Harvard graduate and Culture Warlords author Talia Lavin reveals her year-long undercover infiltration of far-right spaces using six personas, including "Ashlyn," a white nationalist on whitedate.net, where men were instructed to recruit women with absurd propaganda. Her research exposed anti-Semitism as the core scaffolding for extremist ideologies, with threats like "filthy fingernail Jew" radicalizing her stance against misogynistic violence—performative dominance masking systemic control. Now studying Christian right figures pushing theocracy through school boards, Lavin links their authoritarianism to reproductive oppression, arguing de-radicalization requires existential commitment rather than external intervention. Even her medieval sword collection symbolizes defiance against movements willing to kill for their causes, contrasting sharply with her playful Sword and the Sandwich newsletter, which blends political essays with bizarre food histories like slavery-tied barbecue sandwiches. [Automatically generated summary]
God, I mean, yeah, if you really want to get fancy with it, I went to Harvard, I was a Fulbright Scholar, I worked with the New Yorker, but now I'm a bum with a newsletter.
It's, yeah, it's like a food blog, and then I write about the far right, and the Christian right, and then whatever else crosses my path that seems worth writing about.
Yeah, and there were a lot that, like, didn't really pan out, so they didn't make it on the page.
Like, I had a whole tradwife persona that, like, but, like, the tradwives are just a lot better at info security than their male counterparts, and they're like, who are you?
Like, no one's seen you before.
You know?
Like, we need someone to vouch for you before you can join our page on Facebook, that kind of thing.
So I didn't make a ton of headway in the trad wife community.
But I did have several identities I concocted to try and get in.
But, you know, and there were a couple of other things that didn't pan out.
I mean, I was playing like 10 different people over the course of a year and sometimes different people in a day.
And this actually was before I even sold the book.
I just, like, encountered this site, whitedate.net, which is a still extant dating site for white supremacists.
And they were so short on women that they had a page called the Mini Flyer, where they had this flyer that they suggested you hand out to women, random white women you meet, even if you don't think they're hot.
Yeah, it might be one of your white brethren might enjoy her.
Literally, it was like, and the text of the flyer was, our existence is as important as the existence of the Siberian tiger, or our survival, as the Siberian tiger join us on whitedate.net, and you were supposed to give her the flyer and then take it back?
Just very weird.
And the site is run by a woman or someone I believe to be a woman.
She's been on podcasts.
Her name is Liv Haida.
She's German.
And she has a lot of content.
She doesn't show her face, but she has a feminine sounding voice.
I don't know.
But maybe not so familiar with how humans interact.
Anyway, I saw that they were so short on women.
Bizarre scheme.
So I was like, well, this seems like a very ripe catfishing opportunity.
Yeah, so I chose the name Ashlyn because it just like sounded really white.
And I said I was from Iowa because that's the white estate.
And from like a small rural community.
And I just started like getting messages from all these.
I mean, it felt a little like some sort of anti-fi anthropology thing.
Like, I don't even know.
I just kind of started doing it on my own and then folded it into the book.
It was just, I mean, for me, I think what wound up making it into the book was some stuff about basically the banality of evil.
Like, you see all the time.
In mainstream coverage, this, like, oh my god, like, a white supremacist said a, you know, complete sentence, or, like, doesn't live in a compound, in an Aryan Nations compound, like, and is able to cook dinner, like...
Well, the reason that I wanted to ask about that specifically is because you had to write a little, here's why you should invite me into the incel community.
You had to write a cover letter, essentially, explaining why it is that, you know, you hate women.
And one of the lines that I thought was so fucking funny is, and I feel like you almost could have shortened it down to just, I feel very alone.
And I read that and I was like, oh, that's speak, friend, and enter.
That's what that is.
And then I was going, and then I went right back to white date.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, those communities, how many women could possibly be on white date?
Yeah, I mean, I think it was started by a woman, at least purportedly, I don't know.
But...
But yeah, I mean, there's gotta be some, but, like, I think now they charge a subscription fee for joining, but I don't think the gender imbalance has resolved.
Let's put it that way.
Like, I think that maybe just, like, the men part of this community are just, like, more open with security risk or whatever, but, like, I don't know.
