A mouthy Jewish woman reporter makes an immersive dive into white
supremacy’s explosive metastasis online, exploring the
undercurrents of propaganda, religion, misogyny and history that led
us to where we are now–and how to fight back.
Talia Lavin is every
skinhead’s worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman,
acerbic, smart, and profoundly anti-racist, 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 14-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 gatecrashing 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.