This is how you become a white supremacist

I spent seven years leading hate groups and getting other angry white people to join.

By Arno Michaelis June 25, WashPost
Arno Michaelis is the author of "My Life After Hate."

Since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of being a warrior. I learned to read early and would sit in the library poring over books of Greek and Norse myths, gravitating to the parts about monsters and violence. In middle school, I played Dungeons & Dragons, fancying myself as an unstoppable fighter who made his own rules. Art was equally as fascinating as violence, and the two combined in my drawings of battle scenes from ancient Vikings cracking skulls to spaceships blowing each other to bits.

I grew up in an alcoholic family and developed an adrenaline habit that drove me to lash out at the world in increasingly drastic ways. By the time I turned 16, I was an alcoholic and very comfortable with hate and violence. I hated the town I lived in. I hated my school and most of the teachers and other kids. I hated the police. I discovered racist skinhead music through the punk scene and learned that the swastika is an effective way of angering others — the hostility I radiated was reflected by the people around me, validating the paranoid ideology that had become my identity. Eventually I became a founding member of the Northern Hammerskins, which went on to become part of Hammerskin Nation.

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