I mean...
I think there are a lot of women with a lot of hate in their hearts, or whatever, but also it's such a misogynist community that there are just very few women figureheads because, you know, they hate women, too.
You have an army of the worst simps in the entire world.
Yeah, I mean...
Oh, God.
It's also been a while and now I'm trying to access the self that was doing all this shit.
That was a really crazy year of my life.
I was just really...
I was on these chats and forums posing as different people for like 10 plus hours a day, like, you know, and then editing and then rewriting and writing and writing and writing.
Yeah, I mean, I think it was more like the Beauty and the Beast mirror scene where, like, You take the magic mirror and it shows you just like a horrifying tragic scene while we're referencing classic mirror scenes in cinema.
But yeah, I mean, it was just very funny.
So then the persona had to become more fleshed out.
I did a fake out chapter where I was like, maybe she interviewed someone else.
There is a very good progression of escalation, I feel like, throughout the book.
You start with a fairly straightforward history of the far right and how those movements go.
And then it kind of goes from...
To the social media people who are just talking shit.
To the infiltrating the dating.
To the infiltrating the incels.
And then you finally wind up with, you know, out and out, let's go light stuff on fire people.
That kind of thing.
I'm interested to see, do you feel like there were other people who followed along with the same journey?
If that makes sense?
Do you think that there was some earnest person who's going on white date, realizes that there aren't any women there, then goes to an incel community?
I mean, I guess I could see someone being like, well, like, I've been radicalized, like, now I'm a white supremacist, looking for my perfect woman, goes on white date.
Like, every night I eat, like, pork and beans from a can.
How are you?
Kind of vibes.
Um, can't, like, I would say the most manipulative thing I did, and, like, I mean, there are a lot of things, it's like, I am still proud of Culture of Warlords, and obviously, like, people still want to talk to me about it on a podcast three years later, and that's tight, but, like, some of the things I did were a little outre, like, which is sort of, I mean, I think it makes the book a more propulsive read, but, like, I got the men on White Day to write me love letters to their ideal white wife.
And then I printed them in an anti-fascist book.
Which is sort of an objectively funny, if manipulative, thing to do.
I would say I feel ashamed of really anything I did.
I think it is like, the one thing is there was a lot of push from...
The, like, publisher to make it more of a memoir-ish feel, include more me, and that wasn't necessarily Hunter S. Thompson going undercover in the right wing kind of thing.
Yeah, that, like, I was a character, and, like, I'm trying not to do that in book two.
Like, it's something that hopefully as my writing matures, like, it obviates the need to, like, kind of center the self, I think.
It can be kind of reflexive.
unidentified
I mean, and every first book is an autobiography, as they say.
Very cringe, and it has a good heart, but it's so weird.
It's with Daniel Radcliffe, and he plays this real-life guy.
I think it's Mike German?
The name might be familiar to you.
This guy, an actual fed who went undercover with white supremacists and has been kind of warning about them ever since.
But the movie is Daniel Radcliffe plays him going undercover with a bunch of Nazis.
Goading them into, like, or, like, they have a plot to, like, blow up a dam, and then he, like, sort of both goads them and then interrupts it at the last second.
And it's, I think it's, like, partially based on a true story.
It's also just, like, Daniel Radcliffe is a very tiny person, and he's, like, pretending to be this ex-Navy SEAL who, like, is their security expert.
That's the thing that I couldn't stop thinking about.
Besides, you know, the visceral nature of it, I assume must have been just beyond fucked up to not be yourself and to hear people talk about you behind your back.
I think at the time I was like, well, I guess I'm doing something right.
I will say that as a woman and as a Jew, but as a woman, I think there's an element of covering this stuff that gets very visceral because The misogyny is really at the beating heart of these movements.
And that includes the Christian right, by the way.
But when we're talking about these terror movements, when we're talking about white supremacy and white supremacist terror, right?
And incel them, obviously.
Misogyny is the beating heart of it.
And they really hate women.
They really hate feminism.
And they are very violent people.
And so their heads go to gendered violence right away.
When I talk to men who are in the sort of, like, we're weirdos who research the far right kind of community, most of what they get in terms of opposition, and I wonder if this is your experience, is like, I was like, okay, like, I'm Lex Luthor, you're Batman.
