 This is Startup to Storefront, and this is a very different episode from what we normally cover. On this show, we've covered the highs and lows of dozens of entrepreneurs' journeys, and part of every one of those journeys takes them down the path of self-discovery, a path that challenges them and expands their worldview before transforming them into the successful business owners and operators they are today. But what happens if that path of self-discovery initially drags you down into some of the most hateful and violent places in humanity, one where fear, hatred, and self-loathing rule and lead to violent extremism? To be fair, this is not a typical path, and this is not one that any rational person would ever consider. But this path does exist, and all it takes is to read the news to know that it persists in the shadows of modern society. So we believe that it makes sense to shine a light on it and expose it for what it is in the hopes of reforming those who are currently embedded within the rank and file of hate groups. Because there is hope for those who at first glance might seem beyond redemption. And to find that hope, you'd need to look no further than today's guest, Arno Michaelis. Arno is a former leader of a white nationalist group who, from the late 80s to the early 90s, was involved in all sorts of violent acts against minorities, the LGBT community, and any white person he and his organization deemed to be unsupportive of his cause. The hatred and violence ran so deep that he even tried to take his own life with two different suicide attempts. He saw friends killed, more go to prison, and he hurt innocent people, himself, and his family. All because he bought into an ocean where he believed there would be a race war and that he was carrying out these acts because in doing so he was defending his race. At the very core of white nationalism exists the lie that the Aryan race is the superior race. But pull at any corner of this lie and it starts to unravel. For Arno, this lie was undone by the kindness and forgiveness shown to him by people he professed to hate. This, coupled with the birth of his daughter, led him to flee the life of violence and hatred he had inhabited. Once removed, he was faced with a choice, bury his past, or make amends for it. It is to our society's benefit that he chose the latter and is now a renowned author, speaker, and peacemaker actively working against violent extremists. Through his work, he has helped families reclaim loved ones who had joint hate groups and prevented countless others from believing in the narrative that they preach. His most recent book is called The Gift of Our Wounds, written alongside Pardip Kaleka, whose father was killed in the Sikh temple shooting in 2012 by a white supremacist. A fascinating book that I cannot recommend highly enough. It formed the basis of our conversation today, ranging from how music played an important role in both Arno's entrance and exit from white nationalism, how hate groups recruit and how best to counteract them, and how Arno found happiness and forgiveness in the healing process that he's currently going through and will continue to go through for the rest of his life. So without any further ado, here is our conversation with Arno Michaelis. Let's jump into it. All right guys, welcome to the podcast on today's show. I don't even know how to honestly introduce you Arno. Fucking amazing book, crazy story. I think one of the things, just to dig into some of your past, it sounds like there was a pivotal moment, at least in reading the book, where you get jumped, right, by a bunch of guys. Nobody else jumps in and this becomes like a defining moment for you, where you felt probably alone, mega vulnerable, and this became like, let me lean into finding my group. Yeah, for sure. I want to dig into that, right? That to me was like, wow, like we can all relate to that. We've all been through high school. If you grew up in the 90s or the 80s, like pre phone era, that was the thing, like you were used to fighting, at least at least where I grew up fights were not a, it was like, oh, they're fighting again. Let's go. It was the thing, but at the same time, it was also very polarizing, right? It was like, if you lost the fight, it could ruin you for the next four years or at the time of school. And so when I heard you tell the story, it made a lot of sense to me. And I grew up in a place which was like probably a third black, a third Latino, and a third white. And so people were mixed all the time. But it was when these defining moments hit, certain groups would act differently, things would change, right? Tides would come. And it was like, oh, now we understand who this person is becoming for the next foreseeable future. And so I want to lean into that with you. I want you to kind of, if you can share us, bring that, bring us into that moment, into that moment of, and even that decision making process, what happened after? Well, as most storytellers are, I'm a big fan of irony. And one of the big ironies of my story is that prior to becoming a white nationalist skinhead, maybe three, four years prior, I was one of the first white kids, at least in my area, who like got into hip hop and started break dancing and things like that. So I used to go to a now furniture store, but it used to be like a roller rink on Saturday nights, with skate jams going and nucleus and Africa bimbata and all these like old school early 80s kind of proto hip hop artist plan. And I was a break dancer. And I hung out with like the five black kids who went to my school. I lived in a very predominantly white suburb. But all of us like taught ourselves the break dance by watching beat street and one of the richer dudes furnished basement and this late tried to copy the moves and we got pretty good at it. And it got us a lot of attention. We performed at the school talent show in the blue was seventh grade. And of course at that time in any young man's life, getting the intention of young ladies is always a big thing. And because I was this like cool break dancer guy, I had a lot of girls who liked me and they'd like that, of course. And I don't know if you guys are anywhere near old enough to remember like the OG like mid 80s break dancer look. But for the white guys in the mix and Latino guys as well, it's kind of harder to pull off when you have an Afro. But the having that rat tail hanging in the back, that was like, that was part of the look, right? So I had like kind of this buzz cut going that was actually kind of Billy Idol ish. And one of my first girlfriends actually liked me because I looked like Billy Idol, she said. And I had the rat tail hanging down and it would been dipped in peroxide and it was a good six inch long rat tail. And a bunch of the jocks in my school, just about all of whom I had been like good friends with at some point, I've always been and this has certainly been a blessing really, I've always kind of navigated every click there was in school, like throughout my K 12 years, I had to hang out with the nerds and hang out with the the burnouts with the jocks with the preppy kids with and with the punk rockers when that came on, the break dancers would have you. But even though I knew all these guys, like they were all getting really sick of my shit. They didn't like that I got all this attention from the girls. And it's important to understand, like I was a dick. I was like this cocky asshole kid that I wasn't really didn't really care about other people. I didn't I just as soon like tank a friendship and beat somebody's ass if I for the whim of it, then like really be loyal to friends that I had and that rub people the wrong way, go figure. And I had been a bully since I was a little kid. So a lot of these guys were now jocks and maybe you're bullied by me in first, second, third grade. And I don't think any kid ever has this coming, but if anybody can make an argument that I did have it coming. And what happened was was one day at recess, I'm there with my fellow B boys and we had gotten our boombox confiscated like the week before. So we're like beatboxing to give a beat so we can break. And as we're like very engulfed in doing that with a good chunk of girls looking on all of a sudden, like we didn't notice, but there was a group of like 20, 30 jock kids that just like snuck up and then they jumped on me. And I fought for all I was worth, like a rabid Wolverine, but there was, you know, a ton of them and just one of me and eventually they ended up snipping my tail off and then running off with it like a trophy. And I was like hysterically balling. I felt violated. You know, I can't imagine what anybody who's been sexually assaulted goes through, but lucky for me, like this is about as close as I've come to being sexually assaulted in my life. And it had that same sense of violation. And the other thing that really sucked was that as I was kind of getting my bearings and everybody had split, like my guys were all gone also. All my B boy guys who I hung out with every Saturday. And of course, when you're a suburban white kid and you're hanging around with the black guys and you actually go to like the black part of town and you're at the roller arena every Saturday night, I was all enamored with like gangs, like the black gangs. And so I was kind of a wannabe gangbanger as well as this break dancer guy. And we kind of looked at our little break dancing group as like a gang, like we stuck up for each other, we looked out for each other. Certainly when we went out to starlight every Saturday, it was like we stuck together. And we sometimes would get in little mix ups with other groups of kids there. But when this tail cutting incident happened, like all my guys were absolutely nowhere to be seen. And that sucked. Like I really, I expected these guys to have my back. The attack was totally unexpected. But when it just made it hurt more afterwards when I kind of looked around and saw that they weren't anywhere to be found. So I literally like sprinted the mile and a half to my house and like came in and just devastated and tears. My mom said she'll never forget that day about how upset I was and how hurt I was. And looking back now, I think like she's more hurt about it still than I am. Like I'm looking back now. I'm like, I had it coming. You know, when it comes around, it goes around. You want to live by the sword. You want to be a bully. You want to fuck with other kids. Like somebody's gonna fuck with you at some point. And that's, that's how I look at it now. But back then like it sucked and it really hurt. And I think it definitely made me meaner going forward. And I was already pretty mean. So it was, it kind of made me take the meanness up a notch. And I might ask you some questions that you might think like there's just so much curiosity to your story, right? And I've never had the opportunity to talk to someone who lived that life or played a character in your former life. And so for me, even when entrepreneurs come on, it's like, it's, it's the chance we get to understand their worldview. The beautiful thing about your story is that perspective changes. And everything, everything comes and we'll for sure touch on that. But like, there's so many just questions I have around how does someone, did you get recruited from that moment on? You know, what was that like, what was the recruiting process like? Was it something that just happened gradually over time? Can you give us a sense of what that was like for you? Yeah, I work in counter violent extremism now and everybody talks about, you know, being radicalized, counter radicalized, de radicalized, whatever. Looking back at my story, I was definitely one of the category of being self radicalized. I wasn't like approached by anyone, at least not at