David Duke's Godson Now Opposes White Nationalism Thanks to a Jewish Community | Amaryllis Fox

David Duke's Godson Now Opposes White Nationalism Thanks to a Jewish Community

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As a teenager, Derek Black was the webmaster for Stormfront, the Internet's most prominent message board for white nationalists. The reason? His father created the site and needed technical assistance. As a result, Derek was indoctrinated to hate non-whites. Derek became so bonded to the white nationalist community that he became the godson of David Duke, outspoken racist and founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. But Derek escaped that world thanks to an unlikely ally: a Jewish community that consistently invited him to Shabbat. Derek came to realize that the hatred he'd been taught was a lie. The lesson, says former CIA clandestine operator Amaryllis Fox, is that counter-terrorism tactics regularly used abroad against enemies of the United States, i.e. exposing them to the truth, can be used effectively against its own internal enemies.

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AMARYLLIS FOX:

Amaryllis Fox is a Former CIA Clandestine Service Officer, writer, television host and peace activist. Before attending university, she traveled to the Thai-Burmese border to volunteer in the Mai Laa refugee camp and worked with the Burmese democracy movement and eventually interviewing Aung San Suu Kyi for the BBC, which landed her a brief stint in Burmese prison at the age of 18, but also resulted in the first radio broadcast from Suu Kyi in almost a year.

In 2002, after extensive field work in East Timor and Bosnia, Amaryllis graduated from Oxford with an honors degree and started graduate work in international security at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. There she developed an algorithm to predict terrorist activity under thesis advisor Dan Byman, a leading thinker on terrorism and US security policy. Asked by the University's CIA Officer in Residence, Dallas Jones, to share the algorithm with the Agency, she began work as a political and terrorism analyst for SE Asia, commuting between Langley and Georgetown to finish her degree with honors. Following graduation, she moved into CIA's Directorate of Operations and deployed as a Clandestine Service officer, focused on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. She served in 16 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, before leaving government service in 2010.

Following her CIA career in the field, Amaryllis has used her coding abilities and international experience to build projects in support of international development and has covered current events and offered analysis for CNN, National Geographic, al Jazeera, BBC, and other global news outlets. She speaks at events and universities around the world on the topic of peacemaking and her videos about dialogue and nonviolence have been viewed over 120 million times online. She is the co-host of the History Channel series American Ripper and lives in San Francisco, CA, with her daughter Zoë.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Because of my work in counter-terrorism I’ve seen so many of these lessons around identifying humanity in one another unfold overseas. And when I came back to the United States I was really interested as to whether those same lessons would apply in daily life here. Is it possible to find common humanity in one another domestically that would be just as shocking as finding common humanity with our adversaries was to me during the war on terror? And the answer is a resounding yes.

One of the examples that I really find moving and that really gives an idea of how powerful this can be in a community’s life is that of Derek Black.

And this is the story of a young man who grew up, a teenager with a father who was friends with David Duke, started Stormfront which is the first and still the largest neo-Nazi online community in the United States. And because even neo-Nazis need online help from their kids, when Derek was a teenager his dad looked to him to be the webmaster of this dark, hate-filled online community.

And so Derek who grew up 13, 14, 15 years old being the webmaster, being the moderator for discussions of hate online. And eventually having his own podcast that went out nationwide to this community of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

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