Filmmaker Steffen Hou (left) talks with Jasen Barker (right) in the documentary “Face of Hate” which details Barker’s journey away from white supremacy. Submitted photo
An anti-extremist group plans to host the U.S. theater premier of a documentary next month detailing the journey out of white supremacy of a former KKK leader and Nazi sympathizer from Livingston County.
‘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. Over the course of the film, Barker’s path takes him deeper into white supremacy, including becoming a leader with a Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group, taking on pro-Nazi ideology and eventually receiving a second prison term for multiple firearm offenses related to illegally possessing guns and explosives.
Slowly, however, Barker begins to explore his overt racist ideology and question its origins, eventually seeking redemption and forgiveness from his children after accepting the pain his white supremacy had caused.
Stand Against Extremism Livingston County, which goes by the name SAGE, plans to host a free screening of the documentary on Feb. 6 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Historic Howell Theater.
“I think that the first thing what makes me happy about a showing like this is that it’s no secret that in the U.S. media landscape and in the U.S. in general, there is some kind of scaredness, if I can put it that way, to actually touch base on this topic,” Danish author and filmmaker Steffen Hou told Michigan Advance.
Hou, whose interactions with Barker form the basis for the documentary, plans to attend the free screening in Howell, along with Barker, and take part in a Q&A session afterward facilitated by Christian Picciolini, a former skinhead extremist turned peace advocate and author.
“I hope that with the screening and showing like this then I can just add a bit of debate and awareness,” said Hou. “I hope that we can actually bring a different perspective to the debate.”
The film, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, begins in 2017 when Hou visits Barker at his farm property near Fowlerville and is immediately inundated by Barker’s deeply-held white supremacist beliefs.
In one notable scene, Barker shows Hou his pig enclosure which he has named Dachau, after the infamous Nazi death camp used in the Holocaust. When Hou questions why he would use such a name, Barker matter-of-factly lays out his rationale.
“There was just a lot of documentation that I’m coming across and that I’ve been turned on to you that just kind of disproves a lot of (the Holocaust) and there’s a lot of people, famous people, for instance, I know Mel Gibson, he doesn’t believe the concentration camp stories,” says Hou.
“So you don’t believe in what is a fact to most people that actually six million Jews were killed in World War II?,” questions Hou.
“Yeah, I believe some were killed, but six million? That number I think is very far fetched,” said Barker.
“But it doesn’t matter whether it was six million people or if it’s actually six people,” said Hou.
“I guess not to the Jewish race it doesn’t,” responded Barker. “I guess the higher the number, the better.”
But when Hou notes that members of his own family, who he notes were “white Christian Danes” also died in the Holocaust, Barker seems surprised, at which point Hou convinces Barker to not only remove the Dachau sign, but forgo naming another enclosure after the Auschwitz death camp.
Hou tells the Advance that moment was actually a hinge point in their relationship.
“I decided out of the blue more or less to confront him with my background and how my family have been involved in World War II and I took a deep breath, and then I confronted him, not knowing if he would actually attack me physically because I had at that time been witnessing a very violent environment that was his everyday life,” he said, noting that he had witnessed Barker and several like-minded friends firing off weapons in mock training drills preparing for what they believed would be a racial holy war.
“I did not know how he was going to respond and then probably anticipated that it could be in an angry, aggressive way,” said Hou.
But to his surprise, Hou says Barker thoughtfully considered the request and began to open up about his past, including hearing stories from his uncles of the cross burnings at the farm of notorious KKK Grand Dragon Robert Miles, whose Cohoctah Township property north of Howell hosted Klan events in the 1970s and 80s, one of which Barker claims to have attended with an older cousin.
“The facts of this documentary bring to question our local leaders’ narrative that “racists aren’t from LivCo / not our problem”; which is why we feel strongly it needs to be seen by as many community members as possible,” stated a press release by SAGE.
The group has been active in pushing back against several recent white supremacist incidents in Livingston County, including a march through Howell in July, which prompted a symbolic scrubbing away of hate by SAGE members. SAGE also held a counter protest rally on the steps of Howell City Hall after white supremacists with Nazi flags protested in November outside a production of the play “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
According to SAGE, volunteers and supporters of the group raised the funds to make the screening free to the public with a primary goal of education.
“This event and its crucial follow up conversations are the start of moving forward from a validated history of racism with LivCo at the active center,” stated the group.
By the end of the documentary, Barker discusses some of the deep trauma from his childhood, including his mother’s death, that led him down a path towards hate, but then how his desire to be in his children’s lives ultimately motivated him to come to terms with his past.
Hou says the transformation he saw in Barker through the years really was amazing.
“I found Jasen extremely despicable over the first years. There was something in him that I felt sorry for and that I felt like was trapped in his beliefs and in the violence that he has conducted,” he said. “But I very much sympathize with him today because I have no doubt that he generally has changed and that he has gone from being an evil, hateful man to one who actually does good, that is grateful and then wants to keep changing himself.”
SAGE asks that anyone interested in attending the free screening of ‘Face of Hate’ should sign up through this link as seating will be limited.
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