Was a Neo-Nazi for Years and Quit; Life Is Better Without Fear or Hate

This test also told is based on a conversation with Arno Michaelis, a former neonazi who works with the organization Parents for peace This helps radicalized individuals. It has been changed for duration and clarity.

For seven years, I was a white nationalist skinhead and the front man of a neonazi metal group based in Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, I lived in fear and anger, motivated by a violent ideology that transformed history into mythology and threw me like a hero in a delusional war.

However, this “heroism” was hollow. The life I led was toxic to myself and everyone around me.

How I became neo-Nazi

I was attracted at the age of 16. I was an angry and lonely child, looking for something: identity, goal, belonging.

I found it, or I thought I did it, in a fantasy: the idea that I was part of a master breed under siege.

I was in the Greek and Nordic myths when I was a child, and the Nazi ideology sold as the real version. He told me that I was one of the “nobles” standing against dark and corrupt forces.

This story was intoxicating and listening to it through music attracted me.

I was not a real musician. I couldn't wear a melody, but I could scream strong enough to whip a crowd in a frenzy, and it was enough.

Our goal was to spread ideology by music, to indoctrinate others as I had been. Music was the device that allowed us to feel united and just in our hatred.

Being a neonazi, however, was not a empowering, was exhausting.

I lived in constant anger, fear and hatred

All those who do not look like or think as you are considered a threat. You wake up angry and go angry. The only relief is violence, and even it does not satisfy long.

We have justified brutal attacks – what we called the “startups” – on people we consider enemies: people of color, LGBTQ people, Jews, punks, anyone who was not us.

I would hear a calm voice inside to ask, “What are you doing? This guy did nothing to you. You don't even know him”, but I didn't have the courage to listen.

I told myself that I was protecting my race, but the truth is that I was addicted to hatred, and somewhere basically, I knew it.

I am an alcoholic. I drank profusely from the age of 14 until the age of 34. There were days when I said to myself: “I can't do that anymore. I'm so tired of that.”

Hatred is in the same way.

I crossed life in constant fear and hatred of all those who did not look like and did not think like me, and I fell ill and tired.

The push I needed to go out

In 1994, I was looking for a way out, but leaving was not easy.

Being a neonazi gave me a status. I was a reverend in a so-called racial holy war. I had groups and I was a “founding father” of my group.

Apart from this fantasy, however, I was a dropout of the secondary school and an alcoholic who could not pay my bills and I had to return with my mother and my father.

It was intimidating to give up all this, although false, to rule and to face the cruel reality of the hole that I had dug for me.

It would require something drastic to give me the push I needed.

At the beginning of 1994, my daughter's mother and I broke up, and I found myself a single -parent at our 18 -month -old child. Two months later, one of my friends was shot in a street fight. At that time, I had lost the account of the number of incarcerated friends.

It finally struck me that if I did not leave, prison or death would take me from my daughter. It was the push I needed, so I moved away.

My life is better without fear or hatred

Hatred did not end overnight, but freedom came in stages: listening to music that I really liked and going to a game packers without the guilt to feel as if I played in the propaganda of pop culture designed to corrupt the will of the white man.

A year and a half after his departure, I was on the south side of Chicago at 4 am, dancing to shelter music with 3,000 people from each ethnic, sex and background. This is where I knew I was free.

That night, I achieved something deep: what I had looked for from the start – belonging, joy, connection – was not found in hatred was in community.

There were moments along the way that gave me glimpses of this truth: a Jewish boss, a lesbian supervisor and black, Latin and Asian colleagues. The people who treated me with kindness when I deserved it the least, but most needed it.

This is what undoubted me, in the best way. Their compassion made me see who I could become if I let go of the lies.

Today I work with Parents for peace, an organization It helps people taken in extremism to find a healthier and more connected life. We support individuals in their journey – whether interviewed, in difficulty or always deeply rooted – and we guide families trying to reach a loved one.

I believe that responsibility is not only to admit guilt, it is a question of using your story to ensure that the cycle stops with you.

I deeply live the evil I have caused, but I know that I can never undo it. What I can do is work to avoid more pain, and in doing so, I found a life that I would never have thought of being possible: a life without fear, without anger or hatred.

If you or someone you know with extremism, parents for peace offer confidential Family support and individuals. Learn more at Parents for Peace.

This story has been adapted from Michaelis interview For the Business Insider series, “Authorized account.“Find out more about his life before and after neonazism in the video below: