GARRET WAS BORN IN 1975 as Achim Schmid in Mosbach, Germany, to a marriage that was already breaking apart. When he was 8, his father died of lung cancer. His mother, who never remarried, would grab a bottle of alcohol after work and lock herself in her room all night. Given his family’s reputation, other children’s parents didn’t allow them to play with Garret. Kids bullied him in school. Then one day, he heard schoolmates laughing over anti-Semitic jokes, and he began dropping those jokes too, hoping to score laughs.
In post-war Germany, the mere mention of Hitler or national pride drew giggles and gasps. Garret liked that attention. By age 13, people were calling him “the Nazi kid,” but anything was better than being the bullied kid: “Suddenly, I had an identity. I was not a nobody anymore.”
As a young teenager, Garret fell in love with far-right skinhead bands that sang about nationalism and feeling misunderstood and that raged against authority, Jews, blacks, and immigrants. At 19, he began performing in a skinhead band that traveled across Europe.
In 1998, Garret joined a Klan group in Germany and later opened his own chapter. The age of the internet was also booming. Garret met American Klansmen online who identified as Christians, and he peppered them with questions: How can you be anti-Semitic yet pray to Jesus, a Jew? They said Jesus was not Jewish, but white. They claimed that black people are “beasts of the field,” that Jesus was blond, that enslaving or exterminating nonwhites would hasten Christ’s second coming.
That sounded ridiculous to Garret, so he pored through the Bible and found the opposite: The Bible teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God. It talks about welcoming foreigners and treating them with empathy and justice. Jesus was kind and compassionate to the Samaritan woman, who was part of an ethnic group the Jews abhorred.
Garret began wondering: What if nothing made sense because his beliefs were wrong? What most people don’t realize is that “everyone in hate groups have doubts,” Garret said. But whenever he expressed doubts, other Klansmen shushed him: The Jew-controlled media’s tricking you. Satan’s deceiving you. “It’s like standing on quicksand,” Garret recalled. “The more you try to get out, the deeper you sink in.”
By then, police were raiding his house, digging for evidence of domestic terrorism and hate crimes. That spooked him. In 2002, he resigned as grand dragon of his Klan group and moved with his family 100 miles away to another town, where he rented the only affordable house available. Problem was, his landlord was a Muslim immigrant from Turkey. That man turned out to be Garret’s “someone.”
One night, the landlord invited him to dinner with his wife and two children. As a penny-strapped stranger in a new town, Garret felt forced to accept. His inner conflict exacerbated into a full-out internal warfare when the landlord’s wife placed a steaming bowl of Turkish fish soup before him. He had heard that rejecting these people’s food is a grave insult. But if he ate this soup—he was quite convinced that he might vomit before his hosts.
Finally, Garret blurted out, “I’m sorry. I don’t like fish soup.” And then he held his breath, but the landlord’s wife simply smiled and took the soup away. For the rest of the night, they were just as nice and gracious. Garret walked away that night in tears: “Everything I had expected did not happen. I felt so small and wrong.”
Garret had always thought his ideology was based on love: love for his race, his family, country, heritage, and culture. But the more he met people of other races and ethnicities, the more he realized how much he had lived in ignorant hate: “We went to bed with hate, we woke up with hate.”
That hate is all-consuming: It seeps into every part of that person’s life and identity. That’s why it’s so hard for some to separate themselves from their ideology—without it, who are they?
Comments
Cyborg3
Posted: Fri, 08/02/2019 12:33 amThe racists are those who keep poking race in our eyes! They regulate speech and if you say anything off color then you are a “RACIST”! How dare you point out immigrant crime problems - for you must be a RACIST! How dare you point out a rape crisis in Europe when the immigrants are of color! You are a RACIST! How dare you point to a nation that is a “hell hole” and call it such when the nation is predominantly black! You are a RACIST! How dare you make a judgment for you must be a RACIST! How dare you be white and not castigate yourself and volunteer to pay reparations! You must be a RACIST! How dare you not grovel in the dirt decrying your white privilege. You must be a RACIST! How dare you call out a black politician who has done little to actually resolve the rat problem and poverty issues in their district. You must be a RACIST! And on and on we could go!
Those who peddle racism looking for a racist boogie man behind every bush ARE the problem! Rather than letting go of the past, they seek to create a race problem for political gain! If they can create enough fear in minorities then they can create a solid voting block at the polls! Sadly, the multiculturalism doctrine on race is so well ingrained in our youth through the schools and universities, that even “conservatives” are falling for the dogma! The notion that racism is a serious problem today is one of the grandest con jobs ever sold!
