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A review by spenkevich
Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism by Seyward Darby
4.0
‘Combating hate requires understanding it,’ writes Seyward Darby, ‘not what it seems to be or what we hope it amounts to, but what it actually is.’ Her book, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism aims toward this understanding, chronicling the stories of three women in order to understand the hows and the whys to these women becoming key members of white supremacist hate groups. This is a rough read, one likely to bring a lot of visceral reactions (trigger warnings basically up and down the board here), but it is an really insightful examination as to the motivations people have for joining groups such as these (beyond the overt racism) and also the complex aspects of these groups needing women to function while also being massively misogynist and oppressive. A key element of these groups belief is the unfounded Great Replacement theory, and in each of these women’s stories we see them viewed almost solely on their ability to create more white babies, shamed if they aren’t having enough, and then a very unsettling fixation within the men of the community around their underaged daughters. These are all first hand accounts, some have left the community (one became FBI informant), one becomes a Mormon and a “tradwife”, while others have not and, while initially willing to give their story, back out after becoming suspicious of Darby. This book came highly recommended and is a valuable yet deeply disturbing look into the psychology of neo-Nazi and other hate groups from the perspective of the women within them, as well as a cursory look at how online platforms became safe havens and radicalization cesspools, and this is a book I cannot stop thinking about.
‘White supremacy lurks in mediocrity and civility as much as it fuels slurs and violence.’
To be clear, this book specifically addresses self-proclaimed neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups (the ANP is prominently featured) and for the purpose of the review I am remaining faithful to Darby’s terminology. She sites legal scholar Frances Le Ansley’s definition of white supremacy as the baseline for her usage of the term:
It should be noted that whiteness is a structural term that collects different usually-white skinned ethnicities and nationalities for the purpose of power rather than a commentary on color of skin on its own, something very well discussed in [b:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition|55921521|What White People Can Do Next From Allyship to Coalition|Emma Dabiri|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612737752l/55921521._SY75_.jpg|86227274] by [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] for those who are interested. Darby discusses how she began to interview and research into the women that are active participants in these groups due to an interest in why people often vote against their own self-preservation, such as the 47% of white women who voted for Trump in 2016 being something she wanted to understand more fully. She reached out to three women who all provided in-person interviews: Corinna Olsen (an interesting NYT article about her here), Ayla Stewart, and radio antisemtic conspiracy theorist Lana Lokteff. All three were prominent figures in neo-Nazi groups, all three used online blogs and social media to spread their messages of hate, all three faced extreme demands to produce white babies or be shunned. And each has a story that will make your skin crawl.
‘Hate becomes a cure for loneliness’
Darby refers to all three women as ‘seekers’, people who looked for a community as a sort of escape or thrill seeking adventure. Corinna, for example, is someone that does everything to the extreme with an addictive personality, rotating from one thing to the next, being a body builder, having been homeless by choice, and giving her interviews while embalming a dead body in her current line of work. Each had an inkling towards white supremacy to begin with, but found communities that encouraged that behavior and found companionship in shared hatred. Darby describes it as ‘looking for a narrative’ that they can belong within:
It should be noted that understanding does not mean condoning, but Darby does an excellent job of dissecting the mind of women in neo-nazi groups to show how radicalization is able to take root. She cites criminal psychologists who describe radicalization ‘likened to quenching a long-standing thirst for ‘truth’,’ and the validity of opinions matter much less than the community that shares them and props them up to these people. It is what [a:Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|2778055|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1433582280p2/2778055.jpg] describes in [b:Mother Night|9592|Mother Night|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344621657l/9592._SY75_.jpg|1222244] as ‘the wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information,’ the abandonment of reason for the false reality that they can play the main character within where they can ‘reap social and political rewards.’ Hold on to your hats, this gets disturbing.
‘America’s contemporary hate movement, where animus is justified, incentivized, learned and performed.’
I won’t spoil anything but there were constant moments reading this where I said ‘what the actual fuck!?’ I mean, we all have an idea what white supremacists are all about but this book really breaks it down into some chilling details. Absolutely terrifying things happen in this book, and half the time the women here just shrug them off and keep promoting it. Which is where social media comes into play because these women were Very Online and amassed huge followers with their frequent hate rants. ‘The aim of these groups,’ Darby is told by Corinna, ‘is to make it normal,’ and their vitriolic postings become so commonplace to their readers that it begins to seem like common ideas. Tradwife Ayla uses motherhood in toxic ways, promoting challenges to have as many white babies as possible and preaching that women should be subservient to men. The internalized misogyny and patriarchal oppression is beyond belief in this book, and often dressed up as christian niceness (paging West Michigan…). These online groups seek out targets to radicalize, most notably the natural health and wellness communities. It has been frequently examined recently how the online wellness community, for example, became an antivax stronghold, which is all part of what has been termed as the wellness-to-white supremacy pipeline, which you can read about here or here. This and many other groups that tend to attract ‘seekers’ were targets for these women to recruit members into their white nationalist movements. These same targets have been weaponized towards anti-public institutions and anti-lgbtq+ movements.
