The Crunchy Mom To Alt-Right Pipeline

Crunchy moms and trad wife online content may seem innocent, but when you take a closer look, you start to see evidence of white-power ideology and conservative radicalization. So what happens when you go so far left that you end up alt-right?

In this episode of The Cost of Extremism, we’ll take a deep dive into the crunchy mom to alt-right pipeline, its ties to extremism, and the role social media plays in the radicalization of women.

For a transcript of this episode, please email theswppod@redwine.blue.

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Transcript

The Cost of Extremism - Season 2, Episode 5

Jill (host): This is the Cost of Extremism, Episode Five: The Crunchy Mom to Alt-Right Pipeline.

Throughout history, men have been the face of alt right extremist movements. We think about this sea of white men with red, anger-flushed cheeks and starch-pressed shirt collars walking through the streets of Charlottesville with tiki torches. We imagine the hordes of men flooding the Capitol with American flags draped over their shoulders.

Most of us don't picture modestly dressed women baking sourdough bread and preaching the importance of divine motherhood and the white racial purity of children. 

"Trad Wife" influencer: Today I'm going to be talking about the trad wife movement. Being a wife and a mother should be your top priority, always. And that is what is so great about this movement. Order is coming back into place in a chaotic world. No other society or culture except the Western culture, which is built by Europeans, has had this forced upon them, diversity and multiculturalism. 

Hey y'all, welcome back to my channel. So today we are going to be talking about box cake mixes and why they are tools of communism.

Jill (host): We've all seen crunchy mom or so called trad wife content on social media. It's usually a young millennial mother standing behind a kitchen counter talking about all the ways she lives a clean, traditional life. So they avoid modern medicine, eat only organic food, and typically oppose vaccinations. They want to live a more quote unquote traditional lifestyle. It's a very specific aesthetic, often presented as simple and natural. These traits are commonly associated with people on the left. But what happens when you go so far left that you end up on the far right? 

Seyward Darby: A big project within my wider project of the book was to dispel the idea that there is any one type of person who gets involved in white nationalism.

Jill (host): Seyward Darby is the author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism. After the election of former President Donald Trump, Seyward went on a search for the women involved in white nationalism to highlight their role in the movement. One of the women she followed, Ayla Stewart, was a self professed feminist turned online tradwife personality. She went viral for what she called a “white baby challenge,” where she challenged others to have more white babies than she had. 

Seyward Darby: I think it may come as a surprise to some people that women who had previously sort of professed to be uber liberal, you know, very all organic foods, like want to raise their own food you know, very kind of bleeding heart on the on like the edge of the left, so to speak, could radicalize in such a pendulum or seemingly pendulum swinging direction. But we have actually been seeing that type of radicalization happening for, for quite a long time, particularly in the, in the internet age. 

And so I was really interested to understand that trajectory. What I discovered really was that it's actually not so much a pendulum swing. It's that people who are very, very sort of far to the left on the, it's not even political spectrum exactly. I mean, politics is part of it, but it's sort of just like a way of interacting with the world. It's actually more like a little jump. If you think of it as a circle, you know, you kind of jump from one side to the other. 

And if you think about, you know, this sort of obsession with freedom from impurity, freedom to, you know, raise your children how you want to raise them, freedom from influences you don't like, a sense of control, really, over, you know, the curation of your child's existence, it's really not that much of a leap from being very lefty to actually being much more, you know, authoritarian, quite frankly.

Jill (host): Now, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with making sourdough bread or trying to live a more simple life. The danger comes when you take that small step forward and turn a quote unquote clean life into something far more extreme. 

"Trad Wife" influencer: Hi guys, and welcome back to my channel. Today, I'm going to be giving some tips for the ladies on how to attract a masculine man, a provider man. In order to be approached, you have to be approachable. So there's that saying “feminine, fit, and friendly.” And I highly agree with that. You should be smiling a lot at the cashiers who are checking you out. Or when somebody opens a door for you, say thank you and smile. You of course should be putting effort into your look. Whether you are into makeup or hair or anything like that, if you are just putting on sweatpants and a loose shirt and a hair and your hair in a bun, I promise you, you will feel better and feel more approachable when you put more effort into the way you look. So I challenge you, if you are the type that likes Lululemon or the sweatpants, for a whole week, put yourself in maybe jeans or put dresses on and skirts on and it will make such a big difference, I promise. 

There are some great feminine jobs out there that won't put you in that masculine dominating energy but more so in that nurturing and feminine energy. Some of these feminine jobs are nannying and babysitting. I love babysitting. I think it's a lot of fun to be around energetic kids. Another one would be teaching, or teacher's aid, because I believe to be a teacher you have to have a bachelor's, I think. Nursing is also a great occupation because you are caring for people, you are nurturing, it's not super dominating and aggressive.

Jill (host): The transition happens slowly, sometimes before you even realize it's happening in the first place. 

Samantha: So many people are not just documenting their lives, they're creating their own brands, and it's usually very aspirational. You know, it's a woman in either a modestly, you know, decorated home with neutral colors or bright colors, there's like a child on her hip, she's whisking things with a smile on her face, talking about how happy she is to have found this holistic medicine. There's a weird… “purity spiraling" is actually what the far right and, and what other people call it. 

Jill (host): That was Samantha, an employee at Life After Hate, a nonprofit that works to help people leave the far right and lead compassionate lives. Samantha, who wishes to keep her last name anonymous, is an exit specialist and peer mentor. She works to help people exit extremist movements and provides the support they need to rebuild their lives.

