Rising Out of Hatred

by

Eli Saslow

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Rising Out of Hatred makes teaching easy.
Stormfront is a neo-Nazi internet forum and the first major racial hate site. Don Black began Stormfront as an online bulletin board system before it became a website in 1996. His son, Derek, helped maintain Stormfront; growing up, he even set up a children’s page to expand its reach. Many mass shooters, including Dylann Roof, have been radicalized by Stormfront and admitted that they were motivated by white supremacist rhetoric they found there.

Stormfront Quotes in Rising Out of Hatred

The Rising Out of Hatred quotes below are all either spoken by Stormfront or refer to Stormfront. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

No family had done more to help white nationalism bully its way back into mainstream politics, and Derek was the next step in that evolution. He was precocious, thoughtful, and polite, sometimes delivering handwritten thank-you notes to conference volunteers. He never used racist slurs. He didn’t advocate for outright violence or breaking the law. His core beliefs were the same as those of most white nationalists: that America would be better off as a whites-only country, and that all minorities should eventually be forced to leave. But instead of basing his public arguments on emotion or explicit prejudice, he spoke mostly about what he believed to be the facts of racial science, immigration, and a declining white middle class.

Related Characters: Derek Black, Don Black
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

Under his watch, Stormfront grew into a gigantic, international community of message boards and chat rooms that offered everything from academic research on racial differences, to daily Nazi news links, to dating profiles rife with racial slurs. A few of Stormfront’s frequent users went on to bomb synagogues or murder minorities; the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-watch group, published a report connecting Stormfront to more than a hundred murders. Don discouraged violence in his own messages on the site, but he also managed the website with the language of a wartime commander, writing about “enemies” and “comrades,” in the “fight for our future.”

Related Characters: Don Black
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

As Derek explained it to his listeners, white nationalists were not fighting against minority rights but fighting for rights of their own. As the white population in the United States continued to drop, Derek and other activists were “simply trying to protect and preserve an endangered heritage and culture,” he said. They were trying to save whites from an “inevitable genocide by mass immigration and forced assimilation.” Theirs was the righteous cause. They were the social justice warriors. “What’s happening right now is a genocide of our people, plain and simple,” Derek said. “We are Europeans. We have a right to exist. We will not be replaced in our own country.”

Related Characters: Derek Black (speaker), Allison Gornik
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

And then there was Derek, the white nationalist prodigy living anonymously in his dorm room, helping to moderate the world’s largest white pride website and calling in to his own political radio show five mornings each week. On the air, he repeatedly theorized about “the criminal nature of blacks” and the “inferior natural intelligence of blacks and Hispanics.” He said President Obama was “anti-white culture,” “a radical black activist,” and “inherently un-American.” There was nothing micro about Derek’s aggressions. He knew that if his views were discovered at New College, he would be vilified on the forum and ostracized on campus. So he decided that semester to be a white activist on the radio and an anonymous college student in Sarasota.

Related Characters: Derek Black (speaker), Don Black, Barack Obama
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

But what became most evident at New College during those first overnight hours was the beginnings of an ideological rift, a divide that would widen over the next few years on campus. Ultimately, similar debates at campuses all over the country would convulse, splitting America’s liberal Left. What was the appropriate response to the most intolerant kinds of free speech? Exclusion or inclusion? Was it better to shame and demonize Derek? Or was it more effective to somehow reach out to him?

Related Characters: Derek Black
Page Number: 49-50
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

But nonjudgmental inclusion—Matthew believed that tactic had potential, and the more he researched Derek, the more convinced he became. On Stormfront, Matthew learned Derek had been homeschooled by his white nationalist family and therefore spent little time with people of color or Jews. By listening to snippets of Derek’s radio show, Matthew came to understand that Derek was sharp, rational, and good at making arguments with outsiders. He could deflect anonymous callers who belittled him and questioned his ideology. He had spent the last decade practicing—and teaching—the verbal tactics of debate against the enemy. So what information could Matthew provide during the course of one Shabbat dinner that would reorder Derek’s worldview? There was nothing. So instead of trying to build a case, Matthew began working to build a relationship in which Derek might be able to learn what the enemy was actually like. “The goal was really just to make Jews more human for him,” Matthew said.

