Rising Out of Hatred: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

At the Derek Black Memorial conference, Don is now the sole director—his first time in years leading one without Derek. Don’s friends sense that Don needs some inspiring, and Duke in particular is angry at the pain that Derek caused Don. Duke assures Don that the movement is still strong in its numbers, and that being positive can help advance their cause and win the fight to make white nationalism mainstream. Duke expresses his admiration for Don, and Don feels a bit better.

Indeed, it appears that white nationalists are finding unlikely allies. A few weeks earlier, the Supreme Court overturned a key part of the Voting Rights Act, allowing for a new wave of voting restrictions throughout the South and erasing one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s signature achievements. The Tea Party Caucus stalled Obama’s attempts at immigration reform, and congressmen were talking about the “war on whites.” By the end of the conference, Don feels reassured about the future of white nationalism, particularly as the attendees are younger than ever before.

One such person is Matthew Heimbach, who graduated just months before, like Derek. He 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 traced their views back to Stormfront. An entire generation of white power advocates came of age listening to Derek’s interviews and playing his white pride video game on Stormfront’s children’s page. He tells Don that they are “primed for revolution” after Stormfront “planted the seeds in his mind.”

Meanwhile, Derek is uprooting those seeds, trying to prevent himself from interpreting the world through the lens of white nationalism, like distrusting the government, ignoring sports, and avoiding most music and movies. He feels like he is just starting to find his way into American culture. In many ways, it feels liberating to start over—to be free from his history, to trust people, and to act without prejudice or judgment.

Derek spends his first year in Michigan engaging with American multiculturalism: movies, music, and The New York Times, for example. He studies a little Arabic and explores Muslim neighborhoods, briefly tutoring an Iraqi immigrant in English. He finds himself liking President Obama and trusting the U.S. government. He drinks tap water for the first time (Don always feared possible contaminants).

Derek saves money for trips with Allison, and they travel to Nicaragua, the Caribbean, and Morocco. He thinks about how connected the world is, and he is again ashamed of how he acted. He apologizes to close friends, but he doesn’t know how to make amends for the damage he did. At the same time, he completely cuts himself off from anyone associated with white nationalism, not wanting to be drawn in again.

Derek does try to reconnect with Don and Chloe, sending them money to repair their roof; in return, they send Allison a gift certificate for her birthday. Meanwhile, Don messages Derek with little taunts about the rise of white nationalism as race becomes the center of the country’s most divisive debates. Anti-refugee sentiment rises during the Syrian crisis, and the Black Lives Matter movement spurs the All Lives Matter and White Lives Matter countermovements. Don thinks that the U.S. isn’t far from a racial civil war.

Derek mostly ignores these kinds of messages, disagreeing with Don wholeheartedly now. He confides his guilt to Allison, who visits him every few months. A year into Derek’s graduate program, Allison graduates from New College and starts a doctoral program in Lansing, Michigan, less than two hours away from Derek. They spend every weekend together, happy and solid in their relationship.

Derek is doing well at Western Michigan, focusing his energy on schoolwork rather than white nationalism. But no matter how hard he tries, there is no way for 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 only seemed to be talking and not acting. So, in June 2015, he attends a Bible study at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, before pulling out a handgun and killing nine people.

The shooting brings Stormfront back into the news, and later, Roof’s defense attorney blames the “racist internet” for radicalizing him and causing the shooting. Derek wonders if anything he posted or said had led Roof to extremism and violence, but Derek tries to distance himself from the incident.

During the same week, however, another story breaks: Donald Trump has just announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Derek thinks that Trump has always been driven more by his desire for popularity than actual beliefs, but he knows that Trump could back the establishment into a corner. In 2011, he claimed that Obama was not born in the United States until Obama had to release his birth certificate. Now, listening to Trump’s announcement, it seems like something directly out of his white nationalist past.

Trump becomes popular by using racist rhetoric and railing against immigrants. Don hears echoes of things he and Duke used to say about securing the border so they can protect the U.S.’s culture and economy. He knows that Trump is banking on support from white people who are fed up and angry. Trump wants to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., and he positions himself as the “law and order candidate” in the age of Black Lives Matter. He cites statistics about crime that prove to be blatantly false, but people ignore the fact-checking and instead see the appeal in his call to make the U.S. “great again” by reinforcing structures of white supremacy.

Don is amazed: this is the first time a U.S. presidential candidate is actively using white nationalist dog whistles and sharing messages on Twitter from a white nationalist account called @WhiteGenocide. When people commit violence in Trump’s name, he calls it “unfortunate” but then justifies it. He refuses to condemn David Duke until finally consenting to do so. Regardless of whether Trump believes in his own rhetoric, Don becomes convinced that it is mutually beneficial. Chloe attends rallies and sees the size and energy of the crowds, and the rage and passion that they have. Trump is accelerating the movement.

Don laments that Derek isn’t there to share in the energy, knowing it could have been an opportunity of a lifetime for him. Young white nationalist leaders have a giant media circus around them, including Richard Spencer, a 38-year-old academic who wrote about IQ differentials, white genocide, and a future white ethno-state. Don thinks that Spencer could fill the role that Derek left behind, and he reaches out to Spencer in the summer of 2016.

That summer, in 2016, Derek has just earned his master’s degree and has three months before starting as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago. He spends more time with Allison and watches the election unfold across Michigan, which has become a crucial swing state. Meanwhile, Derek reads up on the white supremacy underpinning American society, which he now views as a fundamental flaw. He reads Ta-Nehisi Coates, Edward Said, and Ibram Kendi. His own political identity is unclear, but he quickly realizes that he aligns much more with Hillary Clinton than Trump. He plans to cast a ballot in Michigan to increase its impact, because even though polls show Clinton reliably ahead, Derek still thinks Trump has a chance to win.

Don talks to Derek on the phone, explaining that white people feel threatened, and a “silent army of white believers” want to “take the country back” from Obama, even though they have a disproportionate share of wealth and power. Derek can sense a storm building, and it terrifies him. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton speaks about how Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia, allowing white nationalists to take over the Republican Party.

Derek feels implicated in what is going on, knowing how he helped spread the movement. He talks to Allison about his guilt, and she explains that he needs to publicly refute white nationalism at every opportunity. Derek knows Allison is right, and he begins to share parts of his story during the final months of the election.

However, whatever effect Derek has is dwarfed by Trump and white identity politics. On election night, Derek watches as the results begin coming in. Trump wins Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan is trending that way as well. After midnight, Trump gives a victory speech. Derek turns off the TV, feeling antsy and obligated to do something. For two decades he pushed to bring about this moment, and now he wants to sound a warning bell.