Samantha: There was a channel on the far right that had this YouTube channel, they had like their own little sub YouTube channel, and it was just this blonde woman and she would always, it was like, “I'm going to be making these sugar cookies,” or “I'm going to be making this like Swedish traditional meal” or whatever and you watch it and you're like, “wow, I really love that recipe and like how it's all whole foods and this and that.” And then you realize it's a sub channel. You go onto the main channel and it happens to be like, “yeah, don't go tanning because it will ruin your white skin.” And you kind of, you just fall into it. 

Seyward Darby: In the case of coded language and the way that people might not even know what they're being told and fed, you know, what we've seen particularly in the last seven, eight years, but it was really going on well before that too, is, again, not necessarily overt. You know, “Are you a white person? Do you also hate other people?” It's, that's not the message, right? The message that often draws people in is more, “Do you feel dissatisfied with your life?” That can mean your personal life, you know, the political situation that you find yourself in, that you think the country is in. “Do you believe that, you know, you're not being told everything about how we got here? Do you feel like there are things you can't say? Because it's no longer politically correct to say, you know, I don't want to live in an urban environment because people will call you racist?” Or, you know, all of these things. 

It's kind of appealing to these like very base racist, quite frankly, instincts that I think a lot of Americans, white Americans, you know, have instilled in them just by virtue of the society that we live in and being told that those things are okay. And that there's a community that will support those impulses. And then it gets more intense and it gets more explicit in its racism. 

So, you know, radicalization is not as simple as, you know, an existing white supremacist organization identifying a person who hates people who aren't white. Like, that's not how this works. It's more looking for people who are susceptible, who are vulnerable. 

Jill (host): No one understands the steady decline into extremism quite like Dominique Burleson, a former trad wife and mom of six kids. She only recently opened up about her former life. When we interviewed her, she was eager to tell her story. She was nervous, but as she spoke, there were no signs of hesitation. She was ready to speak out. 

Dominique Burleson: I grew up evangelical from the time that I was six years old. Um, and it was extreme from the jump. I was doing door to door ministry around 11 years old. I was laying hands and praying for people at 12 years old. I was doing the pro life marches in DC. I was, you know, you know volunteering at the Pregnancy Resource Center. Like, my views were extreme at a very, very young age. And I'm a millennial, so this is during the late 80s, early 90s, during the “satanic panic” where everything was “demonic” from Pokemon to Dungeons and Dragons. We were taking rock and roll records and playing them backwards to hear satanic messages. Everything was very, very extreme. 

And so that extremism just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Now we're all adults. Now we're voting. Now we're making decisions for society. But after high school, for me, I was already looking for a husband. I was already looking to be a mom because that's what we're told. Our value is in what we give to a man. Because we have the Proverbs 31 woman who is more, you know, precious than rubies, more valuable than gold. That was the goal. 

I met my husband, we were very young, we were 21 and we started dating and six months later we were married. And six weeks after that, we were pregnant with our first baby and things just kept getting more extreme from there. This was the dawn of mommy bloggers. And I quit my job at the end of my pregnancy, my first pregnancy, I quit my job, started staying home. There is nothing like being told that this life is going to fulfill you and then to get home and be alone and not have anyone around you. So with that idle time, I was like, “Oh, I have to start keeping the perfect house. I have to make sure that my husband comes home to home cooked meals.” 

And just to put it out there, this was not my husband's, like, this was not his way of thinking at all. He was going with the motions because that's what he's being told from his side. You have to be a leader. You have to be the head of your household. If you were to meet my husband, my husband is very quiet. He is very gentle and he is very kind. He was the complete opposite of all the men who had spoken and raised me and been in my head from, you know, childhood on. He was the complete opposite. And that would eventually be what kind of saved me in the end because my husband just… he didn't understand how to be this leader that they were wanting him to be.

So we butted heads from the time we got back from our honeymoon. Because I wanted him to be head of the household. I pretty much was like begging him to oppress me. Like, “please!” So I started reading these mommy bloggers. And these mommy bloggers were typically Christian women, a little bit older than I was, cause again, I was only, you know, 21, 22 at the time. And they were so nice. Selling this lifestyle of these beautiful homes and this joy and this happiness that I was not feeling. Because I was having babies. I was having postpartum and you don't talk about that kind of stuff. That's a lack of faith. That's between you and God. You need to deal with it. You need to pray more, fast more, whatever it is. You cannot have these conversations. 

And so that was kind of what started it. I went from mommy bloggers, I even became a mommy blogger myself, and then we started having the MLM essential oil craze, which turned into being completely anti vax to I was wanting to like birth my babies at home by myself. Like that… if you knew me now, you would be like, “there's no way she would do that” because I'm absolutely terrified of any of that medical stuff. Now I'm like, give me all the doctors. Give me all the nurses. Like I want it all. But then the people around me started to get into QAnon and at first I thought it was a joke, right? Like it was something funny to talk about. But then it started getting really weird and it started to get really uncomfortable. 

Jill (host): For Dominique, she was drawn into the alt right through her connection with the evangelical church. She was in a vulnerable position and was exploited for it. 

Dominique Burleson: It's rooted in fear. None of this is necessarily a 100 percent choice. It is, “I'm doing this out of fear. I'm, I fear losing my husband. I fear losing my relationship with God. I fear my kids becoming gay or anything of the above. I'm also fearing that I'm going to lose my country because you have Islam and all of the bad guys coming in. I have to fight against all of this.” And so it's rooted in just everything that we're dealing with that is tearing the country apart is packaged into this aesthetically pleasing video of a woman making sourdough. Because there's a reason behind that. There's a reason why she wants to be off grid, why she wants to pull her kids out of school, why she wants to do all of these things, and it's all rooted in fear. 

Jill (host): When you hear Dominique's story about how she got involved in the trad wife crunchy mom movement, you can't help but notice that it's not that different from how women have become radicalized and other more traditional white supremacy groups. Before Samantha got involved with Life After Hate, she was a member of the white supremacist hate group Identity Evropa. Like Dominique, she was involved during an unsteady and new period of her life. 