first. I do recall, I was in, I think eighth grade, which was after the tail cutting thing, when I really kind of like got a whiff of the power of a swastika to, to piss people off and to repulse people. And it's important to understand that since I started lashing out at other kids at school, whatever, at a very young age, like kindergarten, first grade, it really crystallized for me as, as it was just about pissing people off. Like I wanted to repulse people. I wanted to make a scene. I wanted to wreck all your shit. And nothing does that like a swastika. You're not wrong about that. That's for sure. Right? It's very polarizing. Yeah. Exactly. And I wasn't ignorant as to why. Like, like I had known about the Holocaust. I grew up with some pretty close friends who were Jewish. I recall in sixth grade, I went to a ton of bar mitzvahs and bot mitzvahs and caused a lot of trouble at those. But just for the sake of causing trouble, like not just from an anti-Semitic place, but in eighth grade, there was a new kid who was a Russian Jew and he was kind of, you know, dumpy and nerdy looking. And I just decided like this kid, this is my new target. He's, he's going to get it. And so I would sit in class and my mom is an amazing artist and she, I've been drawing since I was a little kid. And I still not a bad artist myself. But when I was in class, I was really into comic books also. So I draw these big like muscled up superhero guys, like the body of like, you know, Superman or Thor or whatever. And then the head would just be a big smiley face. And then on his chest, like where Superman's S would go, there was a big swastika. And I don't have a name for the guy, but like that was just the guy. And then I thought it would be clever to like draw him doing all kinds of horrible things to this kid, like decapitating him, kicking him down a flight of stairs, whatever, like, so I basically make these little comics of the swastika guy victimizing the kid who of course I drew a character of and made him a lot fatter and dorkier looking than he was. And then I just slipped these to him during, you know, English class or whatever and giggle. And I had, of course, I had a bunch of toadies who were all thought it was hilarious as well. And, you know, the kid like many kids is kind of like, haha, trying to play it off. And ultimately, one teacher I actually really connected with, I had him in sixth grade and eighth grade, his name was Mr. Franzen. And I love Mr. Franzen because he cussed. Like I was like, yeah, this is a teacher who cusses. That's cool. Like that connects me with him right away. And the other cool thing about Mr. Franzen was he was a Vietnam vet and he would like tell all these really fucked up, gory Vietnam stories. And we're just like, oh, like, so I love Mr. Franzen. And after these comics I was drawing got wind to him. He took me aside after class and he's like, Arnie, what is up with his swastika bullshit? You know better than that. And I was just like, what, what? I'm just kidding. I'm just having fun. And he's like, that's not fun. There's nothing fun about that. That's bullshit. Like you're better than that. And I expect you to quit doing that right now. And I did, but I didn't lose the thrill or that memory of like how powerful it was. And all I got to do is to display this symbol and everybody loses their shit. And from that point, I got involved in punk rock, which I still love. And I always make a point of saying I, I never want to make it sound like punk is some kind of gateway drug to become a white power skinhead. But to me, punk was just about like breaking shit and pissing people off and very kind of like, ambitious style. Like, I don't know, fuck, fuck you, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to be disgusting. I'm going to be repulsive. And in the mid late 80s, there was another kind of faction of punk that arose. And they're actually more predominant in the punk scene now than ever. And back then we called them peace pumps. And they were like very kind of social justice driven activist types. And I remember I'm going to a punk show and I'm 15 and all these peace pumps are like, boy, God, Coors beer, they don't hire black people. They're racist. And like, I didn't give a shit one way or another who Coors hired or didn't hire. But I hated the peace pumps. Because to me, punk was about like breaking shit. It wasn't about caring about things. And they were like threatening everything I thought punk was. So I would go out and spend the extra like dollar or two. To me, at that point, Coors was like a premium beer that I was all about quantity, not quality. But just to piss off the peace pumps, like, I'm going to spend an extra dollar or two to get Coors beer. And I even got myself a Coors hat. And I was literally like sitting outside of a punk show working on my second 12 packet Coors in my Coors hat, like fucking with all the peace pumps. When a fellow, another friend from the punk scene that I knew brought up a Walkman and put the cans on me and hit play to play me a white part of skinhead band called Screwdriver. And when I heard that music, I was like, oh, oh, like, where has this been all my life? And just like the hair on the back of my neck stood up right away. I'm just like, this is amazing. Like this is what I'm all about. And that music told me that the reason I was violent and the reason I was hateful was because I was a white man fighting for his people against this evil Jewish conspiracy to kill all the white people on the planet earth. And if I don't succeed, there won't be any white people left. And as ridiculous as I would hope that sounds to any thinking person to 16 year old Arno, that was like literally music to my ears. And that's how I got into it that was was through the music. And then you would go on to start your own group, right? And kind of really, and have you always, I want to use this term interestingly, but have you you've always kind of been a leader, right? You've always kind of been the person pushing, whether it's you're just pushing the edge, pushing people to have a reaction. You're always leading in some example. And so for you to get into music and lead your own band, I would imagine was like the thing you were going to do anyway. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've always had an ability to influence other people for good, bad or very, very ugly. I think the first time it was was when I was in like second grade, and there was a kid on the bus I beat up by myself all the time. And that got boring. So I got a group of like six other kids to beat him up. And he got hurt really bad. And that was like kind of at the time where I was like, I can control people, like I can make them do what I want them to do. What was that like for you that moment for you when you realized it? It was a rush. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was it was a huge like sense of power. And I liked it. I wanted more of it. And did you at that moment, you just went into let's go full throttle into doing all the things that are in my head and getting other people to do it? Right? Yeah. It was I always kind of had my own crew around me or whatever in sixth grade, about a year before the tail cutting incident. My parents watched the news and always annoyed the shit out of me. And I'm like, turn the news off. I don't care about the news. But one night on the news, they're talking about Patty Hearst and the Symbi, Symbi's liberation army. And I had no idea what it was about, but liberation army sounded really dope to me. I'm like, liberation army. Yeah. So in sixth grade, you know, me and my crew, we were oppressed by the teachers because they would stop us from hurting all these other kids and like steal on their lunch money. And so we need a kids liberation army. And I actually started that group in sixth grade, which involved like, again, drawing pictures of teachers being decapitated. A lot of shit that like sent to whole school in the lockdown nowadays, but back then it just got me a week of in school suspension, during which my guys went to a dentist office next door to the playground and they stole the hubcaps off of Mercedes there just to let them know we weren't fucking around. And they were all apprehended trying to take the hubcaps home on the bus. Many parents were like, you're not hanging around with Arnie McKels anymore. That kind of shit. When you were first getting introduced to the groups, is it like any other gang in the sense of like there's an initiation process? They have to know you're worthy or like you're proving yourself to them? Is there, what is that like? There's a lot of, a lot of parallels between skinhead crews and gangs. I work quite a bit in gang prevention, intervention. I'm a huge fanboy of homeboy industries there in LA. My dear friend Hector Verdugo is the associate executive director there. So I'm pretty versed in like street gang prevention, intervention. And I think that the skinhead gangs definitely fall into that category. We would have told you we were not a gang because we're white. And when we didn't like fight over turf and we, aside from like violence, we weren't really engaged in like criminal activities like selling drugs or prostitution, things like that. But just the mental, emotional, social dynamic was very ganglike. We started our own skinhead crew in Milwaukee. And there's a, to my knowledge, the first white power skinhead crew in the United States was in Chicago. They were called the Chicago Area Skinheads. And their leader went to prison right about the time that our crew was starting up. And I recall like some of those guys from Chicago came up to Milwaukee to like visit us. And at first we were like, cool, you know, it'll be cool to connect with these guys. And then they all come in our house and they were very much like, okay, we're in charge now. You guys are going to knuckle under to us. We're in command. We're the OGs. No, you're not motherfucker. Like we ended up chasing them out of our house. And we were, that's all kind of how we rolled. We were like, no one's telling us what to do. Like we're in command now. Don't come thinking you're in command. And there's a lot of, when the whole white power skinhead thing came about in the late 80s, a lot of these like old school neo-Nazis and Klansmen who had kind of been stagnant for a while started crawling up from under their rocks. And some of them made the mistake of trying to come to us like they're, it would even call themselves commander and shit like that. And those guys got the shit kicked out of them. Like anybody who told us that we weren't in charge was going to get the shit kicked out of them, whether they'd claim to be white power or not. So in a way, there, there was kind of like initiation thing, but we were the ones like, we're, we're running this. Like we're not here to, to join anything. We're here to, we're starting our own shit. You can join us if you want to, or you can get rolled over. At what point did it become violent against other groups? Was it a weekly thing? Was it, you know, planned? When did it turn violent? I, I was, I mean, I mean, I was violent my whole life. And I was very violent as a punk rocker. We made a sport out of like brawling all the frat boys at UW Madison. And I got my ass whipped by a gigantic guy who played center for the Wisconsin Badgers one night. So I, like, the violence was nothing new to me. It was just like, now we're all skinheads and we're, we're going to take it up a notch. And initially the violence was directed against non-racist skinheads, which is important to understand that the whole skinhead counterculture began in like the late sixties, early seventies in Britain. And originally it was not racist by any stretch. They listened to reggae. They, they included