麻豆传媒

Talia Lavin

Octopus Books (Buy from *)

Book

TALIA LAVIN awoke one day to discover a group of white supremacists using encrypted messaging app Telegram to discuss if she was 鈥渢oo ugly to rape鈥�. A few weeks earlier, unknown to its members, she had joined the group.

The writer and former New Yorker magazine fact checker didn鈥檛 feel prominent enough to warrant such vile comments. 鈥淚 was mostly just a loudmouth on Twitter. Why was I taking up real estate in their heads?鈥�

The ugly incident is recounted in Lavin鈥檚 book Culture Warlords, about her attempts to get into the heads of white supremacists to understand the mechanics of online racism and how it overlaps with misogyny.

Her book is a well-researched overview of the ecosystem of online hate. Lavin walks readers through the histories of racial segregation, anti-Semitism and white supremacy in the US. She also covers more recent history, such as 2014鈥檚 Gamergate, in which harassment of a female game developer metastasised into broader online trolling against people who criticised sexism in the games industry.

Most striking is how far Lavin will go. She lurks in anonymous forums, even posing on a white supremacist dating site as 鈥渂londe, gun-toting鈥� Ashlynn. Such commitment is beyond mere anthropological curiosity. Lavin takes self-professed 鈥済lee鈥� in enticing men to reveal personal details so she can out them as white supremacists.

Her intent is not without justification, but there is a problematic irony here. Lavin has had personal details shared online by harassers, yet she readily exposes the identity of a neo-Nazi in Ukraine. 鈥淚t was sweet鈥� and a bit perverse,鈥� she writes.

Her presence in far-right chat rooms, Lavin believes, has the effect of accountability: 鈥淚f I鈥檓 there, I can tell you about it.鈥�

But awareness of a problem and finding practical solutions are very different.

Knowledge may have one beneficial effect, yet it is one Lavin understates. Scrutiny over sites and apps enabling hateful and violent views could bring reform or close them down.

That鈥檚 despite the inaction of big tech. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Telegram, she writes, are responsible for turning US white supremacy into 鈥渁 white-internationalist movement鈥�. Hate makes money, after all. It is, she says, 鈥渙n us to demand more, and better鈥�.