The founders of Life After Hate have braved threats from former “associates” to renounce their former lives as members of racist organizations and help other members change their minds and escape from hate groups. Those former lives?...

…Angela King, a swastika-tattooed, active member of a gang of Aryan supremacists, took part in the armed robbery of a store owned by Jews and was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to six years in prison where she was “adopted” by a group of Jamaican women. “When I was treated with kindness and compassion,” she says, “it was like being disarmed. I wasn’t prepared for that.”

…Anthony McAleer was a member of Aryan Nations, recruited prospective members, and managed a racist rock band. He owned numerous rapid-fire rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, ready for what he said would be an inevitable race war.

…Frankie Meeink was a skinhead leader, neo-Nazi recruiter, and member of a gang that regularly assaulted people. He ran his own cable-access TV show, “The Reich.” Arrested and convicted of kidnapping and assault, he spent several years in prison.

…Arno Michaelis was a founder of the largest skinhead group in the world and lead singer with the race-metal band, Centurion.

…Christian Picciolini joined the white supremacist movement when he was 14; he became the leader of the first U.S. neo-Nazi skinhead group.

…Sammy Rangel joined several gangs and was arrested and sent to prison for stealing a car. He came out of prison radicalized by racists he met there, and soon returned after an armed robbery conviction.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that the number of hate groups in the United States has doubled in the last decade; about 80 percent of these groups are white supremacists. And three-quarters of deadly extremist attacks are carried out by far-right groups. These groups are known to pursue and harass anyone who leaves and opposes them, following a change of heart.

What changed for these five reformed racists?

…While she was in prison, King was “adopted” by a group of Jamaican women. “When I was treated with kindness and compassion,” she says, “it was like being disarmed. I wasn’t prepared for that.”

…Picciolini became a father. This, he says, challenged his “notions of identity, community, and purpose.” He left the neo-Nazi group he’d been leading.

…McAleer became a parent and then a single parent. Loving his children transformed his way of thinking about the world and about himself. “I felt safe to open my heart and learn to love again,” he says. “I learned that to hold the ideology of separation or racism, you have to have a closed heart.”

…Meeink formed relationships in prison that up to that time had been unthinkable; he was befriended by men of color.

…Michaelis stepped out of his aryan bubble and was astonished by the kindness of people of color who urged him to rethink his life.

…Rangel participated in an in-prison drug rehabilitation program in which he had to talk about his life, a life that included being sexually abused by his mother and uncle when he was three and trying to hang himself when he was eight. He moved from self-pity and rage to remorse when a fellow inmate challenged him on his own failure to find a lost daughter.

Their new lives: King, Picciolini, McAleer, Meeink, Michaelis, and Rangel got together on a blog and then created a literary magazine to tell their stories. As Picciolini says, “We quickly started to realize that people from all around the country and all around the world had similar stories they wanted to share.”

That got them thinking about a huge further step, and in 2011 they formed Life After Hate, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to “inspire, educate, guide, and counsel” radicalized individuals.

Operating from their own experiences, the five co-founders have helped such individuals disengage from extremist movements. The number of requests for support coming in has increased from several per week to several per day.

“Everybody at Life After Hate is a former extremist, so we understand the [motivations] of why people join,” says Picciolini. "But, more importantly, we understand what it takes to get out of these groups." They travel around the country, they refer individuals for therapy and job training, they set up dialogs between former racists and members of groups who have been victimized by racists, they even provide—when possible—tattoo removal.

The Obama administration awarded Life After Hate a grant for operating costs. The Trump administration stopped the grant. The founders are determined to keep this crucial work going.