Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

Sisters in Hate is about women whose raison d’être is the preservation of white supremacy. In their chosen cause, they imagine solutions to problems both political and personal—their frustration with contemporary feminism, say, or their sense of dislocation in a rapidly changing country. Their commitment to white supremacy is what makes them white nationalists, denizens of the far right, supporters of the hate movement.

Jardina’s groundbreaking research shows that some 20 percent of white Americans—roughly forty million people20—now have “strong levels of group consciousness,” meaning they “feel a sense of discontent over the status of their group.” These people tend to be less educated but not financially vulnerable. “Most own houses, have average incomes similar to most whites in the United States, are employed, and identify as middle class,” Jardina writes. And white women are more likely than white men to hold “exclusionary views about what it means to be American, preferring boundaries around the nation’s identity that maintain it in their image.”

Hate, Blee says, is “encouraged” by “the organization of the physical and cultural world”—racial segregation, say, and negative caricatures of minorities. It is also “a process rather than an attribute,” a thing achieved as much as felt or believed.

Someone might read racist tweets or watch xenophobic YouTube videos and feel prompted to review their own life through a new lens, finding a seeming truth about their whiteness that they never knew was there. Or, as with Corinna, a person eager for human connection might find a racist community, present themselves as a potential ally by saying all the right things, and forge friendships that solidify their place in a cause. Hate becomes a cure for loneliness.

ANALYSES OF THE far right often dismiss the elevation of motherhood as a way of keeping women subservient to men by convincing them that they have more power than they actually do. As Corinna’s story shows, the hate movement can sideline women who aren’t dedicated to having and raising children. Yet it’s possible to acknowledge the rampant, persistent sexism of the far right while also giving women the credit they deserve. They aren’t being duped or forced into hate. They have agency, they make choices, and they locate power in places other than standard political authority. Whether they’re in a dominant order or a fringe crusade, women are getting something they want out of their position as mothers: validation, security, solidarity, visibility, purpose, bragging rights.

The exploitation of motherhood exposes a clear line connecting the American far right and insidious regimes of the past. The Nazis fostered a cult of motherhood and undertook what historian Claudia Koonz calls “the world’s most ambitious fertility drive.” It even gave mothers medals: gold, silver, or bronze, depending on the number of children they had.

Most tradwives are white, and they embrace a dream of comfort, contentment, and affluence specific to lived white experiences. It’s a reverie in which the diversifying of culture—from fashion to music, social perspectives to religious beliefs—never happened. To be sure, not every tradwife is a white supremacist, but the community’s hunger for the distinct boundaries of the past makes it vulnerable to far-right messaging. Tradwives and white nationalists share core objectives (more babies), myths (America’s moral decline), and iconography (happy heterosexual families). Such close proximity, particularly on social media, makes the exchange of ideas a straightforward prospect. When a tradwife mentions threats to “European culture” and “Western civilization,” she’s borrowing euphemistic language from white nationalists. When she talks about protecting her children from multiculturalism and black-on-white crime, she’s all but reading from the hate movement’s proverbial handbook.

White nationalists have always wanted to tell their stories on their own terms—unscrutinized, mythologized. Now more than ever they have a stage with an open mic. While writing the book, I thought often of a comment I read on YouTube, left beneath a far-right video by a supportive viewer: No need to talk to any media ever. We are our own media now.

What can America do about the hate movement? Tech companies can identify and ban hate speech, but this process inevitably becomes a game of Whac-a-Mole. It’s not enough, and it never will be. Similarly, bringing the law to bear on hate speech and crimes is necessary but remedial—levying penalties for specific wrongdoing won’t vaccinate America against far-right extremism.