This translated article depends on a conversation with ARNO Michaelis, a former new Nazi who works with the organization Parents for peace This helps extremist individuals. It was released for length and clarity.
For seven years, I was the presidency of white nationalism and the front man of the new Nazi metal band in Milwaukee.
During that time, I lived in fear and anger, driven by a violent ideology that adheres to history in myths and threw me as a hero in a war.
However, the “championship” was hollow. The life that led her to myself and everyone around me.
How did you become the new Nazis?
Michel was attracted to the new Nazi ideology that could be a champion of his race.
With the permission of Arno Michaelis
I was attracted when I was sixteen years old. I was a single angry child, looking for something: identity, purpose, and belonging.
I found it, or I thought I did, in imagination: the idea that I was part of a major race under the siege.
I was in Greek and Skilous myths as a child, and the Nazi ideology was sold itself as a realistic version. He told me that I was one of the “noble few” that stand against the dark dark forces.
This story was intoxicating, and listening to it through music attracted me.
I was not a real musician. I couldn’t carry a melody, but I could shout out loud enough to avoid the crowd in madness, and that was enough.
Our goal was to spread ideology through music, to rotate others as you were. Music was the device that allowed us to feel monotheism and good in our hatred.
Being the neo -Nazis, though, was not an empowerment, as it was exhausted.
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I lived in constant anger, fear and hatred
After leaving, Michaelis devoted his life to speaking against the white nationalists and their toxic ideologies.
With the permission of Arno Michaelis
Anyone who does not look or believe as if you are considered a threat. Wake up angry and go to bed. The only relief is violence, and even this does not satisfy for a long time.
We justified the brutal attacks – what we called “boot parties” – on the people we saw as enemies: colored people, the people of LGBTQ, the Jews, the wicked, any person we were not.
I hear a calm voice inside asking: “What do you do? This man did nothing for you. You don’t even know him, but I didn’t have the courage to listen.
I said to myself that I was protected by a camel, but the truth is that I was addicted to hate, and somewhere in my deep, I knew that.
I am addicted to alcohol. I drank heavily from the time when I was fourteen years old until I was 34 years old. There were days when I was like, “I just, I can’t do it anymore. I was tired of that.”
Hate in the same way.
I was suffering from life in constant fear and hatred for everyone who did not look and think like me, and I was tired of that.
The batch I need to go out
Micols has finally left because of his daughter.
With the permission of Arno Michaelis
By 1994, I was looking for a way out, but leaving it was not easy.
Be the new Nazism gave me a place. I was harsh in the so -called racist sacred war. I had groups and I was a “founding father” of my band.
Outside this imagination, though, I was leaked in high school and an alcohol addict who could not pay my bills and had to return with my mother and my father.
It was frightening to give up all this, albeit a mistake, and to confront the harsh reality of the hole that I dug for myself.
It was a fundamental thing to give me the batch he needed.
In early 1994, my daughter’s mother separated, and I found myself one of our 18 -month -old parents. Two months later, a second friend was shot and killed in the streets. By that time, I lost the number of friends who were imprisoned.
He finally struck me that if I do not leave, the prison or death will take me from my daughter. This was the batch that I needed, so I moved away.
My life is better without fear and I hate
Michaelis is happier after leaving his life as a newna.
With the permission of Arno Michaelis
The hatred did not end overnight, but freedom came in stages: listening to the music that I already loved and going to the Baks game without feeling guilty as if I was playing in propaganda in the culture of pop that designed to corrupt the will of the white man.
After a year and a half of my departure, I was on the southern side of Chicago at four in the morning, danced on music with 3000 people from each race and type of sex and background. This is when I learned that I was free.
That night, I realized something deep: what I was looking for all the time – belonging, joy and communication – was not found in hatred, and was in society.
There were moments along the way that gave me glimpses about that fact: a Jewish president, a lesbian supervisor and his black, Latin and Asian colleagues. People who treated me kindly when I deserved it, but most of them needed it.
This is what spoiled me, in the best way. They made me sympathy. I see who could have become lies.
Today, I work with Parents for peace, organized This helps people who fell in extremism find a healthier and more associated life. We support individuals on their journey – whether they are interrogating, struggling, or still deeply headed – and we direct the families trying to reach a member of his family.
I think the accountability is not only related to guilt, but rather is related to the use of your story to ensure that the course stops with you.
I live with deep regret for the damage I caused, but I know that I can never retract it. What I can do is to work to prevent more pain, and thus, I found a life I did not think it was possible: life without fear, anger or hate.
If you or any person you know are fighting with extremism, parents for peace offer two secrets Support for families And individuals. Learn more about parents for peace.
This story was adapted from Miklis interview For Business Insider, “Certified account.“Learn more about his life before and after the new Nazism in the video below:
