Word: leyden
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Watching cartoons with his two children one Saturday morning last year, Thomas James Leyden Jr. was startled when his elder son, then 3, abruptly turned off the television. "Mom says we can't watch shows with niggers on them," the boy explained. The ugly word--and the sentiment behind it--did not exactly spring unsolicited from the preschooler's head; his dad sports enough neo-Nazi tattoos and credentials to explain the boy's action. But hearing his son talk that way, says Leyden, 30, "hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew I was taking him down...
Until his change of heart, Leyden had given 15 years of his life to brawling and recruiting for neo-Nazi causes. His activities had even landed him on the Klanwatch list compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But in June, Leyden walked into the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and renounced his former life. It was not an easy thing to do: Klanwatch analyst Laurie Wood says Leyden is "asking for trouble" from his former associates...
Those engaged in the fight against bigotry cannot believe their good fortune in finding someone who can shed some light on the shadowy world of neo-Nazis. Wiesenthal staff members, who have held several long debriefing sessions with Leyden, have big plans for him: they have made arrangements for a laser surgeon to remove his tattoos, and this fall they hope to take him on a lecture tour at U.S. military bases, where Defense Department rules permit local commanders to decide whether to tolerate "passive" extremists in uniform. He has also offered to counsel troubled teenagers. "No one like this...