Related Characters: Matthew Stevenson (speaker), Derek Black, Allison Gornik, Moshe Ash
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Derek’s talk ended with a long ovation, and then Don offered a toast to what he called “the next generation.” Allison listened as the applause built around her and wondered, even if she could somehow convince Derek of the flaws in his ideology, how could she ever compel him to give up all of this? His parents were glowing. A line of admirers had begun to form near his chair, a dozen people waiting to compliment Derek on his talk. “They really loved and cared about him,” Allison said. “Derek was so much more at the center of everything than I’d realized.”

Related Characters: Derek Black, Allison Gornik
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

On their long drive back to Sarasota the next day, she began to remind him of the public archive he had built within white nationalism: A website for “white children of the globe.” Thousands of public Stormfront posts. Several hundred radio shows. Dozens of interviews, speeches, and a conference now going into its third year. No matter how much Derek wanted to disappear, that legacy wasn’t going to disappear with him. In the car, Allison asked Derek how many people he had influenced during his time as a white nationalist. How many had he radicalized? How many had he turned into activists? And how many millions of other people had his rhetoric offended or oppressed?

Related Characters: Derek Black, Allison Gornik
Page Number: 205-206
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

For a decade, white nationalism had rallied around Derek as if he were the movement’s lovable mascot: young and smart, with a funny hat and bright red hair. Everyone felt as if they knew him, and so his rejection also seemed personal.

“Anger and disappointment,” one poster wrote. “Then again, we don’t need weaklings in our cause.”

“Derek’s now an open enemy to the survival of the white face.”

“He’s a traitor without hope or redemption. Should WN’s ever seize power, his name should figure prominently on the ‘Hunt Down List.’”

“Brass knuckles to the face and groin. Then water boarding.”

Related Characters: Derek Black, Don Black
Page Number: 228-229
Explanation and Analysis:

For the last decade he had been one person in public, and now he was another. All of the stereotypes he had promoted, all of the misinformation he'd helped spread, all of the hurtful and racist things he had believed and then said—it was all behind him now. That was Derek. This was Roland. He told Allison he never wanted to log on to Stormfront or watch cable news or so much as think about white nationalism or white supremacy ever again.

"It's all over and done with," he told her. Except at that very moment, at a white nationalist conference in Tennessee and beyond, the ideas he'd been promoting were continuing to spread.

Related Characters: Derek Black (speaker), Allison Gornik
Related Symbols: Derek’s Name
Page Number: 235
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

In June 2015, Roof scouted out a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and traveled there alone with a handgun. He went to a Bible study attended by black and mostly elderly congregants and waited until they stood up to pray. Then he opened fire and killed nine people, firing off dozens of rounds as he shouted about wanting to “start a race war.”

“A crazy kid latching onto portions of our cause” was how Don later explained it to the media, as the shooting brought Stormfront back onto the front page of The New York Times. “If the movement has a leading edge, it is Stormfront,” the Times wrote, and later in court Roof’s defense attorney attempted to blame the “racist internet” for Roof’s massacre. “Every bit of motivation came from things he saw on the internet,” his attorney David Bruck said. “He is simply regurgitating, in whole paragraphs, slogans, and facts—bits and pieces of facts that he downloaded from the internet directly into his brain.”

Related Characters: Derek Black, Don Black
Page Number: 246-247
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Rising Out of Hatred LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rising Out of Hatred PDF

