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Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
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A HARROWING JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF WHITE SUPREMACY
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 F ...more
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 F ...more
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It's not so much that this is a quick read as that, once begun, I could no more put it down than I could stop playing a horror movie in the middle, just when the looming, overarching sense of dread demands some kind of relief. But this is not a horror movie, this is all too real. This is the world we live in.
Of course, I was expecting that when I went in - not just the horror, the revulsion, the recognition, but also how morbidly fascinating the subject matter is. What I wasn't expecting was gra ...more
Of course, I was expecting that when I went in - not just the horror, the revulsion, the recognition, but also how morbidly fascinating the subject matter is. What I wasn't expecting was gra ...more
This book is...fine? I’m trying to figure out how to review it without disagreeing with the points it makes or its importance. I was all on board with Talia-as-narrator and the importance of a popular, voicey mainstream book about antisemtisim. Ultimately I wasn’t a huge fan of the way the book was organized (each chapter devoted to a “theme” like the internet or violence or religion—all of which kinda blurred together and really ends with a whimper in the last two chapters), and I find much mor
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This reads like when a smart and reasonably funny friend, who has spent way too much time on the internet, takes a couple of bong hits, and unloads for a long while about the ugly things they found there--it's all interesting, and at times funny, but presented in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness fashion with random asides, repetitions, and detours that lack signposts, and never quite going into enough depth or detail. This is neither a piece of investigative journalism into a subculture (or ra
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Yikes. I cannot imagine the fortitude of Lavin's stomach to be able to pretend to be one of these horrible people. There were some interesting tidbits in this book, but you might need to go watch Sound of Music afterwords or something similarly wholesome.
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Thank you Hachette Books for the opportunity to read this book!
“To make peace with white supremacy, to give it room, to tender it mercy, is to assert that protecting black and brown and Muslim and gay and trans and Jewish people from violence isn’t all that important or necessary.”
TALIA LAVIN
Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin is an amazing piece of investigative journalism! Talia Lavin is a fierce Jewish woman who decides to face online, white supremacist, hate-fueled trolls. She is often the targe ...more
“To make peace with white supremacy, to give it room, to tender it mercy, is to assert that protecting black and brown and Muslim and gay and trans and Jewish people from violence isn’t all that important or necessary.”
TALIA LAVIN
Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin is an amazing piece of investigative journalism! Talia Lavin is a fierce Jewish woman who decides to face online, white supremacist, hate-fueled trolls. She is often the targe ...more
I wish this book had been better edited! Who let this go to press so poorly organized that the same terms were defined over and over again, including an instance of "incel" (which had already been defined!) being explained with the same phrase on two facing pages. This was distracting, and a detriment to the best of Lavin's writing, which can be very sharp. Her work shining a light on fascist spaces and individuals is vital, and the things she's exposing are very scary -- but I wish there was mo
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I went into this hoping to understand the white supremacist psyche, the detailed steps to radicalization that the web accelerates, snd the means with which organized hate turns opinion into violence, and finances violent campaigns. Generally a clearer view into the vulnerabilities that underly white supremacists. What I took from Talia’s work was, for lack of a better word, a rant of her experiences when infiltrating white supremacist channels, and surface level observations of their online acti
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I really appreciated the detail of this book. Over all i learned a lot. Very understandable. It got repetitive and wasn’t rich enough in drawing lines between past and present. Solid book.
Lavin’s writing crackles with energy and wit, and I’m very much in her corner politically. But this maddeningly repetitive and bafflingly unstructured book really, really, REALLY needed a good editor.
I am proudly Antifa. I stand against White Supremacy, Jingoistic Nationalism and State sponsored violence against its own people.
This is a hard book to read but a fascinating fall into the hate filled world of Charlottesville and the right wing venomous orgies that gathered around Trump.
This is a hard book to read but a fascinating fall into the hate filled world of Charlottesville and the right wing venomous orgies that gathered around Trump.
