A White Nationalist Took MDMA For a Drug Study and Renounced His Racist Views

A former white nationalist leader renounced his racist views after doing a single dose of MDMA as part of a study. 

The man, identified as Brendan in a BBC article based on Rachel Nuwer’s book I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, was outed for leading the Midwest faction of Identity Evropa, a preppy white supremacist group best known for helping organize the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He subsequently lost his job and was cut off from family and friends, according to a report published in the Biological Psychiatry in June 2021. 

In early 2020, Brendan joined a study run by University of Chicago researchers about how MDMA enhances the pleasantness of certain types of physical touch. At the time, he later told researchers, he was still holding onto his racist ideology—until he got high. 

“I felt in that moment that all of my priorities in my life were just so messed up, the way I was interacting with people, particularly people who are close to me. But there was also an almost euphoric feeling, a feeling of love, and I concluded that was the sort of feeling that I should strive to permeate across the world,” said Brendan, who added he was radicalized by consuming pro-Donald Trump news, which led him to antisemitic content. 

Brendan told the BBC he joined Identity Evropa, which formed in 2016, because he agreed with their mission to push white nationalist ideology into mainstream politics. 

But after doing MDMA, he said he came to the realization that “love is the most important thing” and “nothing matters without love,” according to the Biological Psychiatry report.  

Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist at the University of Ottawa who researches psychedelics, said it likely helped that Brendan was already contemplating his life after being outed. 

“I think there has to be some intention, ideally, to your thought process in order for it to create a change like this.”  

After his trip, Brendan said he reached out to “antifa” to pull down the information about his identity, which led to “hundreds of emails back and forth, about my life, about the guy who doxxed me and his life.” He called the exchange “meaningful.” 

While he was part of Identity Evropa, which recruited preppy, college-aged white men, he traveled around the U.S and Europe, and marched in Unite the Right. Identity Evropa members were seen at that violent rally brandishing tiki torches, wearing khakis and white polos, and chanting "Jews will not replace us.” (The group rebranded in 2019 as "American Identity Movement" and ultimately disbanded a year later.)

Brendan told the BBC that after doing MDMA, he hired a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist to advise him and started reading books to educate himself. But he still has racist or anti-semitic thoughts. 

While he told researchers he still struggles to maintain the positive feelings from his trip, he said the drug could be very helpful for people like himself. 

“Some sort of change is necessary. But you can’t just flip the switch and say, I no longer have these beliefs anymore.” 

MDMA is unique in that it’s considered both a psychedelic and a stimulant. It’s commonly known as the “love drug” because of the feelings of euphoria it creates. 

Anya Bershad, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles who worked on the study, said the drug produces an “experience of social connection that can be very elusive for a lot of people in their everyday lives.” In part, that’s because it increases a person’s levels of oxytocin, a social bonding hormone. 

While she wasn’t surprised that Brendan had euphoric feelings about other people while under the influence of MDMA, she was surprised that it seemingly resulted in a lasting change. 

Williams, who researches the impact of psychedelics on people who’ve experienced racial trauma, said all psychedelics have the potential to help people get in touch with new perspectives. For other radicalized individuals, she said a drug like ayahuasca could be useful because it’s like taking “a good hard look at yourself in the mirror.”  

“That's what ayahuasca kind of has a reputation of doing to people— kind of showing them maybe where they screwed up and how and how they got there in a compassionate way.” 

On the flip side, she said she’s heard from many people of color who’ve used psychedelics for healing and to reduce the depression and anxiety they feel from experiencing racism. 

However, she said psychedelics shouldn’t be viewed as a panacea for racism. 

“The psychedelic movement, they have not cured themselves... of racism and sexism and homophobia. If it was just a matter of taking psychedelics and that stuff would go away, it would be pretty evident we would all know this,” she said. 

But it can be used as a tool. She said she’s interested in setting up a study where psychedelics can be taken in groups where people’s issues around race and racism are discussed. 

— with files from Tess Owen