Sisters in Hate
American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
WITH A NEW FOREWARD
Journalist Seyward Darby's "masterfully reported and incisive" (Nell Irvin Painter) exposé pulls back the curtain on modern racial and political extremism in America telling the "eye-opening and unforgettable" (Ibram X. Kendi) account of three women immersed in the white nationalist movement.
After the election of Donald J. Trump, journalist Seyward Darby went looking for the women of the so-called "alt-right" -- really just white nationalism with a new label. The mainstream media depicted the alt-right as a bastion of angry white men, but was it? As women headlined resistance to the Trump administration's bigotry and sexism, most notably at the Women's Marches, Darby wanted to know why others were joining a movement espousing racism and anti-feminism. Who were these women, and what did their activism reveal about America's past, present, and future?
Darby researched dozens of women across the country before settling on three -- Corinna Olsen, Ayla Stewart, and Lana Lokteff. Each was born in 1979, and became a white nationalist in the post-9/11 era. Their respective stories of radicalization upend much of what we assume about women, politics, and political extremism.
Corinna, a professional embalmer who was once a body builder, found community in white nationalism before it was the alt-right, while she was grieving the death of her brother and the end of hermarriage. For Corinna, hate was more than just personal animus -- it could also bring people together. Eventually, she decided to leave the movement and served as an informant for the FBI.
Ayla, a devoutly Christian mother of six, underwent a personal transformation from self-professed feminist to far-right online personality. Her identification with the burgeoning "tradwife" movement reveals how white nationalism traffics in society's preferred, retrograde ways of seeing women.
Lana, who runs a right-wing media company with her husband, enjoys greater fame and notoriety than many of her sisters in hate. Her work disseminating and monetizing far-right dogma is a testament to the power of disinformation.
With acute psychological insight and eye-opening reporting, Darby steps inside the contemporary hate movement and draws connections to precursors like the Ku Klux Klan. Far more than mere helpmeets, women like Corinna, Ayla, and Lana have been sustaining features of white nationalism. Sisters in Hate shows how the work women do to normalize and propagate racist extremism has consequences well beyond the hate movement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Atavist editor-in-chief Darby describes women as a "sustaining feature" of white nationalism in her revelatory and harrowing debut focused on three women with ties to the "alt-right" movement. While one of her subjects, Corinna Olsen, has since disavowed her "racist lies," Ayla Stewart and Lana Lokteff continue to garner thousands of followers online. Tweeting under the name "Wife with a Purpose," Stewart, a Mormon mother of six, challenged "Americans of original pioneer stock" to have as many white babies as possible in 2017. Lokteff, part of the husband-and-wife team behind the multimedia company Red Ice, hosts her own program where she profiles fellow white nationalist women. Before becoming an FBI informant and converting to Islam, Olsen cohosted a white nationalist radio show under the moniker "Axis Sally." Darby delves into the history of white women "on the front lines" of misogynistic and racist movements, and finds commonalities in the upbringings, personalities, and indoctrinations of her three profile subjects, including social anxiety and "an outlook defined by binary thinking and perceived victimization." With their social media prowess and "#tradlife" values, Darby contends, these women are integral to the resurgence of white supremacy across America. Darby writes with a clear sense of purpose and makes a concerted effort to understand why women would "fight against their own interests." The result is a disturbing and informative must-read.