Xion
Posted: Mon, 08/05/2019 02:35 pmExcellent article! It says that indoctrination and ignorance are always overcome by unexpected kindness and empathy. But what about truth?
The truth is that there is no such thing as a white race or black race or any other kind of race. The Bible says so. Modern science says so. Ask any anthropologist. And yet no politician or media or any one else ever mentions it.
White Supremecy isn't just a bad idealogy. It is a lie. An equally evil lie is repeated infinitely by our professors and politicians and press who call others racist day and night. When will someone in power tell the truth? When will we Christians start saying it out loud? There is only one race, the human race. The truth will set us free!
KeithT
Posted: Tue, 08/06/2019 08:26 pmXion, you're right. There is only one human race. The problem is that there are a whole lot of people who treat each other as if "we" are good and all others aren't, just because of color and other indicators historically associated with the idea of different races.
Cyborg3 - Ironically and sadly, your comment "sounded" like what these guys must have sounded like prior to their change of hearts. I think it is safe to say you aren't a man of "color." If you were, you would have many concrete personal experiences which would make it clear that racism did not stop just because slavery was abolished. Sinful human hearts did not stop just because of the 14th amendment. There is too much undeniable objective evidence supporting the reality that white people - sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively - make it harder for non-white ipeople to live in America.
Brendan Bossard
Posted: Tue, 08/06/2019 09:35 pmTo be fair, I can personally vouch for Cyborg3's good character.
KeithT
Posted: Tue, 08/06/2019 08:38 pmAnd to quote Marvin Olasky in his "Two Mass Murders," "We by nature are haters." People feel better about their hate when they have an excuse for it. So why should we be surprised that people use racial markers to help them find an object of their inate inclination to hate?
KeithT
Posted: Tue, 08/06/2019 11:28 pmI did not seek to impune his character. I was describing how his comment sounded. That's all.
Cyborg3
Posted: Mon, 09/09/2019 02:11 amIf you are saying that we cannot speak out against “race peddling” then I couldn’t disagree more! The left uses race as a bludgeoning tool against anyone who would oppose their ideology. If you fly a Betsy Ross flag, you are a racist. If you support keeping historical statues of men who owned slaves, then you are a racist. If you support Nationalism where you support your country, culture, and Western Civilization, then you are a racist. If you disagree that police treat blacks bad, you are a racist. If you agree that we need to control our borders, you are a racist! If you are a white person, then you are a racist. If you are a Republican then you are racist. They then use the argument that minorities should vote Democrat because the Republican Party is racist. It is the method to keep blacks and other minorities staying on the “plantation” of the Democratic Party. In essence they treat blacks and other minority groups as stupid - not able to think for themselves.
Brendan Bossard
Posted: Tue, 08/06/2019 09:36 pmMiss Lee skillfully proved that only the love that enables us to honor the image of God in our enemies heals this festering wound.
DCal3000
Posted: Fri, 08/09/2019 01:50 amThis article is both timely and good. Too often in our culture, we discuss topics related to race without being specific as to what we are talking about. Articles like these help to focus the discussion and steer it toward genuine Christianity, which stands firmly against white supremacists that try to twist Christian terminology for their own ends.
West Coast Gramma
Posted: Sat, 08/10/2019 12:35 amWow Sophia, awesome article about Formers. Thanks so much.
Cyborg3
Posted: Mon, 09/16/2019 09:25 pmKeithT, I think you missed my point. People are using the race issue for politics rather than real concern for other “races”. The number of actual white supremacists is minuscule compared to those who peddle race for politics - especially against Trump. I don’t support white supremacy for it is a sinful ideology not based on the Word nor science, but by NOT pointing out the fact that race is being used as a political club misses the real dangerous issue today - and plays into the liberal narrative. One example is the attack on Trump where he is falsely accused of being a racist! This attack is politically motivated not based on truth.
I am not all white and a few years ago a racist guy recognized my “color”. Sometimes my hearing is not the best because I have allergies. A stranger approached me at a fast food joint and it took me a moment to register what he was saying. I thought he was saying something funny as small talk so I laughed but then it registered that he was talking about “slitting my throat”. My response was probably the best I could give because he didn’t know what to make of me laughing when he is threatening to slit my throat! He must have thought I some tough ready for a fight.
KeithT, I don’t accept the notion that “white people” can’t understand minority persecution so they don’t have a right to speak out against “race peddling” for political gain. I am against white supremacy of any form where they say one race is inherently better than another. I also am against the notion that there are no (characteristic, moral, worship, etc) differences between the races, which if you engage in discussion of them that that makes you a racist in a derogatory sense (Titus 1:12).
Brendan: Thanks for your support of my character. I didn’t see these comments or I would have responded earlier!