Stormfront Term Timeline in Rising Out of Hatred

The timeline below shows where the term Stormfront appears in Rising Out of Hatred. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Introduction
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Derek’s godfather, David Duke—a former KKK Grand Wizard—ran for the Senate. Stormfront, a hate website that Derek’s father Don Black founded, gained much more traffic. Each week,... (full context)
Chapter 1
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...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. (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...Republican committee chairman, Sid Dinerstein, was Jewish. They continued to spar in the press, and Stormfront became filled with hate speech against Dinerstein. (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
...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. (full context)
Chapter 2
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
...to Derek, singing along to his music. Derek once wrote “Jews are NOT white” on Stormfront, but he quickly gets to know Matthew, who is funny and bright and likes medieval... (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...around him, and he starts actively disguising his beliefs. When a classmate randomly brings up Stormfront one day, Derek pretends not to know what it is. He is beginning to feel... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...that “Jews are the cause of all the world’s strife” and promoted this idea on Stormfront. Derek wrote that Jewish people were smart, “possibly evil,” and were orchestrating a plot to... (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
...idea about his history. He has written that race mixing is a “traitorous act” on Stormfront forums and advised other people to break off interracial relationships. It was easy to be... (full context)
Chapter 3
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Chapter 4
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
Matthew had visited the Stormfront website years before, hoping to better understand anti-Semitic prejudice. Because he wore a yarmulke regularly,... (full context)
Chapter 5
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Don has largely stopped speaking in public, instead hosting his radio show and monitoring Stormfront. He spends most of his time alone at home, growing more and more depressed about... (full context)
Chapter 6
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Allison begins doing research on Derek’s posts on Stormfront, which included discussing the trial of a Norwegian right-wing terrorist named Breivik who massacred 77... (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
...see that his views are already softening from the ones he used to espouse on Stormfront. (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...speaks. Allison also reads up on the history of racism and parses through posts on Stormfront, which usually make her angry that Derek could associate with such reprehensible beliefs. She grows... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
Stormfront has spawned at least half a dozen murderers, which Don writes off as coincidences. But... (full context)
Chapter 7
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
The Stormfront conference is in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, up several miles of unmarked roads so... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Meanwhile, the Stormfront gathering becomes a major news story, with news outlets reporting that conference-goers will include neo-Nazis... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Chapter 8
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
...the other hand, is starting to realize that Derek’s behavior is changing. Derek logs onto Stormfront less, despite the 2012 election heating up. Don created Stormfront in 1995 and watched it... (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
...that Derek has been doing: hanging out with Jewish and Hispanic friends, not posting on Stormfront or getting on the radio. And, she notes, he’s never fought back, and attacking him... (full context)
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
After Derek sends his message, he starts to worry about it getting onto Stormfront. But privately, students start to write to him, commending him, thanking him, and apologizing. Rose... (full context)
Chapter 9
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...“intellectual ideas”—they are abhorrent and dangerous, and he’s spreading this ideology with radio shows and Stormfront threads. He’s a public figure and not a victim, and she agrees with the things... (full context)
Chapter 10
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
Back on campus, Derek logs out of Stormfront for good. He tells Don he wants to retire from the radio show but doesn’t... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...Hispanic people commit an overwhelming amount of violent crime in major cities. Traffic surges on Stormfront. (full context)
Chapter 11
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
The news also makes its way onto Stormfront, where Don decides he has no choice but to respond to Derek’s letter. He feels... (full context)
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...of Derek’s renunciation, and Don doesn’t have the heart for any of it. People on Stormfront wonder if Derek was paid off, is secretly gay, or had a Black girlfriend. They... (full context)
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
...weeks later to change his name, staying at his parents’ house while they attend a Stormfront conference. He has submitted to a background check and paid $400. He’s switching his names,... (full context)
Chapter 12
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...went from a Mitt Romney supporter to a Tea Party organizer and then a registered Stormfront user. At college, he found promising new leaders on the radical right, many of whom... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
...him to avoid it. In summer 2015, Dylann Roof becomes radicalized by white nationalism on Stormfront. He signed up in spring 2015 under the name “LilAryan” and became frustrated that people... (full context)
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
The shooting brings Stormfront back into the news, and later, Roof’s defense attorney blames the “racist internet” for radicalizing... (full context)
Chapter 13
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Family, Community, and Values Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
Don reads Derek’s op-ed and clicks over on Stormfront. There, they call it “Treasonous,” and “liberal dribble.” Don wonders why Derek is actively opposing... (full context)
Chapter 14
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
White Supremacy and Racism Theme Icon
Redemption Theme Icon
Rhetoric and Language Theme Icon
...anti-racists. Derek writes another op-ed to say that Trump’s statement legitimized a racist ideology, while Stormfront’s traffic triples overnight. But now, at the restaurant, Don asks what happened to Derek—everything he... (full context)