From SJW Alt-Righter to Christian: A Conversion Story

Frank Russo’s Background, Nominal Catholicism, and Early Political Drift

Hi, it's John Harris with the Conversations That Matter podcast. Today I have my good friend with me, Frank Russo. Frank, good to have you.

Great to be here.

We're going to be talking about the alt-right today, which I think is a very beneficial discussion given, well, the current state of politics over the last couple years. And Frank is actually a convert from the alt-right to Christianity.

We're going to walk through that conversion, how it happened. And I think there's a lot of ramifications, implications, that people can draw from your story. So, Frank, why don't you walk us through, first of all, what was your spiritual journey like at the beginning?

What was your family's religion? What did you believe about God? And then tell us, at what point did you become part of what you say is the alt-right? How old were you?

Well, my family was always nominally very culturally Catholic, but they never really believed a lot of the things that even their own church taught. My belief in God was that he was there, but that it had very little impact on my life.

It had very little meaning one way or the other. And I think that led me to have this sort of outlook on life that, well, I could do anything and get away with it and I'll make up later. But I was about, I'm going to say 16 when I was first introduced to the alt-right by my cousin.

I looked up to him. He was everything that I wasn't. He was tall, athletic, handsome, good with ladies. I was none of those things. And he had always kind of been my mentor politically. He introduced me to libertarianism and I kind of embraced that for a while after the solid conservatism of my youth up until about 2011 or so.

Then I became very libertarian. And after 2012, when everything kind of collapsed around me, we lost the election. I had campaigned for Nan Hayworth and she lost. My first introduction to real-life politics was just an utter dismal failure.

And it led me to a lot of depression. I was like, I thought we could fight for ideals and we would win on merit because how could someone not see the moral good of what we're preaching? And it didn't work.

I failed. So I spent the next few years just kind of not caring, but also caring a lot in that kind of micro-ism of youth. And when I was 16, my cousin introduced me to a group called American Renaissance.

And it's an umbrella of the alt-right, which is a very varied and diverse group of people.

Defining the Alt-Right as Racial Nationalism and Conspiracy Thinking

Yeah, I was going to ask you that. How would you define alt-right? Because everyone thinks neo-Nazis, Klansmen, racists, but it's kind of more than just... I mean, you would say that I think that's kind of the element you were converted to as a racially charged...

But it's more than just...

I mean, it's monarchists, it's theocrats, there's even black nationalists, Asian nationalists. It's really kind of any form of racial nationalism. I didn't subscribe to the term neo-Nazi. I preferred national socialist because it sounded more intellectual.

I didn't want to be one of those screeching idiots on the street.

And, of course, because no one knows history anymore. When you say national socialist, they have no clue you're talking about Nazis.

It made me sound like I had a party platform that was good.

Just so people know, the Nazis were, if you don't know, that's the National Socialist German Workers' Party. So when you say national socialist, you're talking about the Nazi ideology.

And it was just very hard to move on in life once... because the conspiracy, that's what gets you. Because it's not really just aimless hatred of blacks or Hispanics, although that's part of it, but it's the conspiracy, that white interests have been subverted by different platforms and agencies and plans and laws.

And this inevitably led me back to Jewish people. My cousin was very big on pushing that with me. He said pornography, Hollywood, these are all Jewish byproducts. At first I argued with him because I'd always been a staunch defender of Israel because of my conservatism.

But he started pulling up facts and statistics and all sorts of things. He even had me convinced of Holocaust denial for a while.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because the way they platform things is it sounds so intelligent. Because they pull math, they pull statistics, they pull all sorts of different things, and they push them together into a platform that sounds good.

But it's utter horror at the bottom of it.

Would you say that what you're describing right now, that the alt-right or this national socialism that you adopted, this is the reverse mirror image of social justice politics in the sense that the oppressor and oppressed categories have been kind of reversed?

Oh, most certainly. Neo-Nazism is just social justice for white people.

Yeah.

So you were a social justice warrior.

Oh, yes.

Only a white social justice warrior.

Yes.

And not one that advocated for other groups.

Right.

