Hate in a Hallmark Town, Part 3: My Life In the Eye of a White-Supremacist Storm

Once you see the threat posed by such groups to democracy, you no longer have the luxury of looking away. Thankfully, I now know there is an army of civic-minded people who have my back.

Posters placed in Franklin, Tennessee, in fall 2023

This post is part of a continuing series that explains how I began this unexpected journey into the world of hate. I hope you will find this publication to be part of an important conversation and will spread the word!

“We’ve got your back.”

That was the reassuring message that I quickly began receiving in the fall of 2023 as my reporting began to catch the attention of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists I was investigating because of their involvement in a mayoral election in affluent Franklin, Tennessee.

Being a relative newbie to the world of hate, I had no idea how many anti-fascist researchers were quietly embedded inside the social media of such groups in places like Telegram and Gab. Some of the researchers worked for well-funded civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League; others simply did that work out of principle.

And those anti-fascist researchers operated under a moral code tha…