Beyond Your Limits

EP19: Violent White Nationalism - View from the Inside, with Arno Michaelis

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Episode notes

Violent White Nationalism - View from the Inside, with Arno Michaelis. Arno Michaelis is a speaker, author of My Life After Hate, co-author of The Gift of Our Wounds, Filmmaker, and Peacebuilding Consultant. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arno was a leader of hate groups, and frontman of the hate-metal band Centurion before single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated helped to change his world, bringing love for diversity and gratitude for all life.

4:57 There are unconscious bigotries unconscious bias says and our guest today is a man who is an absolute expert in understanding bias, bigotry and the unconscious hatreds that are actually formed from fears fear and pain.

7:05 Everything was seeing through a racial lens.

8:20 Some people doubt the authenticity of my turnaround, or they're going to come at me with accusations of privilege. And, oh, I'm an oppressor and I'm going to colonizer and all sorts of things that clouded my judgment in this matter, but actually, everything I've learned about race, I've learned from listening to people who don't look like me.

24:39 That's incredibly nuanced and incredibly clear to me as you're describing it, because you're saying that basically, the more we do define people as white and not white. The more we enable the categorization and therefore the radicalization of those who are willing to are susceptible to it among the so called white group

35:29 But I think it's entirely possible to be extremely proud of one's heritage. And I am diverse, you know, all Northwestern European, Celtic, and Viking and such. And, of course, a little bit of French in there because of the name. But but that doesn't mean that mine is better. It just means I'm grateful and appreciative and loving of those from whom I came, and I honor you black or Hispanic or Polynesian, for where you came from, and your deep love and pride in your ancestors, where you came from. There's they're not mutually exclusive.