Blazak on the Role of Religion in Hate Crimes in the US

Randy Blazak is a PhD from Emory University with a specialty in hate crimes.  Specifically he studied racist skinheads (he doesn't say just "skin heads" because you can shave your head without being a racist).  He's a professor of sociology at PSU where his intro class is opening people's minds, and a professor of criminology at OU.  

His talk for the Freedom From Religion Foundation on 1/15/18 was entitled "With Odin on Our Side; The Role of Religion in Right Wing Extremism."  I didn't understand why he said Odin in the title until the end of the talk, but it has to do with the fact that an ancient Viking religion is being propagated in our prisons.  I'm going to take the information from his talk and put it in chronological order, and flesh it out with links to articles around the web, trying to make sense of the times.

At the end of his talk Blazak summarized that there are two profiles for violent haters; sociopaths, and lower level thinkers.  Sociopaths, or more specifically people with antisocial personality disorder, have no qualms about injuring or killing others because they have no conscience.  These are the people we need to imprison long-term.  Lower level thinkers are simply regular folks who joined the cause because they were alone and needed to belong.  They weren’t philosophical about it, they were simply vulnerable.  These are the people that we need to help.

( Timeline and Links behind Cut )