Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  We could change them.

  Yeah, right. Here are these peace-loving protesters gathered by the hundreds, waving peace flags and holding hands singing folk songs, and we instilled so much hate and revulsion in their soft hearts that they resorted to ripping up chunks of concrete from the sidewalk to violently pelt us with.

  What was wrong with this picture? We inspired so much animosity in those who believed in only peace that they were trying to hurt us with violence.

  Confusion overwhelmed me and I felt as if someone had landed a solid blow to my solar plexus. Along with my breath, my commitment was knocked out of me for the first time, and for a brief moment I clearly saw there was a serious problem with my reality.

  My head spun in all directions and I began to feel sick to my stomach.

  The Nazi salutes had tired my arm and the cries for white power had strained my voice.

  I was weak from a day of heat and hate. We’d barely made it out alive.

  When the march came to an end and my comrades were celebrating by getting hammered with booze, I was hit by the disturbing thought that maybe the whole thing was simply an endless cycle of excuses to fight and drink and commiserate. To belong to an exclusive club of other people more fucked up than you.

  How superficial could it get?

  I left breathless and disillusioned with what I had been doing with passion for the last five years. But I couldn’t let myself give up. Not yet. I had to make sense of it all.

  Maybe the problem wasn’t with the principles, our beliefs. Maybe it had been that rally. With the Klan. We still needed to set the world straight.

  And I needed to get home to Lisa and our unborn child. Between work and my lingering responsibilities to the skinhead movement, we hadn’t been spending enough time together. I vowed to change that. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that our family was what mattered.

  I’d already more or less given up on music, even though Rock-O-Rama had offered Final Solution a follow-up recording contract after we played in Germany. After finding out how shady the label was, we had no problem walking away from the deal and putting a record out under our own vanity record label, Viking Sounds. Not long after, the band broke up. Final Solution didn’t have the same spark, didn’t fill me with the same spirit as White American Youth had. Weimar had been a high point, but in reality, being able to keep the band at the top of my growing list of priorities diminished. My mind was elsewhere. My heart belonged to my wife and our child. And it showed in the substandard recording we released. The album sold a few thousand copies and flopped. I hadn’t had the time or the energy it took to keep it together.

  Now it was time to cut down on rallies and other distractions as well. I’d have to find another way to promote my pro-white agenda. I didn’t know what shape that would take, but I was in way too deep to climb out. Even if I wanted to. This life was all I’d known through every single one of my formative years. Who would I be otherwise? This was my identity. Where would I go? This was my family.

  I returned home ready to try harder than ever to prove my worth as a man. I threw myself wholeheartedly into my construction job. The hours were long, the work at times grueling and other times mind-numbingly boring, but we needed the money. Aside from the wedding money we’d earmarked to buy a home, we were broke and expecting a child in two months.

  We lived on forty-nine-cent packages of oriental noodles and macaroni and cheese. I had no health insurance, so Lisa was on public aid for her prenatal care. I didn’t let myself dwell on the fact that I was dependent on taxpayers’ money to bring my child safely into the world, something I had ripped into blacks about hundreds of times over the last few years.

  I did far more than my share of work. Putting in sixteen-hour days was normal. Sometimes I worked even more hours than that. In fact, the night Lisa went into labor, I’d just come off an eighteen-hour shift. I was dead to the world when her contractions began at home. Lisa’s mom cared for her through her labor pains while I napped until it was time to go to the hospital.

  I was far too worn-out to be the overanxious dad on the way to the hospital, but I came alive when I got into the delivery room. I watched Lisa’s every expression intently. I hadn’t been able to go to birthing classes with her because of my hectic work schedule, but I was confident I’d be able to do my part during the delivery.

  Labor was long, and every hour on the hour ancient nuns came on the hospital’s loudspeaker to read verses from the Gospel of John. It drove us nuts, but being on public assistance had not put us in a bargaining position, and this was the hospital we’d been assigned to by the welfare agency.

  After an eternity or two, our son Devin was born.

  I have one word for the experience. If you’ve had kids, you’ll know what it means. If you don’t, you will the moment your own child is born.

  Magic.

  I held that tiny, helpless, beautiful, flawless infant, not much bigger than my own two worn and battered hands—hands that had been curled into vengeful fists since I was a child myself—and I promised him I would be the best father in the world, no matter what it took.

  Lisa squeezed my hand and saw in my eyes that my hard outer shell had begun to crack.

  Caressed by the soft, gentle breath of our fragile son in my strong, tattooed arms, I was carried away momentarily from the uncertain reality of being a nineteen-year-old father shouldering the vestiges of a fraying cause. My child’s sweet, precious scent filled my lungs. I inhaled deeply and felt it permeate my soul.

  My son’s life was in my hands, both literally and figuratively, and never had I been charged with a greater purpose.

  For the first time in my adult life, I broke down and wept.

  Christian and Devin, 1993

  21

  FINAL SOLUTION

  The birth of our son changed my life. Hardly an original statement. I know a child’s birth has that effect on millions and millions of parents every year in every corner of the globe. The world stands still, everything else fades into the background, and time stops the first time you gently hold your newborn.