Samantha: I was in my early twenties and I had just moved to South Carolina. I was trying to make friends and I was a little unsure of myself. So I meet this guy at a bar and it turns out he liked all the same stuff, and we instantly connected. I fell in love like that night. And we just kind of, we were on and off for a year and a half. We were both pretty aimless, both trying to figure out who we wanted to be when we grew up and growing up while we were doing it.

Jill (host): Samantha and her boyfriend broke up for a little while, but when they got back together, something had shifted in him. 

Samantha: I didn't know at the time, but the guy had gotten into powerlifting, and he got more into the internet. And I had Facebook, and I was on Tumblr, and all of that stuff, but he was like a Reddit 4chan kind of guy. So when we finally got back together, something was different. I couldn't figure it out. I assumed maybe, you know, he's a little bit more serious minded, so I was like, okay, we both decided to grow up, and do this thing and take ourselves a little bit more seriously. 

But he, he just, he kept making these jokes that I didn't understand. And he was way more condescending than I remember him being. I remember him as being, like, a very tender, kind person. And he just kept saying, he kept calling me a “degenerate,” he kept telling me he couldn't defend me on “the Day of the Rope,” he would call me he kept telling me that women were like cars and the second you take them off the lot they decrease in value by half. Like, just like these really, like, just so deeply out of character things. And then when I asked him about it he would just keep saying, like, “they're just jokes from the internet, like, I, I go on Reddit and 4chan.” And I was like, okay. 

So one day, I just Googled it. I was like, what is the Day of the Rope? Like, I don't, what, what the hell is this? Because he kept telling me he wouldn't defend me on the Day of the Rope. And then, of course, to my horror and surprise, I learned about the Turner Diaries and Timothy McVeigh and the alt right and All this stuff. 

Jill (host): The Day of the Rope is a common phrase in the white supremacy community. The Turner Diaries, written by neo Nazi leader William Pierce, has influenced generations of right wing extremists, including Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh. In the novel, during a white supremacist revolution, neo Nazis hang so called race traitors, such as journalists, politicians, and women in multiracial relationships. They named it the Day of the Rope. And since then, the phrase has become a popular white supremacist slogan. 

Samantha: So I confronted him and he was like, “Yeah, I'm a fascist and I don't want to be with you if you don't support that.” So I left. I was just like, “Yeah, obviously I'm never going to talk to you again. I'm going to go home.” And somehow on my drive home, I was like, “You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to learn everything about this and I'm going to confront him and I'm going to change him.” And I spent five days just looking up everything I can, and I went from horrified to fascinated to intrigued to completely indoctrinated in the course of like five days.

He had always told me like, or at least once we got back together, he was like, you know, “the left calls itself open minded but they only talk to people who are like minded. The left always says that they're so, you know, diverse but they only hang out with people who think the same exact thing as them.” So I thought I was beating him at his own game, where I was like, “Yeah, I'm gonna act like this is real for a few days.” And the way that it sucks you in so quickly when you give it that merit, you let one conspiracy sneak in, the rest of them follow like raccoons in a trench coat. It's just, it's, it's this wild thing.

Jill (host): Samantha first began delving into white supremacy online. Sites such as 4chan, 8chan, and Discord were easy on ramps into the organization. Within weeks, she became a believer.

Samantha: I was in for, we'll say a year. So we'll say the first six months was almost entirely online. And then the last six months was in person. And the first six months online it was, to be completely honest, at the time, because I was trying so hard to make friends and all that stuff, like, it felt so good to me. Like, there was a Discord server on my phone that was always waiting for me. There were voice chats where if I worked late on my way home, I could just get in and there's already a conversation going. 

There were always people that acted like they were challenging each other, you know, philosophically, of “what's right about this,” or “if we're not violent, like, then what policy needs to be enacted to do X, Y, and Z?” Like, they really fancied themselves this intellectual movement of people that were going to infiltrate politics and take the future back, is, is, that was always what it felt like. As if it was supposed to be ours the whole time, and by “ours” I mean like, white supremacists. But like, it was always supposed to be the “awoken European,” is what they would always say. 

And it felt really good that if I went out on my lunch break, I could just go on this Discord and chat with these friends. I could, you know, drive home and be a part of these conversations. And I never had to talk about my personal life or how lonely I actually was because I was able to fill those voids with these voices.

Jill (host): Before long, Samantha was buying long skirts to look more traditionally feminine and becoming involved with in person events. 

Samantha: And then once I started in person, that was also surreal in different ways. I went to the first march in Charlottesville, I don't know, it's not as popular as the Unite the Right rally, but in May of 2017 there was another rally. And we were standing in line, it was like a torch, the torchlight march thing, and I was standing next to someone and they said, “Oh, this is where we bring the crosses out.” And I did a double take because that was in the back of my mind, of course, the whole time of like, “are we really the bad guys? Are we these guys?” The whole time I was in there, I was kind of waiting for someone to pull me aside and be like, “Hey, like, we all know this is bullshit. We're kind of just waiting for attention and like, why not? It's a power grab. Why not do it?” But no one ever did either. 

And so we're standing there and like, “yeah, this is where we bring the crosses out.” And I did a double take and looked at him like, “Oh my God, I can't believe it. I can't believe it.” And he and everyone around them started laughing. And in my head, that meant like, “Oh, the public thinks we're bad guys, but we don't have crosses. We're not the bad guys. We're not burning these things.” Nevermind the fact that I was, like, tacitly approving of, like, the suffering and disadvantage of everyone else around me. But yeah, it was a really wild moment where I was like, oh, okay, like, we're not white supremacists. We're just people that want a seat at the table.

