SISTERS IN HATE

Portraits of three contemporary American women and the movement that unites them: white supremacy.

“Hate in America is surging,” writes Darby, editor-in-chief of the Atavist Magazine and former deputy editor of Foreign Policy. That assertion will surprise few, but the author’s thesis—“Women are the hate movement’s dulcet voices and its standard bearers”—is more eye-opening since “men are the far right’s most recognizable evangelists, and bombings, shootings and rallies are the most obvious manifestations of the movement’s strength.” While conducting research, the author learned that the assumption that “women likely wouldn’t fight against their own interests” was incorrect. Darby fleshes out the story with three cases. The first, Corinna Olsen, is arguably the most interesting, partly because she’s a rare bird—she works as an embalmer and was formerly a bodybuilding competitor and an actress in torture porn—and partly because she changed her mind about racism. Ayla Stewart is the opposite story. She started out as a feminist and defender of gay rights and now operates as one of the leading online proponents of what is called “tradlife” as the “Wife With a Purpose,” combining organic cooking with latter-day Nazism. The author reserves most of her scorn for her third subject, Lana Lokteff. Described by David Duke as a “harder-hitting” Ann Coulter with a “movie-star quality,” Lokteff runs a right-wing news outlet called Red Ice with her husband. As Darby documents, she is “capable of extraordinary venom,” from Jew-hating to fat-shaming, as well as plenty of outright lying. (While Olsen cooperated with Darby throughout the project, the other two met with her but then cut off communications.) Along the way, the author carefully explains the supporting work of many other journalists and researchers and a wealth of right-wing lingo.

Engaging, horrifying, and informative—Darby offers an important, fresh angle on the problems tearing our country apart.