  So pure, so untainted, so absolutely unsullied by any of the world’s influence. Babies know nothing of differences. The color of someone’s skin is meaningless to them. They have no concern for someone else’s beliefs. Not money or power, creed or sexual preference matters one little bit to an infant.

  Not only don’t these innocents care what someone’s pay grade or position is in the world, they don’t even understand the concept that those non-essential things exist. Education level, financial success, owning a home, a luxury car, having stock options, are completely without meaning. All the worldly trappings mean absolutely nothing to a newborn. The only thing that matters to a baby is love, and they cry until they are embraced by it.

  My son opened his eyes and looked into mine, and I saw nothing but complete and beautiful innocence. A love purer than I imagined possible pulsated through me, pulling me into a world of splendor I had long since abandoned, claiming me with a power and responsibility greater than anything I’d ever experienced.

  And in that moment, the animosity I had felt toward strangers for half a decade was so inconsequential it was not even a minor thought in my head, a germ of an emotion in my heart. Love blocked out all the venomous anger and prejudice I’d been living with for the previous five years—all but one of my teenage years.

  If I could have held on to that sense of clarity, if I could have honored it in my every act and deed from that moment on, tragedy may well have been prevented.

  But I was young and careless. Unenlightened in ways that horrify me still. Instead of respecting the power of love my son had brought into my life, my signals got crossed, and I convinced myself more than ever that I had to make the world safe for my child by protecting him from the dangers I believed existed. Blacks. Jews. Gays. Anybody who wasn’t white, who didn’t contribute to my family’s wellbeing. Anything that
came from a culture I refused to understand. I saw threats to my family’s safety everywhere.

  My mission to protect the white race and ensure a safe future for my child became even more critical.

  So, too, did the need to provide for my family.

  Lisa and I decided it was time to buy our own home. We found a modest, three-bedroom duplex that suited us, used the money we’d received from our wedding as a down payment, and moved in shortly after Devin was born. That’s what it was all about, right? A family. A house. A job. A future.

  My parents said they were proud of me. Finally. Here was their nineteen-year-old son with a good job, his own home, and a family. What a good boy. My grandparents were pleased with me, too. Only nine-year-old Buddy wasn’t happy. “You hardly ever do anything with me when you live in the same building,” he cried. “Now I’ll never see you.”

  “Sure you will,” I said. “I’ll be over here all the time to visit with the baby.”

  He pushed me away and thumped his little fist down on the kitchen table. I’d never seen him upset like this. “You just love the baby. You don’t love me anymore.” My heart tore with those words.

  “Buddy,” I pleaded. “How can you say that? Of course I love you.”

  He ran to his bedroom crying and slammed the door so hard that a framed picture of the gondolas of Venice hanging in the hallway fell to the floor and shattered into a million pieces. It might as well have been my soul. “Buddy?” I knocked gently. “Buddy, please open up.” No answer. “I love you.”

  “Go away! Leave me alone.” I’d heard that before, but it had been from my own lips.

  I’d watched my shy and innocent little brother grow up from a distance. And only now had he become visible to me through the murky glimpses of my own selfish determination. But Buddy was no longer the wide-eyed pudgy nuisance that I once so easily brushed away without consequence. Hearing his words reminded me of what I had been at his age. Lonely and angry. Wanting desperately for someone to pay attention.

  With work and my own family now, I knew I hadn’t given him much attention over the last year. But how could I have? There were only so many hours in the day.

  I continued to coordinate the Chicago Hammerskins—albeit from a more remote position than I had in the past—while I dutifully worked my construction job six or seven days a week. Pulling double duty with both the movement and my job, not to mention my wife and kid, was a difficult task. But despite the fact that I prided myself on working harder than everyone around me, I still didn’t go home at the end of the day with any real feeling of accomplishment. And I desired that. Desperately.

  I needed to work a job that didn’t shut down during the harsh Chicago winters like mine did. It was tough enough living on unemployment wages for four months every year when there were only two of us to support. With an infant, that was virtually impossible. Devin was born on November 11th, 1992, and I’d be laid off by Thanksgiving two weeks later.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out I could supplement my unemployment checks by importing and selling music on the side to my growing number of skinhead friends. White power music was extremely difficult to come by. Most people settled for third-generation audio dubs of whatever they could find. Record stores wouldn’t sell it, so you either had to trade tapes with your network of friends, or you had to order from Europe. Sometimes it would be weeks before your CD arrived and the customs taxes almost made it not worth the cost.

  I recognized that the opportunity to save money on shipping and taxes existed if I was able to place a larger order. So, I revived my relationship with Rock-O-Rama and bought a handful of titles at wholesale prices from them and marked up the prices a few dollars. I began peddling a variety of white power titles—old and new—so I always had something fresh to sell.

  Anyway I looked at it, this was a golden opportunity to seamlessly work on two of my commitments at once—I brought in an extra three hundred dollars a week for my family by selling music while I was laid off from my job, and I was able to keep promoting the white power message. For once, the two worlds seemed to blend together nicely.