Bullying, Victimhood, and the Appeal of Alt-Right Identity

So you were 16, 17, I believe you had told me in a previous conversation about when you adopted this. You were in high school. You said your cousin's intelligent. He's good looking. He's good with women.

And you said you weren't those things.

Oh, not at all.

Were you bullied?

Were you persecuted in school?

Yes.

And that's an undercurrent that people don't appreciate about the alt-right. Because it's a young group. It's mostly 20-year-olds to 30-year-olds. It's a young group that have a victim complex, and that victim complex has to be developed.

And something that always struck me was during the vicious bullying I had received over the years, a good number of them were of other races. So these things that my cousin was telling me, they appealed to me because they justified my victim complex, and they made those people look bad not as a symptom of their character.

So you're saying this political ideology justified your personal sin.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

And you also found in a group that I'm assuming through online, social media, they accepted you. They were your friends.

Oh, yes.

You were in the trenches with them against an enemy. You felt like you were doing something worthwhile. And then those who are pushing more of an egalitarian, communist in your mind, maybe leftist view.

They were the enemy.

But they weren't accepting you. They were making fun of you. They were bullying you. So they weren't appealing because of that. So you kind of got almost pigeonholed into going that direction because of the influences in your life.

And the state of the modern American leftist is such that if you disagree with any of their platforms, by and large, I'm not saying every leftist, of course, but what I am saying is that they've adopted such principles that make the alt-right swell in numbers, simply because there's so many disaffected.

So you're saying the left creates the alt-right.

Oh, yes.

We're a direct response to leftist policies.

That's why the mirror image then. It's just the opposite of that.

White privilege has done more as an ideology for the alt-right than the National Socialism would ever do.

So you were sitting in maybe a social studies class or history class and you heard things like white privilege. That actually motivated you.

That aggravated me.

You're saying you're blaming me for things that I wasn't involved in.

By the content of my skin, not my character.

Right, yeah.

It's a direct reversal of what was once preached in America. The content of your character and not your skin color.

Community, Christian Conviction, and the First Crack in Alt-Right Thinking

So you made this switch when you were 16 or 17. You were a politically-minded young man. Then, fast forward a few years, and you're 19 at this point, and your friend invites you. You're a nominal Catholic, and he invites you to come to this evangelical college career group.

What was that like?

It was strange because I had what I thought was brotherhood on the alt-right, or racial solidarity. But when I came to college and career, I saw something that was purer, and it looked real. Because it's easy to say, oh, yeah, you're my best friend behind a computer screen.

But here I actually saw it, that they were actually helping each other with their struggles. They weren't tearing each other down. They were approaching disagreements with compassion.

So the community you thought you would find in the alt-right, you didn't find there. You saw something that you didn't even maybe weren't exposed to, and it was attractive. It was a real community. That was the initial thing, I guess, that attracted you somewhat to Christianity, and to Jesus, and to the Bible.

But it wasn't a full attraction, I would say, because I liked what was being done, not what was being preached. I wanted to have this solidarity, but also my racial ideas.

So one of your sins still.

I walked in thinking I could convert everyone else.

Did you convert anyone else?

No, not unhappily so, looking back on it.

No one in the group was neo-Nazi sympathizing at all. In fact, the exact opposite. But they received you as someone who was a broken sinner, disagreed with you, but they didn't dehumanize or demonize you.

They loved you, and that was the attractive thing. They treated you differently than other people who had also disagreed with you. They didn't demonize you like your other nemeses online or otherwise.

So that's interesting. It didn't push you away, but we know, as Christians, that it is the Spirit of God who has to convert the soul by motivating someone to have new desires, to repent of their sin, to put their trust, their faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation.

So it doesn't come just from a community welcoming you. Although, of course, that helps, and God wants us to do that.

It was a step in the door, I would say. It was what God used to first get me to say, like, hey, look, what you want isn't coming from what you're doing.

It was selfishness.

But fast forward, what, two years or maybe a year after this point, and this is, you know, you give me a call after your friend who invited you, he was kind of walking you through some basics of Christianity, but then you give me a call out of the blue.

I haven't seen you for a few months. And you say, can we talk? And we go out to a diner, and you were doubting God's existence. I think you had said you were suicidal at that point.

