Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Rising Out of Hatred, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue
White Supremacy and Racism
Family, Community, and Values
Redemption
Rhetoric and Language
Summary
Analysis
In fall 2008, 150 of the world’s most prominent white nationalists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis arrive for a meeting in Memphis. Despite attempts by local governments to stop the meeting, it is held in a nondescript hotel conference room. Their goal is to “restore White America,” particularly following Barack Obama’s election four days earlier. President-Elect Obama is receiving an average of 30 death threats each day, and gun sales have skyrocketed, but the Department of Homeland Security considers this meeting to be a top threat. They know that it could recruit many new members to the racist movement.
Flashing back to 2008, the book establishes some the white nationalist movement’s recent growth, particularly in response to Barack Obama’s election. This passage suggests that even while there may be some distinctions between white nationalists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis, the differences between them largely disappear because they’re all pursuing goals based on bigotry and white racial dominance. The passage also implies how dangerous they can be as a group, such that the Department of Homeland Security views them as a major threat—suggesting that white supremacy in all its forms can be dangerous.
Themes
David Duke is organizing the conference. At 58, he has spent his life working to push the movement from the fringes to the far conservative right. He’s rebranded himself from a KKK Grand Wizard to a “racial realist” politician giving rants on YouTube. At the conference, he hands over the keynote address to “the leading light” of the movement: Derek.
Duke’s transformation from KKK Grand Wizard to YouTube personality underscores a broader shift in the movement: downplaying the violence in it and focusing the discussion on ideas of being “realistic” about race. The same people are essentially espousing the same ideas—but they’re able to gain more support simply by shifting their language, which shows how persuasive rhetoric can be.
Themes
Nineteen-year-old Derek gets up from his laptop, where he is running a live radio broadcast on a station that he started himself. He is young, but he is already well-known: he’s started a website for “white children of the globe” and a radio network, and he’s won a local election as a Republican in Florida. He is a prodigy in the movement and a product of it—his father, Don Black, led the Klan for nearly a decade and created Stormfront, the internet’s first and largest white pride website. Duke sometimes refers to Derek as “the heir.”
This passage highlights how much Derek has been immersed in white nationalism even from a young age: he grew up with these values because his father instilled them in him. Derek is not just the “heir” to the movement, but also to the work that his father specifically has built; the movement and Derek’s family are inherently tied together. Additionally, the work cited here shows the impact that Derek has already had—even on children—and hints at how part of his transformation process will lie in making amends for that work.
Themes
Derek is thoughtful, polite, and never uses racist slurs. He doesn’t advocate for outright violence: his core beliefs are that the U.S. would be better off as an all-white country. On his radio show, he couches this belief in speeches about racial science, immigration, and a declining white middle class. The first half of his show is often innocuous, until he begins talking about “the survival and continued dominance of the great white race.”
Here, the book expands on some of Derek’s beliefs. Just as Derek himself often does, the passage attempts to clarify how Derek is different from the more violent extremists or explicit bigots around him. At the same time, Derek’s statements about wanting to maintain the “continued dominance of the great white race” demonstrate that his beliefs are still very much rooted in racism and white supremacy, both of which are harmful.
Themes
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Derek tells the audience about his campaign in Florida, when he heard about all the reasons white Republican neighbors felt their culture was under threat: highway signs in Spanish, urban crime, outsourced middle-class jobs, and political correctness. Derek explains that white people are becoming a minority, and they’re eager for white candidates to talk about these issues so that they can go to the polls as a voting bloc. Even though Derek campaigned with no experience and no diploma, he beat a Cuban American incumbent with 60 percent of the vote. Derek tells the crowd that the Republican Party can become the “White Party,” and people start to applaud his desire to “save white people.”
Derek recognizes the power of rhetoric and manipulating language to suit one’s purposes. So, rather than calling out race specifically, he positions white people as victims (who need to be “saved”) and uses coded language (like highway signs in Spanish or urban crime) to talk about white people’s frustrations with other races without having to explicitly align himself with racism or white supremacy. In doing so, he knows, the Republican Party can co-opt these ideas into the mainstream to gain white support broadly.
