Arno
Michaelis
My Life After Hate
“When we see ourselves in others, hate and violence no longer make sense. Understanding and love takes over.” - Arno Michaelis
ABOUT
In the late 1980s and early 90s, Arno Michaelis was a founding member of a notorious worldwide racist skinhead organization, a reverend of a self-declared racial holy war, and front man of the hate-metal band Centurion, which sold 20,000 CDs by the mid-nineties and is still popular with racists today.
Single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated all helped to turn Arno’s life around, bringing him to embrace diversity and practice gratitude for all life. Author of My Life After Hate, and co-Author of The Gift of Our Wounds, Arno travels extensively and is very fortunate to be able to share his ongoing process of character development, in an effort to counter the cycle of violence he once perpetuated.
Hate consumed seven years of Arno’s life, and during that time, he saw close friends murdered, and others incarcerated. Fueled by rage, Arno harmed innocent people, his family, and himself.
In a glorious twist of irony, it was people who Arno claimed to hate — a Jewish boss, a Lesbian supervisor, Black and Latino coworkers – who treated Arno with kindness when he least deserved it and helped guide Arno towards a complete transformation. Altered by these examples of humanity so bravely demonstrated, he left hate groups behind in 1994 to begin a new chapter in his life.
Today he helps to run Serve 2 Unite, an organization founded in response to the August 5, 2012 Sikh Temple shooting in which a white power skinhead (who was a part of the gang Arno was a founding member of) murdered six people because he told himself a story that made him feel threatened by their culture and the color of their skin. Serve 2 Unite has inspired tens of thousands of students to cherish a common human identity while adopting service as a purpose. Arno’s latest book The Gift of Our Wounds is co-authored with Pardeep Singh Kaleka, who lost his father Satwant Singh Kaleka in the August 5th shooting. It tells their respective stories leading up to the hate crime mass murder that brought them together, and the peacebuilding brotherhood they’ve developed working to heal the world through Serve 2 Unite.
Since Arno went public with his story in 2010, he’s had the honor of speaking worldwide, to audiences from Abu Dhabi to Silicon Valley, at colleges and universities, and in churches, mosques, synagogues, Gurdwaras, and Buddhist centers. He’s spoken to employees at Google and Facebook, and thousands of students from public grade schools to Harvard University.
Arno has been actively speaking on numerous major TV programs, discussing the alt-right and hate groups, providing a keen and astute understanding of what drives hate, and the tools we all have to combat it.
Arno is available to keynote and for workshops.
Workshop
As the Alt-Right strengthens in America, one of their strategies is visiting and protesting at college campuses; fertile recruitment grounds for students feeling lost, afraid and uncertain about their future. Protests advocating for white separation and against LGBT and transgender rights, liberalism and feminism, will likely be met with counter protest. Charlottesville teaches us that fighting violence with violence will only create more human suffering, while perpetuating more violence. History, and the world’s greatest peace warriors – King and Gandhi, for example – instruct us to fight hate and fear in a different manner.
No one understands hate and fear like Arno, and no one is better equipped to teach us what to do when hate comes to town. In Arno’s dynamic, interactive and powerful workshops, he talks to student leaders, staff, administration, faculty, and communications personnel, about what to do and say, and what NOT to do and say, when the Alt-Right comes on campus. Additionally, he offers strategies and ideas for coalition building and programming ideas, that will disarm and weaken hate groups, should they come to town. Arno only advocates for peaceful solutions, and has the experience to prove that love and forgiveness will always prevail, and that violence will never be the answer.
MEDIA
TESTIMONIALS
“His remarks were powerful and harrowing … a lot to consider about the vulnerabilities exploited by white supremacist organizations and the ways to break through hate with dialogue and empathy.”
— Teresa Delgado, PhD, Director, Peace and Justice Studies – Iona College
“Arno hit it out of the park!”
— Kerry Raadt, Director of College Events – Carleton College
“ARNO WAS AMAZING!! Fantastic! Brilliant!”
— Jules Greene, Dean of Equity and Inclusion – Drew School
