Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

But Alma White was correct: Women’s political participation was crucial to the perpetuation of white supremacy.

A majority of white women haven’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1996—and before that, the last time they had done so was 1964.20 The most high-profile legal cases against affirmative action have been headlined by white women, and a 2014 Harvard study found that nearly 70 percent of white female respondents somewhat or strongly opposed the policy.

It is easier to be the kind of feminist you want to be than it is to question how that identity might be harmful to other women.

This messaging has persisted. In a 2017 issue of Homefront, published by Women for Aryan Unity (WAU), a commentary notes, “If not for the white women where would the proud white men plant his seed?”15 WAU’s motto, “Securing our future one child at a time,”

In 2002, Kathleen Blee identified invocations of normalcy and solidarity as “perhaps the greatest threat posed by modern organized racism,” more so than “highly visible parades” or other public spectacles dominated by men.32 Overt displays of hate could be countered, prevented, or ignored. Diminishing white nationalism’s quotidian allure and unfastening its hold on followers would be much harder tasks.

Lana put her vision of the threat succinctly in her 2017 Stockholm speech. “It was women that got Trump elected,” she said triumphantly. “And I guess to be really edgy, it was women that got Hitler elected.”ii