Ex-white supremacist: How he got out

[Esox_Lucius]

A little kernel of good news in the bushel of bad. He’s well-spoken and makes his case well. I wouldn’t say there are any major revelations, except for white supremacists who might see themselves as they are for the first time, but it’s good hearing it from a former horse’s mouth. There’s still some sanity in the Excited States.

He has also written a book about it, *My Life After Hate*.

My Life After Hate: Michaels, Arno: 9780983129097: Books - Amazon.ca

And he has a website, theforgivenessproject.com. Well worth the read.

So I assumed an identity where all that mattered was the colour of my skin. I remember one Thanksgiving dinner, when I was very vehemently and drunkenly spouting off my views, my mother said to me, ‘Well, Mr Nazi, did you know that you’re one-sixteenth Indian?’ That completely shut me up right there and then, but later that night I went back to my own house and continued to drink beer out of glass bottles – until I broke a bottle and slit my wrist with it. That’s how convinced I was that my racial identity was all I had.

[Esox_Lucius]

Correction: Arno Michaelis did not start The Forgiveness Project, but his story is on the website here:

http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/arno-michaels-usa/

[wonky]

There was a great article in the past few months about the son of the man who started Stormfront who got out. I can’t remember where I read it though. Highly recommended. I’ll try to find it.

Wow, that was easy! It’s here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html?utm_term=.a5e8a8c44c34

[Esox_Lucius]

Another great story. There’s always hope for them. Thanks for digging it up, even if it was easy.

[BigT]

Cracked had two articles on the subject. Not the same person–one was from Apartheid South Africa, the other a guy who joined a Philidelphia-based skinhead gang–even though he didn’t start out racist. Although he did a stint in jail where he wound up being more friends with the black inmates than the racist white ones, he credits the OJ Simpson trial as his turning point–as that’s when he looked up DNA and found out there was no difference between the races on that level.

[Baker]

http://www.upne.com/1555534716.html

The above link is to a book titled Not By the Sword. It’s the true story of how a KKK leader in Nebraska was helped to transform by a Jewish cantor and his family. I highly recommend it. As others have commented people can truly be changed.

[Esox_Lucius]

Thanks for the additions. I didn’t intend for this to be a collection of these stories but I think it’s a good idea to gather them here in one place, so if there are more, keep them coming.

From BigT’s first link:

It’s satisfying to think of those people as dumb fuckups the world is rapidly leaving behind; bumbling cartoon characters like the Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie. But here’s the reality: If you grab any member of a hate group and make them tell you about their formative years, you quickly find out they never really had a chance.

I have to admit to reflexively and unconditionally hating white supremacists, especially during the election campaign with the attention they were given, which of course made me not all that different from them. They’re not inherently evil, but severely damaged products of their dysfunctional upbringing who need help more than anything. They haven’t had a chance to mature psychologically. The mostly anonymous people who drew these guys out of their hateful and fearful lives didn’t hate them. They’re the best examples of the better angels of our nature. They’re the reason that there can be hope for the others and, by extension, the country as a whole.