Talia Lavin (born 1989) is an American journalist. She is the author of Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, published in 2020, [1] and the forthcoming October 2024 book Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America. [2]
Lavin grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and was raised Modern Orthodox. [3] [4] She attended SAR High School [5] and graduated from Harvard University in 2012 with a degree in comparative literature. [6] She was a Fulbright scholar [7] and spent a year in Ukraine from 2012 to 2013. [8]
Lavin was a fact-checker at The New Yorker . [9] She resigned from her position in 2018 after mistakenly comparing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer's tattoo to an Iron Cross. [10] ICE released a statement via Twitter that the officer's tattoo is a Titan 2 platoon symbol, accompanied by the Spartan Creed. [11] Lavin had deleted the original tweet before the agency's statement. [12] In 2018, she was hired as researcher on far-right extremism by Media Matters for America. [13] Within "several months", she was no longer with Media Matters for America, and was hired at New York University where she was scheduled to teach an undergraduate course in the Fall semester called "Reporting on the Far Right". [14] The course was canceled by May 30, 2019 when only two people signed up for the course. The Wrap reported her faculty bio had been deleted "around April 20, 2019". [15]
Until January 2019 Lavin wrote a weekly political column in HuffPost , [16] and she also worked as a columnist for MSNBC Daily. [17] Her work appeared in GQ, [18] Jewcy, [19] HuffPost, [20] Rolling Stone, [21] The New Republic, [22] The New Yorker, [23] New York magazine, [24] The Nation, [25] and TheWashington Post. [26]
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White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.
The Aryan Brotherhood is a neo-Nazi prison gang and an organized crime syndicate that is based in the United States and has an estimated 15,000–20,000 members both inside and outside prisons. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has characterized it as "the nation's oldest major white supremacist prison gang and a national crime syndicate" while the Anti-Defamation League calls it the "oldest and most notorious racist prison gang in the United States". According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Aryan Brotherhood makes up an extremely low percentage of the entire US prison population, but it is responsible for a disproportionately large number of prison murders.
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also referred to as the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization is actively controlling international banks, and through them governments, in order to collude against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, or belong to any other part of a particular population.
Kevin B. MacDonald is an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and retired professor of evolutionary psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). In 2008, the CSULB academic senate voted to disassociate itself from MacDonald's work.
White pride and white power are expressions primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, fascist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist organizations in order to signal racist or racialist viewpoints. It is also a slogan used by the prominent post-Ku Klux Klan group Stormfront and a term used to make racist/racialist viewpoints more palatable to the general public who may associate historical abuses with the terms white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist.
Jewcy is an online magazine of Jewish pop culture and offbeat news. The site was launched on November 15, 2006. The Guardian has described Jewcy as "a cultural icon" and "at the forefront of a reinvention of Jewish identity by young US Jews". The New York Times has described Jewcy as part of "the Jewish Hipster movement".
Taki's Magazine, called Takimag for short, is an online magazine of politics and culture published by the Greek paleoconservative commentator and socialite Taki Theodoracopulos and edited by his daughter Mandolyna Theodoracopulos. It has published articles by far-right figures such as Gavin McInnes and the white supremacist Jared Taylor; the white supremacist Richard Spencer was an early Taki's editor.
The Nazi Lowriders, also known as NLR or the Ride, are a neo-Nazi, white supremacist organized crime syndicate, and prison and street gang in the United States. Primarily based in Southern California, the gang is allied with the larger Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia gangs, and fellow peckerwood gang Public Enemy No. 1. The Nazi Lowriders operate both in and outside of prison.
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (JBAKC) was an anti-racist organization based in the United States. The group protested against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacist organizations and published anti-racist literature. Members of the JBAKC were involved in a string of bombings of military, government, and corporate targets in the 1980s. The JBAKC viewed themselves as anti-imperialists and considered African Americans, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans to be oppressed colonial peoples.
Amber is an unincorporated community in Jones County, Iowa, United States. It is located northeast of Anamosa, northwest of Center Junction, south of Monticello and north of Olin. Amber is located approximately in the center of Jones County.
The 211 Crew, also known as the Aryan Empire, Aryan Alliance or Brotherhood of Aryan Alliance is an American white supremacist prison gang, active both in and out of prison, that was formed in 1995 at Colorado's Denver County Jail. It was linked to several high-profile murders and criminal investigations. Those included the assassination of Colorado Department of Corrections head Tom Clements. Due to a threatening letter sent by a Texas Aryan Brotherhood member, it was suspected to be linked to similar assassinations of Texas district attorney Mike McLelland, and his assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse, but a former Justice of the Peace was eventually indicted for those murders.
The Daily Stormer is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website Total Fascism, which had focused on his own long-form essays on fascism, race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. In contrast, The Daily Stormer relies heavily on quoted material with exaggerated headlines.
The Right Stuff is a neo-Nazi and white nationalist blog and discussion forum and the host of several podcasts, including The Daily Shoah. Founded by American neo-Nazi Mike Enoch, the website promotes Holocaust denial, and coined the use of "echoes", an antisemitic marker that uses triple parentheses around names to identify Jewish people.
Christopher Charles Cantwell, also known as the Crying Nazi, is an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
Lana Jennifer Lokteff is an American far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theorist and white supremacist, who is part of the alt-right movement. She became a prominent YouTube personality before being banned. She is the host of Radio 3Fourteen.
Aph Ko is an American writer, vegan activist, and digital media producer. She is the author of Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out (2019), co-author of Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (2017), and creator of the website Black Vegans Rock.
Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy is a non-fiction book by Talia Lavin. In the book, Lavin describes a project of inventing online personae that allow her to meet and expose fascist white supremacists who gather in online chatrooms and websites; the book also traces the historic roots of these contemporary phenomena.
Andrew Barret Anglin is an American neo-Nazi and conspiracy theorist, and editor of the website The Daily Stormer. Through this website, Anglin uses elements of Nazism combined with Internet memes originating from 4chan to promote white supremacy, fascism, and antisemitic conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial to a young audience.
Marc Aaron Tracy is an American journalist. He is a reporter on the Culture desk at The New York Times. Tracy was a staff writer at The New Republic and at Tablet, where he won a National Magazine Award for Blogging. He also won a National Jewish Book Award in 2012 for co-editing the anthology Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame.