Frank Meeink was once one of America’s most prominent young white supremacists.
As a teenager, he led the ultra-violent underground Nazi movement, Strike Force, before being convicted for the aggravated kidnapping and torture of an Antifa member in 1992.
His story, in part, became the inspiration for Edward Norton’s character, Derek Vinyard, in the 1998 Academy Award-nominated film American History X, who ditched his racist views after kindling friendships with Black inmates.
Once flaunting a flaming swastika tattoo on his neck and “skinhead” inked across his knuckles, Meeink now lives a very different life as a self-decribed anti-racist, activist and observant Jew.
And his life has taken another turn recently, since wildfires began ravaging the Los Angeles area on January 7, with the 49-year-old focused on helping those with addiction issues navigate southern California’s worst natural disaster on record.
Meeink, who himself has been through recovery in Los Angeles for drug and alcohol addiction after moving to Long Beach, has been working as a mental health promoter for SHARE, a charity funded by the LA County Department of Mental Health based in Culver City.
With many meetings forced to move online due to the fires, he’s been chairing self-help groups on Zoom.
“It’s about bringing community, bringing resources, and also, swapping phone numbers with people so that you know who can call so you’re not alone right now,” Meeink told The Independent.
“We want to say, ‘Hey, tell us what you went through. Tell us how you felt. Have there been any little victories? Did you find your dog this week?’”
At least 27 lives have been lost, more than 12,000 homes and structures destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of residents placed under evacuation orders in the devastating wildfires.
Meeink had recently been working in the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades, and said he’s gone “balls to the wall” to ensure people get the support they need.
“We can offer groceries,” he said. “We can offer rides to go get things. We can offer ways for us to help you go get more clothing. We can offer ways if you need to go get your medication.”
Meeink said the group is also looking for dogs that went missing as people fled areas due to evacuation notices, and to find fosterers for people’s pets that remain unclaimed.
“Many people in the Palisades didn’t leave their dogs,” he said. “They were evacuated in the middle of the day, while they were at work, and they weren’t allowed to go back and get their dogs.”
In 2019, Meeink himself went into recovery in LA for alcohol and drug abuse after the loss of his 19-year-old son Josh, the death of his mother to a fentanyl overdose, and a marriage breakdown – all within five years.
There, he met his sponsor, a Jewish man he nicknamed his “Recovery Rabbi” who helped him find his faith and sobriety.
He said he continues to call his sponsor every morning at 8.00 a.m. – and has done so religiously since 2019.
In March last year, the New York Post revealed that Meeink took a 23andMe DNA test and discovered that he has Jewish ancestry – and has now embraced his heritage.
He now prays three times daily wearing the tallit and tefillin of observant Jews, attends synagogue every Friday and Saturday, goes to three Torah study classes a week and only eats kosher.
“I’m still, very, very active in my faith and very, very active in recovery. I sponsor like f**king 10 guys now, so I’m constantly on the phone with other drug addicts and alcoholics,” he told The Independent.
“I mean, that’s my life, and I live a very beautiful life because of me staying consistent with my faith and with my work in recovery.”
That marks a stark difference to Meeink’s teenage years growing up in Philadelphia, where he rallied against the perceived Zionist Occupation Government and believed the Jews were “the root of all evil,” he told The Post.
At 15-years-old, Meeink said he had already joined – and been kicked out of – the Ku Klux Klan before deciding to form his own group: Strike Force.
Meeink said he used the Bible to preach hate, “just like Hamas does with the Koran” and started The Reich, a cable TV show full of racist “skits and jokes”.
The Nazi leader, who had “Sharp Killer” inked inside his lower lip – a reference to the anti-fascist group Skineads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) – invited a member to a party on December 24, 1992. The Sharp member was held captive and tortured.
Aged 17, Meeink was sentenced for three years for aggravated kidnapping in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Surrounded by skinheads in prison, he began bonding with two Black inmates nicknamed Jello and G.
Good behaviour meant Meeink’s prison stint was over in just over a year, and his racist beliefs left shaken.
The drunk, jobless 19-year-old ditched his White Supremacist views all together after a Jewish man named Keith Brookstein offered him a job at his antiques store in New Jersey.
Meeink has since turned into an active campaigner who, in 2020, testified to the House Oversight and Reform committee about neo-Nazis’ attempts to infiltrate police forces. The same year, he also became an Black Lives Matter activist.
But it is his embrace of his Jewish faith that means the most to him, he told The Post.
