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April 4, 1994 - Bill Cooper
48:48
Floyd Cochran (On Satellite Only)
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Time Text
...
Stay for close to 20 years.
Then in 1990, after a divorce, he moved to the Idaho compound of the racist anti-Semitic group Aryan Nation.
He became an international spokesperson and recruiter.
In 1992, he organized the Aryan Nations Youth Fest.
But later that year, he left the group.
Now he's speaking against hate groups, sharing his inside knowledge about how white supremacist groups operate.
I asked him why, as a long-term neo-Nazi, he decided to leave Aryan Nations two years ago.
He told me about the turning point.
I had been told by the leadership, the people above me at Early Nations, when they found out that my son was born with a cleft palate and a cleft lip, that he was a genetic defect and that he would have to be euthanized, which is a polite word for murdered or killed, because he was a genetic defect.
And I want to tell you, Terry, or your listeners, that in that very instance, I stopped being racist.
It took me two months from that point.
To build up the courage to leave the compound and also to examine, is this what I want to do?
But I couldn't get beyond that stumbling block.
Were there other things that were giving you doubts about Arianation?
Not serious doubts.
I mean, those days, like any other individual running in, be it work, be it play, be it whatever, you have those doubts.
But they don't stay very long because they're fleeting or whatever.
So I never seriously questioned what I was doing.
I never seriously doubted what I was doing.
But after that was said about my son and I had time to reflect, think, examine how I felt, I couldn't get past that wall that what was said about my son was wrong, but then how was I right for me to say the same thing about people who were born different than I was because of their skin color, because of their faith, for that being hypocritical.
And again, I don't want to convey to the listeners that getting over racist ideas and political thoughts and organized racism is something that a person does in 48 hours or 24 hours.
It's been a year and a half now and yet I still struggle with racist ideas.
I still struggle with sexism but unlike what I was doing in the past I confront it.
I confront it by the people that I associate with today.
I confront it internally not hiding behind something.
The group that you were a member of and national spokesperson for, Darien Nation, what separates Darien Nation from other organized racist groups?
What's their focus?
Well, for instance, the Klan wears a white sheet and Darien Nation's a warm blue shirt.
There's really no difference.
Both are becoming part of the Christian identity network.
And it's the Christian identity that people in this country really need to start concerning themselves with.
The Christian identity is the name of a religious movement.
Right.
It is the religion that the racists have developed.
It gave me a higher justification for my hatred.
It also imbued me and other people to go out and commit crimes in the name of God.
If people would like to think, well, this is just offbeat religion, you don't have to worry about it.
This is a religion that teaches that white people are the sons of God, and that it is their duty to exterminate Jewish people and people of color.
And again, it's more than just sitting around and talking about these things and reading the Bible.
I'll point out that since 1982, almost 20 people have been shot and killed because of Christian identity believers.
Numerous crimes have happened.
Armored car robberies, the shooting death of Alan Byrd, the Jewish talk show host, bombings of synagogues, churches, Catholic priests, attempted bombings of NAACP buildings, shootouts with law enforcement officials.
These are all the things that are associated with Christian identity.
How large would you say the Christian Identity Movement is?
About 60,000 people.
Is there a founder of that movement?
Well, there would be many people who would be considered a founder.
Dr. Swift, a former Ku Klux Klan rifle instructor who is now dead, pretty much is considered a founder.
Christian Identity, like any other religion, organized religion, has these two separate factions.
Both factions teach racism.
This is how they approach that racism.
One faction teaches that God created everybody but the biblical commandments in the Bible, or it's the white people and white people only, and God will deal with his enemies when he returns.
Two-seed line Christian identity teaches that as a white person you are commanded to go out and to kill Jewish people, black people, today, here on earth and in the heavens.
Also, two-seed line Christian identity teaches that Adolf Hitler was a biblical prophet of God.
I mean, I would use the Bible to show that Hitler was a biblical prophet.
You will find swastikas, you will find all the Nazi paraphernalia that is associated with Nazis as Christian identity compounds.
This segment of Christian identity that preaches killing Jews and people of color, you call this the two-seed line.
What does two-seed mean?
It comes from the biblical passage in the Bible of Genesis 3.15 where God told Adam, I will put enmity between your seed and my seed, your seed being the seed of man.
To fully explain I'd have to back up a little bit and almost give you the identity doctrine.
But identity teaches that Eve, instead of eating an apple, that she had sex with Satan.
That that was the forbidden fruit.
And as a result produced Cain.
And Cain is considered the father of all Jews.
And Satan, the soul of the grandfather, whatever, using selected biblical passages to reinforce that.
So this is what would make all Jews the children of Satan?
Yes, and that is why this talk is Christian identity compounds around the country and at churches.
There are 300 identity churches in the country.
There's an identity college in Grants Pass, Oregon.
There are numerous compounds, Pennsylvania, Utah.
Idaho?
Oklahoma?
I think the goal of Aryan Nation is to create a separate nation.
Within, yes.
For white... Yes, we would take that as it's called a territorial imperative and you want to take the five states of the Pacific Northwest and turn them into an all-white country as a starting point.
It certainly was not the cure-all or that was the final answer or whatever.
The final answer is Closely equated to the final solution that was implemented in Nazi Germany, and that was exterminating people based on their race, based on their faith, based on if they were genetic defects or not.
You had no problem when you were a member with the idea of exterminating people?
No, no.
At Aryan Nations, you can purchase literature that denies the Holocaust, but you can also purchase materials that prove, or show for the Aryans anyway, that Hera was just doing God's work.
I see the remarkable lack of empathy To think that extermination would be okay and that some people aren't really people.
Yeah, there's the whole crux is when you no longer consider someone to be a person.
Then that person is viable or open to any type of humiliation and or death.
The other thing is when you are having constant viable indoctrinations to go out and kill people.
It's a thing to do, or it's done in the name of God.
I mean, I can think of a Bible verse that was used repeatedly to justify killing.
What was that?
It's in the book of Jeremiah, the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, I believe it's chapter 50, verse 21.
And it's, Thou art thy Bible, acts and weapons of the Lord, with thee we will break into pieces the nations and the kingdom of the world.
And so, there then was that biblical justification.
In Luke, it says, If you do not own a sword, so your foe can buy one.
Well, today that is an M16.
So again, there is biblical justification to hate people.
You can hate anyone down through the ages.
We've used the Bible to justify our hatred in the ranks of social agenda.
You just joined us.
My guest is Floyd Cochran.
He's a former national spokesman and youth recruiter of the white diplomacist group Aryan Nation.
He left that group about a year and a half ago and is now speaking nationally against organized hate and racist groups.
What inspired you to actually move to the Aryan Nation compound?
Well, a bunch of events kind of came together.
The fact that in 1889 I became divorced, just sort of, I'm no longer married, I no longer, I mean, I had children, but there was my ex-wife.
The reason I picked the Aryan Nations, let's say, versus the Klan, was the fact that the Aryan Nations owned official property.
they had a definitive idea about the borders.
They were going to build this country and mom was going to stay home and dad was going
to work and there was going to be small farms and businesses.
For a person who was very unstable in their own personal life, here is stability.
I grew up in foster homes all over the state of New York.
Here was something very stable.
I had a failed marriage.
Here was something very stable.
So not only with myself but with lots of young people that is in their collection.
And within the racist movement, that has not gone unnoticed among the younger people.
That is a propaganda technique.
That is a tool to recruit other young people.
Creating a family for them.
Creating a family, giving you self-esteem, giving you a uniform, giving you a title, giving you God.
You know, it's a very powerful inducement, especially when you're 18 years old.
Can you describe something about what the compound is like and what living there is like?
Well, the compound that I live down in North Idaho is the National Headquarters for four area nations, and it was, that particular compound was 20 acres of land, it had a bunkhouse, it had a guard tower, it had a guard shack, and it does have a place of worship.
Showers, facilities, things of that nature.