Yes.

I've always struggled with depression, but at this point in my life it was a very deep, deep rut, and I was considering ending it all.

And so we sat at that diner, and I remember bringing you through presuppositional apologetics, and I was trying my best to give arguments, counterarguments, for some of the reasons that you were doubting that God could be there and that he existed.

And later on I found out, it was two weeks later, you said you got saved. And I never led you in a prayer, like a sinner's prayer. I prayed with you, but I didn't say, repeat after me and you'll be saved.

I was going to let God handle that aspect of it. But two weeks later, I end up hearing your story about how you got saved, and I said, well, what was it that saved you? Or what was it that I said, because you said I had some doing in this, that sort of made its way to your heart.

And you said it was not any of the things that were apologetics. It was actually something I said where I doubted your salvation. I said, I don't think you're a Christian. You don't know if God exists.

You're not living a life for God. It doesn't sound like you're safe. So that was the thing that started getting you to think about whether or not you were. And so what were your thoughts like at that point?

Well, my thoughts were that alt-right people on the alt-right are very naturally very identitarian. It's just who we are. And being a Catholic or at least a Christian of some color or vein was part of my identity.

And when that was taken away from me ideologically because it said, you show no fruit of this, that this isn't what you identify with. You hold views that are counter to this. That was taken away from me, and that was a little harsh because that was what I was, it was my ace in the hole in the back to justify all my cruddy behavior.

Jesus will save me because he said so, and it doesn't matter how bad I am.

So what you're saying, it sounds like, is your sin was exposed and rebuked instead of, whereas the alternative or what had happened before, which is when people disagreed with you, they demonized you.

I was exposed and rebuked, not my sin.

Not your sin, but this has actually got underneath the root cause of these things. And so, was there a moment you prayed a prayer or did you just wake up one day and you said, well, I guess I'm saved.

I desire God, I hate my sin, I trust in him. How did that process?

Well, I went home, and I was thinking on what you said, and I spent a lot of time alone, and I prayed a lot. And I just came to the realization that I'm not happy because I'm not making God happy. I'm not doing what is good in his eyes.

And that was a tough realization because I had to come to the conclusion that it's not all about me. I'm a very small, insignificant part of this world, and I'm not going to change the world. I'm not going to be the next Benito Mussolini that goes out and conquers Africa or whatever.

I'm not going to do any of that.

So you may not want to aspire to be the next Benito Mussolini.

It was overused.

I was going to say, yeah, that's true. But even if you agree with his ideology, he didn't really win.

He wasn't successful. But I came to the conclusion that I needed to change. I was the problem in my own life. I was my worst enemy. My sin was my own worst enemy, and I was completely culpable for that.

And the wages of sin are death, and that was something that stuck with me for a long time. And it came to my conclusion, I'm going to die, and I'm not going to die with Christ, and I'm going to go to hell.

And I think that was the real turning point for me.

So it wasn't, wow, I'm racist, and that's wrong. It was actually much deeper than that. It was, wow, I'm a sinner. I've offended God and people that are made in His image. I've said things.

The things I said, they were just awful, just venom-filled, just hatred. Looking outside that person that I was, I would never want to be that person. That person is just not likable. There's no redeeming qualities in him.

He's just someone that's spewing hate,.

And that's who I was.

And that was something that was really hard to come to the conclusion of, that just I'm a horrible human being. It was just tough. Because I was convinced I was right for so long.

Repentance, Grace, and the End of the Meme War

What did you feel like then, when you realized you were saved?

Was there joy there?

The direct words I used, and I still feel this way, I feel that my debt had been paid. Because I knew that I owed something. You can't just do all these horrible things and not have something coming to you.

And that was damnation. At this moment, it wasn't a direct moment. It was over time. But I began to trust Jesus and desire the things that He would want. And it was just a sudden change. I felt like I didn't have this hate anymore.

It wasn't there. I was no longer motivated to pick up the keyboard and fight the meme war.

The meme war, yeah.

It was just a change.