Quick, bold and somewhat terrifying! People who are Extremely Online might not be surprised by some of what thy read here (I think Gamergate left mental scars on us all), but Levin stares at the roiling nightmarish underside of the internet of white supremacy and exposes it for the bizarrely stupid and dangerous thing that it is. I laughed at some of these people while reading, but it was with a shiver down my spine -- the people that Levin learns about may be foolish and delusional but they are
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Four stars for the book and an additional star because Talia Lavin is a badass antifascist hero who literally risks her life and mental health to expose neo-Nazis with genocidal ideations. You rock, Talia.
In Culture Warlords, Talia Lavin describes her journey (and life's work) infiltrating white supremacist groups on the Internet, in the deepest, exclusive corners of the web where "contributors [feel] safe to speak freely." In order to do so, Lavin invented personas that were very much the oppo ...more
In Culture Warlords, Talia Lavin describes her journey (and life's work) infiltrating white supremacist groups on the Internet, in the deepest, exclusive corners of the web where "contributors [feel] safe to speak freely." In order to do so, Lavin invented personas that were very much the oppo ...more
A VITAL book that everyone must read. Talia Lavin is an absolute superstar - both for her skill as a writer and for her fearlessness in gathering research for this book. I appreciate her skill for breaking difficult concepts down and putting everything neatly in context, starting with an intro to the history of hate and drawing a throughline to the current state of extremism. Racism, antisemitism, and misogyny are presented here as entwined issues that we must overcome together, not singular pro
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This was a complex read that often required me to put the book down and reflect on what I had just learned. This is, of course, the highest possible praise I can offer a non-fiction work that takes on the complicated world of organized hate. Even as someone who tries very hard to keep up on all the ways that misogyny, antisemitism, racism and white-supremacy have roots in American culture and politics, this was an eye-opener on many levels.
Levin blends important historical events and trends with ...more
Levin blends important historical events and trends with ...more
CULTURE WARLORDS: MY JOURNEY INTO THE DARK WEB OF WHITE SUPREMACY by Talia Lavin should win all the relevant awards. as an investigative journalist & writer, the author sacrificed her peace of mind & sense of security to infiltrate the alt-right spaces of the Internet. through her own experiences strengthened w/ additional research, she reveals that the alt-right monsters who plan violence & spew hatred are real people. although we might think that we know this already, we really learn who these
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Talia Lavin is a badass. This book is unabashed gonzo journalism. Lavin, a Jewish progressive, embedded herself in the electronic realms of racists, white supremacists, anti-Semites, and incels as one of them. And she kept notes.
This book was hard to read. There are vast networks of people who hate the idea of living in a world where all of its children can live; who relish the idea of going into the dark and lighting their way with the corpses of those whose existence they resent. These asshol ...more
This book was hard to read. There are vast networks of people who hate the idea of living in a world where all of its children can live; who relish the idea of going into the dark and lighting their way with the corpses of those whose existence they resent. These asshol ...more
First, thank you so much to my friends at Hachette for sending me a gifted final copy of this important text.
If you want to begin to understand the darkness that brought about the insurrection of the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, this book will give you some insight. The author, Talia Lavin, enters chatrooms focused on white supremacy & anti-semitism to learn about what makes this dark corner of humanity the way that they are. I am also concurrently listening to the podcast "No Compromise" from NPR ...more
If you want to begin to understand the darkness that brought about the insurrection of the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, this book will give you some insight. The author, Talia Lavin, enters chatrooms focused on white supremacy & anti-semitism to learn about what makes this dark corner of humanity the way that they are. I am also concurrently listening to the podcast "No Compromise" from NPR ...more
This book is amazing. It was equally scary and enthralling and I had a very difficult time putting it down.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book!