  In the spring of 1993, HBO aired Skinheads USA: Soldiers of the Race War, a documentary about white power skinheads living in the South. The film opened with a scene showing my band Final Solution performing live during a celebration commemorating Hitler’s birthday at the Aryan Youth Front compound in Alabama, a mountainous plot of land owned and run by an older neo-Nazi guy named Will Manfredi, whom I’d never met. I figured it would be incredible exposure for the movement, though the film ultimately focused on the negative aspects and depicted skinheads as a bunch of lunatics. Even if there was an element of truth in that, it certainly didn’t describe the scene as a whole. Did it?

  I’d gotten the band back together for one last show and drove down to play the concert on two days’ notice. The Aryan Youth Front, which Manfredi ran, had a large membership base of militant skins that loved to party, and that meant a good crowd for Final Solution’s farewell concert. Skinheads from all over the United States were set to travel to the fest, and we’d been asked to perform at the last minute when it dawned on the organizers that there wasn’t enough planned in the way of entertainment. I didn’t hesitate. Rounded up the guys for our last hurrah, packed my Chevy truck with our equipment, and we headed down to Birmingham.

  Upon arriving at the compound, we set up our equipment on the only piece of flat land that existed on the property—a small strip of dirt next to the lingering stench of an overflowing outhouse, during the peak of an Alabama heat wave—and ran through a rousing musical set that included both Final Solution and WAY favorites. The temperatures were stifling, almost unbearable, but the crowd loved it. I have to admit it was fun getting behind the microphone one last time.

  After we finished performing, curious to know why the fellow whose property we were playing on was not in attendance, I asked when we’d get to talk to Manfredi. I was eager to meet the man who’d built such a large skinhead following and ask him if he’d have any interest in a bulk purchase for his crew of some of the CDs I’d been importing. I was promptly informed by a skinny, red-haired boy who lived on the property that “that asshole” Manfredi wouldn’t be attending because he had been arrested for illegal weapons charges the night before and was being held for further questioning in several cases involving sexual indecency and forced sodomy on a minor.

  “Excuse me. What the fuck did you just say?”

  “Yup,” said the freckled teenager, “Will’s been molesting most of us and we finally turned him in.”

  Jesus Christ.

  Turns out that dozens of underage boys—many of them disenchanted runaways—had been living with Manfredi on the compound. He gave them food, water, and shelter, and in exchange, they provided sex. The story I was told was that after he rescued these boys from a life on the streets and indoctrinated them over time to worship him, turning them into burgeoning skinheads, he’d sexually abuse these kids and then threaten to expose them as homosexuals if they said a word.

  Had I known about this sick bastard before the band was asked to come down and perform, I would have not-so-kindly told him to eat shit and die, while exposing him to the rest of the movement as a child molesting scumbag. Now that I’d found out, I just wanted to shove one of his illegal guns up his ass and pull the trigger. More than happy to watch him disintegrate into bloody vapor. Manfredi didn’t know how fortunate he’d been, being in that holding cell instead of at the concert. Had he been there when I found out, he would not have made it off his own mountain alive.

  By now Lisa had begun pressuring me heavily about my lingering involvement with the movement. She’d always been afraid for me, but now she was also feeling underappreciated. My responsibilities as a leader were taking time away from her and from our son.

  She was right. Despite my efforts to keep my life with Lisa apart from my skinhead activities, the two worlds were colliding. The first incid
ent happened not long into the marriage.

  Again I’d been arrested when I was named as party to a fight I hadn’t been involved in. I was driving some skinheads visiting from Milwaukee to get some late-night food when they started a ruckus in the restaurant with a few inebriated jocks. When the stealthy undercover cops who’d been tailing us from my house to the restaurant showed up with flashing lights and guns drawn, they all fled and I was left holding the bag. Literally. A take-out bag carrying my dinner, a foot-long pastrami sub and some butter and garlic French fries.

  Luckily, the prosecutor couldn’t prove I’d physically assaulted anyone, so I was only found guilty of Mob Action and Disorderly Conduct instead of Assault and Battery. I was placed on house arrest for thirty days. Had the Pakistani storeowner not testified on my behalf that I wasn’t party to the fight, it would have meant certain jail time. Again, my prejudices collided with reason.

  At the police station, the cops took away my food and for two hours they pressured me to give up the names of the others involved, in return for dropping the remaining charges. I had no interest in cooperating with them. I was pissed at the Milwaukee guys for coming into my town and starting trouble that I was left to clean up, but I was no rat.

  A second incident that had understandably freaked Lisa out happened when Devin was five months old. I’d been tipped off by one of our double agents that a rival anti-racist gang was planning to detonate a pipe bomb on our home on the anniversary of their founding. I rushed home from work, sent Lisa and Devin to her mother’s house where they’d be safe, and rounded up six of my most loyal associates. We stood watch all night with loaded rifles and shotguns pointed out of the windows, ready for someone to approach in the darkness.

  Around midnight, we saw a figure appear from the shadows. Instantly, we turned our guns on him. My finger lay poised on the hair trigger of my AK-47, waiting to squeeze it.