Why the Alt-Right is a suicide cult — My Story
By: Raphael Lane
Tags: Suicide, Mental Health Awareness, Alt Right, White Supremacy, Mental Health

told by a former extremist (written by a ghost writer)

CW; Violence, Self-harm, Suicide, Sexism and misogyny, Racism and racial slurs, insults

Photo by Inzmam Khan from Pexels

Disrupted life or periods of transition create recruitable Alt-righters.

I didn’t want to be an extremist.

I wanted to be a good person, to be liked, I wanted to be happy. I wanted my old life back. I always felt like a normal kid.I was planning to become a normal teenager; starting to date, meeting friends, etc.

Everything changed when I moved. This could happen to anyone, anywhere. Moving, specifically, is not what made me extreme. The countries involved are irrelevant.

Any situational change can push someone like me (an impressionable straight, white, cis man) into extremism.

In my case, moving away from my home-country led to being convinced that killing, and ultimately dying for my ideology was right. When leaving the said country, I lost everything: my friends, the girl I wanted to date, and the possibility of going to parties. I felt marginalized, like an outcast.

The private school I attended after moving was much more demanding than my previous high school. As a result, my (already very controlling) parents forbade from going out in order to study more. In addition, I did not speak the language of this new country and found myself struggling to make friends. What I didn’t know was that it would not be the only thing preventing me from meeting new people.

I was looking for answers. “Just asking questions”.

Why was I like this, why was I not like that.

Religion is the answer.

Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels

For the next five years I was completely sheltered from any possible social contact a normal teenager my age would have been able to experience (I didn’t even have access to Social Media). I started resenting, and eventually hating everyone who had the chance to access all these things I wanted. I wanted to belong. I felt like an outcast, I felt like I was the one being oppressed by society.

I invested all of my spare time, which I could only spend at home, in reading about Religion. The values of loyalty, purity and abstinence really appealed to me, since they justified my situation — I, the social outcast, that was neither able to, nor had the possibility to connect with others, let alone have sex, was the good one, as opposed to the “normies” that went to parties and spent their time fucking around.

I started justifying my situation to myself by telling myself that it was my own decision to withdraw from all of these social activities. Christianity was the tool I used to convince myself that I was “pure”, they were “heathens”.

The impact of news

Eventually I started having violent thoughts. Being from a traditional and conservative (moderate/liberal right, as they call themselves) family, I was only exposed to far right news. Without even noticing it, I slipped into the Alt-Right Onion (please refer to this video).

I went looking for answers. I started consuming more “controversial” content, some including Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Sherman Burgess…I got further into all kinds of Alt-right theories about satanists, the Jews, pedophiles, the White Genocide etc…

What I liked about this new ideology is that it had nothing to do with politics. I hated politics. But the way I saw it, conservatism is not about politics, it is an identity — and there is no place for identity politics in religion, as “Jesus loves everyone”. My best friend, and the girl I dated were black. I could not be racist. In fact, “racism does not exist”. I was convinced of that.

I was marginalized

I was oppressed.

If I was “privileged”, why was I feeling so miserable?

Racism, sexism, homophobia. All of those were just “Buzzwords” used by the left.

SJW are just exaggerating. We are the marginalized group. I even believed I got “bullied” because I was a Christian, when in reality I was likely triggering and gas-lighting members of a marginalized group. I hated people who wanted to force their ideology on me, not realizing that I was already doing this. Racism doesn’t exist. White genocide is the truth.

I know the ultimate truth.

Situational changes

After high school, I moved to a third country. My parents forced me to study a course I hated, and I sank deeper and deeper into the spiral of hatred. The people I suddenly came in contact with were diverse, they were everything I hated. I resented them, at the same time that I hated that they were able to do all the things I could not do. I was still a virgin at 18. I started believing that immigrants were going to take our women, and kill my race in the process of it.

I left the prison that was my family, but the boundaries were still there, however I was the one enforcing them. I was isolating myself more.

The time I did not spend studying, I trained myself to fight for “the greater good”. Instead of getting happier, I just became more and more miserable.

Since I was a kid, I was sensitive and have always been scared of violence. Moving to a new country opened up all the possibilities of being violent. I felt helpless, and exposed. Exposed to the control my parents were exercising on me, the situation that I could not get out of, and my peers, that were not only judging me, but made me question my masculinity.

My new ideology gave me a fix to all of these problems.

My parents think I am sensitive? Would a sensitive guy have fantasies about violence?

Girls wont have sex with me? That’s because they are feminist sluts,I am too pure for them!

I can’t go to parties? All satanists anyway. All worthless pieces of shit.

Right-wing news enforced my fear against minorities, and the supposed violence that came with them. I hated my classmates, they were different (private school, rich, more sensitive). My previous school taught me how to intimidate someone with violence or the threat thereof.

The news I was absorbing without a filter (Migrants muggings, immigrants assaults, presence of Islam in Europe), pushed me further right with each article. I was convinced of a “far-left” enemy that tried to eradicate my race and culture.

I saw everyone else as sinners, the articles I consumed only enforced my fear. I fanatically read the bible, looking for passages to justify violence.

Violence

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I hated myself — not being able to study,

still a virgin,

not likeable,

not being able to make friends,

I started self-harming.

I still used Christianity as an excuse for violence, beating myself with a belt or cutting myself on my back.

Left was a threat to my safety, and freedom of speech. Seeing far-right assaults and terror acts on the news never left me satisfied , however none of it was a fix for happiness. I was ready to harm innocent people. At one point I had violence fantasies about my Moroccan roommate. During an argument about music being too loud, I considered stabbing him. I lured a random guy into a back alley to beat him up. I wanted to hurt him…but I never did. I never acted on these fantasies.

Preparing myself for war, I was thinking exactly how the Alt-right wanted me to think, without even realizing it.

I fucked up my grades. Failing at both, uni, and harming people, I started hating myself more, hurting myself more, it spiraled down…

So why is the Alt-Right is a suicide-cult? They ultimately convinced me that “Nothing is worth it.” I would die a virgin. People didn’t take me seriously. I wanted to physically hurt people without any repercussions. I wanted to force them to take me seriously. If I just killed myself afterwards, there wouldn’t be any other option, and the Alt-Right content I was eating up, was implying this over and over.

There was no group, there was no leader, yet I was acting in the way the Alt-Right wanted me to act. I still feel like I thought this way because of religion. In reality, it was just an excuse, because I did and could not admit that I was a white supremacist.

I hated Jews and Muslims for being able to be violent compared to Christians.

I had fantasies of violence. All of it went against the principles of Christianity, yet I used this religion as an excuse.

Today, I am relieved I never acted on it, I am one of the few that got away.

Luckily I got out. I was lucky, because I never talked to anyone about it. I read forums but did not interact with them. Yet I would have committed hate-crimes on behalf of people who are not in an organized group, let alone know who I am.

Freedom

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I went back home for summer. I took these holidays to recover, watched videos to confirm to myself that violence was not the answer. I changed my university major. Eventually, I met someone who represented everything I used to hate, and the only thing I ever did was loving her.

If you liked this article, please clap, share, and join me on my twitter account. I made it my goal to prevent young men from slipping into this dangerous scene, and it would mean a lot to me as a survivor.