Places for people that bring their tents and their camping equipment and things.
Do you live in a tent?
No, but I had a small camper at the time because I was an officer.
It was allotted to me.
In the spring is the annual Hitler Youth Festival.
So upwards of 150 young people would show up from around the country and Canada to be indoctrinated, to learn how to hate people based on the Bible.
To practice martial arts training that women would have separate courses in and child rearing.
I think an area that we haven't covered that I would very much like to cover and it's a relatively new area of the racist movement.
Very few people have taken a look at it.
Now there's a number of young women entering the racist movement today in record numbers.
Why is that?
In the past people women would join with their husbands or their boyfriends Today the women are not only joining, but some of them have even formed their own organizations.
The Aryan Women's League, for instance.
Lots of reasons.
I noticed that the overwhelming majority of women came from single-parent homes, where there was a lack of authority or structure.
And that plays a big role in the developing of a young person.
The other was pushing those buttons.
When I would go and talk with people, when I would go and try to recruit people, If it was a young lady, I would talk about in an Aryan society, a man will take care of his children.
If you're a single mom, that's a powerful thing.
In an Aryan society, dad's going to work and you're going to be put on a pedestal.
There are still millions of people who have that traditional idea of mom and dad.
The Aryans have just added the racial context to it.
That's something we have to start examining because women, by their very nature and very fact, Bring stability and infrastructure to the racist movement that it never had before.
Infrastructure, the women have developed programs to, if a white supremacist is arrested, the women send clothes and birthday cards and money to the kids.
They take up that collection.
The women are in much more contact with one another from various organizations than the men are.
Women are a great recruiting technique.
I would use attractive women to stand in front of the camera.
Because again it's a great recruiting technique.
Also women.
Recruiting for men and women.
Because for men it's become a way to like meet cheeks or something.
Well much like we sell cars with women.
I mean is there any correlation between a woman in a bikini and a new car?
Other than the fact that the woman in the bikini helps sell the car a little bit faster.
So again in terms of selling and propaganda techniques it's still the same.
I'm wondering if there was an initiation that you had to go through?
Or if your loyalty was tested in any way before you were allowed to live there?
In various ways.
Not as much as far as being allowed to live there.
First of all because of the paranoia throughout the racist movement.
Everyone was watching you all the time.
It didn't matter how long you'd been there.
They were always watching you.
The other thing was your loyalty wasn't tested so much, like they say, as you do this and this will prove that you're loyal.
What was tested more was your mental and ATTLE.
I was given different jobs to do and then watched Ella Hammond.
At first it was as simple as mowing the lawn and chopping wood.
Then it was doing guard duty.
And then it was being put in charge of people who were mowing the lawn and chopping wood.
And then at the first time that Idaho celebrated Dr. King's holiday, in January of 1991, I was put in charge of seven skinheads to go down and attend the Martin Luther King celebrations.
And that turned out, as far as the Aryans were concerned, so well that I was appointed to propaganda.
Now what was that successful about?
Well, I'm still trying to debate, other than the fact that we walked into the place and sat down, and it totally disrupted everything.
They wouldn't let the people out of the room when we left.
The next day when I picked up the newspaper I had 14 paragraphs covering Dr. King's holiday.
I had 11 of them.
Just the fact that I was showing up there and I kept everything, the people that were with me under control and so forth.
I got very favorable press.
Favorable press in that the newspapers reported I was personable.
That I was educated, that I was kind of fun to be around.
Those type of things gave me all kinds of credibility within the community.
Was all press seen as good press because it was a sign of your power?
No.
Well, for myself it was.
Instinctively, most races were referred to the press as being a Jewish confold, an approach that was very hostile.
Being a person who was raised on television and watching people sell whatever it was they wanted to sell on TV and radio, I realized that the camera has replaced the pen as being which one is the mightier.
That if I smiled when I gave reporters coffee notes when they come to visit and I asked them about their family, that they were one much more relaxed around me.
The questions weren't quite so hard.