I ended up going to what the far right calls “pool parties,” and I went to a book burning, and I went to all of these different, you know, the voices and the podcast hosts and all those guys and all the people that you see today. Like, I, I, I, I knew a lot of them, most of them. 

Jill (host): Samantha eventually became an interviewer for Identity Evropa, where she tested whether new applicants were fluent in white power ideology, and screened out Jewish people and people of color. She was then named women's coordinator and ran a women's Discord chat room, an important organizing tool and a movement that takes place almost entirely online. This extremist group gave Samantha a purpose. It didn't matter if it was good or bad. 

Samantha: Wanting to be a part of something bigger than yourself, feeling worthless, not understood, like, feeling like you had no purpose in your life. Like, I kind of felt like I was just floating along. I was making friends, I was going to parties, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, like, calling up my senators and, like, you know, picketing or protesting things. Like, there wasn't really much of a cause that I was attached to. That's all. 

And when I was reading and looking at these sites, like, I was not on Reddit and 4chan, I was on, you know, the, the dry, you know, pseudo academic, you know, the intellectuals that used words like legacy and history and lineage and stuff.

It felt like, oh, that was my purpose. Just being alive is my purpose. Having kids is my purpose. And I remember one of the first things that they had said was like, “your yacht isn't going to become president when you die. Like, you know, what, what are you leaving in this world? It's not going to be your dogs.” And, you know, that hit me because I, I kind of realized, like, I never really looked deeper in my life. 

Jill (host): And where do they get the money to do this? According to a report published by the Anti Defamation League in 2023, extremists are using online crowdfunding platforms like Give Send Go and GoFundMe to raise millions of dollars for their ideological driven activities. Through crowdfunding, extremists have generated over 6 million from 324 campaigns between 2016 and mid 2022. These extremist groups recruit people who are susceptible to radicalization. It's organized and targeted. 

Samantha: It's really anyone with a grievance. I mean, it normalizes it. It, it turns it into at first like, “Oh, you know, the left can't make fun of itself” or, you know, “liberals are stuck in their ivory towers” and you hear this one person that has like, maybe one good point, and you start to follow them more, then you find another video.And as studies have shown time and time again, the people most likely to believe in a conspiracy theory are people that already believe in another one. So if you start at one, no matter how small, it's a lot easier. Because you're kind of like, well, you know, that is something I believe now, why, why couldn't this also be true? 

And so there's a lot of social media influencers, social media people, I mean, we see them all over the place posting these like 30 minute tropes that will just ask this question where you're like, Oh, I've never thought of that before. And they'll make it a very binary choice, again, of either like, stay ignorant of this or join this group, this far right ideology, and know the truth. And I think it's, people are susceptible to it. Again, no one wants to be dumb, no one wants to be ignorant, no one wants to be seen as weak. So when you have an ideology or a mindset of people that are like, we're strong, we know the truth, and you don't, and they say it so confidently, like, yeah, why wouldn't you be compelled?

Dominique Burleson: It's kind of a slow burn, because it's one of those things you don't even realize you're getting that far until you're already way, way out there because in the essence, there's nothing wrong with homesteading. There's nothing wrong with liking, you know, the crunchy life as far as, you know, doing the whole sourdough bread thing. I do a lot of that. I make fire cider. I love like herbs and things like that. I love studying stuff. Like it's still a passion to this day. 

However, this starts going into what God wants. And if it's natural, then it's good. If it's not natural, then it's bad. So you're already starting off with really extremist views. There's no gray area. When it comes to this crunchy mom, when it comes to evangelicals, there's no gray area. And then there's a lot of shame involved because if you can't keep up with this then again, it's something wrong with you. It's a faith issue or whatever. And so you start to build that community.

And like I said before, how all of this stuff is rooted in fear. And so you're going from doing all these natural, beautiful things for your family to now you're prepping your family for the end because everyone is your enemy. Now, those people who are pushing vaccines, they're your enemy. Those doctors who talk about COVID, they're your enemy. The ones who are questioning homeschool. And I homeschool my kids! But if there's a politician that's questioning homeschooling, they're your enemy. Everyone who goes against your lifestyle becomes your enemy. And so now you're switching into soldier mode. And you have to protect what you are building. And the only way to do that is to become like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Bobert, and the rest of these women who are just way gone, right? Far, far gone, because they think that they are fighting for the Lord. 

Seyward Darby: We're all worried about so many things, right? And a lot of women are worried about health. And a lot of women are worried about safety. And a lot of women, when it comes to, you know, You know, their children especially, and bad influences, the influence of technology, the influence of additives in food, like any number of things. And those are all perfectly valid concerns. 

Again, what happens when, you know, the, the far right kind of gets involved is it sees those things and feeds on them and says, you know, me too, like we are too, we are concerned about all of these dangers. And then it's not such a big leap to then say, have you thought about these other dangers? Like, have you thought about the threats to your identity and your children's identity? And have you noticed that, you know, when you take your kid to school you know, there are clubs for Black students and clubs for Latino students, but there are no clubs for white students? Like, what is that about? You know, it's not so much giving ideas as it is feeding on ideas and then exploiting them and saying, well, have you thought about this? It's an Overton window thing, right? Like, you know, this idea that. Well, if you can just keep expanding the idea of what is acceptable, what it is acceptable to talk about, what it is acceptable to want, what is, what it is acceptable to dislike, the better for, for, you know, the far right, essentially.

Jill (host): The far right white supremacy movement understands where women are vulnerable and exploit those vulnerabilities to find recruits. They find women who long for community and give them a place to find it. They seek out women living in fear and promise them security. The phrase “everything you've been told is a lie” is a vital part of their messaging. If they can get you to start questioning one thing, they can build on that fear and make you start questioning everything. Before long, you might start to believe that the whole country is built on one large conspiracy. 

