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
Tom McKay is in his final month at New College and is finishing up his senior thesis on domestic extremism, a topic that required hours of research on Stormfront and on website of the Southern Poverty Law Center website, one of the country’s largest civil rights groups. At the time, the SPLC is talking about how the “Patriot movement” has doubled in size and come to define mainstream politics. It also discusses Donald Trump, who has started parroting white nationalist language and insinuating that Obama is inherently “un-American.”
Defining a collective of extremist groups that hold white nationalist beliefs as the “Patriot movement” is another rhetorical tactic that these groups use to soften their image and message. Using such a traditionally positive word like “patriotic” to label their group makes it difficult for people to understand or call attention to the harm they cause. In addition, the passage foreshadows Donald Trump’s rise in politics and points out his use of coded language like “un-American,” which suggests that Obama isn’t American because he isn’t white.
Themes
Tom’s research leads him to discover a picture of a smiling teenager with long red hair whose name is familiar: Derek Black. Tom checks the student directory and finds Derek before confirming with other people that Derek attends the school. He considers calling the admissions office, the campus police, or writing to Derek directly. Instead, he decides to post on the student email forum at 1:56 a.m.
Tom’s decision to post on the forum is a crucial one, because it means that everyone on campus finds out at the same time about Derek being a white nationalist. This, in turn, means that they all have to grapple with how to treat Derek, just as Tom grapples with the best way to go about confronting this issue. In the end, he decides that open dialogue is the best way.
Themes
Within hours, the thread has become the biggest in the college’s history. Some students are afraid about Derek being on campus, and they wonder what to do in response to intolerant hate speech. Should they embarrass and demonize him? Or is it more effective to reach out to him? Some students of color are hesitant to have a one-on-one conversation with him. Some students say he has the right to his opinions like anyone else, while some call for him to be expelled, thinking it’s silly to believe he can be changed and that others are defending a Nazi.
The students consider the best way to treat Derek—and whether Derek’s beliefs or behavior can be changed at all. They pose the debate as ostracizing him—even removing him from campus entirely—versus trying to initiate a conversation with him. But the passage does present an important argument against reaching out to him: that some students who are targeted by Derek’s views don’t feel comfortable or safe talking to him, and so ostracism may sometimes be the only option for those students.
Themes
Derek has been receiving hate mail for more than a decade, making him nearly impervious to it. He recalls an interview he did when he was 10 years old on a talk show segment called “How to Confront a Racist.” The crowd booed and shouted at him as he came out, and that was how Derek learned to “depersonalize the enemy.” But now, he’s getting hate mail from peers whom he knows and respects.
Ostracizing and disrespecting Derek only entrenches him further in his attitudes. When people on a TV show bullied him, it enabled him to “depersonalize the enemy,” thereby reinforcing that they were “the enemy” and preventing Derek from thinking of those he disagrees with as human beings.
Themes
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Derek writes back to individual messages from friends, trying to remain indifferent. But in reality, he reads every post for three days. He mourns all the relationships he’s lost; there are smart people calling him an “idiot,” a “Hitler,” and a “fraud.” The next morning, Rose writes to him, unsure of what exactly to say. They set up a time to meet on Skype that evening, and when Derek calls, he sees a few friends with her. Rose asks if Derek is just using her for cover—she spent the day reading through Derek’s forum posts and trying to reconcile his ideology with their relationship.
This passage highlights how ostracism can provide a starting point for changing people’s views—Derek notices that many people he respects and considers intelligent many are completely outraged at his views and his deception. Derek isn’t indifferent to this, as he’s devastated at losing so many relationships—including Rose. This provides some starting point for Derek in realizing how upsetting his views are to other people. Still, this only goes so far, as calling him an “idiot” or comparing him to Hitler only provides evidence to Derek that they are just overreacting or emotional.
