Abstract

A year after the publication of my book on women in the contemporary organized racist movement,Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (2002), I received a series of emails from a woman I will call Jenny. The study of racist activists in this book was based in part on my interviews with women in the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and white supremacist skinhead groups, and Christian Identity communities. Although Jenny was not among those I had interviewed or even met in the course of the study, she had heard about my book–although not read it, as I later discovered–and contacted me to complain. Jenny insisted that I had inaccurately characterized people in the racist movements as motivated by hatred. In her experience, the movement, at least in the past, had been composed largely of “well-meaning” and “fairminded” people. Only recently had it attracted less savory characters who were just “looking for a home for their hate”—people, Jenny concluded, who were making the racist movement less comfortable for the good people like her.

Recommended Citation

Blee, Kathleen (2004) "Positioning Hate," Journal of Hate Studies: Vol. 3, Article 7.
DOI: 10.33972/jhs.22
Available at: https://repository.gonzaga.edu/jhs/vol3/iss1/7