Talia Lavin
Jewish Journalist Talia Lavin Dives Into the Most Hateful Corners of the Internet
After over a year of immersing herself into the darkest depths of white supremacy on the internet, Talia Lavin still remains hopeful. Lavin, a Jewish reporter, went undercover into some of the alt-right’s most toxic chatrooms — and is now telling her story, and the story of the rise of white supremacy in America, in Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy.
“When I became the target of the far right, I felt my identity sort of burning inside of me,” Lavin explained to me one afternoon in late August. “As a Jewish woman, I was the brunt of all this antisemitism and misogyny. The misogyny is very overt — the threats and abuses are incredibly sexualized. It’s very keyed to my appearance. It’s really hard to disentangle these things, but because of my identity, I was targeted with a viciousness. And because of that viciousness, I decided to turn around and dive in. Not to disengage, but rather to turn towards the darkness — and to fight it.”
Lavin, who previously worked for Alma’s parent company 70 Faces Media, credits her experience at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) as something that made her “re-conceive of antisemitism as something that was alive and present, and particularly thriving, on the internet.”
We discussed going undercover, social media platforms, bringing white supremacists into “the light,” and collecting swords, among many other things.
