White American youth My descent into America's most violent hate movement -- and how I got out

Christian Picciolini

Book - 2017

"As he stumbled through high school, struggling to find a community among other fans of punk rock music, Christian Picciolini was recruited by a now notorious white power skinhead leader and encouraged to fight with the movement to "protect the white race from extinction." Soon, he had become an expert in racist philosophies, a terror who roamed the neighborhood, quick to throw fists. When his mentor was arrested and sentenced to eleven years in prison, sixteen-year-old Picciolini took over the man's role as the leader of an infamous neo-Nazi skinhead group. Seduced by the power he accrued through intimidation, and swept up in the rhetoric he had adopted, Picciolini worked to grow an army of extremists. He used music as ...a recruitment tool, launching his own propaganda band that performed at white power rallies around the world. But slowly, as he started a family of his own and a job that for the first time brought him face to face with people from all walks of life, he began to recognize the cracks in his hateful ideology. Then a shocking loss at the hands of racial violence changed his life forever, and Picciolini realized too late the full extent of the harm he'd caused. Awe-inspiring, and heartbreakingly candid, White American Youth tells the fascinating story of how so many young people lose themselves in a culture of hatred and violence and how the criminal networks they forge terrorize and divide our nation."--Back cover.

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2nd Floor 320.533/Piccolini Due Apr 12, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York ; Boston : Hachette Books 2017.
Language
English
Main Author
Christian Picciolini (author)
Other Authors
Joan Jett (writer of foreword)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
"Originally published as Romantic Violence : Memoirs of an American Skinhead in May of 2015."
Physical Description
xxiv, 275 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780316522908
  • Foreword / Joan Jett
  • Introduction
  • Prologue
  • Goliath
  • Miles apart
  • Buddy
  • White power
  • Romantic violence
  • Fourteen words
  • Summer of hate
  • Young hate mongers
  • Hear the call
  • White pride
  • Armed and dangerous
  • W.A.Y.
  • Sick society
  • Heavy-metal hate machine
  • AKA Pablo
  • Martyr
  • Happy death
  • Final solution
  • Open your eyes
  • AmeriKKKa
  • Soldiers of the race war
  • Organized chaos
  • White revolution
  • Walk alone
  • Sins of the brother
  • Epilogue.
Review by New York Times Review

The music came from a mail-order service called Romantic Violence. It was for "white people with guts." Picciolini, then a punk rock kid in Chicago struggling against the assimilationist dreams of his immigrant Italian parents, was hooked. He soon learned that skinhead trappings - Doc Martens, the skinny suspenders known as braces, Nazi insignias - made people automatically fear him, and he got hooked on that, too. Picciolini became an enterprising disciple. He shoplifted, and read, a copy of the only book he could find on skinheads. He diligently photocopied and disseminated racist literature. When his mentor went to prison, Picciolini was ready to step in, ultimately fronting Final Solution, one of the first American neo-Nazi bands to play in Europe. He got expelled from school multiple times, once after beating a black kid who refused to move and hurling racial epithets at the principal. He presided over street fights and began to stockpile weapons for the race war he believed was looming. He also grew up: He got married, had two sons and opened a record store that sold some white supremacist music, but also attracted anti-racist and nonwhite customers who turned out to be real human beings. A friend, a fellow band frontman and father, was killed in a fight. Picciolini began to realize that the movement was no longer for him. But in the end, there is something unsatisfying about this redemption checklist. In Christian Picciolini's story, the only character is Christian Picciolini. We don't hear from anyone he hurt - other than a chance encounter with the former security guard at his high school, to whom he apologizes, he does not seek any of them out. By this time his wife has left him, and though Picciolini worries about what his new girlfriend, who "saw beyond my mistakes to the man I had become," will have to say about his old tattoos, we don't actually find out. When a tragedy befalls his family, Picciolini goes so far as to wonder if it isn't divine payback for his own mistakes.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 20, 2018]
Review by Library Journal Review

Picciolini, a wayward teen born and raised in Illinois, is drawn by the authority and righteousness of a local skinhead gang, the Chicago Area Skinheads, and easily recruited by its leader. Through the medium of music, Picciolini is slowly indoctrinated into the extremist ideology and urged to protect the white race from extinction by whatever means necessary. Slowly rising through the ranks of the white power movement, he eventually becomes a national (and perhaps international) figure and recruiter; however, he is jarred into recognizing the effects of the movement (and of his own actions) by a tragic loss. Picciolini narrates his work, and listeners can truly hear his emotions as he relives his often heartbreaking story. VERDICT This is a difficult listen (owing to explicit descriptions of violence and hatred), but it's well worth it for those curious about the origins of hate.-Jeremy Bright, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.