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

by Eli Saslow

Don was about to turn sixty, with his only son away at school and his wife working long hours for the sugar company. He fought back against the long silence of his days by listening to news on both the radio and cable TV, and lately so much of what he heard sounded vaguely familiar. Derek had always insisted that the best way to expand white nationalism was to reinforce feelings of white grievance and victimhood—to pit whites against minorities by hammering home what he saw as the travesties of cultural erosion and white genocide—and during President Obama’s first term that tactic had also become increasingly popular on the far conservative right. Andrew Breitbart, a conservative media mogul, manipulated the tape of a speech by Obama appointee Shirley Sherrod to make it look as if she were racist against whites. Radio host Rush Limbaugh went on the air to warn his listeners, “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay! Right on.’ ” Don monitored the news as Lou Dobbs railed to his CNN audience about “rampant illegal aliens” who were “overtaking the country” and as Newt Gingrich, a 2012 presidential candidate, said Spanish was “the language of the ghetto.” Don heard Glenn Beck tell his viewers on Fox News that Obama had a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” and he watched as U.S. representative Steve King, of Iowa, said Obama was “on the side of black people.”