Themes
Don Black, 55, then joins Derek onstage for a Q&A. He is tall, with thick gray hair and blue eyes. He recently had a stroke and now walks with a cane to steady himself. He relies on Derek more than ever—not only physically, but to help manage Stormfront’s growing business. Derek grew up with a Confederate flag in his bedroom and spent time on Stormfront in private chat rooms, and now Don marvels at the adult his son is becoming—the direct inheritor of Don’s own beliefs.
To Derek, white nationalism is not only his political ideology, but it also reflect values that his family shares, and having those same values is part of what makes Don so proud of Derek. This implies that Derek didn’t necessarily make a conscious choice to become a white nationalist—rather, he was indoctrinated into the movement by his family and community.
Themes
When Derek was 10, Don and his wife Chloe pulled Derek out of school, believing it was being overrun by Haitians and Hispanics. Derek wrote on his own webpage, “It’s a shame how many white minds are wasted in that system.” Derek then stayed home during the day while working on a curriculum of his own creation, teaching himself coding and building the Stormfront children’s website. He started joining Don on interviews with outlets like USA Today, Nickelodeon, and NBC.
This passage illustrates how deeply Derek is immersed in white nationalism despite his young age. At 10 years old, he already believes that white children’s minds are being “wasted” by interacting with non-white children—a racist notion that again undermines Derek’s assertion that white nationalism shouldn’t be based on prejudice. Derek clearly learns these ideas from his parents, who espouse similar beliefs, illustrating how families are often built around shared values.
Themes
Don, for his own part, was shot in the chest in high school while stealing a mailing list on behalf of a white power organization. In college, he joined the KKK and rose through the ranks. The FBI later caught him when he tried to overthrow the government of Dominica, hoping to turn it into a white utopia. He launched Stormfront in the late 1990s, which fostered violent attacks against minorities, synagogues, and hate-watch groups.
Don’s involvement in white nationalism underscores the fact that Derek was brought up by a prominent white nationalist and that it is a major part of his family life and values. Additionally, this passage shows how white nationalism often feeds into other white supremacist groups and leads to radicalization and violence, like Don’s attempt to overthrow the government of Dominica.
Themes
Derek, on the other hand, is studious and quiet. He learned world history from a 1914 Encyclopaedia Britannica because Don thought it reflected their values. As a teenager, Derek thought white nationalism could become more popular if it distanced itself from a history of violence—not fighting against minorities but for white rights. Gradually, the movement spread, and it grew even more when they imposed new rules on Stormfront banning slurs, Nazi insignia, and threats of violence. After this, Don realized that Derek represented the future of the “white revolution.”
Derek recognizes the importance of language and aims to distance himself from other forms of white supremacy. Positioning the white nationalist movement as a civil rights movement for white people is a key way in which Derek tries to distinguish his movement from the KKK or neo-Nazis, and it’s what ultimately allows him to help shepherd white nationalist beliefs into the mainstream. Yet even Don’s thought that Derek will help lead the white “revolution” suggests that white nationalism still carries the same potential for violence as other forms of white supremacy.
Themes
Sparking this revolution came with challenges: when Republicans learned about Derek’s racial views, they tried to prevent him from taking his elected seat by stating that he failed to sign a mandatory loyalty oath to the Republican Party. Derek stated that he was being discriminated against as a “pro-white” activist, noting that the Republican committee chairman, Sid Dinerstein, was Jewish. They continued to spar in the press, and Stormfront became filled with hate speech against Dinerstein.
Again, even if Derek doesn’t personally use anti-Semitic language, his association with Stormfront illustrates that he is closely connected to anti-Semites. He also tacitly accepts people who are more than willing to espouse prejudice, making the boundaries between these movements unclear. And again, Derek tries to harness language to paint himself as victimized for being a “pro-white” activist, when in reality, he is the one whose beliefs are intolerant and discriminatory.