"Trad Wife" influencer: Before 1965, America was 85 to 90 percent white. It's not racist, it's just a fact. Today in America, whites make up 60%, around 60% of the country, and by the year 2044, they will be a minority around 49% if we keep going the way that we're going. It's because just like men and women are different, and those biological differences dictate different roles, races are different. There are studies done on race and IQ differences. We have been sold the lie of assimilation. So I wanted to come on here and share my thoughts about this. Why are we telling women, even starting out as young girls, that they need to have a life of independence? I think that that is a very toxic way to bring up a girl. 

Jill (host): And their end goal? 

Seyward Darby: There are some people for whom the end goal is literally, you know, and this is like the most sort of literal of white nationalists, either like an all white republic of some kind, or a republic in which white people are dominant and recognized as, you know, rightful Americans. Or a society in which races kind of keep to themselves. Because isn't that what they want? White nationalism is nothing if not a pro natal project, right? This idea that we have to have more white babies in order to make sure that the future looks the way we want it to look. 

And the sort of implicit message in that is that being a mother, having children, and being a mother, and raising children a certain way, is important. The most important thing you can do. And it is political, right? Like it's not just something you do on the home front, like the home front is a political space. And so I think there's this empowering message that they're delivering. Of course, it's highly problematic, but you can, you can kind of sense the appeal for some women of feeling like, “Oh, well this person is telling me that what I'm doing is important, and like, important in a way that other people aren't telling me that it is.” 

And so I think that that message really can't be under appreciated, like it can't go under appreciated, because I do think that it is very appealing to a lot of people who feel like some of their choices, you know, haven't been appreciated, celebrated their contributions, haven't been appreciated, celebrated, you know, they, they're being told, we will, by this, you know, community of people online.

Jill (host): They're presenting these ideas that are extreme from the outside, but when you're in the movement, they feel almost normal. Their messaging isn't overt. It's subtle, slow moving, and effective. And it's wrapped up in a nice, aesthetically pleasing linen package, making it digestible for the general public.

And even though they're not selling a product, they are selling a version of themselves, and becoming social media influencers. Influencers are part of the creator economy, an industry now valued at 250 billion, with some making $100,000 a year, posting photos and videos of themselves. Not every creator gets rich, or even makes a living wage, but the potential is there, and seems contradictory, since their job is to tell people they don't have a job.

Seyward Darby: I think two really just cannot, cannot emphasize enough, the normalizing aspect of all of this. This idea that, “oh no, we're not talking about race, like, we're just talking about raising children. Oh no, we're not talking about crime, like, we're talking about safety.” You know, like, these, these things that provide cover for incredibly problematic, if not, like, outright, you know, racist or hateful ideas. And women, and particularly women who are really focused on this idea of femininity, domesticity, motherhood, can provide a great deal of cover for these ideas. 

Jill (host): Women's involvement in extremism and white supremacy is nothing new. Throughout history, women have taken an active role in the organizations that have spread hate for generations. Even the Crunchy Mom Trad Wife movement has historical roots.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in December of 1865, just days after the states ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and launched a period of Reconstruction. During this time, Black Americans saw an increase in access to education, property rights, and political representation. But many Southern white women felt threatened by this newfound freedom of Black Americans. It was a loss of their quote, heritage. In response, the United Daughters of the Confederacy was born in 1894. The members worked hand in hand with the KKK to grow white supremacist frameworks in the South. 

Seyward Darby: They are responsible for funding the vast majority of the Confederate statues that have become, obviously, targets of progressive activism over the last several years. They were responsible for introducing curriculum components, not just in the South, but across the United States, into textbooks that softened. the image of the confederacy. 

Jill (host): According to the NAACP, more than 4,000 recorded lynchings took place in the United States between the years of 1882 and 1968. One of the earliest and most thorough accounts of white women's roles in these lynchings comes from journalists Ida B. Wells, who found that Black men accused of raping white women were often lynched without going to trial. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, nearly 25 percent of lynching victims were accused of sexual assault. But oftentimes, these accusations were either false or used as a cover for consensual interracial relationships. 

This idea that Black men were a danger to white women was repeatedly cited as an excuse for these horrific, violent acts by white supremacists. The protection of our women became a prominent mantra. The most infamous example of this is the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, who was killed for supposedly whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant Donham. Years later, she admitted that she lied. 

Seyward Darby: You had white women in the South, especially, who were, first of all, very comfortable being held up as symbols, these figures, feminine, maternal, who were in some way physically threatened by the releasing of slaves, by the, by the complete shift in what our country looked like, who was free, who was not.

So, I mean, you look at, you know, the first blockbuster film, Birth of a Nation. And what is the plot in that movie? It is about a white woman under threat and the need, the, the, the sense of duty to protect her from, you know, these, these hordes of, of Black people. It's just, I mean, it is, on the one hand, like, a tale as old as time, because obviously, like, that, I think that paradigm of a white woman under threat from a person who is not white is an old, old, old trope. But, again, it became this galvanizing thing in this period in which people who especially did not agree with the way the country was going, you know, were trying to find symbols were trying to find ways to justify the kind of violence that they, you know, thought was necessary to restore the country to the way they had been before. 

Jill (host): Even the rights that women have today have a history that's tinged with extremism and white supremacy. It's a history that most of us either didn't know or refused to acknowledge. 

