ideologies and groups, amounts to ineffective in any meaningful change to the community to combat the rising tides of division and hate.
That is why I write so often on the topic. I lived it for decades, was a well-known figure, and have intimate first-hand knowledge that I now use to genuinely combat extremism today. So, what is the proverbial elephant in the room?
“Everyone in those groups just hates other people,” this has been the consistent go-to; the media reports it, and uneducated low ranking members (both former and current) espouse this in interviews. Most lower-ranking members don’t even know why they feel the way they do; haven’t read a single book on the topic and often join those movements without fully knowing/understanding the ideology, hoping to learn it along the way. I remember dozens of cases where I would ask someone why they joined and the response, “I hate XYZ.” I’d ask if they read any of the works on the subject and would get an emphatic no.
Several times when I was a leader, I would tell members to read something and weeks later ask what they thought of it. I would get twenty excuses why they couldn’t read it. Your average member of any given “hate” organization is the least indoctrinated and easiest to learn the errors in their thoughts, but to combat those thoughts you need to understand some aspects.
All of these groups have divisions within them, with leaders and followers being almost diametrically different. Followers often see the leaders in the way that you’d see a rock star, and much like a fan of a star, they don’t believe they can attain what the star has (hence they don’t read or grow). Even when this isn’t the case, the leader is seen as the one who has all of the power and knowledge to make informed decisions and so followers will give their own decision-making faculties over to the leader’s discretion. Followers most often place their trust in those leaders, while simultaneously being wholly uneducated as to what and who they are placing their trust.
So, is it hate that followers are ensconced in or is it fear, confusion, lack of accountability, and other aspects which trouble them, and minorities are the easiest to scapegoat for their ills? If it were simply hate, the individual would either need to have a severe mental disorder, or it would resolve itself over time when interacting with other individuals. Understanding the mindset of the average follower of these movements helps to definitively combat them, thus ending the division and demonization which plagues humanity. I ask you this, have you ever hated the way a food looked but tried it and loved its taste? If you’ve answered yes, that’s how easy blanket hate is dispelled!
Leaders of these groups are another story altogether. The leaders make up a fractional and infinitesimal number of individuals, whereas followers make up the majority of them. If you target the followers and the mentality they hold, the leaders will in effect have no one to lead… does that make sense? Now if you target the leaders of these groups, you might get one or two who leave the movement or who get arrested, but those followers will simply find another leader and you’ve done nothing to stop the majority of those espousing the ideology (even if they don’t wholly understand it).
This does not mean neglecting to target the leaders of these groups, but to do that you must become intimately away of the ideology they preach and how to counter it effectively. Target the followers for education first, then the leaders.
So far the leaders of these groups have been the focal point, not the ideology, not the multitudes who follow them, just the leaders. Most think if you cut off the head of the hydra that it ceases to be, but for every one you get rid of, five more waits to take its place. So that strategy is and has proven to be ineffective time and time again. “The definition of ‘insanity’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Anonymous”
Now, if you want to target the followers to help them leave that life behind them, you must understand that they do not simply “hate” people, that is a gross oversimplification, which even they clutch onto often. Many followers don’t understand in full why they feel the way they do, some might say their parents were like that, or that they hate some aspect of their targeted minority demographic, but it is all a lack of introspection.
The Jews are 99% of the time the choice target of these movements, meanwhile, most followers have had no actual interactions with Jews. They will clutch onto simple to understand conspiracy theories and often cite the antisemitic work “The protocols of the elders of Zion,” which isn’t Jewish, or a misquote without context from the Talmud. The hatred of Jews is the cornerstone of their entire ideology, and though they might dislike blacks, Latino’s, Asians, etc… it is because they feel that the Jews are in control and replacing whites with them in our society.
Followers are afraid… as I’ve said in the past, the fourteen words by David Lane (we must secure the existence of our race, and a future for white children) are the guiding principle of nearly all of their ideology. They fear minorities are replacing them, that their way of life is threatened and all that is wrong in their lives can stem from the work of that clandestine Jewish agenda. Meanwhile… they have never met Jews, they know nothing about Jewish people or Judaism at all.
They believe 2.4% of the American population and 14.8 Million Jews worldwide, from a country the size of New Jersey control everything, from finance to government and law, from media to food. They attribute these things to Zionism, which they believe is a Jewish racialist movement, bent on controlling the world (Think the Jew world order or Jewluminati). Jews have always been a small minority, which throughout history has made them the target of scapegoating, pogroms, expulsion, assaults, and inevitably led to the holocaust.
It’s this fear of the unknown, the most powerful fear known to man, that fuels the follower, and if they can say, “None of this is my fault, it’s the Jews,” and place the blame on a minuscule minority, they will do it. This same fear is applied to other minorities as well, the Mexicans are taking their jobs so they are poor (substantiating their lack of drive), they are afraid of black people because they are violent (Substantiating their fear of blacks), and so on. It is a means to take no personal accountability or responsibility for themselves, saying that life is unfair or unkind just doesn’t cut it, it’s not their lack of drive or education or work ethic, they must have an enemy.
…and worst of all, those on the left side of extremism often think they’re combating “hate,” but due to their lack of knowledge of what is behind that, they are in fact, fueling it. This is also what the mainstream media does, not out of lack of knowledge, but for sensationalism, to sell papers or subscriptions and to generate ad revenue, while still fueling those followers.
In this brief article, I have probably helped people understand more about the mindset of “hate” groups than the mainstream media has in thirty years, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed. If you want to defeat an ideology, you first have to know what you’re fighting against, then do a deep dive into dissecting it and countering its points. THAT is how this war is won, THAT is how you begin to end division and heal people, and THAT is my mission and has been for a very long time now.
I have been a target of those who once called me brother for nearly a decade now. I’ve received hateful emails, I’ve been called a traitor, on Stormfront they called me a Jew infiltrator, and I’ve been told there’s an X on my back several times. I will not stop, no threats made against me will halt me… as the saying goes, “I am not the Jew with trembling knees!” I will continue to help people heal, I will continue to help people leave that life and become normal, loving individuals, even at the cost of my life.
© 2022 Frederick W. Cook
This article was originally featured on Son of Sinai