immigrants from the West Indies and from Pakistan and Asia, like amongst them in their skinhead crews. It wasn't until the late seventies that the national front, which was an outright British fascist political party, saw the opportunity to kind of convert the white skinheads into like a kind of a brown shirt. And that's where the skin, racist skinhead offshoot came from. Now, white nationalism, like any other violent extremist group, requires a lot of mental gymnastics to make all the bullshit make sense. And part of our early mental gymnastics was, well, real skinheads are white power. If you're not racist, you're a baldy. And actually the opposite was much more historically accurate. But we called any skinheads who weren't overtly racist and part of our crew, we called them baldies. And we would spend our, our evenings trying to find where they live in the city or go into places where they hung out. And if we found them, we'd beat the shit out of them. That was the majority of the early violence that happened. After a while, the anti-racist, anti-fascist presence in Milwaukee had been beat down so much that like there wasn't, they weren't, they didn't give us a decent fight. So we would like actually pack into vans and drive six hours to Minneapolis where there was a ton of baldies and they were pretty tough. Or we'd drive down to Chicago where there was also a ton of baldies there. And we, we like needed that violent pushback to, to keep us like galvanized and dialed in the, the hate that we were practicing. What was it about the Chicago, Milwaukee area that made it such a hot spot in the 80s for both the skinhead and the racist skinhead movement? Right. Well, as anybody who's been to both these cities knows like Milwaukee is just a scale model of Chicago. It's like the, pretty much the exact same city just the third the size. I think it's the segregation in both cities of, of which both cities are legendary for. Milwaukee has the humiliating dishonor of being the most segregated city in the United States for many years running. And it's, it's only slightly behind, or excuse me, Chicago is only slightly behind Milwaukee as far as like the level of segregation goes. And that segregation causes horrific implications in the inner cities of Milwaukee and Chicago. Recently in, in, in recent years, speaking of humiliating dishonors, Milwaukee has been named the worst place in the United States to be a black person. What is that based on? Is that based on deaths of, of, or just crime against black people? It's based on like all sorts of standard of living metrics. So teen pregnancy is worse in Milwaukee for black people than it is anywhere else in the United States. Failure to graduate high school, failure to go to college, economic mobility, incarceration, homicide, like all of these metrics all fall into place. And then of course, they're all interdependent and they drive each other. If people aren't graduating high school or be more likely to be out in the streets, get in trouble. So go into prison, get killed. Like all these things are linked together. And I know that was a huge factor in our white nationalist ideology because if you can't point at a ghetto and say, look, that's who our enemy is. That's what the threat is. And, and, and very regularly when I was recruiting Jill pissed off white kid, I'd be like, you're been down to 27th and North Avenue. Like I, I'd name an intersection in the middle of the hood. And first of all, white people in Milwaukee are still terrified to go to those neighborhoods. But either way, I'm like, you ever been down there? No, no, I don't go down there while you're wise to. But you know what? If we don't band together and fight for our race, the whole world is going to look like that. Your, your nice white neighborhood is going to look like that. And, and again, the violent extremist ideologies always have the little shreds of truth that they're based on. And the shred of truth we leaned on heavily was the North side of Milwaukee used to be not just a nice neighborhood, but like a very wealthy one. Sherman Boulevard, which is like the, the biggest strip through the North side of Milwaukee is lined with all these beautiful mansions from like the heyday of beer brewing and things like that. And we would say, well, it used to be a white neighborhood. Now look at it. And that's what's going to happen to your neighborhood. If you don't do something about it, if, if we wouldn't have had the North side of Milwaukee to point at and make those accusations, which, which are all like historically ridiculous. You have to have a very like willful historical myopia to blame the conditions of the inner city on the people who live there when actually they were created by government policies of redlining saying black people can't live in the suburbs. No one's going to borrow you money for a house. And it got to a point where like white people were like, we're not living in the city and they all moved out. So these conditions were caused by willful government systemic racism. That's the fact. But of course, as skinheads right now, it was caused by the people who live there. Do you think religion plays a role in any of this? And so I know at least with some of the suburbs, it's religion just just to give historical context creates like your tribe, right? It's like, you know, each other, because everybody sees each other at Sunday service. And then as religion has indoctrinated us to desire, let's say that tribalism or just tribalism in general, but as it sort of fades away, but sort of hangs on in the Midwest still, do you think is there interlinking between some of what you've been subjected to and religion during this time? Or is it like, are they intertwined in the Midwest? I think they are to a degree. And even going back to like Jim Crow and reconstruction, there's that old saying like that you want to see segregation go to church on Sunday. Like that's what everybody goes to their churches. There's the black church, there's the white church. And up until fairly recently, there was just not mixing between them. I think that certainly came into play in the Midwest and in the North. I don't know that it had as much of a role as it did down south, like in the Bible Belt proper. And in my case, both of my parents would describe themselves as spiritual, not religious. So I did not go to church growing up. In fact, I despised Christianity growing up. And I did, honestly, up until 2009 or so when I became a Buddhist and found that like the teachings of Jesus Christ are actually pretty awesome. But as far as my involvement with white nationalism, when religion wasn't much of a factor other than my disdain for Christianity, socially, I think it definitely does help to create that kind of tribal feeling. And I know in Macquan, there's some like very, very ritzy Catholic churches where all the rich white people go. And I haven't been in them in years. But I remember as a kid, when I made the mistake, which I never made again, I was sleeping over my Catholic friends house on Saturday night. And they would drag me to church on Sunday and you go through this aerobics thing of stand, sit, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, eat the Jesus crackers like even back then, I recall pretty clearly like those church services were entirely white. I remember one part of your book where you talk about going home, you're having family dinner, and it's the time that your mother says to you, you're like a 16th Native American or Indian. And this is a, at this time, it's like you had found your identity, right? And it was just crushed in that moment. Can you just give us a sense of what that was like? And yeah, just walk us through that. I mean, super, super pivotal part of the book. It was that that was suicide attempt number one, during my, my seven year involvement, white nationalism. And what happened was, was it was Thanksgiving, which like many alcoholics, I come from two long lines of alcoholism. And at our Thanksgiving dinners, the sober people were vastly outnumbered by the drunk people. And so they were always kind of dysfunctional, but that this particular one, I'm there, I was 18, I'm there with my skinhead girl, girlfriend. She's drunk. And I'm drunk out of my gourd. And I'm going on about white nationalism and how we're under threat and we're superior and blah, blah, blah, blah. And my dad is kind of like, Oh, bullshit. And he's, he's pushing back, but he's drunk too. And I'm going on and on and my mom kind of puts a brakes on all of this. And she goes, well, Mr. Nazi, do you know that your great grandpa, Bordeaux was French, Arcadian, and that he was a Native American, which means you're one 16th Indian. You're not white. And I went ballistic. I was like, don't you ever say that to me again. And I'm cussing her out and I'm, I'm just like, if the table wasn't this massive, like artifact heirloom, I probably would have tipped the table over. And I grabbed my girlfriend and we fled Thanksgiving dinner because I was so upset. And we went back to this shit old house we'd shared with a bunch of other skinheads. And we used to drink beer and returnable bottles. And I locked myself in the bedroom, my girlfriend and I shared. And I started working through a case of these returnable bottles. And at some point it dawned on me, I should break one and carve my wrist up with it, which I did. And later on, my girlfriend kicked the door down and came in there to find me lying on the ground. Fortunately for me, I didn't know the trick that you're supposed to go, you know, parallel to your wrist rather than perpendicular. And while I cut myself up pretty bad, it wasn't fatal. And my girlfriend, being a proper skinhead girl was not squeamish at the sight of blood. And she knew basic first aid. And she put pressure on and bandaged me up and stopped it from bleeding. And the next day I wrote a letter to Tom Metzger, who was kind of like this elder statesman of white nationalism. He was a big deal back then that he was kind of like the number one like David Duke level guy in the country. And I wrote him a letter saying, my mom, my race trader mother told me that I'm one 16th Indian and like my race is all I have and I'm humiliated and I don't know what to do. And I tried to kill myself and it didn't work, but I just want to kill myself again. And he wrote me right back saying, you know, you're a good Aryan white man. And if you got a nosebleed, you'd lose your Indian blood. And, you know, you need to get back on it and quit feeling sorry for yourself and like a real kind of rah-rah pep talk. And tragically, I don't have that letter anymore, but I did keep it around for like probably the rest of my neo-Nazi career as kind of like my past. Like if that got out to anybody else in my group or in the movement, I'd be like, look, I got a letter from Tom Metzger that says I'm a good Aryan white man. And that helped me just like go, okay, great, you know, I'm just going to forget about this and go full speed ahead. That is fucking crazy. That was one of the moments when I was reading your book that I thought, okay, this was one of those pivotal moments that everything was shaken up. And instead of turning the lens back on yourself and looking hard at your belief system, you doubled down and sought out validation from this other white nationalist instead of just questioning or even allowing your belief system to be questioned. And there were a couple other moments in the book where that happened, but this was the one to me where it was like, okay, well, maybe this one moment and then right back into it. And so we'll get there eventually when you did start to come around, but what did you expect to happen from that letter? Because clearly you wrote to him for a reason and you wanted that validation, but