Like, you know, this sense of we're rivals, but we're equal.
You know.
And I'm gonna fuck with you, and I'm gonna say violent things, but it's not like I am going to, like, rape your corpse.
Like, you are sub, like, you are subhuman.
You are not worthy of my rivalry because you are a woman.
Like, the constant talk of rape, the constant discussion of my body, like, you know, um, and my face, and like...
Like, using a picture of me as evidence that, like, Jews are non-human and are more closely related to, like, Australopithecus because of their giant hips.
Like, just weird stuff.
Have you had people analyzing your body and face and feet and threatening rape?
Physiognomy in 2023 is just great, but no, I mean, for us, no, and we're more than aware that If we were women, it would be completely different for us.
Because as it stands, we're just ignored.
Nobody talks about us.
Nobody really comes after us.
No, we just sit in our little corner of the internet and are left alone, essentially.
But if we were not two bearded white dudes, if we were two women...
Especially women of color.
We would be exoriated on a fucking daily basis by hundreds of people, if not thousands.
So, I mean, that's why I asked the question to you, because obviously I can't understand it.
When I read that somebody would post something like that, my first instinct is like, well, this needs to be against the law or something.
I don't know what to do with this.
I don't know what to do with this beyond, say, whatever happened needs to stop, you know?
Um, I do think that, like, first of all, there's also a really fucked up, like, sense in journalism that, like, Oh, anyone with a stake in the matter, like, can't be objective.
But a lot of reporting on extremism is, at the very least, rarely acknowledges how central misogyny is to these movements.
Because it is not viscerally directed at the reporters themselves.
Because it is also so ambiently present in the rest of culture that it's easy to ignore.
And perhaps everyone has internalized bias.
You know, reporters and non-reporters alike.
But I think the biggest thing that I would say is, like, living through kind of being an avatar, a recipient of this kind of gendered hate, is, like, recognizing how central misogyny is.
And anti-Semitism.
Like, I think I knew they hated Jews, right?
Obviously, I'm not stupid, and I've been writing about it, but it's like...
Then you get into it and you're like, oh my god, no.
They hate Jews, but it's not just that they hate Jews.
It's that the hatred of Jews is the scaffolding from which every other hate is hung.
It's the overarching sort of canon.
It's the world explanation that provides a support structure for all the other hate.
So it occupies this very unique niche.
As a Jewish woman reporting on this world, it felt very personal for me.
And I think that explains why I went so gonzo, why I felt so out for revenge.
Because I was like, these people want to murder my family.
They want to rape me to death.
They obsessively fantasize about subjugating all women and killing all Jews.
So yeah, it did feel like a personal fight.
And on the other hand, everything in the book is factual and fact-checked.
Like, you know, I think so much of radicalization is just, like, being in a bubble where you get exposed to, like, the same self, like, reinforcing material every day, every hour, where you're, you know, in this bubble of like-minded people.
And I would say that, like, being in those bubbles as someone whose identity is, like, Diametrically opposed to everything they stand for and, like, knowing that they wanted to, they, not only personally, but also just, like, on an identity category basis, like, as a feminist, as a woman, as a Jew, like, they want me dead.
Well, I mean, and it's just a confusing and disgusting question that, like, means so much, you know?
It is an expression of, again, their, like, loneliness and their hatred for women that is, you know, like, they can't even say, like, oh, does anybody find Talia Lavin attractive?
They can't do that.
And that's not the question they're asking.
But the question they're asking also isn't the question they're asking.
They're expressing some feeling that is violent and hate-filled and lonely and just horrendously awful.
When you're in these all-male, majority-male spaces, especially because I'm honeypotting half the time, you just realize how much of it is like...
Guys showing off to each other, like, and I think the dynamic of sexually humiliating and degrading women to other men is very much a performance of masculinity.
There was the other, like, episode where I adopted another identity to, like, talk with white supremacists who wanted to do a Christians versus pagans, like, fight in the woods.
Yeah, and it was to raise money for Augustus Invictus' presidential campaign.
