Hi, I'm Jonathan Capehart and welcome to Cape Up.

This week, we revisit the story of Derek Black.

He was born into a family that was prominent in the world of white supremacy

and was considered an heir to the throne of white nationalism until he went to college. His transformation

was expertly chronicled by Eli Sasslow, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Washington Post in his

book, Rising Out of Hatred, the Awakening of a former white nationalist. Eli Saslow, thank you very much for

being on the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me on.

Okay, so your book is pretty incredible because it's the story about a young man named Derek Black.

Tell us who Derek Black is.

Sure.

Or actually, who Derek Black was.

Yeah, exactly. I think was is the key word. You know, Derek was raised sort of within the very insular world of the white nationalist movement. His father, Don Black, had been the head of the KKK in the United States for a decade. And then later in his life had started Stormfront, which is sort of the epicenter of racism online. It's the largest for 20 years. It has

been the largest sort of racist website in the world. Derek's godfather was David Duke,

probably the most notorious racist politician of modern times.

And both of those men raised Derek kind of in their image to take over this movement and to mainstream it.

And because Derek was really, really smart, and in that case, I should say, is really smart.

And also really ambitious, he invested himself in these ideas that kind of, you know, he'd

been indoctrinated with and was disastrously successful.

You know, by the time he was 18, 19 years old, he'd been elected to office on the Republican

Committee in Florida.

He had his own daily radio show. He was traveling

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