How Christians Should Reach Social Justice Warriors and Alt-Right People

So what advice would you have for those, especially social justice warriors who happen to be Christian? People are surprised now, older folks especially, but there's a lot of seminaries and institutions of higher learning that are Bible schools and Christian-affiliated that now have a lot of students who want to go out and change the church or change Christianity.

And they're applying leftist categories usually to that in some way. And they see alt-right people, like you used to be, as the problem with America or the problem with Western culture. So what advice would you have for them?

Because I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'd rather convert people so that they're Christians like yourself rather than destroy them.

That's a hard benefit of the doubt from what I've seen, but I'll give it to them.

I'm sure there are some Christians. Yeah, let's give them that benefit.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

So if they were interested in combating the alt-right and converting people who are alt-right, what advice?

Well, first I would say abandon your own identitarianism because that's not going to convince someone. You're not going to replace one form of identitarianism that's contrary to that individual with another form of identitarianism that is completely different than anything that they can relate to.

Stop with these group categories, oppressor and oppressed, because that's what I was doing.

So you're saying identitarianism on a social level.

Needs to be eradicated.

Not a spiritual level, but on a social level.

Because we have a unique identity in Christ altogether, and that's the most beautiful thing you could aspire to. But this racial identitarianism needs to die off in all forms.

So I'm going to stop you right there. I want to hear your second thing. So if someone came to you and said something like your white privilege is a problem, you need to support some leftist cause, or give your money to help people that are of different races or ethnicities, that wouldn't be appealing.

Before you were a Christian,.

That wouldn't have been an appealing thing.

I'd have to ask where in the Bible it says that I have to do that on a racial scale. I should just do these things because I want to do these things, not because I'm white and I need to atone for something.

So you're already seeing this as an alternative gospel.

It's works-based salvation. That's what it is. If you self-flagellate enough, you whip your own back enough, and you appear upset enough about your race, you'll get into good grace.

So what you're saying is you'll preach grace, not guilt.

Oh, yes.

Which is what that is, when they're getting down on you for being white or something.

Or at least preach real guilt. Like, hey, you looked at that woman with lust. That's committing adultery. Not even just racially saying something that's racist. You put that person down for no reason.

Actually, your actions are sinful, not that your skin color is sinful.

Because everyone's awful. Without Christ, everyone's awful. My second presumption would be to act in love because these people are not going to be converted by seeing the very enemy that they've been trained to hate.

Good point.

Propaganda is very effective. And once you have a scarecrow image of the enemy and you see it in action, you're going to go after it. Like a greyhound chasing a rabbit, you're going to go right after it.

So project the opposite of what they are. Project what Christ wanted. Because that's what helped convert me. I saw what Christ wanted, and that was different than what I had. And I wanted that.

The Persistence of Alt-Right Identity and the Need to Address Sin

Are there any final thoughts that you have, things that maybe I should have asked that you'd want to add?

Well, I would just say that the alt-right is not going to go away. It's always going to be here. It's always going to be in some form. Simply because there's always going to be people who are disenfranchised, and they don't see their own sin as the problem.

And you can see this across all spectrums of people. Don't be confused in thinking that this is just a white problem. It's most certainly not. I'm saying it is a problem in white communities, but it's also a problem.

I mean, look at the black Israelites.

Right.

Look at all these, what was that?

So ethnic pride plagues every racial category.

Oh, yes, I would say that. And as soon as you get to that assumption, you start looking at neo-Nazis a little different, because they're not this anomaly.

Right, right.

I guess that would be my major thing to say.

Well, thank you.

Well, thank you.

I sure hope that helps those out there who are trying to figure out how to deal with those who are on the alt-right. Maybe you have a family member or just someone that you care about that you know, and you want to see them converted.

You want to see them come to Christ. The gospel is the answer for that.

Oh, of course.

And if you are someone on the left maybe that hates people from the alt-right, I hope this will at least maybe convince you that that's maybe not the best reaction, that there's all sorts of blind areas that we all have, and there's sin that we all have.

And I think you did an excellent job just saying that the sins that you were involved with in regards to race, racism, or thinking ethnic pride, that these are issues that plague every single person out there, every group of people.

Not just unique to the group that you were with in here for thousands of years.

All right, well, thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.