Arno Michaels founded skinhead group called “Northern Hammer Skins“

We all have our demons, but few are haunted by the terrors former white supremacist Arno Michaels brought on himself.

Michaels was an instrument of chaos as the lead singer of the heavy metal hate band Centurion. During the mid-1980s , and early 1990s the group played mostly in dark bars, basements, and any place that allows their drunken racist ranting. Michaels says, “It was a seven year keg party with racism, and violence.”

Back then Michaels was one of the heads of Milwaukee‘s white power movement as a founder of the racist skinhead group The Northern Hammer Skins.
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Micheals’ past is littered with lost lives, and live ruined by racism. In 1990, an 18-year-old, who will only identify himself as Chuck, is drawn to the deadly skinhead lifestyle. Soon after that he picked a fight with a latin gang, and was killed. Michaels says, “One of them had a .25 pistol…he took one shot, and it hit chuck in the back, and it went through his heart, and he died on the spot.”

The death only enrages the racist group. Michaels said, “We played it off like, ‘What’s the world coming to when a white man can’t even walk down his street without being murdered by these savages.’”.

So the cycle continued for years, the music played, the booze flowed, and hate ruled Michaels’ life.

It’s hard to imagine the Michaels of 2011 as the violent man involved with the Centurion group. Now, you’ll find the 40-year-old in very different places. FOX6 found him laughing in a Milwaukee inner city library with mostly minority students. He said to the kids, “We literally had blinders up to deny all this information from the world around us that indicated that other people were as human as we are.”.

The now reformed racist shares his dead friend’s story as a lesson worth learning. Michaels told the children he was talking to, “It’s really poignant, tragic evidence that hate, and violence begets hate, and violence.”.

Michaels’ journey from hardened hammer skin to self-proclaimed peace activist actually begins with more racism. He says, “We felt it was our duty to have white children.”.

A year and a half after his daughter was born there’s no mother in the picture, and Michaels is left to take care of his little girl alone. He said, “I was aware that my daughter would be left essentially orphaned if anything happened to me.”.

It’s the birth of his innocent little girl that finally makes Michaels feel guilty about everything. So, in the mid-1990s he began leaving the movement he helped mastermind. “As the violence, and hatred lost that constant reinforcement, it began to make less sense.”, he said.

Michaels realized the ramifications of the life he helped saved. He told FOX6, “I think about my daughter. How much I love her, and I think about how I’d feel if someone ever hurt her. And I think, “How did that kid’s parents feel after you got done with him?”.

By 2004, the former skinhead finds himself sober, sorry, and with a plan to reconcile his past. He says, “The impetus to begin writing this book was really my own sanity.”

Michaels book, “My Life After Hate”, was published in December of 2010, but writing the book wasn’t enough. Michaels continues to spreading his message through his music, blog, and online magazine.

Michaels launched an anti-bullying campaign with former Latin Disciple Sammy Rangel. Rangel says, “He’s a skinhead. I’m a Chicago gang-banger, two different mindsets, but still so similar on this other side. Just things that drew us together.”

Michaels will be speaking at a forum in Ireland about counter acting extremism. He’ll be joined by other former gang members, and even former Islamic extremists.

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