Themes
Derek fumbles through apologies and tries to explain his ideology to Rose, which he has rarely done. He says he believes all races are equal but that there are biological differences between them, and that white people are better served by living apart from others—he fears white genocide. None of this makes any sense to Rose, who becomes angry and cries. They finish the call, and Derek writes to her apologizing for lying to her. She doesn’t write back. He tries to reach out a few more times, but he realizes how much damage he has done to her.
Again, Derek tries to justify his beliefs by distinguishing them from other ideologies. Yet even though he says that he believes the races are equal, his posts on Stormfront do not align with this statement. And again, Derek starts to realize how hurtful his ideology is to someone like Rose, who liked and trusted him but who feels demeaned by things he has said in the past.
Themes
A few days later, David Duke visits Derek in Munich. Duke is currently living in Austria and has spent much of the previous 10 years in Europe trying to grow white nationalism. He has been banned from many countries and cities for racist actions, but he risks leaving Austria to see Derek.
Derek’s association with David Duke—whose actions have been extreme enough to ban him ban from many European cities and countries—illustrates that that the boundaries between the different white supremacist groups are fluid because of the relationships that people build across groups. Even if Derek’s views aren’t as extreme, his relationship with Duke is an implicit endorsement of extremists.
Themes
Duke is Derek’s mentor and godfather—he’s like a second dad. Duke and Don Black met as teenagers in the late 1960s. Soon after, Duke went to Louisiana State, where he fell in love with a classmate named Chloe Hardin. Duke and Chloe married and had two daughters before getting divorced, and several years later, Chloe reconnected with Duke’s best friend—Don. They married in the late 1980s, and Derek was born a year later. They have operated as a blended family since, with Don helping to raise Duke’s two daughters and vice versa.
Duke isn’t just a family friend—he is essentially Derek’s second father and helped to raise him. Thus, even though Derek doesn’t identify with the KKK or neo-Nazism, his association with white supremacists indicates his implicit approval of them.
Themes
Together, Duke and Derek tour Munich, talking about history and ideology as they stop to see Odeonsplatz, where Hitler organized marches in 1923 for his Nazi party. Derek tells Duke about the forum thread, but he leaves out details about Rose. Duke explains that he went through something similar in college: students could often step onto a soap box outside the Student Union and speak passionately about their interests. Once, Duke started talking about white people as the “master race.” Over time, more and more people gathered—some in support, but most in protest. One Jewish woman attacked him onstage until police came. Classmates slipped death threats under his door, and students proposed shutting down the soap box to prevent him from speaking.
Even though Derek doesn’t identify as a neo-Nazi or white supremacist, the activities and discussions that he and Duke bond over suggest that they find a lot of common ground on viewpoints like white people being a “master race.” In this way, white nationalism and ideologies like white supremacy or neo-Nazism are perhaps not as distinct as Derek would like to believe. Derek and Duke’s closeness is also based on the fact that they have undergone similar experiences in college, suggesting that Derek may also go down the path to further radicalization, just like Duke did.
Themes
Duke found some freedom in being hated—it allowed him to be his true self, hanging Nazi photos and symbols in his dorm. He started the White Youth Alliance with more than 200 people, and later he left LSU after his junior year and revitalized the Klan, ultimately remaking himself into a politician and spending four decades as a notorious racial zealot. Maybe, he thinks, this will be Derek’s path, too.
Duke’s radicalization suggests that being ostracized and hated by the other students at his school only cemented his ideology, leading him to become even more extreme both during school and afterward. In this way, the book implies that this kind of reaction to extreme views may not actually change people’s minds.
Themes
When Duke leaves, part of Derek wants to redouble his commitment to white nationalism in the same way Duke did. He returns home and reads through the forum again, getting angrier and angrier. He makes plans to return to New College in the fall, hoping to invite white nationalist speakers there. He also wants to turn the forum thread into a lesson that will benefit white nationalists, planning to organize a conference like the one Don hosted in Tennessee. They book a dozen keynote speakers, and Derek goes back to the United States.
