Hardcover, 288 pages
Published Oct. 13, 2020 by Hachette Books.
One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now.
Talia Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers.
Culture Warlords is the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists. In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme …
One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now.
Talia Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers.
Culture Warlords is the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists. In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme fatale. Along the way, she discovers a whites-only dating site geared toward racists looking for love, a disturbing extremist YouTube channel run by a fourteen-year-old girl with over 800,000 followers, the everyday heroes of the antifascist movement, and much more. By combining compelling stories chock-full of catfishing and gate-crashing with her own in-depth, gut-wrenching research, she also turns the lens of anti-Semitism, racism, and white power back on itself in an attempt to dismantle and decimate the online hate movement from within.
Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the Web-and shows us how we can fight back.
Reads more like a memoir than an actual in-depth exploration of white supremacy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and there was certainly a lot of background in there, but I feel like there was a lot more to unpack. The last chapter, "We Keep Us Safe", is as relevant as ever and is probably the most important part of the book.
I read this book pretty quickly, which is testimony that it kept me engaged. I learned a lot about the history of the far right and appreciated the ways she captured some intimate details about individuals involved in these cultures.
Maybe this is ironic since so much of this essay was about her positioning herself in the narrative, but something irked me about her personal anecdotes. I think this has to do with the fact that I am not drawn to corporate social media famous outspoken influencers, admittedly, which it seems like she is. Something turned me off about how she was live tweeting about her escapades at certain events she went to. I'm not totally sure why, though. Ultimately, I probably just want a book on this topic that is a little bit more historical and in-depth analysis of these cultures. The personal narrative I enjoyed the most was …
I read this book pretty quickly, which is testimony that it kept me engaged. I learned a lot about the history of the far right and appreciated the ways she captured some intimate details about individuals involved in these cultures.
Maybe this is ironic since so much of this essay was about her positioning herself in the narrative, but something irked me about her personal anecdotes. I think this has to do with the fact that I am not drawn to corporate social media famous outspoken influencers, admittedly, which it seems like she is. Something turned me off about how she was live tweeting about her escapades at certain events she went to. I'm not totally sure why, though. Ultimately, I probably just want a book on this topic that is a little bit more historical and in-depth analysis of these cultures. The personal narrative I enjoyed the most was probably in her introduction and her afterward section.
That said, if you enjoy reading about stuff like this and are as fascinated by 'the culture wars' as I am, I would definitely recommend it!
