Milwaukee Man’s ‘Life After Hate’

In the late 1980s and 1990s, not many people would have wanted to know Arno Michaels.

At the time, Michaels was head of the white power punk/metal band Centurion, which sold more than 20,000 CDs of what Michaels calls “violent, hateful stuff, me bellowing about killing Jews and blacks.” He said his band still has a following in Europe.

Back then, Michaels was also one of the leaders of Milwaukee’s white power scene and inspired scores of easily manipulated, angry kids and adults to believe in white supremacy.

Michaels and his crew beat up people, spewed hatred, found networks of racists around the country, saw friends die and watched another go to prison.

Back in 1988, he even helped to organize Skinfest in Doctors Park, which attracted skinheads from all over the country, featured swastika flags and led to a drunken rampage throughout Milwaukee, during which the racist skinheads beat up anyone in their way. In the depths of his race-based world, Michaels thought he was fighting a “race war,” which “had a kind of romance to it.”

That’s a heavy burden to carry, especially when you’ve renounced that way of thinking and that way of life.

“I need the world to know that Arno Michaels is a race traitor,” he said in language that white power skinheads will understand—“race traitor” meaning a white guy who doesn’t believe that whites are superior to anyone else.

“Worst of all is someone like me—a white person who is actively working against racism,” Michaels said.

 

Basic Human Goodness

It took a long time to get from being a skinhead, getting out of that way of life in the mid-1990s, to now, a decade in which Michaels’ racist worldview slowly eroded until it could no longer stand.

Michaels attributes some of that shift to the result of the real world not conforming to his rigid belief system. Outside of his skinhead community he discovered that people not like him could be kind and smart and interesting.

But he said that being a father and wanting a better life for his daughter was the biggest challenge to his life as a racist. He had an epiphany when watching his daughter in day care at MATC, peacefully playing with kids of different races and ethnicities.

“I never wanted her to be exposed to the hate and violence I’d perpetrated over the years,” Michaels said. “I didn’t want her to be a victim. I thought about the parents of kids I’d beaten up. They loved their kids as much as I loved mine. It really hit me how horrible I’d been. I really regretted it.”

After even more soul searching, Michaels realized he wanted to share his story and help others find positive ways of expressing themselves and their diverse worldviews.

In January, Michaels, Christian Picciolini and Angela Aker launched the online magazine “Life After Hate,”which the founders say is “about the triumph of love, peace and openness.”

The first issue, published on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, features essays from Michaels and fellow former skinhead Picciolini on their experiences in the white separatist movement, “in the hope of helping others to avoid making the same tragic mistake.”

Aker, who has no history with the white power movement, writes about her positive childhood experiences with a Laotian family and her insights on single motherhood.

“It really is about basic human goodness,” Aker said of “Life After Hate.” “It’s about reaching out to people regardless of differences and being a little conduit of goodness.”

The next issue of “Life After Hate,” which will be updated on Feb. 18 at www.lifeafterhate.org, will feature an interview with Milwaukee artist Bashir Malik, cover a sweatSHOP/Youth Build b-boy battle in Madison, and continue publishing more of Michaels’ memoir. 

Michaels said that the project is looking for contributions from artists and writers.

“Anyone who wants to can take part,” Michaels said. “It’s as much a product of its readers as its writers. We want to promote the message of basic human goodness.”