What they didn't realize was I had spent hours rehearsing in front of the camera over and over again.
And that in two interviews I realized the reporters were going to ask basically the same 25 questions.
So the responses would seem to be spontaneous.
And then again I went from milking cows in upstate New York and then in 1991 in the Newsweek magazine because I was a pretty good spokesman.
I didn't allow myself to be trapped in a situation.
I didn't show racial epitaphs.
That came across as the appearance of a reasonable person.
My guest is Floyd Cochran, a former spokesperson and recruiter for the white supremacist group Aryan Nation.
More after this break.
This is fresh air.
That's a former white supremacist, Floyd Cochran.
Thank you.
I want to talk with you more about your recruiting techniques.
You were recruiting young people for Aryan Nation.
Tell us a little bit about what you do.
Would you go to, I don't know, a college campus or an area where there are young people and talk very explicitly about how Jews were the offspring of the devil, blacks are mud people?
What language would you use?
It would all depend on the circumstances.
For instance, I went to Oregon to talk about the spotted owl issue.
On surface, the spotted owl issue didn't appear to be a racial issue, but I made it one.
By pointing out that this was just another example of a government set-aside program.
Setting aside the white water in favor of a bird.
Another affirmative action program.
Another government set-aside program.
And then from there, I had the whole field to myself.
Lots of times, if I went into a community, first of all, I would look to media.
Because media was my most successful ally I had in recruiting people.
Even if it was bad media, it was still media nonetheless.
The other was I would just sit and listen to young people.
First of all I wasn't interested in people over the age of 40.
And people in the racist movement aren't interested in recruiting people over the age of 40.
Why not?
Well first of all you don't have that youthful ambition, that rustle rinse, that idealism.
You're somewhat cynical.
You have children.
You're set in your ways.
You've got a job.
Also, it's not so easy to mold your mind when you're 40 years old.
But a 14 to 25 year old kid, you can do all kinds of things.
And the racist movement has shown that in the last 20 years.
The last 10 years.
So again, I would sit and listen to what the young people had to say.
Were they having problems at home?
Were they having problems at school?
And maybe work on that.
If it was, if I noticed it was more of a religious type thing, then I would pull out the Bible.
Or I'd ask them, let's use your Bible.
because Christian identity is a faith that uses the same Bible we find in any Protestant
church.
Not a Bible that the Aryans grew up or the Klansmen.
It's just the interpretation.
When I went to Seattle for instance I went and looked at the demographics and saw that
Seattle had a large gay and lesbian population.
And that's just the target set.
When I was in California it was illegal Mexicans.
When I was in Tennessee it was African Americans.
So again it required some studying on my part from a propaganda point of view.
Lots of times I would use what I had perceived to be my enemies, their own words against
them.
For instance the head of the Northwest Coalition against Molesis harassment had said that all
racists were transparent.
If you hold them up to the light you can see that.
I submitted an application to join the Human Rights Commission as a racist.
And I used his very words.
The Human Rights Commission talks about two sides of the issue, fairness and so forth,
democracy.
Well, we'll see if those are transparent words.
Again, playing word games.
How much would you talk explicitly about hate, about how blacks and Jews aren't human?
In public settings, would you use those words?
Or did you find kind of euphemism?
Not euphemism.
Crime and welfare.
I talk about crime and welfare.
Veil in the media.
Is that saying who they is?
Until the person came back for a second visit.
It was very explicit.
But for an opening line or whatever I would just try to be myself.
If a young person showed a lot of interest in the center of the compound, that person was made the focus of everything for two weeks.
We would tell them that we loved them.
We would give them hugs.
We'd give them uniform.
We'd give them some responsibilities.
The fact that I was an adult, even though that young people may not like to admit it, there's still that desire to please adults.
I think the biggest thing, probably one of the most successful, was we're family.
We work together and we play together.
But I think what the young people need to know is that once they get arrested, the adult leadership disappears.
And I can point to numerous incidences where young people have committed crimes thinking that they were going to please the adult leadership.
And the adult leadership simply said, we don't know you.
I want to get back to the language that you'd use when recruiting people.
What are some of the other, like, code words?
Zog, which is Zionist, which is the euphemism in the racist meaning for Zionist occupational government.
The belief that the Jewish people control the government.
Within Christian identity, not referring to God as, let's say, Jehovah, but referring to Him as Yahweh.
Again, it's a different word that people aren't used to.
We've talked about crime and welfare.
We've talked about drugs a lot.
And again, in more of a racial context.
There are very few racists today who will stand in a street corner and say, let's go out and kill people.
Because first of all, you'd be put in jail for it.
Second of all, realizing that propaganda effect, that doesn't work.
And again, I said, what makes the race more dangerous?
Because they have realized these things and they're becoming slicker.
In public I would tell people that I was a white separatist.
Sounded much softer on the ears, much more palatable, kind of showed different ideas.
But on the compound we've left all that.
We talked explicitly about killing people.
I sent in a conversation talking about what to do when a dead body falls out of an oven.
You pick it up and put it back in your shelf, or you go find someone to do it for you.
I mean, those were the kind of conversations.
We talked about hanging filthy lying politicians and preachers.
We talked about killing gay and lesbian people.
But in public, no.
With the exception of gay and lesbian people.
Was it easier to get away with it?
Oh, no.
The easier society is Appreciated, but I don't know if appreciated is the right word.
To give you an example, if I walked outside this door here in Philadelphia, and I made anti-black remarks, I'd have to duck.
The politicians would attack me, the clergy would attack me, people walking down the street would attack me.
I'd go out here and say homophobic remarks, and I would automatically have jumped into the 35-40% of the population will agree with what I'm saying about gay and lesbian people.
Floyd Cochran is a former spokesperson and recruiter for the white supremacist group Aryan Nation.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Floyd Cochran will be back with us in the second part of our show.
I remember I once interviewed a former Klansman who had gotten involved in politics, and when I asked him if he thought of himself as a racist, he said, well, no, you know, that he'd never really exactly been a racist, and the Klan isn't really a racist group, and I was wondering, like, when you If somebody, a reporter or anybody outside, are you a racist?
How would you respond to that?
That I was a racialist.
That I was proud of my heritage and culture and wanted to maintain it.
And then I would move to another subject, not allowing the reporter the time to come up with another question or to think that one through.
Why couldn't you say, since it's so clearly a racist group, what would be the harm in admitting that you were racist?
Oh, I think I did by saying I am a racialist.
Still you're avoiding, you're avoiding, and then you're saying I have pride in my group as opposed to the hate of a group.
There are very few people in this country, very few people in this country who really, if they are haters, want to publicly admit that they hate.
It's not a human trait.
It's the same trait I hate.
And then that was one of the problems I had with Aryans, in that I was more of a positive and they were negative.
And racism doesn't thrive in a positive atmosphere for very long.
But I was looking at angles of What can we do for the population, not what we are against?
What would you gain by electing an Aryan Nation official?
Not, this is what I'm against, this is what I'm for.
And again, it's just a simple switching of words.
You'd never say, when you were with Aryan Nation, you'd never say to a reporter or to even a recruit that, yes, I'm a racist.
No, no, not quite.
Well, if you were to recruit, and if I'm saying that in my uniform, it'd be very hard to.
Isn't it?
Yeah.
But again, there was I found with reporters, the ones I worked with anyway, and partially because of racism themselves, was that as long as I set up with a friendly smile and didn't threaten them as a person, they would report exactly what I said, word for word.
So it was up to me.
Maybe that's how I look at it.
And I was, I believe, fairly successful.
I was in the paper all the time, I don't know.
And what is funny, as a racist, I could come into a town and I'd be on the front page of the newspaper, or I'd be one of the top leading stories, So yeah, I travel all over the country, and it's page 3 and 4.
Again, because racism sells newspapers, racism sells TV advertising and things like that.
You've described yourself as a self-taught racist.
When did you start becoming a racist?
As a kid, I was always interested in history and politics.
I remember at the age of 10, I read DeRozan called The Third Reich.
Inside the Third Reich.
And you were like a hero to him.
Yeah, I was very fascinated.
I mean, he was this person that rose himself from the gutter, the flags, the marches, the parades.
I was very fascinated with that.
That, and coupled with what I was learning from society, from schools, from my parents, from foster homes, with really no one standing up and saying, no, that's wrong.
I mean, this was in the 60s, 70s.
An observation I would kind of like to point out, If you watch and read most of the things covering the young people in the racist movement today, you will see them all with a fascination for a uniform.
Be it skinheads, or the Klan, or Aryan Nations, or whatever.
That fascination with some type of uniform.
As an individual, I've intellectually continued to grow.
But on a very personal and emotional level, I stopped at about the age of 13.
And when you think about it, that's the age when young boys are into being, you start that development of being macho and playing with, you know, the board games or the guns and being fascinated with Rambo type of things.
But I saw numerous, just about everyone I ever met in the racist movement were on an emotional level or somewhere between the ages of 13 and 15.
You grew up in a lot of foster homes.
In upstate New York.
How did you end up in foster homes?
My parents put me in one when I was 10.
Well, it was my parents and the state.
Yeah, I was having problems.
I was running away a lot.
I was out in schools.
So, Denver was very bright.
I didn't get along with family members.
So, at the age of 10, I went into a foster home for myself.
In that regard, it was my brothers and sisters.
They all got to live at home.
I was the only one that went into a foster home.
And I got a big whatever.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there was nothing that my kid could do.
If he had a pen that I would say, just, here, you know, go away.
The only time I ever saw my parents after that was for a funeral or a wedding, you know.
Since you grew up knowing very few black engineers and not being close to them, where do stereotypes come from?
What made you...
I grew up in a farming community and the first thing that you hated in New York was New York City.
So for a wide variety of reasons.
And I would listen to people talk about all the welfare people in New York City.
All the crime being committed.
And every image I ever saw come across TV was a person of color.
George Bush validated everything I ever thought about people of color with the Willie Horton ad.
I'm going to play a little bit of that.
♪♪ ♪♪
♪♪ You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
Thank you.
Tonight we are airing a rebroadcast of National Public Radio's Fresh Air program, which aired on March 21, 1994.
You are hearing Terry Gross interviewing Floyd Cochran, the former spokesman and propagandist for the Aryan Nation and the American Alliance.
He was at the very top.
He was the person they sent to talk to the news media.
He was their official recruiter.
He knows all about their lies, their propaganda, who they really are, and what they're really promoting.
You heard it from his own lips, folks.
What you need to start paying attention to is the Christian identity movement.
They're not what they pretend to be.
And I had long suspected that, but was not sure until I heard it from somebody who knows, and not just Mr. Cochran.
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Don't forget yourself.
That's exactly, but no one has ever said that before.
Well, I'll take that back.
Three nights ago when I spoke at Colgate University, Uh, but I told them, I said, you know, for me one of the things that's most gratifying is the fact that here I am with no education and I can come here and talk to your political science classes, your religious and race and ethnic studies classes, your communications classes.
I meet with the smartest people you have on campus and realize that there isn't any difference between your intellect and mine and that I'm just as That was exactly one of them.
Because I was constantly told as a young person by my parents, by foster homes, by psychologists, because I was a foster kid, that one, I would never amount to anything.
Two, I wasn't very bright.
I can remember they tried to put me into an alternative school because I wasn't very smart.
I wasn't disciplined.
I mean, I could sit down.
I would, for instance, from ninth grade until I got out of high school, I never took any notes.
But they couldn't understand why I got 90s untouched, because if I heard it, saw it, or watched it, it was there.
I didn't do homework, I didn't, you know, but it was that discipline.
But there was that feeling of somehow I was less than educated, somehow I was dumb.
And I used to play that all the time in talking with reporters, you know.
Well, I'm just a racist, what would you expect?