That's a white nationalist, wife-beating piece of shit who started off his career drinking goat blood and challenging Marco Rubio for his Senate seat in Florida.
I think now he's a tradcast.
But he just, like, beats women.
That's his other thing.
I mean, so misogyny, hyper-masculinity, misogyny as part of hyper-masculinity and performance for other men, this, like, am I tough enough?
unidentified
Tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough kind of vibe.
I think the degradation, humiliation, and specific targeting of women is part of that performance, which isn't to say it doesn't come from a place of, like, All kinds of fucked up inner rage, but I think part of it is also showing off for other guys.
Yeah, well, that's what I was thinking about with whitedate.net.
Sorry for interrupting you.
But what I was thinking about was how much of the messages that they sent you are them with this mistaken impression, or, you know, in your case, mistaken, but perhaps a reasonable impression that...
Any woman who would go on white date is looking for the most white nationalist man she can find, right?
Like, the whole white nationalist terrorist movement, which is like, at this point...
One of the things that's shifted in my thinking is, like, it is a fascinating and destructive subculture.
It's also, like...
Since I wrote that book in 2020, like, the Overton window has shifted so far that, like, to focus on, like...
Like, the violence is coming from inside the Capital H House.
Like, there has been a seismic shift in, like, where the centers of violence are.
Like, you know, who sort of makes sense to study as, like, a...
Primary target.
I'm also not really doing undercover work anymore.
Smart.
Just because I was like...
I can't do that again.
Like, I'll go crazy.
Crazier.
And there's more than enough stuff.
I mean, I am planning to attend at least one conference either about like prophecy homeschooling ideally both in chronicling the Christian right but like I will not be undercover at that point like I will be a a me um person attending um hopefully I won't get chased out again um Where did you get chased out of?
No, it reminds me of, like, 1940s journalism where they'd just go into a paragraph on a woman's appearance on a story about, like, the building was falling down.
And then they've got her shoes were a little bit too high.
Well, it's just another example of how visceral this stuff is.
And, like...
Okay, so, like, I show my face, right?
The Postmillennial, I swear, published, a woman who looks like a pigeon is actually Antifa, and she's gonna ask you misleading questions and lie about you on her blog.
The guy who said that at the mic in the session I was in was someone who had told me, like, oh, like, I'm not a white nationalist.
No, and for a while they were obsessed with the idea that in, like, a few pictures my fingernails appeared dirty, and, like, someone made a collage of, like, different photos of my fingernails, including several where I was, like, at the beach and just, like, had sand in my nails.
So when I've talked to people who've been brigaded and swarmed by hate, I'm like, like, a lot of times they feel guilty for letting it get to them.
Like, I've talked through, like, specifically a lot of women through the process of, like, so, like, you wound up being, like, the target of Tucker Carlson's show today, or, like, 4chan found your...
Blog posts and suddenly gone from being like a random person to like being the target of an avalanche of hate.
And it's like very weird.
It feels like the roof has blown off your life.
And I've talked them through it.
And like inevitably, it's mostly been women.
And inevitably, there's this feeling of guilt of like, shouldn't I be stronger?
Like I'm letting this get to you.
And I'm like, no, like you're a human being.
We like evolutionarily respond to criticism because we don't want to be rejected from the tribe and like left alone to starve.
It hurts to hear people say stuff like, you are too ugly to rape.
Or like, this disgusting, dirty fingernail Jew is an example of Neanderthalism and not a homo sapiens.
It's weird.
It makes you feel weird when you look in the mirror.
You're like, God, do I really look like the...
You know that caricature of a Jew?
They always have.
It's like the guy with the hook nose bending over, sort of rubbing his hands.
I'm like, is that what other people see when they look at me?
It's just like, you know, and I've had some time and I've had some therapy, but for a little bit it was just like, oh my god.
You know, when you deal with very direct comments and attacks on your appearance, who you are, your...
Gender, your ethno-religion, whatever it is.
Like, and it's all intertwined.
It does fuck with your head.
So that wasn't, you know, I think that was part of my process of radicalization.
To hear that, like, I mean, honestly, you can see my body language, I hope, but I'm fucking shivering with how much I can't, I can't even, I can't, I can't conceive of the idea of wanting to say that.