‘Children functioned as stamps of legitimacy,’ Darby writes, ‘white nationalism’s professed goal is protecting the white race from extinction, which necessarily requires having babies.’ This gets gross. Corinna has men who plot to kidnap her pre-teen daughters from her ex husband in order to ‘breed’ them, Lana is shamed for not having enough babies, and bodily autonomy is not even a question. [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506476357p2/16600238.jpg] discusses in [b:Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women|50726976|Entitled How Male Privilege Hurts Women|Kate Manne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594850499l/50726976._SY75_.jpg|75327102] that ‘there is a prevalent sense of entitlement on the part of privileged men to regulate, control, and rule over the bodies of girls and women – cisgender and trans alike,’ and this wrapped up in cultish hate group control with a fascade of christian beliefs to hide behind becomes a really perverse aim. This is entwined with current US movements to outlaw abortion and contraceptives, as well as fear mongering about immigration and all the other issues scapegoated as reasons to preach Great Replacement Theory (if you are fortunate to not have heard of this, it is a belief that white people are being made a minority in the US by a coordinated effort to have non-white people reproduce more in order to eradicate white people or oppress them). This theory is central to the lives of the women in this book and they are driven to preach about it, though they are quite quickly pushed out of their roles by men once their purpose is thought to be expired.
None of this is to condone these women’s actions, to be clear. Darby writes ‘It’s possible to acknowledge the rampant, persistent sexism of the far right while also giving women the credit they deserve,’ adding, ‘we risk stripping them of responsibility when we suggest that the harm they do is merely a way of coping with their own oppression.’ This book is not intended to make excuses for them, if anything it is a strong criticism but wrapped up in one that seeks to understand how they got here. Along the way Darby also discusses the history of white supremacist movements and puts modern day groups into that context, such as a long section on George Lincoln Rockwell who founded the American Nazi Party in the 50s and is the icon of clean-cut white supremacists look that David Duke and Richard Spencer aimed to replicate in order to mask their violent bigotry. Darby also investigates how hate groups hide amongst and influence evangelical communities, though this is better examined in the highly recommended [b:Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation|53121662|Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation|Kristin Kobes Du Mez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611376522l/53121662._SY75_.jpg|73351359] by [a:Kristin Kobes Du Mez|20883080|Kristin Kobes Du Mez|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] (who is actually a local author here).
This book is a lot. And it’s a lot of ugly events involving actual nazis, so read at your own risk. It is, however, quite well done and gets its point across in an effective manner. I’ve only scratched the surface of what goes on it this book, as the book likely only uncovers a small amount of the terror and terrible actions of the people in groups such as this, but it is an interesting look specifically at white supremacist women. It is also a warning about online radicalization and the behaviors and personalities that are more easily swayed by hate groups. If you can stomach it, this is worth reading.
‘White supremacy lurks in mediocrity and civility as much as it fuels slurs and violence.’
To be clear, this book specifically addresses self-proclaimed neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups (the ANP is prominently featured) and for the purpose of the review I am remaining faithful to Darby’s terminology. She sites legal scholar Frances Le Ansley’s definition of white supremacy as the baseline for her usage of the term:
‘a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of of white superiority and entitlements are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.’
It should be noted that whiteness is a structural term that collects different usually-white skinned ethnicities and nationalities for the purpose of power rather than a commentary on color of skin on its own, something very well discussed in [b:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition|55921521|What White People Can Do Next From Allyship to Coalition|Emma Dabiri|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612737752l/55921521._SY75_.jpg|86227274] by [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] for those who are interested. Darby discusses how she began to interview and research into the women that are active participants in these groups due to an interest in why people often vote against their own self-preservation, such as the 47% of white women who voted for Trump in 2016 being something she wanted to understand more fully. She reached out to three women who all provided in-person interviews: Corinna Olsen (an interesting NYT article about her here), Ayla Stewart, and radio antisemtic conspiracy theorist Lana Lokteff. All three were prominent figures in neo-Nazi groups, all three used online blogs and social media to spread their messages of hate, all three faced extreme demands to produce white babies or be shunned. And each has a story that will make your skin crawl.