Themes
People started calling into radio stations defending Derek’s position. Don recorded these calls, asserting that white nationalism wasn’t a fringe ideology but the “natural impulse” for most white people in the U.S.—they held prejudices even if they didn’t identify as racist. Don thought this might be the time when people were most susceptible to joining the movement.
While Derek tries to portray his beliefs as not based in racism or white supremacy, Don makes it clear that white nationalism is rooted in taking advantage of people’s “natural impulse” toward prejudice, even if they don’t want to identify as racist. This makes it evident that white nationalism is similarly based on racist beliefs, and that all types of white supremacist groups are harmful.
Themes
The day before the first committee meeting, when Derek said that he would be there to claim his seat, Don and Derek started getting death threats, which was nothing new for their family. They had lived in West Palm Beach, Florida for 25 years to be close to Chloe’s family and job, and they surrounded their home with thick bushes and trees, only letting family and a few white nationalist friends visit. But now, Don was also getting messages from people who said they had guns trained on the house. After some consideration, Don called the police and told them about the messages, wondering if he should tell Derek to stay home from the meeting.
The death threats that Don and Derek receive as a result of their white nationalist beliefs reinforce their ability to portray themselves as victims. This also illustrates how ostracism and attacks are ineffective ways of fighting against harmful beliefs. This only makes Don and Derek closer and more entrenched in their belief system, as they feel as though they’re part of a community that sticks together and keeps its members safe from outsiders.
Themes
Derek, on the other hand, wasn’t worried about death threats. The only thing on his mind was failing and “having the white race collapse.” The day of the committee meeting, Derek went through a side entrance of the building. Security officers asked him to leave, and Derek said that he planned to file a lawsuit. Later, Don wrote on Stormfront that “Republican Jews are particularly vile,” but that Derek is planning on coming back.
Again, while Derek portrays himself as being concerned about white people, there are people in the white nationalist movement (like his father) whose beliefs are centered on denigrating and discriminating against other groups of people. This illustrates how even comparatively mild views like Derek’s can still be harmful, because they’re closely associated with (and may even encourage) more extreme white supremacist beliefs.
Themes
Many months later, after failing to retake his seat on the committee, Derek parlays his notoriety into his own regular morning radio show. He speaks about his ideology, though he claims he’s not a hateful person. He explains that racial diversity causes a lot of problems, recommends writings from Holocaust deniers, and talks about KKK ceremonies. Derek also uses the show to interview other white nationalists about their experiences, always framing themselves as victims of a genocidal government and anti-white discrimination.
Derek tries to separate his ideology from other groups in arguing that he’s not a hateful person. But Derek nevertheless references extremist movements like neo-Nazism and the KKK, potentially encouraging his radio show listeners to adopt the violent extremism that these groups promote. He also understands how to package his talking points in order to make listeners more sympathetic to the white nationalist movement, illustrating how manipulative rhetoric can be.
Themes
The radio show becomes so popular that Derek starts hosting five days a week with Don’s help. Don and Chloe are so encouraging that they push him to enroll in a community college, then to transfer to a four-year school after he gets straight A’s. He is accepted to the New College of Florida in 2010, a liberal arts school in Sarasota with 800 students total. His parents tell him they’ll pay his full tuition, considering it a good investment in Derek and in their cause.
Don and Chloe’s thoughts here continue to tie together family and shared values. To them, investing in Derek also represents an investment in the future of the white nationalist movement. They believe Derek will take up both the mantle of their family and the mantle of their ideology, intrinsically binding the two together.
Themes
New College is more than 80 percent white, but it is also listed in college guides as the most liberal school in Florida. One day, a caller on the radio show asks Don if he is worried about his son moving away from home to live “among the enemy in a hotbed of multiculturalism.” Don isn’t worried—Derek is a non-conformist, and if anyone will be influenced there, it’ll be other students.
The caller recognizes that communities are built around shared values—and in this case, New College’s community is a “hotbed of multiculturalism” where Derek might not necessarily mesh well with the “enemy.” This hints at the social conflict Derek will encounter when he and many of his classmates do not share the same worldview.
Themes