Like Duke, Derek starts to double down on his own viewpoint as a result of the harsh reaction that he gets on the forum. As such, the book underscores the same idea here as in its discussion of Duke’s life: that reacting harshly to Derek, calling him names, or completely cutting him out of the New College social life will only push him further into the white nationalist community. This is very clear when Derek realizes that he wants to host a conference, showing how their reaction is pushing him to retreat to his own community.
Themes
Derek returns to campus and avoids everyone he can. He quickly finds an apartment far away from campus on Craigslist. The administration has investigated Derek’s background and decided against disciplinary action, wanting to encourage free speech. Derek hasn’t broken any laws or student conduct, and he has a strong academic record. So, they let him live off campus to protect both Derek and the other students.
Derek’s feeling that he has to move off campus as a result of his views illustrates that it’s hard for a person to fully take part in a community when they don’t share that community’s values. Because of Derek’s white nationalist beliefs, he can’t live or interact with the other students.
Themes
Yet the students are more divided than ever. Juan reads Derek’s posts on Stormfront, but he also knows that he and Derek shared a genuine friendship and that perhaps Derek is already in the process of changing his views. But most other students want nothing to do with him—even dropping classes he is enrolled in or vandalizing a car they mistake for Derek’s. The students again debate shunning him completely or trying to reach out to him.
While most students shun Derek or react strongly against him, other students like Juan recognize the value of finding common ground—particularly because Juan knows that his and Derek’s friendship helped Derek see that not every non-white student has to be an “enemy.” Simply being able to interact with people who are not white helps humanize them in Derek’s mind.
Themes
One voice begins to stand out on the forum: James Birmingham, who has already graduated from the College but stayed in Sarasota to work in the student affairs office. He is half Chinese and a staunch advocate for students of color. He has studied anthropology and knows what most experts believe about race: that it is a fluid, social idea and not a scientific fact. There is no clear genetic boundary between races, and the concept of race didn’t appear until the 16th century, when colonialists needed to differentiate themselves from slaves. It was a tool of oppression and exploitation that then became ingrained in every part of society.
James’s researched understanding of race counters Derek’s beliefs and shows that Derek’s thoughts on racism are rooted in white supremacy and colonialism. As James notes here, white colonialists constructed the idea of race and then used it to justify their brutal treatment of slaves and indigenous people, reassuring themselves that non-white people were naturally inferior and therefore deserved this treatment. So, again, even if Derek believes that he isn’t an extremist or a violent white supremacist, his beliefs are nevertheless harmful because they enable oppression and discrimination against racial and religious minorities.
Themes
With the school year about to begin, James keeps reading on the forum about Derek and is disgusted by the idea that Derek thinks he’s “oppressed and victimized by a lifetime of anti-white discrimination.” James is frustrated with students who want to defend and reach out to Derek, believing them naïve. At 22, Derek is an adult, and he is indoctrinating others after an adolescence spent demeaning and excluding racial minorities. Why should classmates be so worried about including him? Instead, James says they should make him uncomfortable and irrelevant—they should not acknowledge him at all.
James comes down firmly on the side of ostracizing Derek, arguing that Derek’s views are so intolerant and abhorrent that they shouldn’t be given credence at all. This is particularly based on the idea that James doesn’t think anyone’s mind can be changed. But the book has already noted that Derek does eventually have a change of heart, so James’s decision to ostracize Derek is perhaps overly pessimistic.
Themes
Gradually, James’s movement works. Rose ignores Derek, while the German Club and the Pluralism Committee ask him not to come back. Students flip Derek the middle finger in the library and dining hall. He avoids trips to campus and goes home on weekends. He stays in his apartment, feeling lonely and isolated, until one day he can’t take it anymore and decides to go to a party. There, a group of students—self-described anarchists and anti-fascists—start heckling and circling him, until another student, Blair Sapp, leads Derek away.
This episode further illustrates how people who do not share values with a given community are often forced out of that community completely. The other students ostracize Derek, and any attempt to ingratiate himself is met with frustration or even threats of violence. This reinforces how communities—like the group of anarchists and anti-fascists—are largely built on shared beliefs.
