Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-11

Chapters 12-14

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “This Is Scary”

Allison agrees to attend Derek’s Stormfront conference because she believes Derek is being dishonest with her about his beliefs, “watering down the true extent of his racism in order to preserve their friendship” (140). She wants to know if his arguments change in tone or substance when he is with his white supremacist followers. Allison also believes that by attending the conference, she will show Derek she is making a sincere effort to understand his beliefs, allowing her to earn his trust, then build a case against white nationalism.

The recent presidential election energizes the conference. Racial dog whistles dominate the Republican party’s talking points and after the election racial hate crimes surge to historic levels. Conference attendees believe the country has reached a racial tipping point that will trigger the white supremacist revolution they have been waiting for. To Allison’s surprise, Derek’s family is kind and welcoming. Their discussion topics are odd: gripes about “brown people,” Obama, Jews, and political correctness, but they are otherwise pleasant and loving people. At the conference, Allison notices, “Where she had expected to find only bigotry and nastiness, she also recognized something else” (149). She tells Derek, “These people genuinely love and adore you” (149). Derek concludes the conference with his keynote speech. Saslow notes, “After months of conversations with Allison, he was slowly becoming less secure in his beliefs. Whereas before he had catered his message exclusively to white nationalists, he now was at least aware of another perspective” (151). Derek’s speech avoids potentially hurtful topics and instead focuses solely on the demographic decline of whites in America. The conference shows Allison that Derek is more central to the white nationalist movement than she previously realized.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Another Debate, and Another Midnight”

After Derek’s Stormfront conference, Allison feels “more prepared than ever to begin debating Derek in earnest” (162). She enrolls in a course on prejudice and employs lessons from her curriculum in debate with Derek. Saslow says, “Each Monday and Thursday, there was Allison […] taking notes about their discussions on psychological science to arm herself for the next conversation with Derek” (163). Allison periodically injects white nationalism into conversations, hoping to influence Derek’s opinions. She sends him scientific studies refuting his long-held beliefs: articles showing race is a fluid and unscientific concept; articles refuting Derek’s beliefs on race and IQ; articles illustrating white privilege over other races in contemporary United States. Allison also brings emotion into Derek’s scientific debates to illustrate to him the real, actual harm these ideas inflict on people. Saslow elaborates, “Allison repeatedly pushed their conversations from theoretical to intimate, hoping to make Derek confront the reality of his beliefs” (168). As they debate, their relationship transitions from friendship to romantic.

Don notices a change in Derek’s behavior. Derek insists that his beliefs are unchanged, but he stops posting on Stormfront and tempers his on-air rhetoric. He begins skipping his radio show to paddle on his kayak and think. Derek ponders his beliefs and future. Saslow elaborates, “Derek’s brain was also crowded with new ideas, backed by data and dozens of studies, which suggested white nationalism was both dangerous and flawed” (175). The ideas Derek once subscribed to now seem to him cruel and wrong. Around Thanksgiving of 2012, instigated by a post about him on the New College forum, Derek finally responds publicly to his critics and tentatively embraces his new mindset. Derek writes, in part:

I do not and would never support discrimination or unfair treatment against anyone insofar as my privilege allows me to identify it. I am not a white supremacist, nor do I identify with white supremacy. I don’t hate anyone because of race, religion, or anything similar. I am not a Nazi, nor do I identify with Nazism. I am not part of the KKK, nor do I identify with the KKK. As far as Stormfront goes, it’s my dad’s website, and though I have moderator privileges, I don’t moderate. And as should be understood for both the radio and the website, only things I’ve said myself are things I can be held accountable for (184).

This equivocal renunciation of Derek’s beliefs satiates the student body, but something still concerns Allison: the SPLC maintains a public “extremist file” on Derek. Allison forwards Derek’s forum post to the organization, hoping it will convince them to remove him from their website. Instead, the center contacts Derek for comment before publishing his full post.

Chapter 9 Summary: “I’m Torn”

Derek responds to the SPLC, “My forum post and my racial ideology are not mutually exclusive concepts […] Everything I said is true, and I also believe in White Nationalism” (190-91). The truth is more complicated. Derek is contemplating a life free of white nationalism, as an academic in a quiet college town. He is increasingly abandoning elements of his ideology, but is bound to it through his family, for whom “white nationalism wasn’t just a belief system; it was the glue that held together friendships and family” (190). Rejecting the label white nationalism is rejecting Derek’s family and friends, and is the most difficult part of his transformation.

Derek loses any progress he made with his classmates at New College when they read his response to the SPLC article. The community shuns him. He wonders if white nationalism is worth such exclusion and if his classmates “were valid in their criticism and righteous in their anger […] if white nationalism was inherently flawed and morally indefensible” (197). He researches and finds flawed many of his prior conceptions about whiteness in medieval Europe and other aspects of human history. He researches statistics on race in America and learns that many of his beliefs on white genocide are also flawed. He becomes “increasingly convinced that the structures of white supremacy remained very much in place” (202). By 2013, he says to Allison of white nationalism, “The ideology is flawed, and I’ve moved away from it” (203).

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

While Derek is relinquishing his white nationalist ideology, due to Derek’s advocacy it is increasingly becoming accepted in mainstream America. Allison has become Derek’s most fervent adversary and is also his closest friend. By attending Derek’s Stormfront conference and continuing to engage with him on the subject, she persistently erodes the foundations of Derek’s beliefs. Allison adjusts her college curriculum to better debate Derek and continues pushing him on the subject even when it is painful and seems hopeless. She begins presenting Derek scientific studies refuting what he previously accepted as truth. Everything—emotion, logic, science—overwhelms Derek’s tortured intellect and leads him to conclude his white supremacist ideology is flawed. He issues a public partial rejection of white supremacism, but familial bonds prevent him from fully denouncing white nationalism. Derek has settled his internal conflict and renounced white nationalism as a personal ideology, but he struggles with any public renunciation or condemnation because he knows it will destroy his relationship with his family and community of white nationalists.