This was a book that was terrifying and harrowing, and while I knew a fair amount about white supremacist movements online (as well as misogynistic movements like incels, though the overlap is definitely there), Lavin really peels back the nitty gritty of the awfulness. She has well researched information, as well as primary sources given that she basically went full on undercover to get close to these groups in their online forum ...more
This was a book that was terrifying and harrowing, and while I knew a fair amount about white supremacist movements online (as well as misogynistic movements like incels, though the overlap is definitely there), Lavin really peels back the nitty gritty of the awfulness. She has well researched information, as well as primary sources given that she basically went full on undercover to get close to these groups in their online forum ...more
Talia Lavin is really a hero. Who else wants to enter the underworld of white supremacists and women haters to find out what makes them tick, who they are, where they are and what we can do about them? It isn’t easy and I give her a million kudos for even attempting it. She has brought serious attention on herself and as a Jew and a woman she is placing herself in harm’s way. So Talia be careful!!!! Talia is funny, self-deprecating and totally candid. Her personality shines through the book. Whi
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I have such a deep respect for Lavin and the work she does. I loved whenever she wrote about her activist work. Sadly I didn't think the more general stuff was exceedingly well done (but that might be because I have read too much work about the new or alt-right already).
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4.5 stars but rating up to five because this book is SO essential. if you want to understand the current American alt-right, this is a great place to start. this book is a great entry point because it doesn't assume any knowledge on the reader (Lavin explains who everyone is, even the more household names like Alex Jones and Richard Spencer). as someone who has immersed myself in trying to understand the alt-right, i first came across Lavin on the podcast qanon anonymous (a good place to go afte
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Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, funny, smart, and profoundly anti-racist, with the journalistic chops to expose the tactics and landscape of online hatemongers.
Can't wait for this. ...more
Can't wait for this. ...more
Invaluable for revealing the links between antisemitism and white nationalism. But I wish it did more to tease out the specifics of islamophobia or anti-Black racism within these movements rather than frame issues as white/non-white. Still a very compelling book though! Offers some good insights and strategies for combatting white nationalism & fascism.
This would be an excellent place to start if you're looking for an explainer on contemporary hate movements. A bit basic if you already read a lot about on the subject, but I am (due to my own lifelong morbid fascination with people who hate people like me) pretty well informed and I still found Lavin's writing very engaging.
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i read this book bc it was clickbait but it was pretty good actually
Outspoken Jewish female journalist Talia Lavin has endured widespread attacks from members of the alt-right and related supremacist movements, including rape threats and death threats, both for being who she is and for daring to report on their organizing. In this book, she goes even further, presenting what she has learned by entering their online networks under pseudonym and observing as they talk amongst themselves. To some extent, the result is a wry portrait of the author catfishing people
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There was a certain preparedness I thought I had before being shown the inner workings of these online white supremacist subcultures; that being said, the reveal is never without shock value, like upturning a rock you know will have grubs and centipedes underneath, but being wholly unable to contain a scream. Talia Levin’s infiltration of these taboo, yet disgustingly popular and interconnected spaces, left me wondering two things: how and why did this happen? I think Levin does a great job at o
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With recounts and incidents that are still so fresh on the minds of most Americans this book helps to navigate the behind the scenes look at the Alt-right and Neo-fascist rhetoric that cause so much division on our social and political platforms. This gives context behind the brash behavior of alt-right online trolls and the political pundits on Fox news. From the moment I begin reading this book it was next to impossible to set it down. From first hand accounts to shocking stories of catfishing
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A timely read, both for those familiar and those completely unfamiliar with the dark, racist, white-supremacist underbelly of the Internet. A chance to learn how online discourse moves into violence in the streets.
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Talia Lavin is a freelance writer who has had bylines in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and more. Profoundly anti-racist and a nifty digital native, Lavin possess the online skills needed to go behind the scenes of the digital white supremacist movement (even if that does mean becoming the frequent target of extremist troll
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“To make peace with white supremacy, to give it room, to tender it mercy, is to assert that protecting black and brown and Muslim and gay and trans and Jewish people from violence isn’t all that important or necessary.”
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“[N]o amount of such rhetoric is acceptable in the country’s discourse, just as there is no acceptable amount of poisonous gas to let seep into a room.”
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