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Title details for White American Youth by Christian Picciolini - Available

White American Youth

My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement — and How I Got Out

by Christian Picciolini
Christian Picciolini
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
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As featured on Fresh Air and the TED stage, a stunning look inside the world of violent hate groups by a onetime white supremacist leader who, shaken by a personal tragedy, abandoned his destructive life to become an anti-hate activist.
Raw, inspiring, and heartbreakingly candid, White American Youth explores why 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. The story begins when Picciolini found himself stumbling through high school, struggling to find a community among other fans of punk rock music. There, he was recruited by a 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 sent to 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.
"Simultaneously horrifying and redemptive" (AlterNet), White American Youth examines how radicalism and racism can conquer a person's way of life and how we can work together to stop those ideologies from tearing our world apart.
*An earlier edition of this book was published as Romantic Violence

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 26, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781549197529
      • File size: 195800 KB
      • Duration: 06:47:54

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      April 15, 2018

      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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      From his introduction to a white supremacist group to his ascendance and eventual rejection, Picciolini explores how he and many other white youth unquestioningly drink the lies and misrepresentations of white supremacist ideology as a means of making sense of their own lives, building kinship, and finding charismatic father figures. Picciolini's narration proves steady and largely enjoyable. Sometimes, though, he seems as if he's intentionally voicing those in the wrong to sound a bit more obnoxious in tone and delivery than might actually be the case. His voice sounds a bit congested, but his deliberate pace adds some sincerity and weight to his narration. The introduction, which is both written by and narrated by rocker Joan Jett, proves a strong endorsement of Picciolini's growth. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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