I was invited to go and speak to colleges as a racist.
And again, they weren't expecting much.
That automatically gave me the advantage.
But this must have been one of the real appeals to you of actually remaining in RIA.
Yeah, and picking up a newspaper and reading that I'm far more dangerous because I was educated and articulate.
I was far more dangerous in the adverse plans than because I was educated and articulate.
I did all kinds of things.
All kinds of things.
And almost importantly, even driving me more insane.
You really knew how to play the media when you were a spokesperson with RIA Nation.
And of course you can imagine there's a part of me wondering now if you really know how to play me.
The only reason, a year and a half ago I could understand that.
I think I've done a lot of things in the last year and a half.
The only thing I can do is come up, and honestly I've testified at congresses, About what?
In a test like Montana State Senate to include sexual orientation, the malicious harassment law, the renewal of the sodomy law.
I help to program a scheme head here in Philadelphia.
I've worked with umpteen law enforcement agencies, numerous.
I go into high schools.
I go into jails.
I go into churches and synagogues.
In terms of getting paid or anything, the only place I get paid is colleges.
Everything else comes out of, I use that college money to do all these other things.
I also am writing materials that are sent out free of charge to people.
Do you face a lot of skepticism?
Not so much now.
But early on?
Yes.
Because, boy, what proof did I have?
Right.
You know, and the thing is, I wasn't, I'm not standing up and saying to people, I changed because I had a born again experience.
It would be so easy to do that.
Right.
Instead of saying, I've changed because I'm a Christian now.
And people would, you know, I wouldn't have to really come up with any proof.
And I know enough of the Bible that I could convince them.
I wasn't under arrest, so I didn't have a jailhouse conversion.
I lost a rising star in the racist movement and walked off.
People don't understand that.
That just isn't what people want to prove.
But that builds up a good, solid track record.
In fact, we're getting ready to start an organization for parents whose children have become racist.
That's probably within the next month, April 15th, of parents.
Because there's no place to turn.
If you're 18 years old and want to leave the racist movement, where are you going to go?
You're going to give up your friends and you're going to go live in a tent?
No.
Not when you're 18.
If your child gets involved with a racist group, where are you going to feel as a parent?
I've worked with hundreds of parents across the country who don't know what to do.
I mean, they're totally devastated at this plot.
They didn't raise their children to be Nazis.
They didn't raise their kid to become a skinhead, go join a group.
We'll cut off yourself and the rest of your family.
So what do you want to do with your life in the future now?
I mean it's been a couple of years since you left.
Do you have like political or professional ambitions?
Someday I'll be milking cows again.
You know I say that well I'd like to go to school because if I have found out anything that one I can talk and the other one is I like it's a semblance of teaching when they come and speak to your class or communicate with your class or that's fairly good.
Do you feel you have to protect yourself against people who might want to... Kill me?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I've got a red Doberman.
I've met a point of him and I being on some national TV shows.
When I'm at home I don't sleep too far from a gun.
I brought somebody with me when I came here.
Bodyguard somebody?
Well not so much a bodyguard but just to have somebody with me.
I'm getting all kinds of numerous threats and so forth.
So I've got to be careful.
I'm a human.
I don't let it get to me because paranoia would drive me crazy.
I try to make a joke out of it or something.
But I'm sure the rest of us know where I live.
I change my phone number about every three months but I've had the same address.
And I write articles on women, hate groups, how hate groups recruit young people.
Things like that that is mailed out.
So that's pretty well known.
My guest is former white supremacist Floyd Cochran.
More in a minute.
This is Fresh Air.
On March 31st, the last American troops are scheduled to leave Somalia.
I'm Marty Moskowitz inviting you to join Radio Times tomorrow at 10 to review America's military involvement in that country's political and social problems.
Then at 11 o'clock, the growing interest in the martial arts.
Tonight at 9 o'clock, 91FM will present a special edition of Charlie Rose, an interview not heard on TV12, as well as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Mideast Peace.
Philadelphia.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin tonight on a special edition of Charlie Rose on WH5-IFM, Philadelphia.
