Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

One definition of hate is animus toward another person or group, but there is a more complex, useful, and frightening description. Hate can be understood as a social bond, a complex phenomenon that occurs among people as a means of mattering and belonging. It is a currency that arises “in particular social, cultural, political, and historical contexts, and it shapes the possibilities for future social interactions,” writes sociologist Kathleen Blee.

It is also “a process rather than an attribute,” a thing achieved as much as felt or believed. People may arrive on the doorstep of the hate movement with racist impulses, but not necessarily ones any stronger than those of many other white people. Blee explains: “Social camaraderie, a desire for simple answers to complex political problems, or even the opportunity to take action against formidable social forces can co-exist with, even substitute for, hatred as the reason for participation in organized racist activities.”

Researchers have described the “underlying force” of extremism as “the basic human desire to matter and have meaning in one’s life.” They call this “the quest for personal significance,” and there are three main parts: need, narrative, and network. Everyone experiences feelings of need. What sets budding extremists apart is an imbalance, “the tendency…to privilege one need over the expense of others.” This disparity “allows formerly constrained behaviors to become liberated” and “be considered as reasonable and permissible” in service of the big need, the nagging one, the one that a person’s sense of self seems to hang on.

Maybe they sense a gap between who they are and who they imagine they deserve to be; maybe they want to feel stronger than circumstances allow; maybe they want to protect a privileged status. To explain their need—both its causes and its possible remedies—people look for a narrative, a framework for understanding the world that “directly promise[s] a sense of mattering and purpose to those who subscribe.” The most alluring narratives are often those that “portray the world in clearly defined, black-and-white terms that allow no room for ambiguity or cognitively demanding nuances.” Hate, certainly, offers a story like that, and the untethered behaviors it encourages—from exclusion to slurs to violence—arise from America’s communal well of white supremacy.

Hate becomes a cure for loneliness.

EXITING HATE IS similar to embracing it. It involves a search for place and purpose, born of personal need. A person doesn’t necessarily exit because a veil lifts and they are suddenly able to see hate for what it is. They leave because it makes sense to them and for them. Corinna seemed to know this, writing once on a blog she kept as Axis Sally, “The reality is, people rarely change their personality or ideals during adulthood, and if they do, it needs to be something they do on their own, for themselves.”14

The first episode, entitled “Axis Sally Comes Clean,” described her disillusionment with Covington and white nationalism. In no uncertain terms, she described the far right as a bunch of idiots and criminals too inept to launch a political movement of any kind, mired in petty resentments of everything and everyone they saw as holding white people back—including one another.

“Choice feminism” is liberation in the eye of the beholder, celebrating the fulfillment of women’s personal desires over the dismantling of harmful hierarchies and ideologies. Author bell hooks once described feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” Choice feminism isn’t that: It’s the belief that every decision has equal value so long as a woman makes it. If a woman decides to do something, it must be feminist.

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. Choice feminism claims to value civility and crams a big tent with clashing opinions. You can be a choice feminist if you buy into systems of oppression or oppose them—if you want to expand social benefits or slash them, if you’re a protester outside an abortion clinic or a volunteer ushering patients in the door, if you’re building a corporate empire on the backs of underpaid employees or an advocate for a fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage. Disagreement inevitably happens, and too many people in the teeming tent “focus their ire…on the tsk-tsking of other feminists,” according to political scientist Jennet Kirkpatrick.37 This dynamic limits collective, meaningful progress. It can stoke conflict that pushes some women toward the tent’s exit and prompts others to waffle about entering in the first place.

In their view, some truth was always being suppressed. Falsehoods were thought crimes—taboo, alluring—and refusing to acknowledge reality was a virtue. Like Coast to Coast, where Art Bell believed in the principle “Let the audience decide,” Red Ice treated expertise as a matter of perception and confidence. It was in the eye of the beholder, and in the mind’s eye.

WHY DO PEOPLE believe what isn’t true? Philosopher Baruch Spinoza believed that humans aren’t skeptical by nature—they’re instinctively credulous.

In the context of white nationalism, the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) shows how repetition can displace truth. At the turn of the twentieth century, the UDC presented a false version of the causes and consequences of the Civil War as often as it could, to any audience available. Cofounder Caroline Meriwether Goodlett once wrote in a letter, “It is my earnest prayer that it may continue to be the crowning glory of Southern womanhood to revere the memory of those heroes in gray and to honor that unswerving devotion to principle which has made the Confederate Soldier the most majestic figure in the pages of history.” Those pages bore the UDC’s influence: The organization lobbied for the creation of state commissions to determine which textbooks schools could distribute, then ensured that the selections were “fair and impartial” to the Confederacy. The UDC’s historian general warned against any volume that “calls a Confederate soldier a traitor, a rebel and the war a rebellion; that says the South fought to hold her slaves; that speaks of the slaveholder as cruel or unjust to his slaves; that glorifies Lincoln and vilifies Jefferson Davis.”17 Meanwhile, the UDC’s youth arm held ritualized chapter meetings. Members saluted the Confederate flag and recited catechisms, each one like a hammer on the nail of false historical memory—for instance, “Q: How were the slaves treated? A: With great kindness and care in nearly all cases.”18

UDC-approved textbooks were used widely until the 1970s, and not only in the South. Generations of Americans were denied an accurate education about the Civil War. The

soldier James McElroy wrote in his 1879 account of life in a brutal Confederate prison, an early challenge to the narrative of the Lost Cause. “I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told to them.”

June 2019, the FBI released a bulletin calling it a security risk. “Based on the increased volume and reach of conspiratorial content due to modern communication methods, it is logical to assume that more extremist-minded individuals will be exposed to potentially harmful conspiracy theories, accept ones that are favorable to their views, and possibly carry out criminal or violent actions as a result,” the bulletin stated.