About this item
A stunning exploration of how to heal a nation reeling from extremist violence from a viral TED speaker and onetime white-supremacist leader who now work as a peace activist disengaging hateful radicals.At fourteen, Christian Picciolini was recruited by a now notorious skinhead leader and encouraged to fight with the movement to "protect the white race from extinction." Soon, he had become an expert in racist ideology, a neo-Nazi terror who roamed the neighborhood, quick to throw fists. By the time he left the movement years later and was able to see clearly for the first time, Picciolini found that his life was in shambles and the nation around him was coming apart. Told with startling intimacy and compassion, BREAKING HATE is the inside story of how extremists have taken the reins of our political discourse and a guide to how everyday Americans can win it back. The forces pushing to polarize and radicalize us are many--from fake news to coded language to Russian trolls to a White House that often aims to inflame rather than to heal. Increasingly, the information with which we construct our world views is segregated by social media stars and advertisers with murky motives to validate our worst impulses. As Picciolini demonstrates, our modern world systematically normalizes extremism in such a way that we grow blind to it, only recognizing it in the wake of tragedy. Drawing on profiles of extremists that he works to free from violent ideology and on his own painful history leading and then escaping from an infamous neo-Nazi group, BREAKING HATE explains why terrorism and violence have come to characterize our daily lives and why that doesn't need to be the case.
About the Author
Christian Picciolini is an award-winning television producer, a visual artist, and a reformed extremist. His work and life purpose are born of an ongoing and profound need to atone for a grisly past, and to make something of his time on this planet by contributing to the greater good.
After leaving the violent hate movement he was part of during his youth, he began the painstaking process of rebuilding his life. Picciolini earned a degree in International Business and International Relations from DePaul University, began his own global entertainment and media firm, and was appointed a member of the Chicago Grammy Rock Music Committee and the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival.
In 2010 and 2011, he was nominated for three regional Emmy Awards for his role as executive producer of JBTV, one of America's longest-running nationally broadcast music television programs. He has worked as an adjunct professor at the college level, and as the community partnerships manager for Threadless, a company that combines a thriving online art community with a highly successful e-commerce business model. Additionally, in 2013, he contributed to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's and Director of Google Ideas Jared Cohen's New York Times best seller, 'The New Digital Age.'
Most notably, in 2010 he co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping communities and organizations gain the knowledge necessary to implement long-term solutions that counter all types of racism and violent extremism. In 2015, Picciolini published his memoirs, 'Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead.'
An explorer by nature, Picciolini loves to learn new things and thrives on challenging himself with "positive disruptive thinking." He values kindness, unselfishness, sincerity, and respect for all people, and believes that small ideas can change the world.