Seyward Darby: One of the heads of the KKK during its heyday in the teens and the 20s was a woman, Elizabeth Tyler, and she also oversaw the creation along with some other women, oversaw the creation of the women's KKK, which was also very active particularly in, in the twenties and had chapters across the country. And they really leveraged this idea of women having the right to vote to their advantage. You know, obviously I'm so glad we have the right to vote, but the reasons we have the right to vote are not as simple as, you know, there were people who said women needed equal rights. There were women advocating for women's right to vote, specifically white women's right to vote. This idea that women needed to be able to have a voice in society in order to help clean society up. And that, you know, you, you really see this fascinating intersection of sort of suffrage rhetoric and ideas and white supremacy in the 1920s.

But then, you know, school integration. White women were on the forefront of resisting integration to the point that they shut down like whole school districts for pretty extended periods of time because they said I don't want children of color with my children in this school. And just became these really important, essentially, like, PTA moms who were pushing an incredibly racist agenda, a reactive racist agenda.

Jill (host): There's an infamous photo of 15 year old Hazel Bryan as she trailed behind Elizabeth Eckert, one of nine black students entering Little Rock Central High School for the first time. Standing behind Elizabeth is an angry mob of white women, screaming in her face as they fought to keep their schools segregated. And at the center was Hazel. For so long, the image of anti Black and anti Semitic rage has been centralized around white men. But many of us forget that white women also benefit from the white power movement. And in return, white men benefit from their involvement too. 

Samantha: Women kind of are like the backbone and the padding of the movement. Women are the people that call up the buses to get transportation. Women are the ones that plan the after parties. Women are the ones that are pressing the clothes. And most of the women are the ones that have the jobs that allow the men to be on podcasts complaining about women working. Like, it's a really wild experience and all the while we are supposed to be your secretary and remember all of your engagements, your mother and make sure that like you eat dinner, your girlfriend, your mistress, like we are supposed to be everything to you. However if we slip up once, like, that could quite literally be our bodily safety at any moment. 

I always find it really interesting that if you look at a lot of um, newspapers and organizations… there was one in particular, it was this couple where they were planning on attacking power grids and it was neo nazi or like far right extremist or whatever “and girlfriend.” The “and girlfriend" trope is like a joke in the far right. Women appreciate it because it gets them out of trouble and allows them to continue doing more. But it also, again, like, is just general societal misogyny, where it's like, “well, a woman couldn't have that much agency.”And it's like, they both planned it, and I bet you, she probably planned more meticulously than he did.

Women are such an integral role in the movement. And also, we make it look enticing. “Oh, there are girls in the far right.” Men go in thinking they're going to find wives. Women join thinking that it's safe. We are the propaganda. And it is really dangerous. 

Jill (host): Nowadays, the majority of the Trad Wife Crunchy Mom content we come across is from social media. TikTok and Instagram are filled to the brim with women gardening, cultivating their homesteads, and preaching their traditional and natural way of life. At first glance, it's a perfectly cultivated life, whether you agree with their views or not, it's hard to look away. Social media might be relatively new, but using media to spread extremist talking points comes from an old playbook.

Seyward Darby: White nationalists have always been very savvy about media of all kinds. So in fact, the revival of the KKK in the teens and 20s of the United States, which was its big heyday, like when it was at its most powerful, its largest, was led by publicists, Like people whose job it was to, to market ideas. And one of whom was actually a woman. And whether it's trying to spread their message to a wide audience, or in the case of trying to be a bit more subterranean, if you will, like in the very, very early days of what we now consider the internet, white nationalists were some of the people using, like, very, very early form message boards. 

The use of social media now to spread their message is really just in keeping with a pattern of identifying when and how new media might be helpful for them. And in the case of social media, you don't even really have to look. You just get to plaster, right? Memes, videos, but there's much more of, like, a wide tent, you know? Like, “let's just put it all out there and see who we get.”

Jill (host): But for Dominique, social media was also the saving grace she needed to leave her life as a trad wife. 

Dominique Burleson: I discovered. TikTok. And this is when I started seeing people having conversations that I was too afraid to have, that they were asking the questions that I had been asking for so many years and had beat myself up about that I didn't have enough faith.

Jill (host): During the COVID 19 pandemic, Dominique watched countless videos displaying the churches and her fellow tradwives reaction to the virus and the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by white police officers. Dominique watched these videos with a newborn in her arms and just sobbed. She became hungry for any information she could find. 

Dominique Burleson: There's something to be said when you've been raised for 30 years from the teachings of a man who talks about loving his neighbor and feeding people and like doing right by people and loving people. And that's what my husband and I wanted. Like we wanted to love people, but we were always told, “No, not those people. Nope. Not those people. No, you don't do it like that.” 

And finally I was like, I'm going to do it my way. And if I'm wrong, then I'll deal with the consequences, but I don't want to do it that way anymore. And so we started reading like a book and like I said, I started just consuming so much on TikTok. I started following and listening to people that I was always told that I shouldn't associate with. So I was getting to know the trans community, the queer community, even the Indigenous community for myself, Indigenous practices, spirituality, all of these things I got to watch on TikTok and hear people's stories that I was never allowed to experience, that I was not allowed to talk to these people.

And before long, the empathy kind of took over and I was like, how am I supposed to hate these people? And that was the question that my husband and I were like, that is what separates us now from our past selves is that now we have the freedom to love and care as hard as we want to whomever we want with no guidelines and it feels more like freedom than we've ever had. We lost a lot of our friends, our family, just by really asking questions. 

Jill (host): Samantha's de0radicalization process differed from Dominique's. Dominique started by taking a closer look at the outside world. Meanwhile, Samantha examined the dark underbelly of her own world. 

Samantha: I will never ever have that treatment again in my life. Being treated like a star or being treated like I'm an influencer or whatever. And it was, it was overwhelming and in so many ways it felt good to be such an insecure person and to have all these people be like, “Oh my gosh, you exist? Like, that's amazing. Let me have your autograph. Like, you're perfect.”

