Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist (2018) is a biography of disavowed white nationalist Derek Black, authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow.

Derek is a former white nationalist wunderkind. Derek is the son of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Stormfront online hate group creator, Don Black, and the godson of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, white supremacist politician, and notorious public figure, David Duke. Derek’s parents remove him from public school and groom him to be a rising star in the movement through homeschooling, white nationalist conferences, and familial relationships. By age 19, Derek is famous in the white nationalist community for his presence on Stormfront, his AM radio show, cable news appearances, and lectures reforming the movement from its violent past into mainstream ideology.

Derek leaves his family and their ideology for the first time to attend a progressive liberal arts college where he befriends immigrants, Jews, and LGBTQ students. He forms personal relationships with them and for the first time views members of these groups as human beings rather than abstract concepts. Derek’s friendship with nonwhites forces him to recognize their viewpoints as legitimate and question his own long-held ideology.

When a classmate unearths Derek’s identity as a prominent white nationalist, the college community turns against Derek. He is lonely and isolated. When an Orthodox Jewish friend invites Derek to Shabbat dinner with a group of students, Derek embraces the social opportunity and returns every week. This begins the lengthy process of Derek’s classmates dissuading him from his white nationalist ideology. Derek’s views shift not through debate or confrontation, but through friendship. As his friendships with the diverse group of students deepen, his commitment to an ideology that excludes them weakens. A friend presents him with information refuting the pseudoscience behind much of his beliefs, and he publicly disavows white nationalist ideology.

White nationalism is the glue that holds Derek’s family together. When Derek disavows the ideology, he causes an irreparable schism in his family. He is no longer welcome in his childhood home; Stormfront members spew vitriol at him; his interactions with his father consist only of verbal jabs. Derek moves from Florida to the Midwest, then the Northeast, and as white nationalism engulfs mainstream politics in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Derek speaks publicly about his experiences and the dangers of white nationalism. Simultaneously, Don and Duke are mentoring Richard Spencer and other rising stars in white nationalism as racial politics engulf the United States before and after the 2016 presidential election. Derek and his family are now adversaries in a national battle. They do not engage as a family or even socially. Each works to spread their ideological message and defeat the other in the court of public opinion. Each views the contest as vital for the future of the United States, and each is committed to defeating the other.