was his response kind of what you were looking for? The response is exactly what I was looking for. And Tom Metzger, even at that point, was a master at manipulating people. And I had, I kind of had that same gift where I, when I would recruit Joe Pistoff, white kid into the group, I wanted to find out everything wrong in his life and then blame it on Jews, blame it on blacks, blame it on gay people, blame it on everyone but him, which has a dual purpose. The first purpose is it's just, it's way easier to blame all your bullshit on everybody else but you than it is to look inward, like you said, and be like, Hey, what do I got to do to fix this? So it's an easy way out. And the second purpose, which is far more insidious, is that when you blame everything wrong in your life on other people, you're literally just casting away your ability to fix it. And so your life continues this spiral downwards, which means you're going to just go deeper and deeper in white nationalism as I did. And I don't doubt that that was Metzger's intention when he brought me back. It's a great response. I mean, that's a nosebleed amount of blood. That's a crazy, that's like brilliant, right? It's like how persuasive does it get? It's insane. So one of the things that, so new territory today, we have 23 and me and all these DNA tests. And so my wife thought she was Italian, she takes the thing, turns out she's like 60% Ireland or Irish. And obviously we can trace like the migration, you know, and so it's a melting pot. How is this viewed, right? So if you took one of those tests, we'd probably find out you're a whole bunch of stuff. Like all of us, right? And so how does that play into the white supremacist mindset? And does it just take a good salesperson to rewire and be like, that's a nosebleed amount, right? How do you view any of that? Interestingly, I did 23 and me last year. They had some sale and I got one and my daughter and I both did it. And one of the first things I thought when I got the results was like, well, I couldn't really use this back in the day, because I was actually about as pure-blooded Aryan of white man that you could possibly imagine. It was like just way skewed to Northern European and a little bit. I think I had like .02% Somali. And that was like, other than that, it was like as as Aryan white man as you could get no Native American at all. And I brought it up to my mom and she's like, oh, I don't think that's right. That's what the DNA says. And it was interesting. I've seen some media pieces where some like evolved white supremacists were confronted with their DNA results, showing that they weren't pure-blooded Aryan white people after all. And there's two predominant responses for that. The really, really easy, lazy one is to say that the whole thing is Jewish propaganda to corrupt the minds of white men. I mean, that's the boilerplate response to whenever the truth gets inconvenient. Oh, it's Jewish propaganda. It's fake news. It's the exact same mental process that people on both sides of the political aisle go through and they just go, oh, that's fake news. That's one of the responses you get. The other response that you get from like the pseudo-intellectual types of which there's like, there's always been kind of a faction of pseudo-intellectualism within these racist movements. And nowadays they're really like dialed in on IQ and they show a thing like these are the most diverse countries on earth. And like, this is all the most fucked up countries on earth. And go figure the diverse ones are the most fucked up ones. And I'm like, okay, then why does half the United States GDP come from New York and California? Well, and so now they go back to their pseudoscience. And what the pseudo-scientists would say about DNA is they just say, well, yeah, but then we evolved. Like white people went to, you know, came about in Europe in a very harsh environment where they're, you know, you weren't just like lazing about in the jungle picking fruits and feed yourself without lifting a finger, which isn't true whatsoever, but they'd cast it like that. That like people of color stayed in this easy environment. Whereas white people migrated to a very harsh environment where you had to be a lot smarter to survive and you had to be more dedicated and more conquering and stronger. And they would actually kind of spin it around as justification for their beliefs, rather than like a legitimate challenge to them. That's crazy. And I guess, since we're talking a little bit about the future as it relates to 23 million, these new companies, is white supremacy bigger now? Is it a greater threat than it used to be? Are people leaning into it more? Or how do you view it now? I'm very much an optimist. I believe that human society has been steadily progressing for 200,000 years and that progress has always been kind of a two step forward, one step back process. And I think we're definitely in a step back right now, but we're progressing nonetheless. And I think one of the best pieces of evidence for this is that diversity is so inevitable that even groups who organize around the idea of diversity being bad and toxic and unhealthy are becoming more diverse, whether they like it or not. And one of the, an example of this is, is that I saw this data like four or five years ago. I'm not sure what the latest update is, but I have plenty of anecdotal evidence as well. But for a time, the fastest growing demographic of the alt-right was Latino men who are US citizens who are just like buying all this xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment hook line and sinker and just putting everything behind it. I've heard Latino men say things like, I'm glad we were colonized by Spain. We were sacrificing each other and the king stabbing himself in the nuts to see what, you know, where to plant the crops. Like we, Spain did us a favor. And it's, to me, it's very much like Stockholm syndrome. But that mindset is not uncommon. To that point, then, would, I think people might be wrong to assume that it's in places people can easily point to, right? Where it's like, people will say, oh, that's, that's in the south. They're, oh, it's in the Midwest. But, but what you're saying, maybe not, maybe it can be in every, everywhere that situation might exist, where you can point to a group and say, look, see, that can be anywhere in the United States, right? You'd say it's probably a myth, right? To, to assume it, it just exists in the south, let's say. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, you know, at the same time, though, I think there are, we're all a mixture of nature and nurture. And there's certainly environmental factors that have a lot to do with the story you choose to believe. If you live in a diverse place, like New York City or, or Los Angeles, and I understand both New York and Los Angeles have their pockets of, you know, this is where the rich people live, this is where the poor people live. There's a lot of racial issues with the rich and poor, things like that. But if you live in a diverse area where diversity is the norm, you're going to be less likely to be afraid of it than someone who lives out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere has never seen a Muslim person, never met a person of color. It's just, it's a normal thing for human beings to fear what they don't understand. Yeah. So I, yes and no, you know, it can happen anywhere, but I think it is more likely to happen where people are physically isolated from diversity. Do you think having Donald Trump as president is galvanizing for the movement? Like a lot of people assume? I absolutely think it is. In my day, in the late 80s and early 90s, it would have been absolutely unthinkable to imagine the president of the United States saying that our country is being infested by people who are crossing our borders illegally and liking them to vermin. That, that was, that was how we talk. And we, back in the late 80s, early 90s, like Pat Buchanan was about the farthest right that you got. And, and we didn't, well, he would get kind of xenophobic, but he was just kind of a minor player. He wasn't, you know, he was a pundit. He's a foreign politician, whatever. He didn't have that much influence. Like you're one of the middle GOP and the late 80s, early 90s were very much more, you know, George Bush, Reagan kind of thing where you could certainly argue there is some racist undertones to their beliefs and their policies and their actions. There is nothing like overtly racist about it. And that pissed us off. We were like, you know, fuck them. They're as bad as the liberals. They don't care about the white race. Nowadays, every single person that I've helped to leave hate groups in the past 10 years from 2016 on was like, before they left, they were huge cheer leaders at Donald Trump. And there were clan groups who put up like robocall campaigns for them. So, you know, it doesn't matter that his son-in-law is Jewish. It doesn't matter how many black church leaders he gathers in the Oval Office from time to time. I don't honestly think that personally Donald Trump is like an avowed, I think he'll just say whatever gets him phrased. I think that's what motivates him. I don't think race motivates him. But at same time, what he says to get praise really resolves with racists. I read a, I recently read a book about Facebook and went pretty deep into the election. And basically what it was showing was he was just testing different phrases, different, different sayings in all these different groups. And so whether you were white of this income and different target demographics and what he was realizing, he could literally like pick posts by cities and see which ones are being reshared a lot. And on Facebook, that's what you want. The more it gets shared, the more likes, the more it propagates the bigger circle seeing it. And the strategy meetings he would have were not around, okay, you know, Mr. Trump, what are your policies? It was like, what is, what is working? And then he would just lean into that and which good and bad, right? Good, if you want to win bad, if you're propagating a message that doesn't necessarily inspire or lead or remove the country or civilization into, yeah, it just gets you elected, but it doesn't mean you're doing good by anybody. No, exactly. I think it is certainly a win and all cost approach. And I think a big factor of that is his advisor, Stephen Miller, who is like an outright white nationalist. And the first thing anybody on the right is going to say, Tucker Carlson would be like, he's Jewish. How could a Jew be a white nationalist? Very easily. Back in my day, there were a number of guys who, like after the fact, we find out they're Jewish after they had joined our group and been in it for months. And then they got the, they were violently expelled, but it was, it was not uncommon for Jews, for people of color. I even had in the early days, like before I went like full blown white power, there was a black skinhead who hung out with us and he would, he had a collection of black people jokes. He would like rip on black women. He was like very much like self-loathing black person. So this, this idea of like, well, he's Jewish. How could he be a white nationalist? No, there's, that doesn't stop you whatsoever. It doesn't mean that you can't be that when your policies are outright white nationalism. Arna, you talked about the strategies that you employed and getting other people out of the white power movement. But I want to touch upon, like in your book, you said like the big catalyst for you shifting gears and doing a 180 degree turn was the birth of your daughter. And, but even then it struck me the honesty that it wasn't a here one day gone the next moment. It took years for you to, to leave