Ep. 5 — Technology has given women a powerful voice in the alt-right movement / Seyward Darby, Author, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism.
Mar 25, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
A large number of women participated in the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by violent supporters of former President, Donald Trump. Some allegedly played a key role in plotting the protests and two of the five people killed in the riots were women. How have women exploited technology to expand their reach and influence in the alt-right movement? And have technology companies done enough to counter and combat their disinformation campaigns and hate messaging by white nationalists? Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism has some interesting insights.
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Chitra Ragavan:
I was struck by the number of women taking part in the rioting at the US Capitol on January 6, by violent supporters of former President Donald Trump. Who are these women, I wondered? How have they exploited technology to expand their reach and influence in the alt-right movement? And have technology companies done enough to counter and combat their disinformation campaigns and hate messaging.
Chitra Ragavan:
Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia. Here to answer those questions and more is Seyward Darby. She is the author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism. Darby is the editor in chief of The Atavist Magazine, a forum for great long-form journalism. Darby previously served as the deputy editor of Foreign Policy, and the online editor and assistant managing editor of The New Republic. As a writer, she has contributed to The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Elle, and Vanity Fair, among other publications.
Chitra Ragavan:
Seyward, welcome to Techtopia.
Seyward Darby:
Thank you so much for having me.
Chitra Ragavan:
What led you to start researching the role of women in white nationalism and to write Sisters in Hate?
Seyward Darby:
I began this project immediately after the election that preceded this one. So I guess four years prior, so in 2016. Just like January 6th of this year and the aftermath of the election in 2020 has led a lot of people to ask questions about the state of the country and to ask questions certainly about women's complicity in the far right in this country. I had a similar question after 2016. But in that case, rather than number of women who were suddenly in the news, it was the opposite. There were no women who were ever quoted or mentioned as being part of the so called alt-right movement, which had gotten a good amount of press attention over the course of the election, because of the movement's affinity for Trump and the way that he projected dog whistles to them.
Seyward Darby:
So I would read articles about the alt right and find that there were always mentions of how they were angry white men, and it was so misogynistic, and a woman was never quoted, there were no photos of women. There was just a complete absence of women. And that struck me as wrong from the standpoint of how social movements actually function and what is required for social movements to function, particularly social movements that are all about making sure you're preserving an identity, a way of life, a race in this case. You literally need women for that. And history has shown us that women have been very deeply involved in many oppressive, racist regimes and organizations.
Seyward Darby:
So, I went looking for the women. They were quite easy to find. They were exactly where you'd expect them to be on YouTube, and Twitter, and Facebook, and all of these different platforms. I then dove into these questions of who are they? Why do they believe what they believe? How did they come to believe what they believe? But also, why are we not talking about them? Why have they been erased from the wider narrative about the far right? And so that was exactly four years ago, basically, that I kicked this into gear.
Chitra Ragavan:
