Vancouver Jewish Film Festival offers a sneak peek at The Cure for Hate
The work in progress follows the journey of Tony McAleer from racist extremist to anti-hate activist
The Cure for Hate: Bearing Witness to Auschwitz.
Vancouver Jewish Film Centre Society presents the 34th annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival from March 9 to 26 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas, Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre, and online
TONY MCALEER DOES not hide his past as a vocal Holocaust denier and active member of the neo-Nazi group White Aryan Resistance. Born and raised in Vancouver, the former skinhead spent 15 years practising violent extremism, often as an instigator. About two decades ago, he walked away from the far-right, going on to become a founding member of Life After Hate. The organization helps people leave the world of racist radicalism and lead compassionate lives.
McAleer shares his experiences in The Cure for Hate: Bearing Witness to Auschwitz, a forthcoming documentary directed and produced by Peter Hutchison (whose previous films include Requiem for the American Dream: Noam Chomsky and Healing From Hate: Battle for the Soul of a Nation). Vancouver Jewish Film Festival has an exclusive sneak peek at the work in progress, which follows McAleer’s journey from anti-immigration activist to anti-hate advocate, and is inspired by his memoir, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist's Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion.
Acutely aware and deeply ashamed of the hatred he once promoted, McAleer says he wanted to be involved in the film because it serves as a vivid cautionary tale for our time, one that illustrates what can happen when hate is left unchecked. This is now more important than ever, he tells Stir, with hate crimes rising and the Holocaust fading from collective memory.
“Sixty-six percent of millennials and 41 percent of American adults cannot say what Auschwitz was,” McAleer says in a phone interview, citing results from the 2018 Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference). “Even though I’m the subject of the film, it’s not about me. It’s a story told through me. Auschwitz is the story.”
The Cure for Hate is among dozens of titles at Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, designed to be a community-building initiative that brings people together through compelling, educational, informative, and artful filmic storytelling.
Screening March 12 at 1 pm at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and from March 19 to 26 online, The Cure for Hate sheds light on how people become attracted to violent extremist groups, just as McAleer did. It touches on how as a child, he worshipped his father, who worked as a doctor; although he was a fantastic provider, his dad worked 80 hours a week and didn’t have time to give his son love, attention, and approval. When McAleer was 10, he walked in on his father with another woman. The youth was filled with anger and a sense of betrayal. His grades at the boys’ Catholic school he attended started to drop. Eventually, if he didn’t get As or Bs, with his parents’ consent, the principal would march him to his office and strike him on the rear with a stick, first two times, then four, then six, then eight. That office is where McAleer was introduced to shame and powerlessness, feelings that would fuel his need for pride and authority. He found those sentiments—or illusions of them—in the skinhead community; to have its members’ protection, he had to have their respect, and to have their respect, he had to commit all the same violent actions they did. He did so willingly, and found it intoxicating. He got involved with some of North America’s most notorious neo-Nazi groups.
Years later, McAleer found himself in a hospital delivery room holding a beautiful baby girl, the first of his two kids. She introduced him to unconditional love and compassion. It took time for McAleer to leave the white supremacist movement and even longer to begin to dig deep and heal. He makes no excuses for his actions nor does he expect forgiveness, but he has spent the last 20 years in atonement.
“Tshuvah”, in the Jewish tradition, means “return” and describes the return to God and fellow human beings through repentance for wrongdoings. In The Cure for Hate, McAleer travels to Auschwitz in the spirit of tshuvah, to bear witness to the horror of the Holocaust and deepen his work against the ascendency of extremist politics. The documentary includes footage of his unhurried time with an Auschwitz guide who lost family members in Nazi gas chambers and with a historian in Krakow, who reminds that 90 percent of Polish Jews didn’t survive the war.
“Through my story, we’re telling the story of Auschwitz and hopefully reaching new audiences,” McAleer says. “If there’s one community on the planet I’ve harmed the most, it would be the Jewish community. We talk about tshuvah in the Jewish faith…and it’s not enough to just say I’m sorry.
“The first part of my healing journey was getting out of those movements and healing myself; you can’t heal others until you heal yourself,” he says. “I wanted to help others who are where I once was. The next leg of my journey was to go back to the communities I harmed. When you see the power of compassion and you see people transform through good and compassion, that gives me hope. My purpose is to inspire people to act from a place of compassion, courage, and curiosity. I have the belief that nobody is irredeemable.”
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