But then also, you know, I don't, Like, I take very serious precautions.
I don't post photos where I am.
I, like, still, you know, even though it's been years and no one's coming after me, probably, there is a sense where I'm, like, knowing that, like, enough people have wanted to murder and rape you over the course of your life does sort of put a permanent dent in your feeling of safety.
I still think it was worth it writing this book.
I still think it's worth it writing book two.
Just because whatever, like, my emotional distress, like, this is existential for the country.
This is existential for so many people.
It's worth doing the work, but it does take a toll.
And particularly if you are female, that toll is gendered in very extreme ways.
Oh, for sure.
And not in ways that are necessarily readily visible to men interfacing with this world.
Yeah, I mean, I think at the same time, fighting for freedom is still worth it.
Even if it's really far away.
Like, even if...
You know, I think it takes a real...
It takes power and courage to imagine utopia.
It takes courage to resist how shitty things are.
I recently had a great conversation with a wonderful feminist author, commentator, Moira Donegan, and she said every time a woman summons up the courage to get mad about how unjust things are and speak up about it, it grants Other women the courage to do the same.
Every single time.
And there are real stakes that come with that.
There are real stakes with poking the status quo in the eye.
And the status quo fucking hates women.
But, like, yes.
Attacks on reproductive rights, as we've seen in so many states, it makes women second-class citizens.
It makes pregnancy very close to a crime.
You're also surveilled.
And as I'm writing about extensively in this book, the curtailment of reproductive freedom is fundamentally about a worldview that wants to see all women, every woman, every woman, submissive, subjected, oppressed, and fundamentally dependent.
Like, this is the dream that they want to achieve, and forcing us to get pregnant when we don't want to be is part of that.
And some of them are very open about wanting to, about not being sad if someone who tries to get an abortion illegally dies.
Like, that the deaths of women are just collateral damage that they're not even particularly sad about.
All the shit about babies is a smokescreen.
It's all about controlling women.
It's all about making sure that...
I've chosen not to have kids for a variety of reasons.
That choice is one that is no longer available to a lot of women.
That's really scary.
And it's life-altering.
And...
It's tragic.
And so the stakes are very existential.
So as I'm writing book two, it's like, you know, these aren't people that are going to say, I'm going to comb over to your house and rape you.
They're in state legislature saying, I am going to curtail your rights.
That's why, yeah, I go back to the white date, you know?
When you enter in a space for these men where they feel like they're okay to say whatever it is they want, right?
They wind up saying shit that they would never say out in the real world.
There are millions upon millions of those guys who would say the same stuff, who think the same stuff as like, I'm looking for my perfect white submissive wife, but they're not on white dates, so you don't hear them say it.
Yeah, but, like, it manifested very physically in Orthodox Jews, and, like, we were required to pray in school, and there was, like, a division, literally, like, a...
Partition between the sexes.
And in many synagogues, the women's section is much smaller and more uncomfortable because women not only can't make up a prayer quorum, they can't lead prayers, they're not obligated to be present, they're expected to be home taking care of the kids.
So it was just very, very physical.
And I, at a very early age, I think I was 19, I was just like, I don't want to be part of a faith that says that I am...
Inherently inferior because of my religion.
And just one funny moment from that.
I married very young.
We got divorced.
And we went through a religious wedding and a religious divorce ceremony.
The Orthodox Jewish divorce ceremony is that you...
You're in front of a panel of three rabbis, a religious court.
Men who don't, who refuse, are socially ostracized, but can keep their wives in this state of limbo where they can't remarry.
Great.
But what was supposed to happen...
He handed me the divorce decree and there's this doctrine of silence as acceptance.
I was supposed to take it quietly and back out of the room.
And I didn't even remember this, but I was recently reminded that apparently during that moment I was so pissed off at the whole thing that I moonwalked out.
The difference between leaving a form of Christianity that's oppressive and leaving a form of a minority faith in this country that's oppressive is that I'm not, like, gonna tire and feather, like, I'm not comfortable being, like, I think that, how do I put this?
Sometimes people who have experienced religious trauma and spiritual abuse in Christian contexts are very eager to say, like, All religion is shit.
All religion is oppressive.
