You are not born a racist. But Derek Black was born into a family in which it was almost mapped out to become one – and it is all the more remarkable how he got out of it. From the crown prince of the American right-wing extremists, Derek Black became a dropout.
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Juan Moreno speaks in the foreign podcast “Eight billion” with SPIEGEL reporter Alexandra Rojkov, who met Derek Black several times. Derek Black has now broken with his father and condemns his parents’ ideology. Last but not least, an Orthodox Jew was decisive for his development. He met and listened to Derek Black every Friday for several years. Little by little, the convinced racist became a man who fights racism – and against Donald Trump.
Derek Black, who knows the “white supremacy” movement better than anyone else, says today: “Racists couldn’t ask for a better president.”
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The Blacks are considered “right nobility” in the US, a family that is unparalleled in the scene. Father Don Black, an idol of the scene, was the operator of the website “Stormfront”, meanwhile the most important right-wing extremist site in the world, contact point for neo-Nazis, right-wing radicals and members of the “White Supremacy” movement and the Ku Klux clan. Derek’s mother, Chloe, was the ex-wife of David Duke, America’s most prominent neo-Nazi and Derek’s godfather. For Hitler’s birthday, Chloe Black baked cake.
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Skinheads and racists came for Christmas. When he was ten, Derek taught himself to program and put a page on the net that was supposed to bring white children closer to hating black people. Right-wing radicals and neo-Nazis called him the “heir”, the man who was to be their leader in the future, who would bring racism into the political mainstream. Intelligent, rhetorically gifted and deeply convinced of the cause.
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Instead, Derek Black is now warning of the right’s strategies to conquer the mainstream – strategies that he once conceived himself.
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