Back with Floyd Cochran, former spokesperson and recruiter for the white supremacist group Aryan Nation.
I have another recruiting question.
It seems to me that some of the people who want to join organized hate groups would be kind of nuts.
Some of the potential recruits might be a little on the psychotic side.
Oh, very much.
And out of your control after you recruited them.
Very much.
This used to be nightmares for several reasons.
First of all, because I made myself an outcast by my choice in society.
People who would be an outcast in most societies, be it criminally minded or mentally or whatever, most people need a place to hang out.
So they go to the extremist parties, both left and right, isn't it?
Something spirically up-and-down of the extreme right.
And those people have that feeling of wanting to do something to prove themselves of getting fired up because they are mentally unstable.
What do you want to commit a crime?
And I would spend all this time, let's say, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, working, building up a lot of credibility and stuff.
And then somebody would go, who I had never seen before and was only safe for two weeks and go away, was going to let me throw a rock through the window or whatever, or be downtown and attack a Jewish person or a black person or whatever.
And then everything I'd worked on would have been gone.
So yes, there are the psychotic.
What would you do with them?
How would you handle them?
They would simply leave.
Well, when I say leave... You'd get rid of them?
Yeah.
You'd take them downtown, take them to the bus station, go away.
Go join someone else or go do whatever it is you do.
I have one last question for you.
Being in any cult group or organized hate group, it gives you a sense of certainty.
You know what you believe in.
You know what's right and what's wrong.
You know who the good people are and who the evil people are and how you're going to do away with evil.
Yeah.
You're out of that now and it kind of leaves you in this more ambiguous world.
Like a vacuum sometimes.
Yeah, so how have you been dealing with the ambiguity of not having this the physiology that you can absolutely believe in?
Knowing that what I'm doing is right and believing what I'm doing now is right.
I have times where I struggle with it.
there were times a couple months ago a combination of a lot of pressure and
different things of wondering am what I'm doing is it making any good is it making sense or am I
just a little sideshow type of thing. So I received a bunch of letters from high school kids in
Pittsburgh who who liked what they told me that some of the things I told them helped motivate
them to fight against racism. No one ever moved them over there. Yeah I'm like anyone else had
those days and I remember it's really all worth this kind of thing because it's more than just
giving some talks.
I go and do these talks.
Well, again, I spoke to Colby.
The talk lasts 16 and a half hours.
I mean, I talk for an hour.
The rest of the time is questions.
When you answer questions from 200 people that run the gauntlet of everything, who I've slept with, to let's talk about the most abstract idea in political science, it really, you might really need this.
Because I don't have much of a personal life.
It's hard to find.
I'm divorced.
It's hard to find friends because you're afraid that someone's going to come kill me.
Why?
I'm very sure it is.
It's hard to find a date because of almost that same factor.
First of all, the baggage is, I'm a racist, this guy must be, you know, he's going to beat me or do this or whatever.
But the other thing is, someone's going to come shoot you, kill you or whatever.
So in terms of having a personal life, I don't.
This is my personal life.
Uh, traveling and talking.
It's very easy for me to talk to 300 people or 400 people or 800 people than it is to talk one-on-one, two-on-one.
In fact, it's much easier for me when you talk, because this thing is sitting in front of us.
It's in the microphone.
Right.
Well, thank you a lot for talking with us.
Thanks for having me here.
I hope it was a good time.
Floyd Cochran is a former spokesperson for the white supremacist group Aryan Nations.
Fresh Air's senior producers Danny Miller, our engineers this week are Roger Voblitis,
Joyce Lieberman and Chris Fraley.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ you
Well, folks, that's it for the Hour of the Times tonight.
I hope you learned something.
Sorry that it's a short program, but everything just got turned around and upside down because of the time mix-up tonight.
So we'll see you again tomorrow night, one hour earlier.
9 p.m.
Arizona time, and you're going to have to calculate the time in your part of the world on your own.
Good night, folks, and God bless you all.
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