Hacking Hate

Award-winning Swedish journalist My Vingren goes undercover as a white supremacist in Simon Klose’s dynamic and socially charged documentary, aiming to expose a network of neo-Nazi and far-right organizations worldwide. Hacking Hate is an investigative journey unraveling the pervasive influence of extremism and its origins, making it a chilling entry at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.

The Ethics of Infiltration

Hacking Hate arrives just in time to add a drop of nightmare fuel to your 2024 election anxiety. Simon Klose’s film delves deep into the perils of social media, revealing how hate insidiously permeates global politics and influences mass murderers. Following a surge in far-right extremism during France’s recent election, this documentary offers a timely exploration of how white nationalists wield influence over democratic systems.  As if you need another reason to cringe every time you see a Tesla, Vingren’s examination of the ascent of far-right influencers from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, takes us down the rabbit hole of profitable hate and power grabs.

Enter award-winning Swedish journalist, My Vingren, a fiery redhead dubbed “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” for her decade-long career tracking online hate groups. Questioning the ethics of digitally altering her appearance for a fake profile, she transforms into “Andreas” to infiltrate one of Sweden’s most notorious online hate communities.  We follow along as she consumes an endless amount of racist, bigoted, and misogynistic posts while going about her normal activities. It’s a daily scroll through the muck of muscle-bound Hitler fanatics, racist mass-murdering gun enthusiasts, white women-hating gamers, and one mysterious American DJ with ties to Moscow’s infamous mercenary killers, The Wagner Group.

For disillusioned white men feeling marginalized in a changing world, the journey from isolation to nationalism unfolds seamlessly through a simple YouTube click. Extremist groups have abandoned their white-hooded street marches for a more potent recruitment tool, the internet, leveraging its reach for political clout and profit. Vingren’s acceptance into a hate group sets her on a three-year quest to uncover the mastermind behind a site whose members have been linked to global acts of violence. From live-streaming their kills for clout in honor of men like “The Golden One” – the first YouTube hate influencer that catches her eye – to discovering ties to a 2022 stabbing spree, her mission evolves from documenting online hate’s influence to exposing its deadly repercussions worldwide.

Hate Breeds Violence

Navigating through The Golden One’s network, Vingren stumbles upon alarming connections to extremist activities spanning continents. She interviews Anika Collier Navaroli, former top Safety Policy advisor for Twitter and Twitch, revealing how easily hate thrives within online platforms. During the post-2016 U.S. election, Navaroli saw the rise of hate, sparked by the divisive words of former President Donald Trump on his social media. This scene in the documentary is stunning; it will keep you up at night and perhaps inspire you to finally end your internal debate over deleting your X-account. Despite warnings, platforms like Twitter and Twitch prioritized engagement over ethics, fostering an environment where racism and bigotry thrive unchecked. The consequences were dire: from predicting the Capitol riot to condoning live-streamed violence, these platforms profit from controversy while masking themselves as guardians of free speech. After a particularly egregious tweet that blatantly broke Twitter rules, Navaroli talks about an emergency meeting to drop certain ethics codes to make room for Donald Trump’s racist tweets. From there, it was impossible to stuff that orange cat back in its online bag – hate skyrocketed and with every tweet came more meetings and bendable rules to satisfy his hungry followers. Hate drives engagement and engagement brings in advertising dollars. It’s a model that would pluck the coin off of the dead eyes of our republic; a lawless sort of new Wild West, where regulations on speech are nonexistent.

An Investigation Uncovers Shocking Links to Political Power Grabs

In a stunning discovery, Vingren’s pursuit leads her to Vincent, a shadowy figure linked to The Golden One’s inner circle. She sets out to unravel a transcontinental trail from California to Moscow tracking Vincent and who he is working for. She uncovers a terrifying link that (for lack of spoiling the climax of this documentary) shows the reach hate has and the dark figures profiting off of it. Her research led her to publish her findings in the Swedish anti-racist magazine, Expo, ironically founded by Dragon Tattoo author Stieg Larsson.

Visually lacking, this documentary makes up for it in featured interviews as Vingren painstakingly pieces together Vincent’s true identity. Interwoven with clips of hateful content and harrowing live streams, the narrative Klose presents here is as informative as it is unsettling– painting a dystopian picture of an internet capable of invading homes and destabilizing societies. Nowhere feels safe from the rise of White Nationalism and this film does a superb job helping us novices recognize its pervasive reach. As we brace for another election cycle, Hacking Hate illuminates an underground movement that threatens our political systems, our civil rights and the safety of our public spaces by exposing fault lines deep enough for hate to seep through. If this documentary keeps you awake at night, let it fortify you with knowledge that according to Vingren, information remains our strongest defense.