Amid the shrill buzzing of a tattoo gun, Nathan Greer squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a low, rumbling groan. In this small, purple room in the back of a tattoo shop just south of Memphis, Tennessee, the 33-year-old former white supremacist has come seeking a fresh start.

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Under the painful strokes of a vibrating needle, the outline of a large swastika on Greer’s chest is gradually obscured. A tattoo artist leans over him, drawing an oval outline of a gas-masked skull on the right side of his chest.

Another former white supremacist, an older German man known as TM Garret, watches from the door frame, tattooed arms crossed over his chest. During the past year, he has helped arrange for more than 100 tattoo cover-ups like this. “Erasing the hate can be painful sometimes,” Garret says, smiling softly at Greer. “You’re doing great.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest TM Garret watches as tattoo artist Trevor Curbo works on a cover-up of the swastika on Nate Greer’s chest. Photograph: Melissa Golden/Redux/The Guardian

Here at Sickside Tattoo Studio in Horn Lake, Mississippi, just south of the Tennessee border, reformed gang members and white supremacists travel from throughout the south-east US seeking free cover-ups. The program is part of Garret’s Erase the Hate campaign, and Sickside is one of a few tattoo shops in the country that participates.

On this particular day, Greer has traveled from rural Arkansas with his friend, who also receives a cover-up: a demonic-looking figure traced over a thick, shaded-in swastika, and a skull on either shoulder to hide identical SS bolts, a reference to Hitler’s Nazi army.

Most often, the tattoos covered up are swastikas and SS bolts, Garret explains. Other times they’re gang symbols, portraits of Hitler, or words such as “skinhead” or “Aryan”. The men using this service – referred to as “formers” – are an even mix of reformed gang members and white supremacists. But he’s open to helping “any kind of former from an extremist group”, he says. “They could be from Isis, it really doesn’t matter. The struggle with hate is still the same.”

‘I was the Nazi kid’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The outline of Nate Greer’s cover-up tattoo is finished. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

From leading a small chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to hosting public forums on the dangers of racism, Garret’s story of leaving white nationalism and becoming a human rights activist is, literally, etched into his skin.

On his upper left arm, where the word “skinhead” was previously displayed in gothic letters, is a solid black banner. Lower down are the lasered-off remnants of a Celtic cross, a ubiquitous symbol of white supremacy. His left elbow, once covered with a large, patchy spiderweb, now features a sun emerging from a pool of water – a testament, Garret says, “to the darkness and the light of my journey”.

Born 43 years ago in a small German village in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, Garret’s original name was Achim Schmid. His father died of lung cancer when he was eight. His mother, when she wasn’t working to support the family, drank a lot. Garret grew up with two older sisters, one of whom constantly listened to rock and pop music, which he says shaped him from a young age.

It was music that brought a teenage Garret into Germany’s skinhead scene. After a classmate gave him a skinhead rock cassette tape, he was hooked. From there, he progressed to harder, more nationalist music, jamming to neo-Nazi bands singing about the preservation of the white, Germanic race.

“I was the Nazi kid in school,” Garret says, leaning back in his chair. “I wanted to have something that was me. An identity or purpose, something to get attention … I didn’t like the label at first, but once I had it, I wasn’t a nobody any more.”

Garret started a series of white power skinhead bands, with names such as Wolfpack and Hounds of Hell. While attending college in Stuttgart, he joined the ultra-right National Democratic party of Germany – known by its German acronym NPD – and played concerts at campaign events and conventions. “War in the streets. Smoking guns. Blood and honor. White and proud,” Garret would sing to rooms of Nazi-saluting skinheads.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest TM Garret stands outside Sickside Tattoo Studio. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

Living in the small German town of Schwäbisch Hall, Garret became associated with the racist skinhead music network Blood and Honour, now banned in several European countries. Around the same time, he joined the International Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and worked for two years before leaving to start his own auxiliary Klan.

Nationalism was “how I defined myself. That’s what gave me my identity,” Garret recalls. “Later, it shifted into being that Aryan warrior that had to save the entire white race.”



