Before Samantha joined the alt-right and became a white nationalist, she grew up in New Jersey and Florida, worked at Chipotle, and volunteered for the Obama campaign. Then Samantha met Richie, who cooked and danced and played the guitar. She fell in love. At first it didn’t matter that Richie quoted 4chan and made anti-Semitic remarks. But when he began arguing for racial purification and announced, “I’m a fascist,” that was too much. Samantha left Richie — that is, until she decided to look into some of his beliefs, to find out where he had gone wrong. Five days later, after watching YouTube videos and reading articles online, Samantha changed her mind: She wanted to become an advocate for the white race, too.
In this excellent chapter from
Antisocial, Andrew Marantz (
#115,
#134) emphasizes that “there is no formula that can predict exactly who will succumb to fascism and who will not.” He adds: “We would like to imagine that, in the current year, the United States has developed a moral vocabulary that is robust and widespread enough to inoculate almost all of us against raw bigotry and malign propaganda. We would like to imagine that, but it would be wishful thinking.” (35 min)
