Tony McAleer

And so this is where, what role does the porn industry have in all of those, the humanization? How do we raise our boys to separate from their own emotions, their vulnerability, their need for nurturance without necessarily sex, their need for other emotions other than anger? So where are we creating circumstances and systems that are separating people from themselves? And if you can't tap into those feelings, including shame, You can't then have empathy for other people.

For my podcast, I interviewed a man, his name is Tony McAleer, and he was actually kind of a big in the white supremacy movement in Canada in particular.

And one of the things he talked about was that he had had some childhood trauma and he had become so separate from his own shameful feelings that he was okay, you know, oppressing others, like he didn't see them as people.

And When he began to connect to his heart, to himself, and he began to reconnect and he felt those feelings of shame, but he gave them compassion, he was then able to understand how he had hurt others.

The former neo-Nazi [chuckles] yes, who now pulls people out of, uh, hate groups, former prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, or police officers rethinking their cultures from the inside.

Tell us about a couple of them, Tony McAleer in Life, Life After Hate.

What does his journey teach us about empathy for the people who we are most tempted, honestly, to write off, and where, if anywhere, should empathy stop?

Yeah.