Rising Out of Hatred: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

The Stormfront conference is in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, up several miles of unmarked roads so that outsiders can’t find them. The attendees will all be dedicated Stormfront users wearing nametags displaying their Stormfront IDs—all except Allison. For weeks, she and Derek have been talking, but she still doesn’t fully understand his beliefs. He says that “overt prejudice can be really bad,” and that he “respect[s] women,” even though Allison points out that racists are usually also sexist. Allison wonders if Derek is trying to water down his beliefs to remain friends with her. She wants to see how he talks to people who sympathize with him so that she can dismantle his beliefs.

The more Allison reads about the conference, the more hesitant she is to go—particularly because racial hate crimes in the U.S. are at historic highs, just two months away from the 2012 election. The Republican primary has become a race to the conservative right, particularly on immigration. Even Mitt Romney has moved away from his centrist roots, suggesting an immigration policy of “self-deportation”: making life so difficult for immigrants that they would become miserable and leave on their own. The party has essentially decided to forfeit the minority vote, becoming an overwhelmingly white party.

Meanwhile, the Stormfront gathering becomes a major news story, with news outlets reporting that conference-goers will include neo-Nazis and Klansmen. Still, despite her growing anxiety, Allison trusts that Derek will not put her at risk, and she approaches the conference with the meticulousness of a research project. She will tell her close friend and her mother where she is, but that’s it. She doesn’t know what she’ll say if they ask her whether she’s a white nationalist, or about her relationship to Derek.

A few weeks earlier, Derek finally asked Allison out over text. She admits it had crossed her mind, but she’s conflicted—while she enjoys spending time with him, she fears what her classmates would think. She rejects his offer kindly, saying that the friendship they already have is nice, and Derek quickly agrees. Now, over Instant Messenger, Allison suggests that she’ll attend as a “curious friend” and tell people she’s “processing.” Even though she’s venturing into his territory, they have also become co-conspirators in Allison’s infiltration into the conference.

Don and Chloe drive up for the conference together from Florida. Don has attended more than 130 conferences, mixing them with vacations and time with his friends. Derek has attended many of the conferences too; even as a young child, Derek liked listening to the speakers. He also liked seeing the popular, energetic version of Don come alive at the conferences, whereas at home he was often tired and pessimistic. The only time Derek acted out was when Don threatened to go to a conference without him; they became fixtures there, like part of an extended family. Don trusts Derek more than anyone else in the movement, and he thinks of Derek as his partner and eventual successor.

When Allison arrives, she meets a lot of Derek’s family, including his older half-sisters, who pull Allison aside to brag about his accomplishments in the movement. Their cabin is enormous, and they play games in the living room and drink beers on the porch. Allison quickly realizes that Derek is famous, and that people genuinely love and adore him. Most people, meanwhile, assume that Allison is a white nationalist. Everything about their conversations disgusts her, but she promised not to cause a scene with his family, so she just smiles and nods.

At the conference the next day, Allison avoids being photographed and jots down questions—about the Holocaust denial, the militant terminology, and the dog whistles about “their kind,” “infiltrators,” and “enemies.” She listens to Don and Duke speak ill of interracial dating, insulting groups that they believe are causing white genocide. During the coffee breaks, Allison frequently excuses herself to the bathroom to avoid the conversation, feeling sick to her stomach.

Then, Derek begins his speech—the first time he has felt dread doing so. After months of conversation with Allison, he is becoming less secure in his beliefs. When he glances at her, he is reminded that his words are hurtful, alienating, and oppressive. Still, he makes his speech, focusing on the demographic decline of white people in the U.S. and talking about how to take the offensive in conversations with “anti-whites.”

Allison thinks Derek’s speech is absurd and upsetting, but it’s consistent with what he’s been telling her in private in the last several weeks. She now knows that at least he’s been honest with her, but he still has so many beliefs that are fundamentally different from hers. Derek’s talk ends with a long ovation, and Allison wonders—even if she can convince Derek of the flaws in his argument, how can she convince him to give up so much of his life, his family, and his friends?

When Allison and Derek leave the conference the next day, she is relieved to get back to her normal life. But a few days later, Matthew notices Allison’s name tag from the event, and she tells him about going to the conference with Derek. Matthew is confused and upset that Allison lied to him about where she went (she told him she was visiting friends in Jacksonville). He tells her that it was reckless to do it, and later he and Moshe look up information about the conference and see that Derek’s views haven’t changed at all.

Moshe is angry—his identity has been built on the very history that white nationalists are trying to erase. His grandfather Chaim came from Hungary, where more than three quarters of Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Chaim—a baby at the time—and his mother were sent to Bergen-Belsen, a work camp where Nazi guards would shoot people at random. Disease killed 35,000 prisoners in the first few months of 1945, several hundred prisoners starved each week, and 12,000 prisoners died after liberation—but Chaim survived. He and his mother and siblings were sent to a refugee camp in Italy and then on to New York and Miami. Most of Moshe’s childhood was built on honoring family history and adhering to Jewish traditions.

Chaim spoke little about the Holocaust when Moshe was growing up, and so Moshe did research himself in high school and traveled to Bergen-Belson at 17 with his brother. He also read up on modern-day anti-Semitism, Stormfront, and Don Black and David Duke, who argued that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated and used as the “pillar of Zionist aggression.” They stated that Hitler was a great leader and Nazi Germany an ideal country. Moshe brought all of that knowledge with him to New College, where he met Derek and had been sitting with him around a dinner table for a full year—even at the cost of losing some of his friends. And now, reading about this conference, he wonders why he’s doing it—Derek is still basically a Nazi.

Moshe at first thought Derek could change because he was smart, kind, and had a diverse group of friends. Moshe himself had broken away from his Orthodox Judaism early in his teens as he began to learn more about science, and he knew how hard it could be to break away from a community essential to his family. But by this time, Derek has spent years away from his parents yet has continued to spread the same ideology. He had no incentive to change, particularly with friends who remained accepting. Matthew wonders if Derek is the one who’s been doing the persuading all along.