Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism

But first and foremost, combating hate requires understanding it—not what it seems to be or what we hope it amounts to, but what it actually is.

Hate can be understood as a social bond, a complex phenomenon that occurs among people as a means of mattering and belonging.

People embrace conspiracism for the same reasons they find God or start reading the future in the stars: They’ve experienced anxiety, ostracism, or a sense of losing control. They are seeking stories to explain what’s happening. Narratives become sources of power, validation, even superiority. Socialization has primed them for this moment; skepticism of authority is already ingrained in their existence.26 Perhaps they grew up in an environment that championed antiestablishment ideas. Maybe they had a series of bad encounters with powerful entities. Or perhaps they were conditioned by global unrest, social instability, financial insecurity, political polarization, and declining trust in institutions. Life in contemporary America may be enough to incline a person toward conspiracism

Bigotry in America has many branches, some bigger and stronger than others, but they all derive from the same trunk.

The essence of propaganda: Repeat, repeat, repeat, and make people believe.

White nationalists make explicit ideas that are already coded, veiled, or circumscribed in the wider white imagination. Hate is what many white Americans would see if they looked in a fun-house mirror: a distorted but familiar reflection.

In our pluralist, capitalist, ever-shifting society, identity is a crucible in which people forge the future. For women, as ever, the stakes are particularly high. As the century barrels on, could white women prove increasingly vulnerable to hate’s allure?

Some far-right groups had even petitioned the U.S. government to make October European American Heritage Month because it was when Columbus Day was celebrated

The website Bossip included Ayla in a roundup of “mediocre mayo packets who spent their whole entire pay day splattering not-very-subtle racism all over Al Gore’s world wide web

Ayla shared the meme on Twitter, where she kept an account under the name Wife with a Purpose. Reactions were swift, and some were furious. “Girl, fuck you,” one Twitter user wrote.