‘Hate becomes a cure for loneliness’
Darby refers to all three women as ‘seekers’, people who looked for a community as a sort of escape or thrill seeking adventure. Corinna, for example, is someone that does everything to the extreme with an addictive personality, rotating from one thing to the next, being a body builder, having been homeless by choice, and giving her interviews while embalming a dead body in her current line of work. Each had an inkling towards white supremacy to begin with, but found communities that encouraged that behavior and found companionship in shared hatred. Darby describes it as ‘looking for a narrative’ that they can belong within:
’a framework for understanding the world that “directly promise[s] a sense of mattering and purpose to those who subscribe.” The most alluring narrative are often those that “portray the world in clearly defined, black-and-white terms that allow no room for ambiguity of cognitively demanding nuances.” Hate, certainly, offers a story like that, and the untethered behaviors it encourages…’
It should be noted that understanding does not mean condoning, but Darby does an excellent job of dissecting the mind of women in neo-nazi groups to show how radicalization is able to take root. She cites criminal psychologists who describe radicalization ‘likened to quenching a long-standing thirst for ‘truth’,’ and the validity of opinions matter much less than the community that shares them and props them up to these people. It is what [a:Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|2778055|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1433582280p2/2778055.jpg] describes in [b:Mother Night|9592|Mother Night|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344621657l/9592._SY75_.jpg|1222244] as ‘the wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information,’ the abandonment of reason for the false reality that they can play the main character within where they can ‘reap social and political rewards.’ Hold on to your hats, this gets disturbing.
‘America’s contemporary hate movement, where animus is justified, incentivized, learned and performed.’
I won’t spoil anything but there were constant moments reading this where I said ‘what the actual fuck!?’ I mean, we all have an idea what white supremacists are all about but this book really breaks it down into some chilling details. Absolutely terrifying things happen in this book, and half the time the women here just shrug them off and keep promoting it. Which is where social media comes into play because these women were Very Online and amassed huge followers with their frequent hate rants. ‘The aim of these groups,’ Darby is told by Corinna, ‘is to make it normal,’ and their vitriolic postings become so commonplace to their readers that it begins to seem like common ideas. Tradwife Ayla uses motherhood in toxic ways, promoting challenges to have as many white babies as possible and preaching that women should be subservient to men. The internalized misogyny and patriarchal oppression is beyond belief in this book, and often dressed up as christian niceness (paging West Michigan…). These online groups seek out targets to radicalize, most notably the natural health and wellness communities. It has been frequently examined recently how the online wellness community, for example, became an antivax stronghold, which is all part of what has been termed as the wellness-to-white supremacy pipeline, which you can read about here or here. This and many other groups that tend to attract ‘seekers’ were targets for these women to recruit members into their white nationalist movements. These same targets have been weaponized towards anti-public institutions and anti-lgbtq+ movements.
‘Children functioned as stamps of legitimacy,’ Darby writes, ‘white nationalism’s professed goal is protecting the white race from extinction, which necessarily requires having babies.’ This gets gross. Corinna has men who plot to kidnap her pre-teen daughters from her ex husband in order to ‘breed’ them, Lana is shamed for not having enough babies, and bodily autonomy is not even a question. [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506476357p2/16600238.jpg] discusses in [b:Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women|50726976|Entitled How Male Privilege Hurts Women|Kate Manne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594850499l/50726976._SY75_.jpg|75327102] that ‘there is a prevalent sense of entitlement on the part of privileged men to regulate, control, and rule over the bodies of girls and women – cisgender and trans alike,’ and this wrapped up in cultish hate group control with a fascade of christian beliefs to hide behind becomes a really perverse aim. This is entwined with current US movements to outlaw abortion and contraceptives, as well as fear mongering about immigration and all the other issues scapegoated as reasons to preach Great Replacement Theory (if you are fortunate to not have heard of this, it is a belief that white people are being made a minority in the US by a coordinated effort to have non-white people reproduce more in order to eradicate white people or oppress them). This theory is central to the lives of the women in this book and they are driven to preach about it, though they are quite quickly pushed out of their roles by men once their purpose is thought to be expired.
None of this is to condone these women’s actions, to be clear. Darby writes ‘It’s possible to acknowledge the rampant, persistent sexism of the far right while also giving women the credit they deserve,’ adding, ‘we risk stripping them of responsibility when we suggest that the harm they do is merely a way of coping with their own oppression.’ This book is not intended to make excuses for them, if anything it is a strong criticism but wrapped up in one that seeks to understand how they got here. Along the way Darby also discusses the history of white supremacist movements and puts modern day groups into that context, such as a long section on George Lincoln Rockwell who founded the American Nazi Party in the 50s and is the icon of clean-cut white supremacists look that David Duke and Richard Spencer aimed to replicate in order to mask their violent bigotry. Darby also investigates how hate groups hide amongst and influence evangelical communities, though this is better examined in the highly recommended [b:Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation|53121662|Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation|Kristin Kobes Du Mez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611376522l/53121662._SY75_.jpg|73351359] by [a:Kristin Kobes Du Mez|20883080|Kristin Kobes Du Mez|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] (who is actually a local author here).
This book is a lot. And it’s a lot of ugly events involving actual nazis, so read at your own risk. It is, however, quite well done and gets its point across in an effective manner. I’ve only scratched the surface of what goes on it this book, as the book likely only uncovers a small amount of the terror and terrible actions of the people in groups such as this, but it is an interesting look specifically at white supremacist women. It is also a warning about online radicalization and the behaviors and personalities that are more easily swayed by hate groups. If you can stomach it, this is worth reading.