“My six years covering neo-Nazis: 'The system is rigged to benefit white people'”

“One of the criticisms of recent reporting on white nationalism has been that too many of the stories are told through a white lens, specifically a white male lens. Jamelle Bouie at Slate argued that the overwhelming whiteness of American political reporting has been a real impediment to understanding how dangerous these groups are. What do you think of that?

I think that’s absolutely true. I see the challenges for anyone else to get that kind of access [that I got]. I have a huge leg up by being white, Norwegian, and bald. In Charlottesville, I brought my photographer friend to see Matthew [Heimbach, the white nationalist leader] and his guys at the house they were renting. As we got there, there had already started these rumors circulating that she was Jewish. When we got there, there was a level of hostility that completely took me by surprise. They gave her, as a test, a pizza with bacon on it and sort of made her eat it.

It really drove home the challenges for anyone who’s not white and male to cover these things. I’m not the traditional victim of far right nationalism. I’m not a victim of racism. This beat would benefit from having someone who is the victim of it, who feels that daily...

Is this a movement that journalists should be taking seriously or not?

Of course we should we should cover these people, because it informs so much of our current president’s way of way of thinking. But we need to put it into context. The Klan will put some flyers on some cars in a parking lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, and all of a sudden, all the journalists go there to cover the Klan and you know that’s well and good. But we need to talk about you know the bigger issue, about how what they say and what they believe has made its way into into the mainstream. We can’t just sort of fearmonger that “oh the Klan is marching again.””

FB: “You write in your book: “The far right in America, at least the incarnation I spent years covering is destined to fail …[but] white supremacy is doing just fine without the far right.” What did you mean by that?

You just have to look at the world we live in. Look at the prison system, look at the rate we’re incarcerating people of color. The system is perfectly rigged to benefit white people. So that’s why I think this very open form of nationalism and white supremacy isn’t going to work, because there is no need for it.”