After the Storm: Ep. 167

Tablet Studios

Tablet Magazine

Religion & Spirituality, Judaism, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2019

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Unorthodox, one young man's journey out of white nationalism. Our Jewish guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow, whose latest book is Rising out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, which tells the story of Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and heir apparent to the White Nationalist movement. After enrolling in a diverse college and befriending a wide range of people—including Jewish students who invited him to weekly Shabbat dinners after he was outed as a white supremacist—Derek began to challenge his ingrained assumptions, ultimately denouncing the movement he was raised to lead and his family's involvement in it. We also talk to Derek himself, who tells producer Shira Telushkin about life after white nationalism, explains the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at the root of the movement (plus the whole thing about lizard people), and shares the remorse and guilt he feels that the ideas he once publicly espoused and proliferated inspired the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. We're heading to the West Coast! We'll be at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. for a special Shabbat show with actor and director Lauren Miller Rogen, 'Black-ish' producer Jonathan Groff, and Iranian-Jewish philanthropist Rachel Sumekh; get your tickets here. Then we'll be at the Stroum JCC in the Seattle area Saturday, Feb. 2 for a special live show with Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast. Get your tickets here. We love to hear from you: Send comments and questions for Unorthodox to [email protected] or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. This episode is sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books Summer Program for high school juniors and seniors. To learn more and apply, visit: www.yiddishbookcenter.org/greatjewishbooks. This episode is also sponsored by JChef, the new kosher meal kit. Go to Jchef.com/unorthodox and use coupon code Unorthodox30 to get 30 percent off your first order. Additional support for this episode comes from Harry's. Get a free trial shave set at Harrys.com/UNORTHODOX.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What better way to be proudly Jewish right now than with our book, the newest Jewish
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0:11.3	from Jewish history, pop culture, holidays, and of course food,
0:14.9	all with our trademark, irreverence, and love.
0:17.5	Our publisher is offering a special 20% discount on newest Jewish and their entire Hanukkah shop.
0:22.4	So head to Artisan Books.com
0:24.0	and use the code unorthodox at check out.
0:26.5	That's Artisan Books.
0:28.2	Discount code, unorthodox, all caps.
0:34.0	This is unorthodox and I'm Mark Oppenheimer.
0:37.0	A very special episode for you this week.
0:39.0	The story that we're going to tell this week is about somebody
0:42.0	who seemed as far gone as could be, who it turned out was very, very capable of change.
0:47.5	Eli Sasslow is a reporter for the Washington Post and in a recent book called Rising Out of Hatred, which was published in September, he tells the story of Derek Black, who was a white nationalist, and not just any white nationalist, he was like one of the white nationalists. He was helping to create the movement.
1:06.0	He was the son of a major white nationalist and he was the heir to this white nationalist family.
1:11.9	He was a big deal. And as Eli Saslow tells it in this book,
1:16.8	Derek Black went off to college and he met people who weren't like him. He met people who were not white nationalists. He even met
1:24.9	liberals. And a very strange thing happened. The kind of thing that we don't think happens
1:30.4	anymore, which is that he changed his mind a lot.
1:36.3	We're going to interview Derek Black later in the show
1:38.2	and hear about somebody who once really thought
	...

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