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From: Tore Bjorgo <Tore.Bjorgo@nupi.no>
To: revs@csf.colorado.edu
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 18:32:31 +0000
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Subject: Milton Klein: FORMER White Nationalist proposes research
Reply-to: Tore.Bjorgo@nupi.no
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Dear Mr. Milton Klein!

I was encouraged  to read your message, and found many of your
statements refreshing. Making a public and clean cut with the racist
movement is a constructive way to make up with the past and make a new
start. 

You lament the lack of scolarly works dealing with why young people
join racist groups, and how they leave. There are a few works which
are of direct relevance. James A. Aho's book This Thing of Darkness: A
Sociology of the Enemy (Seattle and London: University of Washington
Press, 1994), deals with the construction of enemy images, and how
they can be 'deconstructed'. More directly relevant to why youth join
skinhead groups is Katrine Fangen's study 'Skinheads in Red, White and
Blue' (Oslo: Ungforsk, 1995), but it is this far available in
Norwegian only. 
    I am myself publishing a study which is still in press, Tore
Bjorgo, "Entry, Bridge-burning and Exit Options: What happens to young
people who join racist groups -- and want to leave?", in Jeffrey
Kaplan and Tore Bjorgo (eds.), Brotherhoods of Nation and Race: The
Emercence of a Violent Euro-American Racist Subculture (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1997). I hope the book will be out by
early winter.

For a recent and interesting auto-biographic account, see Ingo 
Hasselbach with Tom Reiss, F=FChrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1996).

There is also some very useful research on why young people join and
leave new religious groups ("cults"). Many of the processes described
are equally relevant to racist groups. S. A. Wright, Leaving Cults:
The Dynamics of Defection (1987);and David G. Bromley (ed.) Falling
from Faith: Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy (1988), just
to mention two works to start with.

I recognice your experiences of dissassociating from a racist group
from the stories of others I have interviewed or read about. I agree
with you that traditional anti-racist campaigns and rhetoric does not
really have an effect on those youths who have joined racost groups or
are attracted by them. In most cases, they do not join because they
hold racist attitudes or convictions, but they , but they gradually
adopt racist views because they have become part of a racist group.
There are quite other motivations and needs than ideology which make
them join, and there are also other factors than ideology and
knowledge about facts which make them quit. When they have cut their
social ties to the movement, those racist views they helt in the past
often tend to evaporate, sometimes immediately, other times gradually.
(I read your  statement "A Reconing" from early this summer, and
recognice this process having happened with you, when I now read your
present views!)

I also agree with you about the need to find alternatives to young
people who want to break with the White Power scene, and who feel that
they have nothing to go to. There is some work being done in this
respect in both Norway and Sweden. In Norway, a 'Network for Parents
with Children in Racit Groups' has recently been established. Several
types of measures to assist youth who want to quit, and who feel
threatened by former peers and and enelies, are also being developed.

Milton, I am involved in the kind of research you are proposing. Let 
us get in direct contact. You can reach me by my email address: 
tore.bjorgo@nupi.no

Regards,
Tore Bjorgo