Reading Wednesday
Jan. 27th, 2021 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Metis Nation by Jean Teillet. This was really good! I don't have any more to add beyond what I said last week, other than that the author being a lawyer is particularly interesting when she discusses how Canada completely violated its own laws to screw over the Métis with land scrip.
Currently reading: Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin. This is a hard but excellent read. Lavin is one of the few journalists who had the foresight and courage to tackle internet radicalization when a few lone antifa and feminist voices were saying that it was a problem. For her pains, she got tons of death threats and rape threats, focused on her Jewishness, her appearance, and her gender. It's a familiar story with a twist.
Because she's a badass, and she took revenge.
This book, by virtue of its subject, can't be quite funny enough to be gonzo journalism in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, but I think he would highly approve of her methods. Which were basically going undercover as various white supremacist personas and figuring out who they were. She doesn't pretend to be objective or balanced—these are horrible people who will do horrible things if they're not stopped, and she does not restrain her rage or her opinions. It's simultaneously terrifying and cathartic, and I'm really into it so far.
Currently reading: Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin. This is a hard but excellent read. Lavin is one of the few journalists who had the foresight and courage to tackle internet radicalization when a few lone antifa and feminist voices were saying that it was a problem. For her pains, she got tons of death threats and rape threats, focused on her Jewishness, her appearance, and her gender. It's a familiar story with a twist.
Because she's a badass, and she took revenge.
This book, by virtue of its subject, can't be quite funny enough to be gonzo journalism in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, but I think he would highly approve of her methods. Which were basically going undercover as various white supremacist personas and figuring out who they were. She doesn't pretend to be objective or balanced—these are horrible people who will do horrible things if they're not stopped, and she does not restrain her rage or her opinions. It's simultaneously terrifying and cathartic, and I'm really into it so far.
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