MindSite News announces a live online panel on June 15: "Breaking Away from Hate"

? Former white supremacists, a deradicalization specialist, and a psychiatry professor discuss how to help get people out of violent hate groups

? Thursday June 15 | 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

? Register below

OAKLAND, Calif., June 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Reporter Laurie Udesky was in her early 20s when a neo-Nazi organization decided it wanted to march through her hometown, Skokie, a suburb of Chicago in Illinois where some 7,000 Holocaust survivors resided. She remembers a fiery meeting at her synagogue where an elderly Holocaust survivor jumped up out of his seat, shaking his fist as he shouted, "This time I will kill them!"

She wondered then what compelled people to join a hate group like the Nazis. Decades later, she found herself reporting on a critical question: What leads people to get involved in violent hate groups, and ? perhaps more importantly ? how can they be helped to get out?

Udesky explored this in her story, Breaking Away from Hate, recently published by MindSite News and republished by USA Today and Wisconsin Watch. Udesky's report profiled former white supremacists who have renounced hate and formed a movement that helps people extricate themselves from hate groups.

MindSite News, a nonprofit news organization devoted to mental health, invites you to participate in a panel discussion with anti-hate specialists on the psychology of hate and recovery on June 15, 2023, at 10 am PST /1 pm EST.  The panel will explore what attracts people to hate groups and strategies for extricating them.

Hate crimes in the U.S. have been rising for years and white supremacist organizations represent the biggest domestic terror threat, according to the FBI. Experts say the risk factors include mental health.

Register for this live conversation

The panelists will include:

- Arno Michaelis, former leader of the neo-Nazi Northern Hammerskins, who co-founded Life After Hate and works with Parents4Peace.

- Pardeep Kaleka, a deradicalization specialist at Parents4Peace and co-director of Not In Our Town whose father died in a Sikh temple massacre by a member of the Northern Hammerskins.

- Chris Buckley, an Army veteran and former leader in the Klan, now a peer mental health specialist for an anti-hate group.

- Stevan Weine, MD, a psychiatry professor and director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Illinois, who researches violent extremism.

SOURCE MindSite News