Story highlights Arno Michaelis, a former white power activist, says he learned how to stop hate

Telling people they're wrong rarely works -- demonstrating what's right can, he says

Arno Michaelis is a former activist in the white power movement. He is the author of "My Life After Hate" and works with Serve 2 Unite, an organization founded to stand against violence and hate in the wake of the 2012 Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin. Follow him @mylifeafterhate. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) After Charlottesville, many around the country and the world are talking about hate. I define hate as the willful denial of compassion, a lesson I learned from a Marxist who once told me, "I will never have an ounce of compassion for a Nazi!" It's a definition of hate I learned the hard way.

Arno Michaelis

I've come to understand this definition after a long journey, which includes seven years in hate groups as an active organizer, leader, recruiter and street fighter from 1987 to 1994. I recruited white people who were as angry as I was. I wallowed in violence during that time and got beat up as often as I beat anyone else up.

I grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Milwaukee. Compared with my classmates, my family was poor. By world standards, we were incredibly wealthy. My parents were together and both loved me very much. I was showered with affirmation by all of the adults in my life and reminded how gifted I was at every turn.

Yet I came from two long lines of alcoholism that resulted in a lot of emotional violence in the household. That twisted my adrenaline junkie personality toward lashing out at other kids, which soon became a habit that required ever-escalating, anti-social behavior to be satisfied. By the time I was a teenager, and drinking myself, I was all too familiar with hate and violence. White power skinhead music gave it all a seductive, glorious meaning.

Being on the receiving end of violence never made me any less violent or filled with hate. What changed the course of my life was the profound courage extended to me by those I claimed to hate; their kindness, forgiveness and compassion destroyed my narrative of oppression. As ridiculous as it may sound, I had myself convinced that white people were oppressed, and that there was a centuries-old Jewish conspiracy to exterminate us.

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