All religion is arbitrary.
I don't disagree.
But, like, some of that anger is more appropriately directed at a hegemonic faith that's trying to proselytize and oppress.
And, like, not all religions are equally harmful to society.
And I get a little touchy when, like, ex-Christian Atheists who don't really realize that they're still Christian influence.
Just saying stuff like, kosher laws are stupid.
Like, oh, God doesn't want you to use a magic microwave.
And they're older than fucking time.
If people want to keep kosher in their own kitchens, whatever.
That's the least of our problems with religion at this moment in time.
And you're not proving how equal you are.
By, like, shitting all over Judaism or whatever.
So I get protective also because I've, like, dealt with a lot of anti-Semitism.
It is like all of the stories of abuse that you are describing and telling and retelling from other people are ones that I experienced.
And so what's funny about that to me is that it is treated with such emotional reverence.
And for people for whom it is, it should be.
The problem is my reaction to that was becoming a comedian.
So it's hard for me to read my story reflected as this tragedy.
Whenever I'm walking around being like, alright, so when my parents beat me to shit when I was five, you know, like, it's a joke to me to have lived through this, and that's because it's how I'm dealing with it, not because I believe it to be a joke.
Like, let's just say that there's a reason I was drawn to the topic and I'm not without a stake in the matter, and that's as far as I'll elaborate in public.
But also, some of it is objectively, like, a little bit funny.
In horrifying ways.
Not people's stories, but, like, if you read James Dobson's books, The Focus on the Family Guy, he opens up being like, I remember the day my mom beat me with her girdle and, like, I felt every strap.
And, like, that was the day I knew I would be saved or whatever.
No, the difference between fetish and the things that all of these books start with as far as their origin story are the same as somebody being like, and that's why I go to a dominatrix every week.
No, I understand completely where you're coming from.
It is tragic, not those.
The ones where it's abuse from abuse's sake.
It's tragic, the believers.
The ones who are weeping as they hit their kid.
You know, the ones who are going, if it weren't for God telling me to do this in the form of Dr. James Dobson, if it weren't for that...
Then I really, I don't want to hit my kid.
This is a small human being that can't fight back, you know?
Which was very interesting to me.
Reading those stories is also one of the biggest differences in misogyny versus, you know, anything really is just, there was a moment, you know, I got the shit kicked out of me, but there was a moment everybody knew was coming where I would be big enough.
That you couldn't do that shit anymore.
And everybody kind of, because it happened to my older brothers, you know?
My older brothers got the shit kicked out of them, but then there was a time when it's like, if you want to start shit, I will fight back.
And that was almost like a rite of passage moment in a way.
You know, the first day that he comes over to hit you with the belt, and you say, fucking hit me.
Let's go.
You know?
That was a moment.
And that's not a moment that my little sister had.
That's not a moment that women have had.
I mean, most women, I'm assuming, haven't had that.
Yeah, or that, like, because of also, like, specific evangelical social conditioning of women to be submissive, submissive, submissive, submissive, never fight back, never complain.
There isn't that moment.
You don't prove your femininity by beating the shit out of someone.
Whenever we start saying the word radicalized, I say, based on the amount of shit that they put you through, it is entirely fine with me for you to go throw a punch.
No, and also, I would say that part of it is growing older.
The amount of shit I went through in my 20s, just in terms of...
Dating, but in terms of the way, like, men would just, like, interact with me, like, now I'm just like, like, the reason why men talk about sell-by dates and, like, women being too old is because, like, I'm 33 and I'm just like, don't talk to me that way.
Like, sorry.
Like, don't fucking talk to me that way.
I'm not gonna put up with your shit.
And, like...
The younger a woman is, the more pliable, the closer she is to a socialization of, like, be nice, be nice, be nice, be nice, be nice.
This is why I'm a little bit skeptical of all the people who are like, we just do radicalize all the Nazis.
That's a very emotional experience.
You'll probably get radicalized in the bargain.
How emotionally close do you want to get to some rando who wants to beat up Jews?
I'm more of the make them social pariahs route and protest every time they show up.
You cannot pull someone out of an oppressive Or hateful belief system, like, externally.
You can't do it.