the, maybe not years for you to leave the movement entirely, but for you to become a better father too. I think you said 11, she was 11 years old when you finally got sober. And so it's, it's, that's one of the things that strikes me about getting people to kind of see the light of day and come out of these darker movements is that it's not a, an easy or quick process. Can you talk about your journey over those, those years and just how in the book you mentioned that the kindness shown to you from minorities, people of color was really like another part of like the, the persistent kind of reeducating that it required to get you to flip the switch. You mentioned the black lady at breakfast, right? And that was such a, such a powerful, can you maybe we'll start on that? Yeah. Well, I'm McDonald's. Yes. Yeah. It's a great story. And it definitely, to me, it's an example of the power of kindness. So early on in my white power days, because I'm a gifted genius, I thought it'd be clever to get a swastika tattooed on the middle finger of my right hand, which has since been covered up. By the way, Nick, do you know who covered that up? Was it Chris? Chris Buckley. Gotta love it. I want, I do want to touch on him eventually. We will for sure. We will for sure. So I had this swastika on my middle finger. And just to paint the picture, like I am this like stinking drunk, lanky, tattooed and scarred, shaved head, neo-Nazi skinhead. I got swastika's tattooed on me. I typically had scars everywhere, stitches in my head, like big swastikas on my jacket. There was no, no one would have been like, oh, maybe he's a racist. Like I'm clearly a racist. It was very, very plain. And there was a McDonald's I went into. And I, at this point, I was, I existed on ramen noodles and not like good, you know, artesian ramen, like they got at Silver Lake Ramen. It was like the bricks, the 10 for a dollar ramen. And it was just something that filled my stomach. And that's what I ate all week long to so I had more drinking money. But one day a week on payday, I would go to McDonald's and I'd get a Big Mac. And that was like the only thing I ate all week that wasn't ramen noodles. And it was, I'd all week long, I'm looking forward to that Big Mac. And I, it never occurred to my gifted genius self that maybe if I didn't drink so much, I could have ate Big Macs more often. I don't know which would have been worse for me. But in any case, I go into this McDonald's to get my Big Mac. And behind the counter is this elderly black woman working there, taking orders. And I froze in the doorway because she had this beautiful smile on her face that was so genuine and so like unconditional for everybody. I liken it to the sun in the sense that the sun shines on everyone. Doesn't care what color your skin is, how much money you got, don't God, who you love, who you don't love, who you vote for, like the sun just shines. And that's how her smile was. And it made me really, really uncomfortable because I'm trying to hate black people. And here's this sweet, genuine old lady, like making that seem as stupid as it is. So I go get my food, I scurry out of there. Next week, payday, I come back to the same McDonald's that was right next to the place where I catch my check. And she's there again. And this time, she recognizes me. And she remembered what I ordered. She's asking me about my day. And I'm all the more uncomfortable now. This is like fucking with my whole program. So again, I get my food and I scurry out of there. The next week goes by and in between these visits is when I got the swastika tattoo. So the third time I go back to the McDonald's, the third payday, now I have the swastika tattoo. And I specifically got it to enrage people. Like I wanted to hurt people at the sight of it. And then if they wanted to do something about it, I'd close my fist and I'd physically hurt them. Like that was why I got that tattoo. And I certainly was not thinking of the sweet gentle black lady who worked at McDonald's when I got the tattoo. But when I walked, tried to walk into that door, I literally froze in the doorway again. And I just had this almost like instinctive thought. I'm just like, I don't want her to see this. And I put my hand in my back pocket. And I'm just like, what does anybody else work here? I'm waiting for somebody else comes up there. Nobody does. I'm thinking like, where's the next closest McDonald's? It's December. It's freezing. And I'm hungry. And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to keep my hand in my pocket and she won't see it. So I go up there and I didn't occur to me that it's pretty difficult to reach in your pocket to get a bill without showing the back of your hand. And despite my best effort, she sees the tattoo. And she just says, like my grandma used to say to me when she catch me beating on my little brother, she was just kind of like, what is that on your finger? And I couldn't look her in the eye. I just like looked down at my steel toe and skin had boots and I'm just sitting there and I'm like, it's nothing. And she waited until I looked up again. And when I did look up, our eyes met. And she just said, I know that's not who you are. You're a better person than that. And I was like, I got my food and I scurried out of there. And I would love to say that I went skipping out of McDonald's going racism, stupid. She's so nice. Like glad that's done. But I actually, I went home. I got as drunk as I could as fast as I could. I went out the streets and I attacked the first person I could find because I wanted to put as much space between me and this like singularity of humanity that I experienced as I possibly could. But the thing about human experience is, and this is why people like my friend party can make a living in mental health is that we can't subtract things from our experience. Once something happens to us, it's there. And we can't just remove it. We can't pretend it never happened. All we can do is process it and deal with it. And I, it was all I could do to not process that act of kindness to not deal with it. And for seven years, this happened like within my first couple months of being a skin for seven years, that experience was part of me. And I, despite my best efforts to rip out that seed that she had planted, it took root and it grew alongside other seeds of kindness that I was so fortunate to experience. And it left less and less room in my heart for the kind of hate that it takes to hate people. And so it took seven years to get to the point where I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I got a change. And that woman's kindness was an integral part of the exhaustion that led me to that point. That's crazy. And such a good story. I mean, just, just the small acts of kindness that goes such a long way in perpetuity. I mean, I really forgotten today when I've had a lot of friends that have gone through the program and it's changed their lives in way more ways than just, you know, quitting, right? It's changed their lives professionally. It's changed the way they look at their time with their family. In some cases, they've transcended to become a different human. For others, it's just a way of coping on the daily basis. For you, what did it do for you? Well, this will require a disclaimer ahead of time saying, I know, I can't even count how many people I know whose lives were saved by alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous, some other kind of 12 step program, more power to them, more power to, and honestly, I have like the utmost respect for anybody who says it reaches a point in their life and they're like, Hey, I'm fucking up. I need help. I'm going to go get that help. Like that is one of the bravest, most difficult things a human being can do. In my case, though, I drank profusely for 20 years from the time I was 14 until I was 34. And the impetus for me stopping drinking was I started having these pains like by my kidney, where after a night of drinking, I would wake up like writhing in pain, biting on a belt to keep from screaming. And I didn't have health insurance, although I went to the emergency room. And it just like every time I drank it happened like clockwork. And I'm like, Okay, I got to quit drinking. And I didn't know anything about AA other than that's where you went to quit drinking and that you had a sponsor. Other than that, I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know anything about it. I had a guy I worked with who was in AA and I knew about it because he told me about it every day, but he didn't say like the nuts and bolts of it. He just talked about like, Oh, I'm a drunk and I need to help quit drinking. I have a sponsor. So I make a plan. I'm going to quit New Year's Eve of going from 2003 to 2004. And that night I sat home and I drank a case of beer by myself. And I remember being toward the end of the case and not even wanting those last beers. But I'm like, drink out, motherfuckers. The last beer you ever drink, like finish the case. All right. So I finished the case. Then I sit down on my computer. My guys, my buddy's name is Dave. I sent him this drunk and super dramatic email. Dave, I'm going to quit drinking. I need help. I'm going, you could be my sponsor. And he moves me back right away. And I'm kind of like, I'm like, if you don't drink, what are you doing up at three AM? Anyway, he emails me back and he's just as melodramatic. And he's like, first of all, you got to check yourself in a hospital. You can die of DTs. I'm like, yeah, whatever, I'll be all right. And then he goes, second of all, I can't be your sponsor. I'm not ready to be a sponsor yet, but I'll introduce you to my sponsor. And I'm like, okay, cool. That works. And then he goes, and third of all, you got to go to a meeting tonight and then you go to a meeting every night for 90 days. And I'm like, what? Wait, why? He's like, yeah, that's how it works. And I'm like, really? And he's like, yeah, that's what that's how people like can leave that they need that support to stop drinking. And I'm like, huh, okay. And I'm like, I'll get back to you, dude. And I send the email back and then I pass out and I woke up the next day with his rip and hangover. I was probably still drunk. And I remember the hangover lasted a couple of days. And during these couple of days of miserable hangover, I'm thinking to myself, like, all right, dude, how serious are you about quitting drinking? Like, are you really going to do it or are you not? And I'm really serious. I'm having this interconversation. I'm serious. And then I said, all right, dude, well, here's the deal. You quit drinking on your own or you're going to be sitting in some church basement full of black coffee, swollen chain, smoking dry drunks every night for three months. That's the deal. And the idea of doing that was so distasteful to me, I have not had a drop of alcohol since. Wow. So I've never been proper. I've never been to an AA meeting. The fear of AA, yeah. Right. The, just the idea of going was enough to like, and by my means of quitting drinking was very unconventional. I had like a physical like thirst for beer. So I weaned myself off by drinking an AA beer and smoking a shit ton of pot for like six months. And then I got to the point where I'm like, oh, I quit smoking cigarettes, I quit smoking pot. I successfully did not have a drop of beer or any other alcohol. A big factor in that was after I made this deal with myself about how I was going to go, then I was like, okay, now we're going to bring it home by telling mom and telling your daughter. And so I told my mom first, I'm like, hey, mom, I'm couldn't drink it. And my mom who has dealt with me and my father are no the third and my grandpa are no the second and all kinds of drunks in her family. My mom's like, sure, sure you're quit drinking. Sure you are. Yeah. Good luck with that. And she was kind of blew me off. And then my daughter though, who was 11 years old at the time, I told her I was quitting drinking. And the whole time I drank, she never said anything to me about it. And like, I spent a lot of time with my daughter throughout her whole childhood, but I was drunk for most of it. I was either drunk or hungover. And to my grave, that will be one of many things that haunt me is that my daughter's childhood was soiled by my drinking and there's nothing I can do about that. But she never said anything about it. And when I told her I was quitting, she said, I'm really glad to hear that, dad, because I always hated it when you were drunk. Oh, wow. And the few times where I was tempted and honestly, I wasn't tempted many times. I started to like, I enjoyed sobriety. I really enjoyed not having hangovers. But the few times that I have been tempted, I just remember my daughter saying that and that was all I needed to be like, okay, yeah, I'm not having any. And I haven't had any for, I don't know, since 2004. So it was 16 years this year. I make a point of not saying that I'm clean and sober because I'm not. I do use cannabis pretty regularly. I also use it very moderately. I don't wake and bake. I don't drive on it. I don't, and honestly, I don't like getting like super stoned. I just like taking a wee puff at night and my body's like destroyed from all the stupid shit I ever did. I have arthritis in all my joints. I have pulse and cushion syndrome. I've insomnia. So like, there's a real medical case for marijuana for me. And I can use it responsibly. So I do. But I don't drink because I can't drink responsibly. And I'm delighted about it every single day. You know, you mentioned in the book, and this is one of the quotes that stuck with me the most, is that your dad cried twice in his life once when your dog died, and then the other time was when he told you how proud he is of the work that you're doing now. And in the book that you mentioned, your mom was always quick to see the good in you, but your dad was more the disciplinarian type. And I'm wondering, how long did it take your dad to forgive you for your past transgressions? I, again, I'm, I'm so lucky in like a billion different ways. But one of the things I'm most lucky about is that I do have such an amazing family. And again, enjoying irony. But my pain point as a kid was my father's drinking. It put a ton of pressure on my mom. She's like, sometimes working two jobs to pay the bills. Her relationship with him sucked. They fought constantly. But it was also my parents' love for me, my mom and my dad, throughout the time that I had become this person that they just were disgusted by. But they, they're like, we're not going to give up on you. We love you. We want you back. We're always here to help you. And my dad even at one point, even my mom got divorced when they're eight, when I was 18. And it really wasn't until they got divorced that I was able to kind of like connect with either of them. But once they did, like I started to get like a little closer to my mom and I got a lot closer to my dad and especially in the sense that I'd go out drinking with them. They would sit around drinking. And at one point, you know, some late drunk at night, my dad's just like, you know, I'm so goddamn proud of you, Arnie. I'm very proud of you. And I'm just like, I'm like in the depths of my skin at shit now. And I knew he hated that. I knew he didn't like, he wasn't proud of that. So I asked him, I thought you hated the, you know, white supremacy and white power dad, how are you proud of me? Because that's all I'm doing now. And he's just like, I'm just proud that you're my son. And that you are the human being that you are. And you're making mistakes now, but you're going to grow out of them and you're going to learn from them. And you're going to do great things someday. And again, this is like our no four and our no three stinking drunk midnight kind of conversation, but I'll never forget it. And he meant that. And then I think that that time where he was brought to tears by the work I'm doing now, like that was him saying like, Hey, I was right. I was right not to give up on this kid. Let's talk about your exit plan. So how did you get out? What's that process like? One of my other huge chunks of luck was that about a year and a half after I left the movement, the only friend I had was a kid who had like kind of just dipped his toes in the movement for maybe six months. And then he's like, fuck this. I'm done with this. It was funny. I interviewed him for writing my first book. And I needed a lot of like corroboration because I was also drunk back then. I interviewed about 10 people who had been in and out with me. And I asked him like, why he got out. And he's like, dude, it's really difficult to get laid being a neo-Nazi. You don't go like walking up to a bunch of hot girls and be like, yeah, so that's the white race. He's like, I want to get laid again. Like he's a big ladies man. And he's like, it just wasn't happening in the movement. There is a sausage party. There's no girls. And for good reason. And I'm like, okay, yeah, well, that makes sense. But he was my only friend and he was a raver. Like every Saturday night, he's going to a rave party on the South Side of Chicago or up in the sticks in Wisconsin and the cornfield somewhere. And I would hang out with him during the week and we sit around and I was drinking and he'd like kind of, I love the Beastie Boys before I got in the movement. And when I got out on every one day and being him or like just stoned out of our mind, laying on the floor of his bedroom, listening to Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys, I was like, if this is wrong, I don't want to be right. There's a bunch of Jews playing black people music and it's the best thing ever. And it was really like hanging out with him that kind of like reconnected me to the beauty of humanity and culture and not being afraid of these things. And kind of the final step of it was, he was telling me about these rave parties and I was like terrified to go because I'm like, I'm not going to the South Side of Chicago. You're insane. You're out of your mind. And I don't want to dance. Like, I don't know how to dance. I just, I dance in people's heads. That's all you got to dance and I know how to do. How am I supposed to know how to dance? He's like, dude, you just go and you just start moving. Like the bass is so loud, you got no choice. All right. It took him a while to get me to the point where I was like, one Saturday, finally, I didn't want to sit by myself Saturday night. I'm like, all right, dude, where's the party? And he's like, well, there's one on the South Side of Chicago. You want to drive down there? I'm like, let's go. And that was my first rave party I went to. And I literally, it was such the polar opposite of everything that I had been. It was rave as a mantra of peace, love, unity and respect. And it's something that like the OG ravers kind of laugh at tongue and cheek nowadays, but it really was about that. It was like, I go to this party at a South Side of Chicago. It's 3000 people who are not only getting along and 3000 people of every possible ethnicity, sexual background, social economic background, nationality, it could not have been more hyper diverse. And these 3000 people are not only getting along, they're having the time of their lives. And there's like literally a palpable spiritual love for one another and this feeling like you're just a cell in this big organism. And I did MDMA for the first time that night. I that was a huge, I'm not going to say that wasn't a factor of MDMA or ecstasy or Molly as it's known now was developed as a psychotherapy drug for people to like kind of work past their bullshit. And it certainly worked me past my bullshit. And to the point where you know, Saturday night, I'm at these parties and I'm rocking out and I'm just, I don't give a fuck. I'm just dancing like there's nobody watching. There's no tomorrow. I've like looked like I jumped in a pool with my clothes on. I'm covered in sweat. And I don't give a shit. I'm having the best time ever. And then on Wednesday, like the drugs are long out of my system, but I'll be walking down the street on Wednesday afternoon and I'll see some dude on the sidewalk. And five years earlier, I would have just as soon jumped on this guy and beat the living fuck out of him for, for absolutely zero reason. And now I'd see him walking on the sidewalk and be like, that guy's my brother. I hope he's having an awesome day. I love him. I hope he's, I hope early works out for him. They're like genuinely feeling that way that that was what the, the rave scene taught me is that it's not only possible, but like healthy and, and very like healing to have that kind of love for other human beings. And the other thing that taught me was the power of forgiveness. There was this whole like right for sleeve now where I have this kind of kanji guy used to be a big pile of skulls and swastikas. And I had a bust of an SS soldier and it said white power. Like I got no mistaking what this is about. I remember sitting on the floor of some filthy dilapidated warehouse at four in the morning on Sunday and some girl has my forearm in her lap. And she's like kind of stroking the swastika tattoo and looking at me like, and she's like, what's that about? And I'm like, well, I used to be a Nazi skinhead. I feel really bad about it. And she's like, you're not anymore. Are you? And I'm like, no. And she's like, okay. That's how everybody was back then. I had gay friends. I had black friends. I had gay black friends. Like in every single one of them, even though they knew who I used to be, we're like, it don't matter who you used to be, dude. Like you're here with us now. Like, rock out and have fun. Tree some water. You look like you need, you gotta be hydrated. Like it was, it was just, they demonstrated for me how powerful forgiveness was, how powerful compassion was. And it really like kind of began the healing process that I'm still going through and I'll be going through the rest of my life. But if it wasn't for those, for that step, and, and, and I'm still friends with a ton of people from those days nowadays. And when I see them, when I talk to them, I always let them know, I'm like, dude, you help me get from there to here. And then I'll always be grateful for that. The thing that, I mean, incredible, just, just that the realization and then having an epiphany of sorts over time to get out. Hard enough, hard enough to get there. Then to make the decision to completely lean in, right, to completely start a movement. Because at this point, you have to, you have to tell the world who you were. It's not like you can just move to, let's say Massachusetts. No one knew me before, start new. A lot of people I would imagine do that. They just changed, changed their mindset. Let me go somewhere. Nobody knows me. Here you go, starting something, a brand new journey. People can now Google you. You're putting it out there. What on earth was that like? Well, that was an act of self preservation as well. I was doing IT consulting from 2001 up until about 14 or 15. And I was self employed. And I was, I was good at it. And I had a pretty decent client base and I was getting by. And at one point, I got a bunch of like, Stoner Linux guys with me and some very unwise partners. And we like incorporated into a company and we're going to do open source health software. And I ran the joint to the ground. Horrible with buddy and things like that. But I remember thinking back then, like, even then, like dreaming of our IPO, I'm like, I'm going to start a nonprofit in the inner city that