Themes
Blair, who had a history class with Derek, hadn’t spoken to Derek since he was outed on the forum, but he doesn’t want Derek to get beaten up. Outside the party, Derek seems visibly shaken. Blair is active in politics and is working up the courage to come out as gay to parts of his conservative family, and he knows the struggle of community pressure and fear of rejection. He wonders if Derek has doubts about his own identity.
Blair’s thoughts here reflect his understanding that communities and families are often centered around shared values. One of the hardest aspects of letting go of one’s beliefs is the fact that it might come with rejection from one’s closest communities, as Blair knows that distancing himself from conservativism and coming out as gay may cause his family to disown him. In this way, the book creates a parallel between Blair and Derek, even though the two young men are very different in their views and experiences.
Themes
Blair sits down with Derek and starts discussing Derek’s beliefs. Derek believes white advantages in the U.S. are due to genetic superiority, and that white privilege is a conspiracy theory to make white people feel guilty about their success. Blair is surprised about how informed on history and compelling Derek is, and how practiced and measured his responses are. Blair realizes that Derek has no self-doubt about his views, and that he could do real damage on campus and bring more people to his side. At the end of the night, they shake hands and part ways.
Blair understands just how much damage someone like Derek could do—hinting at how much damage Derek likely already has done in bringing other people to his side. But Blair is nonetheless willing to listen to Derek’s ideas and afford him respect, as he seems to sense that having an open dialogue is probably the most effective way to change Derek’s mind. It’s possible that Blair is able to empathize with Derek because he, too, feels ostracized—in his case, because he’s a gay man in a conservative family.
Themes
A few weeks later, in the late summer of 2011, Derek drives to Tennessee for his first Stormfront conference. The mood is triumphant, particularly given the current political landscape. There is widespread dissatisfaction among white people that often leads to support for white nationalism. Many white people believe the U.S. is slipping away from them, Tea Party supporters are growing into the millions, and Donald Trump has amassed a massive following on the far right.
The Tea Party was a subgroup of Republican politicians that focused primarily on fiscal conservatism. It grew as a movement largely in response to President Obama’s election in 2008 and was viewed as anti-establishment because of its focus on lowering taxes. Some political thinkers have theorized that Tea Party supporters opposed Obama primarily because of his race rather than his policies, which is likely what the book is alluding to here. The other examples cited here—like Donald Trump’s growing following—can also be traced back to rhetoric that targeted Obama, often with racially coded language. This set of conditions suggests that the white nationalist movement can often grow without people truly seeing it for what it is, which can be harmful because people may not recognize the racism underpinning the movement.
Themes
Derek tells the conference that it’s time to adopt a strategy to take the moral high ground. Each speaker discusses changing white nationalist rhetoric to reframe the discussion. They assert that white people are the ones facing genocide and oppression from the “antiwhites.” Don speaks last, complimenting Derek’s work and saying how productive the conference has been.
This passage demonstrates Derek’s direct role in shaping the white nationalist movement’s rhetoric. He understands the power of that rhetoric to help win people over to his point of view, because it’s easier for people to believe that they are victims than to acknowledge their own complicity in racism.
Themes
When Derek returns to New College, he again steels himself for criticism and targeting. But he receives a text message on his phone from two Jewish students—one of which is Matthew Stevenson, who sometimes sat in the courtyard of his dorm and sang with him. They host a few friends each Friday night for Shabbat dinner, and this week they invite Derek along.
Matthew’s gesture of inviting Derek to Shabbat dinner is in direct contrast to the way so many of Derek’s classmates have tried to ostracize him. With this invitation, Matthew seems to acknowledge that his friendship with Derek was genuine. Inviting him over for Shabbat dinner on Friday nights (a weekly ritual that begins the Jewish day of rest) signals to Derek that Matthew is willing to have open dialogue as long as Derek is also willing to do so.
Themes