And then the reality set in. Where it went from, “you're like a movie star” to, “you're good breeding stock.” It went from being at these parties, hearing men joking about women, realizing that they're actually making jokes about the sexual assaults that they had committed. I had become, in all this time, the women's coordinator for the group that I was in, because no matter where I am, I'm a try hard. And so I started this group chat and these women were coming in and it went from this like, “yeah, let's do like makeup tips and just talk about like women's things” to, “Hey, I went on a date with this guy and he now expects us to get married. And he is stalking me?” “Hey, this guy hit me because I wouldn't kiss him.” “Hey, this guy's a creep. And I saw him assaulting someone.” 

And it became a whisper network of women trying to decipher, are there any good men in the movement? And I started realizing that all the slogans for this quote unquote movement of peace were from murderers and violent people. And when I tried to question that, I was immediately shut down and told that either I didn't, you know, like I wasn't deep enough in the, in the ideology or it's the message, not the messenger. That's, you know, like, don't shoot the messenger, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, the messenger shot a bunch of people. So, like, I'm very, like, where are we in this? 

Jill (host): Samantha no longer had the boyfriend she joined the group with. But after a while, Samantha realized that he wasn't leaving. 

Samantha: The weirdest part of the whole thing was, he actually turned out to be one of the people that planned the Unite the Right rally. He was pretty much the main organizer for it. So I saw it behind the curtain of what all this stuff really meant. And so, the Unite the Right rally happened, and Heather Heyer was murdered, and I realized in that moment, like, I can continue to excuse this violence and turn a blind eye, and say like, “well, that guy in the car was a stranger, I didn't know him,” you know, “Dylann Roof wasn't, he never said he was alt right, he was just an extremist, some people will latch onto these things.” Or I can start seeing it for what it is, which is abject violence. That is, that is what this is. Policy change is bullshit. Like, if we were a movement of peace, why is everyone exercising for Rahowa, which is the racial holy war? Like, just the veil was lifted completely, and I realized that I needed to leave. I just didn't know how. 

Jill (host): As much as Samantha wanted to just pack up her stuff and leave, it wasn't that simple. She had to be careful. Strategic. 

Samantha: I didn't know what to do. I knew the person I was living with, he was threatening me. He kept telling me he would like break my legs and rape me, and when the Nazis took over they would throw me in a pit and they would breed me and then murder me when I can't have kids, and it was really psychologically awful stuff.

Two months to the day after the Unite the Right rally, my grandmother died, and I realized that she died with nothing to be proud of. And I realized in that moment, like, it doesn't matter if I actually get killed leaving. I would rather know that I was trying to leave. then do then keep this like I can't keep this going. This is awful. So I mean, I got a storage unit and started piecemealing. It was like leaving an abusive relationship, which I was, you know, it was an abusive relationship. But I never really saw it that way. Because the way the movement operates you as a woman, Your only value is, as they call it, your sexual market value. It's, you know, I'm 5'10”, I have broad shoulders, I have red curly hair. To them, on paper, I am like, the move, you know. I am this, this thing. And that became all I saw myself as. 

When I was leaving, I knew that I'd have to be really careful about it. So I got a storage unit. I piecemealed my stuff into it. I found a place with this at this woman's house where I didn't need sign a lease. It was like a gentleman's agreement. I did everything I could to get rid of my paper trail. Basically, he was out for the weekend and I just left. 

Jill (host): Once Samantha got out of Identity Evropa, she had to rebuild her life from the bottom up. Even though she was no longer an active member of the group, Samantha still held some of their beliefs. You don't just flip a switch and suddenly a year's worth of white supremacist thinking disappears. She had to put in real effort to de-radicalize herself. 

Samantha: I left, but I wasn't gone. I still, so embarrassingly was like, well, I know the Holocaust happened, but like, what is that? Like, I was just so lost. I knew what I didn't want to believe, but I was so brainwashed or so changed by the movement that I was like, can I even believe like textbooks? Can I believe the mainstream media? Like what, what is real? And I had to really deconstruct myself down to like my favorite color and the perfume I wear.

I didn't want it to happen again. You know, I kept telling myself I wanted to be the person I was before the movement because I was so joyous and easygoing. Then I realized the person I was before the movement was gullible enough to end up in the movement. So I was like, well, I want to be better than that. So I completely, I mean, I'm not even joking. Like I wore black for six years straight because I was like, I'm in mourning of everything I was in my past. And I had to like, rebuild my convictions and understand my vulnerabilities. And basically, like, optimism-proof myself. Like, I was a very trusting person, but I really needed to learn how to demonstrate discretion and how to trust my sources and all of that stuff. So, it was a process. 

Jill (host): Samantha spent a long time reflecting on her past and working towards building a better future, one far removed from a life engrossed in white supremacy. That's when she heard about Life After Hate, who gave her a supportive community that could walk Samantha through the process of reconstructing herself and her beliefs. Later, Life After Hate approached Samantha and offered her a job as an expert specialist and peer mentor. Now she's the one who walks side by side with people as they leave extremist groups. 

Samantha: Honestly, I'm just trying to be the person I wish I had. 

Jill (host): While it's important for us to have resources for people leaving the alt right, it's equally important that we prevent this extremism before it has the chance to grow and cultivate. There may not always be a shining beacon to warn us that people in our lives are being radicalized, but there are still early warning signs that we can watch out for. 

Samantha: What I find to be the most universal, for lack of a better term, signs are like a change in language and demeanor. I always say that, like, being radicalized never felt very radical. Like, you kind of just feel like you're learning this new information. You're like, wow, this is such an interesting new way to see the world. Or, oh, I see the truth. It's like the veil of society lifting on you and you suddenly think you're above it. So there is this, this interesting shift in your confidence. Because you think you know the secrets that no one else sees. Your language changes a little bit because you're now using that jargon. It ends up, you know, as it turns out, as brilliant as the far right thinks it is, it's actually not really hard to spot someone in it. At least not once you talk to them at length.

