Former White Supremacist Featured at Lecture

By: Emily Sirois
Posted In: News

Racism has always been considered a major problem in the United States, and the white supremacist movement today is surprisingly large. Tom (TJ) Leyden, an ex-neo Nazi skinhead, shared his experiences during a lecture at Salve Regina University on Monday, Dec. 8.

Leyden said he grew up in a very white town, and by age 15 he was involved in a skinhead gang in California. In the 1980s he entered the military, where he promoted separatism and worked with the Hawaii national movement and other supremacist movements. Several of these groups had goals to overthrow the U.S. government, Leyden said.

While he was in the military, Leyden said he had to be passive, but “there was nothing wrong with racism, yet today you can be discharged for being racist towards gays.”

He also passed out literature and propaganda, including Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and said that he had file cabinets and disks full of literature when he turned it all into the Task Force Against Hate at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he worked for approximately six and a half years.

Leyden eventually received an early discharge from the military due to his alcoholism and other problems. He also became a racist recruiter and said “there were two reasons that kids would join: they were afraid and they looked at me as their savior.”

Leyden said that girls are the number one target for white supremacist movements and that these movements are very strong. They even have TV shows, books, video games such as Ethnic Cleansing, magazines and CDs supporting their views.

There is also a lot of hate to be found within music, which can have negative affects on others. Leyden said, “Laughter is passive acceptance to a racist and your silence is a sign that you are saying their actions are okay.”

Through his activities as a leading recruiter, organizer and propagandist for the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movement, Leyden spent 15 years promoting hate, bigotry and racism. He finally turned away from that world of hate and has become an advocate for diversity appreciation.

He was a featured speaker at the Conference on Hate at the White House during President Clinton’s administration and a contributor to California Governor Gray Davis’s 1999 report, “Governor’s Advisory Panel on Hate Groups.” Lastly, Leyden has trained and influenced members of the military, law enforcement, FBI, educators and over 650,000 students who have attended his lectures.