This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2021) |
Erasing Hate | |
---|---|
Written by | Bill Brummel |
Directed by | Bill Brummel |
Starring | Bryon Widner |
Country of origin | United States |
Production | |
Producer | Bill Brummel |
Original release | |
Release | June 6, 2011 |
Erasing Hate is a 2011 American TV documentary chronicling the efforts of reformed white power skinhead Bryon Widner to remove his numerous racist facial tattoos. Written, produced, and directed by Bill Brummel, it first aired on June 6, 2011 on MSNBC. [1]
Bryon Widner (born c. 1977) became a skinhead at the age of 14, and he spent 16 years involved with racist organizations in the midwestern United States. [2] Described as a "pit bull", [3] Widner co-founded Vinlanders Social Club, a white power group in Indiana [4] that soon gained a reputation for excessive violence. [2] This organization became one of the fastest-growing racist skinhead organizations in the US. [2]
In 2005, Widner married Julie Larsen, who had three children from a previous marriage. In 2006, the couple had a son. The responsibilities of fatherhood gave Widner the desire to reform and leave the racist movement, a desire shared by Larsen. Widner left his organization and endured years of death threats and harassment while attempting to turn his life around. Widner's efforts to rejoin wider society were significantly hampered by his extensive facial tattoos, many of which were violent or racist. Larsen feared that Widner would take drastic action to remove the tattoos, such as immersing his face in acid. Larsen eventually contacted anti-racist activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People's Project who put her in contact with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). [3]
After "several weeks of conversation," [3] SPLC representatives agreed to help Widner in his quest to remove his facial tattoos. They found a plastic surgeon who was willing to perform the procedure, and an anonymous donor provided $35,000 for the procedures. [3] The complete removal of Widner's facial tattoos took a little over a year and a half and over a dozen individual procedures, all of which were excruciatingly painful.
Black supremacy or black supremacism is a racial supremacist belief which maintains that black people are inherently superior to people of other races.
The Aryan Brotherhood is a neo-Nazi prison gang and an organized crime syndicate that is based in the United States and has an estimated 15,000–20,000 members both inside and outside prisons. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has characterized it as "the nation's oldest major white supremacist prison gang and a national crime syndicate" while the Anti-Defamation League calls it the "oldest and most notorious racist prison gang in the United States". According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Aryan Brotherhood makes up an extremely low percentage of the entire US prison population, but it is responsible for a disproportionately large number of prison murders.
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) are anti-racist skinheads who oppose white power skinheads, neo-fascists and other political racists, particularly if they identify themselves as skinheads. SHARPs claim to reclaim the original multicultural identity of the original skinheads, hijacked by white power skinheads, who they sometimes deride as "boneheads".
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi organization in the United States which was founded and formerly led by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. It was based in Warsaw, Indiana, and it was also incorporated as a business. In 1993, the group expanded into Canada.
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyists and Maoists.
The Hammerskins are a white supremacist group formed in 1988 in Dallas, Texas. Their primary focus is the production and promotion of white power rock music, and many white power bands have been affiliated with the group. The Hammerskins were affiliated with the record label 9% Productions. The Hammerskins host several annual concerts, including Hammerfest, an annual event in both the United States and Europe in honor of deceased Hammerskin Joe Rowan, the lead singer of the band Nordic Thunder.
ACAB is an acronym of the phrase All Cops Are Bastards, and it is used as a political slogan associated with people who are opposed to the police. It is typically written as a catchphrase in graffiti, tattoos or other imagery in public spaces. It is sometimes numerically rendered as "1312", representing the position of the letters in the English alphabet.
Volksfront, also known as Volksfront International, was an American white separatist organization founded on October 20, 1994, in Portland, Oregon. According to Volksfront's now defunct website, the group described itself as an "international fraternal organization for persons of European descent." The logo of Volksfront was the Algiz rune, a common rune used as a neo-Nazi symbol common among other organizations such as National Alliance. Volksfront had approximately 50 members in the United States split between four chapters designated as Pac-West, Central States, North East, and Gulf-Atlantic, and an additional 50 members dispersed in other countries including Germany, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Spain. The goal of the movement was to create an all-White homeland in the Pacific Northwest. The flag of Volksfront was based on the Nazi flag in the colors of black, white, and red with the Volksfront logo and the slogan was "Race Over All" implying that race mattered over everything else. In August 2012, the United States branch of Volksfront announced their dissolution via their website. Citing harassment and investigations by the authorities, the group said it was disbanding.
The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) is a white supremacist, white nationalist, neo-Nazi paramilitary organization. Until the late 2000s, it was the second largest Klan group in the United States, and at one point in the early 2000s, it was the largest. In 2008, the IKA was reported to have at least 23 chapters in 17 states, most of which were small.
NumbersUSA is an anti-immigration advocacy organization that seeks to reduce both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. It advocates for immigration reduction through user-generated fax, email, and direct mail campaigns. In November 2022, the organization announced James Massa, a former Cisco executive, as its next chief executive officer following the retirement of founder Roy Beck.
White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads, are members of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and antisemitic offshoot of the skinhead subculture. Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and some of them are members of prison gangs. The movement emerged in the United Kingdom between the late 1960s and the late 1970s, before spreading across Eurasia and North America in the 1980–1990s.
John Hamilton Tanton was an American ophthalmologist, white nationalist and anti-immigration activist. He was the founder and first chairman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigration organization. He was the co-founder of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank; and NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration lobbying group. He was chairman of U.S. English and ProEnglish. He was briefly President of Zero Population Growth. He was the founder of The Social Contract Press, which published a quarterly journal of nativist and white nationalist writers called The Social Contract until the fall of 2019. He founded the pro-eugenics organization Society for Genetic Education.
The Social Contract Press (SCP) is an American publisher of white nationalist and anti-immigrant literature. It is a program of U.S. Inc., a foundation formed by John Tanton, who was called by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) "the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement". Founded in 1990, it publishes the quarterly Social Contract journal, as well as reprints and new works.
One Peoples Project (OPP) is an organisation founded in 2000 to monitor and publish information about alleged racist and far-right groups and individuals, mostly in the United States. The group has about fifteen volunteers in addition to its most prominent members, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, its founder, and Joshua Hoyt, who joined the group in 2002. It has been called "the most mainstream and well-known anti-fascist or antifa" organization in the United States. Its motto is "Hate Has Consequences".
The Nazi Lowriders, also known as NLR or the Ride, are a neo-Nazi, white supremacist organized crime syndicate, and prison and street gang in the United States. Primarily based in Southern California, the gang is allied with the larger Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia gangs, and fellow peckerwood gang Public Enemy No. 1. The Nazi Lowriders operate both in and outside of prison.
Skin is a 2018 American biographical drama film written and directed by Israeli-born filmmaker Guy Nattiv. The film stars Jamie Bell, Danielle Macdonald, Daniel Henshall, Bill Camp, Louisa Krause, Zoe Colletti, Kylie Rogers, Colbi Gannett, Mike Colter, and Vera Farmiga. The film is inspired by the true story of an American neo-Nazi skinhead named Bryon Widner.
Guy Nattiv is an Israeli film director, screenwriter and producer who lives and works in the United States. His film Skin won an Oscar for best short film at the 91st Academy Awards. As of May 2021, Nattiv and Moshe Mizrahi are the only Israeli directors who have won an Academy award. In 2019, he received IFF Achievement in Film Award at the 33rd Israel Film Festival.
Bryon Widner is an American former white power skinhead.