Former neo-Nazi Tom Leyden punctuated his Tuesday night speech with profanity and racial slurs — a tactic he said allowed the audience of about 150 students to understand his lifestyle during his 15 years as part of the white- supremacist movement.
“I will use words that will offend every one of you,” Leyden warned before beginning his speech in Coon Forum.
For two hours, Leyden described how white-supremacist and government-separatist movements in the United States have become a multimillion dollar industry that recruits young people from all walks of life through magazines, Web sites, music, video games and clothing.
“Not all racists are rednecks in pick-up trucks with baseball bats,” said Leyden, adding that one neo-Nazi recruiter he knew was a lawyer.
And he brought up a video game that is set in an urban slum and instructs children to “ethnically cleanse” the area that had a three month back-order at Christmas.
In the years after he joined the neo-Nazi movement at age 15, Leyden said at one point he had 29 tattoos of various Nazi symbols and has been to jail so many times that booking officers still know his name. He even hung a Nazi banner above the crib of his son Tommy.
But Leyden said it was his son who caused him to question his involvement with the neo-Nazi movement. When his son was 3 years old, the boy turned off a television show Leyden was watching that featured black actors.
“‘Daddy, you know better than that,'” Leyden said his son told him. “‘We don’t watch niggers in the house.'”
The audience gasped as Leyden explained that his son’s action made him believe his neo-Nazi sympathies made his son “unpure.” At age 30, Leyden said he realized the life he had lived for 15 years was “a lie.”
Leyden, 37, now travels the nation speaking out against neo-Nazi and separatist movements. After leaving the neo-Nazis, Leyden delivered his first speech at a junior high school. Two days later, a group of neo-Nazis already had created a Web site advising to “terminate” Leyden on sight.
Leyden also had harsh words for the U.S. military, calling it a training camp for extremists. The 12-year veteran of the Marine Corps said the military allows members of separatist groups to remain in uniform.
He responded to one who student challenged his claim that the military allows intolerance.
“I’m not saying the military condones it,” Leyden said. “But they’re doing nothing to stop it.”
Communication freshman Candice Tse said Leyden seemed like a completely changed man despite his sometimes crass choice of words.
“It’s one thing to hear someone preach (about intolerance),” she said. “It’s another to hear someone who has been through it.”
The speech by Leyden, who was this year’s NU Perspectives speaker and keynote speaker for Greek Week, was sponsored by the Interfraternity Council, Panhellenic Association, National Pan-Hellenic Council and the Multicultural Greek Council.
After his speech, Leyden complimented NU administrators and students on how they handled the racist and anti-Semitic graffiti that was found Winter Quarter in campus residence halls, calling the posted “No place for hate” signs a “perfect” response.