In 2000, a then 24-year-old Garret traveled from Germany to a field outside Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to team up with the KKK. In a grainy nighttime video, Garret can be seen kneeling next to a blazing, crackling cross. Standing above him is the leader of the Mississippi White Knights of the Klan, who appoints Garret as Grand Dragon of the newly anointed European White Knights. Gathered around them and the blazing cross are several hooded men in flowing white robes, giving the Nazi salute and yelling, in unison: “White power!”



Back in Germany, Garret’s new Klan group soon came under heavy state surveillance. Two years after the group formed, a Klansman working as an informant tipped off authorities following an annual cross burning ceremony. Within weeks, German intelligence services were questioning everyone involved with the European White Knights.



That was when Garret decided he’d had enough. “I just got out. I said, it’s not worth it,” Garret says.

A Turkish Muslim man breaks through

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Old friends Drew Darby and TM Garret catch up outside Sickside Tattoo Studio. They met when Darby did a coverup of one of Garret’s tattoos. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

The hate group dissolved shortly after Garret left. Eager to get away from the Klan, he moved south to the German town of Giengen, and rented a small apartment with his wife and three children.

Despite no longer being associated with the Klan, Garret says he still thought very much like a racist. Until one day, over a dinner of baked chicken and fries, Garret’s beliefs about white supremacy were abruptly challenged.



At first, his landlord – a middle-aged Muslim man from Turkey named Himmet Özdemir who lived downstairs – asked Garret for some computer help. From there, Özdemir regularly hired Garret to fix his computer issues. He initially felt strange in the presence of this darker-skinned foreigner, Garret says. “But I needed the money.”



Özdemir eventually invited Garret to his house for dinner with his family. “I was still sitting there, waiting for him to fulfill all of the stereotypes. I was waiting for him to be that horrible Muslim,” Garret recalls. “It didn’t happen. He was just nice and compassionate.



“I felt so ashamed, wrong, stupid and small that I had been expecting him to show his real face, while he was showing his real face the whole time. That’s when I realized I had been wrong about everything.”



Desperate to move on from his racist past, Garret decided it was time to cover up the “skinhead” tattoo spanning his upper arm. He desperately looked for a tattoo artist that would cover up the provocative marking.



“These tattoo artists would tell me: ‘You need to know exactly what you want,’ or ‘We don’t know how much it’s going to cost,’” Garret says. “I just told them to put a block bob over it. I didn’t care.”



The solid black banner that sits atop the word “skinhead” on Garret’s left arm was his first cover-up tattoo. “It looks pretty horrible,” Garret says, looking down his shoulder. “But at the time, all I wanted was for someone to make it go away, to make it easy.”

For several years, Garret lived a quiet life. He split from his wife (“She was still involved with white supremacy,” he says. “I didn’t want that.”) and began singing under the stage name The Mississippian. His music took on a new, country rock sound and his lyrics, once full of hateful tirades against minorities, now featured softer themes, such as the importance of freedom and the intractability of life.

A new life in Mississippi

Facebook Twitter Pinterest TM Garret shows a tattoo that represents his life after leaving the world of white supremacy. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

In 2012, “the shit hit the fan”, Garret says.



Amid a government investigation into rightwing violence in Germany, Garret came under intense public scrutiny for his role in the European White Knights after authorities discovered that two police officers were part of his hate group.



The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by Garret, according to German media. Still, the discovery of Klansmen in Germany’s police force left an indelible image. Garret decided to leave the country for Mississippi.



“I had lost pretty much everything,” he says. “It was a good time to leave.”



Garret moved to Olive Branch, Mississippi, just outside of Memphis, on a work visa to open up a music video company with a friend and produce country music. He remarried, and switched his name from Achim Schmid to TM Garret (TM for his stage name, The Mississippian).



Then in July 2016, a string of incidents took place that would stoke racial animus in the US and galvanize Garret to act: a 37-year-old black man from Louisiana named Alton Sterling was shot and killed at close range by a police officer. The following day, a 32-year-old black man, Philando Castile, was shot and killed after being pulled over by a police officer in Minnesota. At a protest the next day in Dallas, Texas, a black man shot and killed five law enforcement officers.