like helps businesses start and then people whose businesses were helped start by it, like reach back and help other people up. And I'm going to name it after my friend who was murdered. Like I always had that idea that I had to do something to atone for my past. I had to do something to repair the harm. I drove the company on the ground. So obviously my IPO thing didn't work out. But it was actually in 2006, I met this woman who I was like, head over heels crazy about from the first second I seen her, we hung out platonically for like three, four months, got really close. And then we started getting naked. And I'm just insane about this woman. And I'm sober. This is like the first time I quit smoking pot at this point too. I was the first time I ever had a relationship being sober. And I was just absolutely over the moon for her. And she like didn't want to hear anything about my past. Anytime we come up, she's like, that's fucked up. I don't want nothing about that. And she also was like in her early 30s, she had a kid who I loved. But she also had her biological clock ticking. She wanted to have more kids. She came from a background of poverty or, you know, really difficult childhood. And she worked as a hairstylist and a really bougie hair salon with cutting rich people's hair. And she was in her head. She's like, I'm going to be rich someday. I'm going to, I'm going to drive a Range Rover and I'm going to have a McMansion to park it in. And I would tell her, I'd be like, well, I live with my mom and I'm six fingers in debt. She'd be like, yeah, I'm not happy about that. And ultimately she dumped me. And I was just devastated. It just, it was one of the most traumatic things I've ever been through. But what it was really about, like looking back on it, it wasn't about her. It was about my past and my past being unreconciled. And I remember after she dumped me, I was like in the suicidal depression for almost a full year that it was so bad that I resented my daughter for being the reason I couldn't kill myself. If I didn't have a daughter at that point, I would have killed myself like hands down. I had no doubt in my mind, but because of her, I couldn't and I resented her for it. That's how miserable I was. And I remember having again, these inter conversations and what the main one was this, I would be like, where the fuck do you get off thinking that you're going to go waltzing off into the sunset with a beautiful woman who loves you after all of the people that you hurt, after all of the harm that you've done. And I knew even then that there was probably people that I had destroyed physically that were still hurting from the beating I give them, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. I knew my parents were still hurting from what I did to them. I knew my daughter was hurting from what I did to her. And I just hated myself more than I ever hated anybody else, ever. And it was, it was my daughter who snapped me out of it. She was a 13, 14, she was having a hard time in school. She literally grabbed me by the collar like, dad, fucking snap out of it. Like I need a dad. PS, she was a bitch anyway. I'm glad that she's out of your life because I didn't like her. And I was like, all right, maybe I do gotta snap out of this. And that's when I started writing. So I started writing what would later become my life after hate. In 2009, I put the three words life after hate together. I registered the domain name. I got the idea to start an online magazine called life after hate where it was not just former violent extremists, but also survivors of violent extremism talking about compassion and really just talking about their past with openness and honesty. And I was really starting to get my groove on about how healing that was to do it, how cathartic it was. And also I started meditating in 2009. And that, that was a huge, huge step forward without my meditation practice, I would not have been able to take the next step. And essentially what my meditation practice, the first time I sat and learned how to meditate, I realized that if I can like deal with this intruding thought of a double cheeseburger with the works as I'm trying to focus on my breath, I can deal with this grudge I have against myself. Like it's all the same raw material. Now granted, the grudge is a mountain of decades of suffering, but if I can move this thought, I can move that thought. And so the possibility of self forgiveness came from my meditation practice. And that's what kind of drove me to carry it forward and brought me to where I am today. You know, you mentioned earlier on in this, in this conversation that you can't erase the human experience. Like every, every little detail that happens to you, you carry that forward going through in your life. And I think that more than anything else perfectly describes how you approach connecting with people who are in hate groups and want out. And in fact, like I, it's exactly the kind of work that I got to see you do first hand with Chris Buckley. And so for the listeners of the show, the reason I know Arno is because in 2016, I was an associate producer on a TV show that never aired, but it was focused on people who were in hate groups, whether it be the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the racist skinheads, and who either wanted out or their families wanted them out. And we would bring people like Arno in to connect with them and kind of bring them back into the light. And it was, it was moments like, I'll never forget this, we were, we were sitting down with you and Chris Buckley, who used to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. And you had brought Chris to a Mexican restaurant. And you showed him the Latino family sitting across the restaurant from you guys and showing him how look at the love this father has for his son or his daughter. This is the exact same love that you show to your son and your daughter. And it's moments like that, that you were so consistent with, that really struck me as, oh, this is, this is everything that Arno's about right now is just the consistency of the message and never wavering from it. And it built up into this thing that Chris could not deny anymore. He could not deny that all of his preconceived notions were false. And it was actually quite beautiful to see. And really, I mean, that's part of my human experience now. I've carried that going forward. And I want you to talk a little bit about what it was like going through the moment when you first met Chris to now where Chris is giving speeches and talking to groups about his former life and how he repented and how he advocates and wages peace as you like to put it. Right, right. Chris is again, of all these things I'm so lucky for meeting Chris is something I'm always grateful for. He's just an amazing human being. And as you know, when I met him, he was in a really rough place. And I know we all suspected on the production, but like on top of being an Imperial Night Hawk of the Ku Klux Klan, Chris was also a raging methamphetamine addict the entire time we were shooting, made production challenging at times. When we sat down and talked with him, one of Chris's amazing talents. And he one of the reasons why it's just a travesty that that show hasn't aired. And my dream is that it will be resurrected somehow someday. But I have never seen anybody open up for a camera the way Chris Buckley does. The way he did then and the way he still does now. Things that that most people are absolutely terrified of Chris leans into and just goes, boom, here you go. Sometimes very often to a fault, but he's such bravery to do that. And I talk about Chris all the time, I work with him all the time now. Both him and I are part of a group called Parents for Peace. People can find it at parentsforpeace.org with the number four. And just this past Monday, we did a online panel with the One World Foundation club at Emmanuel College in Boston on the day when the Boston Marathon was supposed to happen. And one world was founded by Dave Fortier. And it was a survivor of the attack and the Boston Marathon. And his daughter Elizabeth organized One World Manual College. And so they had us on along with our colleague, Moobin Shake, who's a former jihadi. We had Moobin talk to Chris also during the production, which you remember. And then our executive director, Miriam Nadry Churchill was an amazing woman, a mental health professional. And during that panel, Chris goes last, first of all, like, he's the headliner. I went and then Moobin went and then Chris brought it home. And he brings it home because what he is story is so powerful. And he's so fearless. And I remember just watching on the Zoom window the way we're looking at now, seeing Chris fearlessly talk about how he was sexually assaulted as a child. And how that was one of the pain points that drove him to become a member of the US military because he wanted to die on deployment. So people would think he was worse something. And then go on to talk about what his time in Afghanistan and Iraq did to him and what he saw and what he did. And then how he got out, got into the Klan. And now this guy is just such a force for good that I'm riding his coattails. And I think that my favorite part of Chris's story is, first of all, and I don't know that he can't be discounted is the bravery and the love that his wife showed to reach out to me for help in the first place. His wife, Melissa, she's an amazing woman. And nowadays, Chris and his wife, Melissa and their little boy, CJ and her daughter, Myra, are living in a pretty nice place. You'll recall Nick that the place he was living in back then, the way I describe it to people, I'm like a Hollywood set designer with a million dollar budget and 10 years to research could not have designed a more prototypical redneck hovel than the one that Chris Buckley lived in. He had a stove out in the front yard. Shit you not. Everything's like spray painted duct tape together. Well, now they got a nice little place. It's clean. It's a great place for the kids to live. And my favorite part about it is that CJ is like a happy sweet little kid. That's really good. As you know, Nick, when we met Chris, his son, CJ, who he's a spittin' image of, had his own little clan robe. And one of the impetus for Melissa to contact me was that CJ would walk around dropping n-bumps when they were at Walmart and using racial slurs and saying white power. And you'll also recall it like CJ was an angry, angry little kid. And he would just snap at the slightest propagation. He would beat the dog. He was just, I was so worried about him. And nowadays, I just visited him this past January. Myra's doing awesome as well. The kids are doing great. Chris and Melissa are doing a lot better. And just to think about, that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about helping people turn their lives around so that their kids' lives can be turned around. And to bring it all full circle, I get a lot of pushback from political extremes nowadays. And I get actually more pushback from the far left than I do from the far right. And a lot of their story is that they're like, fuck forgiveness. Fuck kindness. We're done being kind. We're done being forgiven. Like, we're going to smash the oppressors because we've been oppressed for 500 years. And it's usually like Snotknoe's white college kids saying this, but there's certainly people of color who feel that way as well. And I can't blame them one bit. I fully acknowledge that. But what I tell them is like, do you want to do what it takes to prevail in this conflict? Chris, as being a vet, taught me to think tactically. I'm like, do you want to do what it takes to prevail in the conflict and accomplish your objective? Or do you just want to be right? And you