In recent years, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Charleston and Overland Park, Kansas have been among

the cities that have experienced mass killings conducted by right-wing extremists.

From the era of slavery through the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era, onto Oklahoma

City bombing and up to the present day.

Violent right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have posed a threat to American society.

But what happens when an extremist has a change of heart or tries to extricate him or herself from one of these militant groups.

In many cases, these individuals make contact with Life After Hate,

an organization that helps radicalized and often violent individuals to turn their lives around.

In this episode, I speak with Life After Hates, Executive Director and CEO,

Pat Rickards. So, Pat, how did you come to be involved with this group? So I was actually the first

executive director of Life After Hate who was not a former violent extremist.

Before me, that was the path that the organization had always taken.

And now that we've been around for about 14 years, we've grown and matured as a national and international nonprofit.

And so that's really what drew me to the organization,

feeling I could make a difference in terms of helping build a safer community and addressing

some of these issues, particularly here in the United States. How did the group prior to you

joining then first come into existence? So originally it was started, there were a handful of individuals who had gotten themselves

out of the violent far right, in a whole host of ways.

And they realized that it would be useful for them to be available to help others do the same.

I think you often hear, you know, when individuals are part of

these violent extremist groups, a lot of people don't know how does one actually get out. Is it

possible? Or are you locked in there for the rest of your lives? And so they started really as a peer

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