Former white supremacist tells Howell audience about his path away from hate

Updated, 7:21 a.m., 2/8/25

A former white supremacist and KKK leader from Livingston County who turned away from extremism was present Thursday night in Howell to answer questions following the U.S. theater premier of a documentary detailing his journey. 

“Face of Hate” tells the story of Jasen Barker, who made headlines when he and a cousin were sentenced to prison after assaulting a Black Michigan State Police trooper at a bar in Brighton in 2001. 

The film, made by Danish journalist Steffen Hou, begins with Barker deep into white supremacy and espousing pro-Nazi ideology, but then shows him  questioning those beliefs, and eventually seeking redemption and forgiveness from his children after accepting the pain his white supremacy had caused.

Following the film’s screening, which was hosted by Stand Against Extremism Livingston County (SAGE) at the Historic Howell Theater, Barker joined a panel discussion about his story and its relation to the rise in extremism being seen across the country.

“I was a lost soul and I didn’t know how to deal with things. I didn’t know how to express myself, and I was just hurting really bad,” Barker told the audience about his former life.

Barker described how he was indoctrinated into hate groups, who he says found ways to meet his psychological needs and provide a family-like stability that was missing in his life.

“They like to twist and use it when they can, and manipulate an issue. I didn’t understand what I do now,” he said. “They talk to you, they spend time with you, they listen to what your interests are, what bothers you, and it’s all just manipulation.”

Dr. David Hayes, a forensic psychologist who served as the panel’s moderator, said the kind of manipulation Barker talked about is a key element extremist groups use to recruit people to their cause.

“People filled with hate, like people with white supremacist groups, are willing to do some terrible and awful things, and it comes from the basis of feeling maligned, being forgotten. And that anger that built up from being forgotten translates itself into having to find the appropriate group that you can fit into,” he said.

A key moment in Barker’s turnaround is shown in the film when Hou, who was interviewing Barker on his Livingston County property in 2017, asked if he would take down a sign he used for a pig enclosure that said “Dachau,” the infamous Nazi death camp from the Holocaust. 

After Hou said members of his own family, who he noted were “white Christian Danes” also died in the Holocaust, Barker complied and apologized, even agreeing to forgo plans to name another enclosure after the Auschwitz death camp. 

Many in the audience said they were surprised by the exchange, and Barker said because the request by Hou didn’t come from anger, it caught him off guard.

“I didn’t expect it, for one [thing]. And I think you’ve seen in the video, I thought about it before I answered that and I had already developed a friendship with Steffen, so it just really kind of hit home,” said Barker. “It was the turning point; it really was.”

Hayes said it was a pivotal moment because it demonstrated an essential truth about how we can change hateful behavior.

“We talk about big societal change and ask, ‘How can we change our culture? How can we change our neighborhood and our community?’ Really, the very, very hard truth about that is that as a group we can’t. We can’t change groups of people, but we can change a person,” said Hayes.

Hou was able to join the discussion from the Denmark via Zoom, saying Barker’s transformation may have begun with the request to remove the Dachau sign, but he deserved credit for staying on that path.

“Change is possible and because of that we have been able to with this film tell a story that started out gruesome and evil, but seeing how it turned into a beautiful love story of a man who chose the right course in life because he had the guts and was brave enough to do it, which is also exemplified by him showing up today,” said Hou, which drew applause from the audience. “He chose to be an example for others, and now it’s up to the rest of us to allow him and others taking the same direction as he did to go through with it.”

As the event drew to a close, a group of about half-dozen protesters waving flags with swastikas gathered across from the theater yelling slogans like “White power” and “We are not going to be replaced.”

It was just the latest in a series of similar white supremacist protests that have occurred in Livingston County since last summer, including a march through Howell in July, which prompted a symbolic scrubbing away of hate by SAGE members. About a month later the same group protested in downtown Brighton.

SAGE also held a counter-protest on the steps of Howell City Hall in November after white supremacists with Nazi flags protested outside a production of the play “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Correction: Documentarian Steffen Hou is from Denmark. This story originally misidentified where he was from.