Wajahat Ali '07 looks at white-power extremists in New York Review of Books article

In the New York Review of Books (NYR Daily) piece “Deradicalizing White People,” writer and King Hall alumnus Wajahat Ali ’07 examines white-power groups’ recent rise in visibility in the United States.

Supremacists have come out of the shadows thanks to “an ally in the White House,” Ali writes, citing President Trump’s refusal to condemn white nationalists for deadly violence at a 2017 white-power rally in Charlottesville, Va. At the rally, a neo-Nazi drove his car into a group of counter-demonstrators, killing a woman. Trump blamed “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

There also is a clear double standard in how authorities and the media characterize targeted acts of violence by white-power extremists, Ali writes. White-power crimes rarely are categorized as being part of a movement.

“Today, the basis on which the media label a suspect either a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘lone wolf’ is determined largely by the suspect’s religion and race or ethnicity rather than by the nature of the crime,” Ali writes. For instance, “Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine black people in a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015, was called a ‘classic lone wolf’—though he had posted photos of himself displaying white-supremacist regalia.”

Ali also explores efforts to stop the spread of racist groups, interviewing former white supremacists who have become anti-hate activists.