want to feel like you're doing the right thing? That's the question you got to ask yourselves. Because that woman at McDonald's had no obligation to treat me with kindness. No one would have begrudged her if she'd be like, fuck you, Nazi. Get the fuck out of my store. She had every right to do that. She had every reason to do that. But instead, she did what she had to do to prevail in that conflict. And that was disarming with compassion and forgiveness and kindness. And because she did that, it brought me to a place over 20 something years to where I met Chris Buckley and I was able to help him change the course of his life, which helped to change the course of his son's life. And as you know, it ultimately led to the disbanding of an entire clan group in northern Georgia. And so that happened because of kindness. That happened because of forgiveness. That didn't happen because of like smash the white supremacist capitalist oppressor. It happened because people had the bravery to connect with what's best about being human. And to do that, they had to set their political views aside. They had to connect on a spiritual level rather than allow their political attachments to dictate how they're going to treat other people. And so I had some amazing teachers in my life. Without them, I couldn't have done anything I've done. Certainly not being successful with Chris. And I'm delighted to say Chris is doing the same thing now. He was in northern Texas on a case where the family was worried about their kid getting mixed up in white nationalism. And Chris's first, I'm talking to him, he's like, okay, I'm going to bring him to Clarkston, Georgia and introduce him to mother Amina, who's a Somali refugee woman that Chris first met at going to an Iftar dinner in 2017. And Chris is like, I'm going to bring this kid to the most diverse place I know and introduce him to all these amazing people who love me, who are my friends and who I wouldn't trade for anything on earth and who I wouldn't know if I was still attached to all my bullshit. So to see him keeping this process and this cycle of spirituality going is one of the greatest gifts I've ever had in my life. I think that's a beautiful tale. But that one lady at McDonald's cascaded it into this network and this spider web of little good deeds here and there that helped people in ways that that you mentioned, she could have never imagined, but it took that one act to start it off. So party been I started organization actually the party been his brother and other people would lost their family in the sick temple shooting of August 5th, 2012 started an organization called served you night and party been I kind of brought it into schools and right now we're hoping to connect with some DHS grants to kind of take it country wide. But working with these kids at a workshop where I tell the McDonald's story and then we all just kind of like riff on who this woman was and how did she get to the point where she was so adept with kindness that she could give it to the person who least deserved it, right the person who needed it most and the person who it was most powerful with. And so we would kind of like write stories and draw pictures and talk about who she was and what in her life led her to that point. So if you think of that interaction as like the singularity and then everything ahead of it and everything behind it and all those people connected you can literally see how an act of kindness can change the world. And I couldn't think of anything more exciting than that. In my head I mean your story is really a story of humanity right it's that's how I distill it I mean it really is it's hopeful it's like to me I always tell people I guess professionally I've switched industries many many times and people say oh you know why do you do that and I'm like because everything boils down to humanity it's really straightforward right what doctors use you know their own terminology and their hospitals in construction we have our own little acronyms everyone's got like right the mix of dp all these little acronyms but at the end of the day it's here you were trying to find identity you chose the wrong path or was it right or was it or did you you were just on a journey and the lens just had to change a few times which led you led you to what you're doing now which is which is giving people the right lens right and sharing your story to impact where that lens leads you there's a beauty to that there's a lot of bravery that you've had to have there's a lot of just your own personal you know I'm certainly not a therapist but there's a lot of you looking hard at yourself and saying I want to matter I want someone to view me for who I am all of me and the only way I can do that is by accepting myself my truth how do I go do that and so it's man it's inspiring it's fucking crazy it's right it's like there's no way around that it's crazy but thank you I mean thank you for having the bravery to share your story thank you for leaning into so many dark places so many unknowns right I mean just the fact of you launching your your organization that could have went a million different ways right who are you like who are you to launch this thing on an MLK day right like right but at the same time I'm just so happy that people were receptive because it says a lot about humanity well I that means the world to me you put it so beautifully too I thank you and and Nick for giving me this chance to share my story how can we help I mean how how can people help you otherwise you know how can we I read the book it's wonderful obviously we'll tout that it's a great book I listen to an audible the gift of our wounds yeah people can find the book at giftofourwounds.com there there's links to order the book there's also a link to something a little project we did called gift magazine which I share with you on our youtube channel it started out as me just with a camera on a tripod and sitting down with people like Daryl Davis or Bernice King the eldest daughter of Dr. Martin King Jr and just say kind of say what's the gift of your wounds and then as I emailed earlier my filmmaking career has progressed and I finally actually had a budget I did a seven minute documentary about a restaurant run by Syrian refugees and that came out great it really is the opportunity to help tell these stories is something I'm so excited about so if people buy the book that's huge people visit our youtube channel share that content view it that's a huge help the organization I'm working with parents for peace is I've been doing this for 10 years and I've come across a lot of organizations in the counter-bound extremism space I chose to work with parents for peace because I think they're the best they do an amazing job of addressing violent extremism as a public health issue and doing it from a non-partisan place a really a spiritual place kind of a condensed version of of what I did working with Chris and that's why Chris is a member of parents for peace now so when people visit parentsforpeace.org with the number four share the content that we have there share our content from our social media assets and of course it's as important as ever I know everybody's struggling now during the time of the pandemic but it's a society that is more ripe reading ground for violent extremism than it's ever been before so as we're all strapped financially it's all the more important that organizations like parents for peace get financial support so that we can reach people who need help getting out of these types of movements and we help people from jihadi groups get out we help people get out white nationalist groups we help people get out of antifa groups we help people get out of all sorts of extremism we have a toll-free nationwide helpline at 1-844-49 peace that anybody looking for help can call whether it's a parent who's concerned about a child or a loved one getting mixed up in extremism or if it's an individual needing help directly that's what parents for peace does and uh anybody in a position to support parents for peace financially that's uh that's that's absolutely huge and you're working on something right are you working on a script you started at the beginning you said you're working on some tell us a little bit about that I am I read save the cat what more do you need to know then to write a screen the quintessential screenwriting book I read it and then properly like shit canned everything in it because my script is not following all the steps they so nicely give you but the end of February this year I started writing the screenplay for the gift of our wounds and I just really fell in love with the the screenwriting process in the format and it's uh I've had a lot of fun with it last question for you yeah what do you want to be remembered for or who do you want to be remembered as uh I I really I I my my tattoo I just got that you see here is a symbol from siki it's called ekonkar and it's uh the the first words in the the sixth scripture so even though I'm a Buddhist I I'm now very inspired by spirituality of all kinds and especially inspired by siki having known party and having seen the sick community demonstrates something called charti kala and what charti kala translates as loosely is a rising spirit or relentless optimism and it's the the concept that no matter what's happening in our lives it's a divine creation and it's something to be grateful for and I you know it's easy to be grateful when things are going great it's difficult to be grateful during a pandemic it's difficult to be grateful when your father was just murdered along with six other people at at your place of worship on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning but I've seen party do this I've seen all kinds of people in the sick community exhibit what charti kala means and to me that is the ultimate defiance of hate and violence that's the ultimate like fuck you you're not breaking us you're not going to make us lose our faith in humanity as us lost yours as a matter of fact because of your violence I'm going to have more faith in humanity than I ever did because I saw how all these communities from southeast Wisconsin gathered to come together and support the sick community that they didn't even know existed before like I've seen people whose parents have been murdered say I forgive the the guy who killed my dad and I do it with vengeance like that's my jam that's my groove that's why I get we are one tattooed on my fist so I think to answer that question I think I want to be remembered as a rebel I want to be remembered as someone who acted in defiance but in defiance of hate and violence through love and through compassion and kindness and what's best about being a human being I love that brother thanks for coming on the podcast thank you so much our now thanks I love you guys we hope you enjoy that episode and we hope you come away with a new understanding of how to fight back against the hatred out there in the world we'd love to know your thoughts on it so reach out to us at startup a storefront on any social media platform or on our website startup a storefront.com startup a storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma Natalia Capolini Megan Conrad Haley Nelson Owen Capolini and me Nick Conrad our music is composed by double touch we've got more great episodes coming out every week so if you aren't already consider subscribing you can find us on instagram facebook linkedin and youtube at startup a storefront because in case you didn't know we film all of our episodes and release them a day early on youtube and you can always go back and listen to any of our other episodes available wherever you get your podcast and on our website startup a storefront.com thank you for listening we'll see you next time