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

by Eli Saslow

“Reach out and extend the hand, no matter who’s waiting on the other side,”

Matthew had already experienced enough shaming at New College to believe that exclusion only reinforced divides.

“If you don’t want people to be afraid of what you’re advocating,” she told him, “then maybe you shouldn’t be advocating for it.”

heard. The concept of civil discourse was the creation of a privileged class that didn’t want their lives disrupted by protests or emotional arguments.

“Is there anything still holding me to this beyond loyalty?”

wildly off base—that in fact it was only 14 percent—Trump said, “What? Am I gonna check every statistic?”

Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy…

It’s now our job to argue constantly that what voters did in elevating this man to the White House constitutes the greatest assault on our own people in a generation, and to offer another option… Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside...

Many other books anchored me in the history of white supremacy, but I particularly relied on Dark Soul of the South, by Mel Ayton; Terror in the Night, by Jack Nelson; Bayou of Pigs, by Stewart Bell; and the expertly researched Blood and Politics, by Leonard Zeskind.