“There was such a need to close the gap between white and black.” Garret says. “I said: ‘I need to do something.’ I just didn’t know exactly what.”



So began Garret’s life in activism. Through his new not-for-profit organization Change (Care, Hope, Awareness, Need, Give and Education), Garret started speaking out publicly about his life in the Klan. He’s since lectured at mosques, churches and synagogues, and is a regular lecturer with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based out of Los Angeles.

Through Change, Garret started the Erase the Hate campaign. He teamed up with his close friend, Drew Darby, a longtime artist at Sickside Tattoo Studio who had previously helped Garret cover up the spider web on his left arm. Darby estimates he and his colleagues do free cover-ups for Erase the Hate roughly every week.



“You rarely get that opportunity to change someone’s life,” Darby says over the motor of the tattoo gun in the front studio of Sickside. “That’s why I do stuff like this as a tattoo artist,” Darby says. “Because when the opportunity occasionally presents itself, you have to take it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nate Greer takes a smoke break outside Sickside Tattoo Studio before getting a cover-up tattoo over the swastika on his chest. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

His last act of courage: changing his mind

In a room towards the front of the tattoo shop, Darby works on former white supremacist Nathan Greer’s friend Josh Boyles. He’s here to cover up the swastika and SS bolts on his back, which he says he “earned” as a member of the New Aryan Empire, an Arkansas-based offshoot of the white power prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood.

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Since learning in June that he was going to be a father, 31-year-old Boyles decided to quit participating in the hate group. “I don’t want to raise my son up with that kind of lifestyle,” Boyles says.



He admits to still being racist, but “I’m trying to change that”, he says. “Where I’m from, you’ve gotta stick with your own kind.”

Greer is significantly more reformed than Boyles. Before becoming sick three years ago with kidney disease, Greer says he used to hate minorities. On his way to joining the White Aryan Resistance, he got a tattoo of a swastika on his chest. “If you wasn’t white, I didn’t like you,” he says.



Struck with heart and kidney failure, Greer fell into a coma for six months in 2016. When he woke up, he discovered that he was being tended to by a Jewish doctor and a black nurse.

“At first, I was like, ‘No, don’t touch me,’” Greer recalls. “And then the next day I was compliant. I was letting them look at me, and every day it started to get better and better until one day I was cuttin’ up with them, and they were sharing with me more and more.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nate Greer takes a smoke break outside Sickside Tattoo Studio. Photograph: Melissa Golden/The Guardian

When faced with needing open heart surgery, Greer says he had a difficult time finding a doctor willing to operate on his swastika-tattooed chest. Now that he’s about to get it covered, Greer is elated. He says he’s especially excited to show his 10-year-old daughter. “When I get this tattoo covered, I’ll be the happiest person in Arkansas,” he says before reaching the tattoo shop.

Later that day, once the cover-up outline is complete, Greer stands in the mirror to admire the first stage of his new tattoo. He’s told to come back in three weeks to get it finished.

With Sickside as the campaign’s flagship tattoo shop, the Erase the Hate campaign has come to include a handful of other tattoo shops. A Jacksonville, Florida, tattoo shop called Inkstainz regularly offers free cover-ups to formers, as does a shop in Los Angeles. Garret says he’s trying to bring in tattoo shops from New York City and Nashville, Tennessee.

“We know it’s a lot to ask these tattoo artists to give up their own time,” Garret says, admiring Darby’s work. Still, “some people want to donate their time to helping people leave extremist environments”, he adds.



Greer would never make it back to Sickside Tattoo Studio. He died of a heart attack a week and a half later in an Arkansas hospital, before his daughter got to see his new cover-up.



“Even though he died before he could show it to his daughter, I hope his daughter’s still aware of the amends he made before he passed,” Garret says upon hearing news of Greer’s death.



“I think the tattoo cover-up was the one last big step for him.”