HOPE FOR TRUMPBOTS:

[H]is white nationalist pedigree was impeccable. His parents were racists; his father once headed the Alabama chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. His extended family members were virtually all white nationalists and he dated like-minded girls growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida. His godfather was David Duke, the nationally prominent white power proponent and former Grand Wizard of the KKK. Derek's mother once had been married to Duke.

Before Derek was born, his father, Don Black, and a small group of ragtag racists were arrested in 1981 for plotting to invade the small Caribbean island of Dominica and turn it into a "white utopia." They never made it out of the United States. Don Black served three years in federal prison.

Derek Black attended his first white nationalist convention at age nine and by high school, he and his father hosted a local radio program on which they discussed such burning questions as, are Jews white? They are not, the duo averred. 

In 1996, Don Black also had established Stormfront, the nation's first major racist website; one regular visitor was Dylann Roof. In 2015, Roof gunned down nine black congregants in a South Carolina church and is awaiting execution. Derek helped manage Stormfront and even started a separate white nationalist website for children.

In 2010, Derek Black went off to college, hoping that students and faculty would remain clueless about his racist bona fides (so much for white pride). Although New College in Sarasota was largely white, he began to encounter fellow classmates of color, including a Peruvian immigrant, as well as a nice young girl who - he discovered after growing fond of her - was Jewish.

It was a brave new world for Derek. Here, in the flesh, were the people whom he was denouncing in Internet forums and on the radio. And, surprise, surprise, he liked them, and they liked him - some of them even continued to engage with him after he was outed as a white nationalist. His friend Matthew still invited him to Shabbat dinners. 

The tug of war for Derek's soul was on: his family and old pals pulling in one direction, his new friends in the other.

In 2016, disturbed by the result of the presidential election, Derek Black went public with his apostasy. He recognized Donald Trump's game plan. He had used it himself to win a seat as a committeeman for Palm Beach County in 2008, when he was just 19 years old. 

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