There has to be a breaking point from within.
And in your case, that was the moment, you know, you walked away, right?
In my case, I walked away from a faith.
In my case, I also experienced, like, the very extremities of misogyny, and it strengthened my identity as a feminist.
Whatever process we go through to attain the beliefs we do or that shape our beliefs, the experience of getting extracted from an oppressive belief system via someone sort of explaining to you how your beliefs are wrong, I think is very vanishingly small.
Which is not to say that these beliefs shouldn't be opposed.
It's just that you can't rescue people unless they're willing to be rescued.
Um, and I've learned that in a variety of different contexts, you know, whether it's abusive relationships, spiritually abusive faiths, um, all sorts of things.
Um, and, and I had like a disastrous, the reason when you were like, I'm kind of intense.
I'm like, is this a debate podcast?
Just because I had a fucking disastrous podcast appearance with Brianna Joy Gray.
Where she was like, shouldn't we just gently talk to Nazis and de-radicalize them?
People don't give a shit what I have to say anymore.
Because I'm a little bit too far to the left.
Which is why my question to you then becomes the word radicalized.
I know I keep coming back to it, but I'm interested in the definition of it because I don't think anybody agrees on it quite specifically beyond to say...
That it is the transformative process, you know, from I was here, and now I'm here.
I think that I wouldn't necessarily use that phrase to describe myself now.
Like, I would say my politics are radical.
I am also disabled.
I have a condition that makes it hard for me to leave my house.
So I'm not on the street.
I'm not throwing Molotov cocktails.
I'm not doing...
I often feel very, like, horrible that I can't show up for the movements I care about.
And so to use that phrase, like, I'm some radical, like, I try to be radical in my writing.
I try to, you know, I think that, like, maybe exercising radical empathy or using a radically outsider framework or whatever, just, like, not giving, like, evangelical Christianity a lot of court or credence in and of itself as a radical act in a, Hegemonic Christian society, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I would say that I was more comfortable using that term in 2020 because I was just so reeling from the experience.
Well, that's why my interest in it, especially in regards to this, is I feel like what you've danced around in that answer is that the immediate assumption that everyone has now is that it's violence.
Because I'm finding it through my conversations with so many people who profess a lot of the words associated with all of this stuff generally have a definition of their own that they are not sharing and are instead kind of allowing the parlance of the day to carry a lot more weight.
And to me, I don't necessarily think that radicalization means Now it's time to fucking kill people.
I think that your definition is far better as a way of describing something that does radicalize you.
And that's what I find so interesting about that is that in this case, I don't think that the white nationalists on incel places or white date or whatever are radicalized.
I don't think these people are willing to die for whiteness.
I think they are willing to talk a lot of shit about it.
If someone kills me because I spent my life writing about people who want to subjugate, murder, and destroy the lives of others, that will, to me, have meant I died a good death.
That wasn't more salient when I was writing about terrorists who were personally threatening to murder me, but at the time...
That was what I felt.
I still feel that way.
I am writing right now about people who murdered George Tiller, who bomb abortion clinics.
I'm always skating close to the edge when you write about people who are willing to move heaven and earth, who want to move earth closer to heaven and are willing to bulldoze a lot of people to get out of the way.
That being said, after this book, I am going to write a book about sandwiches.
I already have that planned.
I think it might be time for me to move on from staring into the void.
It would be nice to do work, at least for a while.
Maybe not forever.
That doesn't make me want to jump in a volcano.
But anyway, yes, I think my definition of am I radicalized is like, I have internalized the idea that this work is so existentially necessary that I'm willing to give my life for it.
That's where we settle after I've been dancing around the answer for a while.
I'm not sure it's an emotionally healthy perspective, but at the same time, you can't really be emotionally healthy while doing this work, which is another reason why I would like to write book three about sandwiches.
If you read my newsletter, I have 67 essays following Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches in alphabetical order, and a lot of them go into history and culture, and generally it's been like a breath of...
I guarantee there are not a lot of newsletters that are similar.
Like, every...
I'm taking a break this month because I have a big book deadline, but every week you will get an essay about some aspect of American politics and a very bizarre essay about food that will probably make you hungry or angry or both.