Feeling powerless

An important question from my thinking about those who become obsessed with social hierarchy (by obsessed I mean those who are willing to do a great deal of harm to others (or a whole nation) to maintain their place at the top of the hierarchy): Why are they that way? Why become a supremacist?

A good person to give an answer is a former supremacist, one who lived the life, realized his harm, got out, and now works to draw others out of that life. Such a person is Tony McAleer. He’s former organizer for the White Aryan Resistance and helped start Life After Hate, which I’ve mentioned before. McAleer talked to Lulu Garcia-Navarro on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday this morning.

McAleer says he got into it because he felt powerless. At age 10 he caught his father with another women and rejected all authority figures. His parents and the school cracked down on authority. Because of that he became angry. The skinheads offered toughness. A survival skill is to befriend and become the bully. That made him feel safe. And then…

Once you're that far into it, you become that far disconnected from your own humanity in the process of getting there - that human life, especially if it's not white, doesn't mean anything. You know, if you see yourself as very small and insignificant in the world deep down inside - you look at, you know, anyone who's done these mass killings in the name of the white race. They become legendary. And people want to emulate them. You know, when you've got nothing going on in your life, you know, the fantasy of going out in a blaze of glory to have your name forever etched in the history books, that can be enticing.

What brought him out was becoming a father at age 23.

For the first time in my life, I started to make decisions for someone other than myself because I was a complete narcissist. And the crazy thing about children is their love is unconditional. They didn't care that I was a neo-Nazi. They didn't care that I had assault rifles in the closet. They don't see that. They just see the human that's interacting with them. And that's sort of what compassion does. And it allowed me to thaw. And when we're compassionate with someone, we hold up a mirror and allow them to see their humanity reflected back at them when they're incapable of seeing it on their own. And I think that's the power of compassion. It's at the power - it's - compassion is at the root of, you know, what we do at Life After Hate.

McAleer reinforces my understanding that a big component of supremacy is that we’re taught. Garcia-Navarro comments that men, especially white men, aren’t taught to deal with feeling powerless. However, I note that the parents around him were more interested in projecting power than dealing with the person in front of them with love. McAleer responds:

That's definitely part of it. I mean, who teaches white men? Most of the time, it's fathers. And who teaches those fathers? Their fathers' fathers. And so the thing about, you know, these negative attitudes is they cascade through generations, right? If my father is misogynist, if I observe my father belittling and treating my mom poorly and, you know, he puts stuff onto me, chances are I'm going to continue the family tradition. And, you know, I've seen that the way roles are transferred through generations that people and families have to play. The job, I think, we have to do is we have to break these cycles.

But with people who profess violence it doesn’t work to simply be compassionate.

Compassion only works when it's accompanied with healthy boundaries and consequences. It has to have that component of healthy boundaries and consequences. Otherwise, it's an invitation for abuse and re-abuse.