Christian Picciolini - White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement--and How I Got Out

T HE UNIVERSAL STRUGGLE FOR IDENTITY and belonging is what binds all of us together. It is this search, ultimately, that makes us human; that makes us, especially as children, vulnerable.

In the 1970s, when I was in the Runaways, the first all-female American rock band ever, I experienced all types of prejudice and bigotry as a woman. Sometimes it was all I could do not to give up altogether. But my guitar, along with my pen and my voice, led me out of that hollow fear and into a long and successful rock-and-roll careerone that, thankfully, I am still riding the powerful wave of today.

Thanks in large part to Kenny Laguna, my producer, manager, close friend, and lifetime confidant, I have arrived at this level of commercial success and have been able to carve out a life in music. Kenny was then and still is very much a mentor to me. Without his direction and aid, I would not be where I am today. He believed in me when most others didnt.

I met Christian Picciolini in 1996 while on tour in Chicago. I did not know about Christian then what I know now. We needed an opener, and when I saw his punk band, Random55, warming up on stage, I saw something special in their style and knew from some place deep inside that they were the right ones. I approached Christian, who seemed low and withdrawn, backstage after the set. He seemed sad for some reason, and I talked with him for a little while, throwing my arm around his shoulder, trying to assuage his fears. I sensed that Christian had been like me as a struggling teenager, in a dark place, searching for identity and belongingacceptance. He needed someone to believe in him.

Random55 ended up going out with us on the road that year, becoming our opening act for a string of shows. Christian and I had many more meaningful conversations, and I like to think that some of what I had to say helped him cope with whatever he was going through. I will always recall his dedication to music and his drive. I could tell that, at that time, he was seeking something from life, from his soul. Now he has written this incredible memoir, detailing and forcing out the truth, after all these years. And in doing so, he has, I hope, released his inner demons for good.

Compassion is an important human quality, and we all have the ability to tap into it. I have it for Christians former, younger, troubled self. He was not a bad kid, but a kid trying desperately to belong to a community; to do something that mattered; to understand his loneliness and sense of rejection and abandonment. Hating the LGBTQ community, non-white minorities, Jews, and others when he was involved with the white-power skinhead movement is tantamount to a disgusting and immoral blind allegiance to hatred. And yet, Christian managed to do the one great thing that anyone who has ever been in his positionor is in his position todaycould do: he learned to recognize his blindness, to see how violently corrupted hed become. He was able to pick his head up from the muck of that ideology and see the error of his ways, to steer the ship in the other direction, and to get out. He not only left and at last denounced the movement in the late nineties, he went on to become a powerful voice against hatred, co-founding the nonprofit Life After Hate in 2009 and launching North Americas first extremist intervention program.

White American Youth is Christians testament to how frighteningly easy it can be to find yourself down the wrong rabbit hole with no way out. It is his tale of the only kind of redemption he will ever know. I admire him greatly, not because he once hated, but because he once hated and he fought hard against his own muddled determination and discovered that his prejudice and bigotry were paper-thin lies. We all have to discover life on our own path, find our truth. Christian writes his book to expose his truth, and we can be grateful in at least some small part for his courage in confessing how he ran on the dark side and what it is like to find yourself there and then breathlessly sprint for the light at the end of the tunnel. The result is a cautionary tale that furthers and educates us all.

In the end, we all need guidance, direction, and help along the road of life. We all need a mentor. For many, music is a major influence, and that can be used for good or bad. I was able to find myself through music, and, in a way, so did Christian. That night after the gig, throwing my arm around his shoulder was my way of showing empathy, compassion. Telling him that whatever he was feeling, I, like so many others, had been there too. Taking his band on tour was my handing of trust over to him. Like Kenny with me, I hope I was able to lead him, if only for a moment, out of the deep fog hovering around him. Christian pursued music in other capacities after that tour, and he maintained contact with Kenny and me through the years. I am so incredibly proud of his lifes work since he left the white-power movement in 1995, and I can see the real change and transformation he has made.