Seyward Darby: Somebody's not going to suddenly start using racial slurs. More often it's, you know, kind of this, the language, the parroting of talking points about risk and fear and the idea that, you know, because of who I am, meaning, you know, a white woman, like, I am in some way under threat. It's like, oh, you're starting to get your information from unreliable sources. I think that that's a really important piece of things. 

And I think, too, it's not just signs of radicalization, it's like, well, what do you do with those signs? Because psychological studies have shown forever like people don't like to be argued with, right? So if somebody says “you know, Black on white crime is rising” and you say “no it's not, like don't be stupid,” people don't want to hear that, right? Like people don't want to be told they're wrong, people are not likely to change their minds because they have been told they are wrong, right?

And so you have to kind of approach those conversations more from a question asking standpoint, a listening standpoint, and then saying, “well, let me tell you, you know, what I know or what I believe.” Coming from an argumentative standpoint and a “let me tell you why you're wrong” standpoint actually can lead people to double down. 

And it's actually something in the stories of radicalization that some of the sort of long trails that I followed of women who didn't necessarily, you know, either started out seemingly pretty far to the left or, you know, center right, and then, you know, radicalized. Oftentimes what they were reacting to was criticism.

Jill (host): While there is no single route to radicalization, there are behavioral traits that we can look out for. According to Educate Against Hate, the outward appearance of radicalization could include becoming increasingly argumentative, refusing to listen to different viewpoints, embracing conspiracy theories, feeling persecuted, changing friends and appearances, and converting to a new religion. Online behavior could be portrayed as changing their online identity, having more than one online identity, accessing extremist online content. This isn't an all encompassing list, but it's a good way for non experts to start. 

But there's more that we can do too. We should all be putting in the work to understand why this radicalization happens and how we can prevent extremism in all its various forms.

Seyward Darby: Counter advocacy is so important. I think being really committed to media literacy and helping people understand, helping young people especially understand, you know, what is true, what is not, what is valid, what is not, what is right, what is wrong, absolutely. But also, you know, how do we distinguish good information from bad information? 

I think it is vitally important to listen to and learn from people who have been victimized by, or their communities have been victimized by, and they have been leading justice initiatives, advocacy initiatives for Black Americans, queer Americans. I think, you know, not necessarily starting from the standpoint of “I want to do something. Let me create it. I want to do something.” And this is what I, you know, listening to people who have the wisdom and in some cases, the incredible networks… you don't have to create something new. Sometimes you can add to and you know, there's really strength in numbers and institutional knowledge. So I think, you know, coming to it from a humble, you know, standpoint is really, really crucial. 

Dominique Burleson: I think the best way to stunt its growth is to keep having these conversations. Because with the way that we communicate on the internet, we have access to people in spaces that we may not have had access to before. I'm using myself as an example. If I wouldn't have had TikTok, I wouldn't have known that there were other people having these conversations, other people who were questioning, like is this really loving the way that we were taught that Jesus said to love people, you know, just a simple question like that. Or is it really terrible for me to want people in the queer community to be able to get married? Like, what is the downfall of that? Like, what, what, how do we suffer from that? Asking those kinds of questions. 

So I think if we keep having the conversation, it's going to eventually reach people. And hopefully will plant that seed of doubt in what they're doing. My journey to get to where I was I had cracks long long before. During obama's reign when everyone thought that he was a demon, at the beginning, I was scared. But towards the end of his presidency, I happened to be scrolling through the TV or something like that, and I came across one of his speeches. And I actually listened to some of the things that he was about, like the things that he was wanting to accomplish, and I was like, “That's not what I was told. I feel like I've gotten this whole thing wrong.” I didn't necessarily do anything at that moment, but it's stuck in my head. And then you had something else that would come up and then something else that would come up. And so it just started to crack the foundation. Those questions kept staying in my head and staying in my head. And then again, it just blew up in 2020. 

Jill (host): Since leaving her life as a trad wife, Dominique has gone on to create her online book boutique, Paperbacks and Fry Bread, which specializes in diverse and inclusive books. As part of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina, she has a particular passion for allowing people to see themselves as heroes in books. 

Dominique Burleson: I consider myself a storyteller. So, you know, writer, artist, all of that. But it all falls under the word storyteller. And that's it. I'd like to think that my ancestors kind of passed that down to me.

Jill (host): Samantha continues to work for Life After Hate, where she's dedicated her life to repenting for the dangerous racist rhetoric that she promoted. When I asked what she's looking most forward to in her new life, she didn't have to search hard for an answer. 

Samantha: I'm really looking forward to being a part of the community that dismantles the far right, and calls it out, and takes away the boogeyman of it, so that we can actually start talking about it for real, and not just saying like, well those are bad people, and we're not bad people. Like, no, we're people with bad ideas. And we need to be called out on it, and we need reality to be in our lives. In real life, I'm just really excited to watch my baby, like, grow and become a person and, like, learn what carrots are. And, like, just, it's so cool. I love it. 

Jill (host): Alt right movements prey on our need for friendship and community. It's how they recruit women like Samantha and Dominique. And community is so important. In May of 2023, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new advisory about the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country. We're meant to do life together, but there are lots of ways to find connections that build our communities and our democracy rather than tear it down.

If you're looking for a community that's committed to making the world a better place, join us at Red Wine and Blue. We provide everything women need to successfully organize in their communities and beyond. Fighting extremism is serious business, but Red Wine and Blue is proof that we can stand up for democracy while making friends and having a little fun along the way.