A review by happiestwhenreading
Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin

challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

This book really started to pop up in my Instagram feed after the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since the election – and especially since Trump has been banned from most (all?) social media, I’ve heard more and more about the radicalization of people through social media and this book seems like a great dive into that topic!

“The thing about hate, though, is it metastasizes. The thing about channels that are filled, twenty-four hours a day, with stachoastic violence–testosterone-filled megaphones shouting for blood–is that, sooner or later, someone is going to take them up on it…racist networks have proven over and over again that the steady dissemination of murderous propaganda leaves a trail of blood behind it.”
Talia Lavin, “Culture Warlords”

While I probably appreciated the chapter on social media the most (Chapter 7: Tween Racists, Bad Beanies, and the Great Casino Chase), I learned A LOT from this book and how the internet plays a big role in how white supremacy has gained a foothold in our current world. Coming off the heels of the 2020 Election, the insurrection of the Capital, and the banning of Trump on social media platforms, the question that is begging to be answered is: where do we go from here? How do we make changes that disallow hate to have a platform? And how do we heal this divide? Those are questions I don’t necessarily have an answer for, but I think this book is an important piece to strategizing out some possibilities.

One chapter of the book that I vehemently disagree with is Chapter 9: Antifa Civil War. Lavin says that Anitfa is “a collection of individuals scattered throughout the country who are loosely pursuing the same goal: preventing fascist, far-right organizing through a varity of tactics” (pgs 215-216), and that “more than anything, it’s a way to keep ourselves – and our more vulnerable friends and neighbors – safe in a world where hate wants to swallow us whole” (pg. 216). After all of the destruction of federal property in various cities in the United States, I do not believe them to be a tempored group and I believe Antifa’s actions are just as wrong as the alt-rights. I would like to believe there isn’t a place for either one of those extreme groups in our country, and I cling to the believe that more people feel this way than don’t. Admittedly, I am not well-researched in Antifa or their methods, but from the mainstream media, I am not a supporter of their tactics, and I had a hard time agreeing with Lavin on much of anything in this chapter.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings