[“They’re hucksters,” says the director of White Noise, a
new doc that focuses on three prominent right-wing figures: Richard
Spencer, Mike Cernovich, and Lauren Southern.] [[link removed]]


PORTSIDE CULTURE

WHY THE ALT-RIGHT’S REAL POWER IS IN THE NARRATIVE IT SELLS  
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Alissa Wilkinson
October 23, 2020
Vox
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_ “They’re hucksters,” says the director of White Noise, a new
doc that focuses on three prominent right-wing figures: Richard
Spencer, Mike Cernovich, and Lauren Southern. _

Richard Spencer in White Noise., The Atlantic

 

One among a sea of unfortunate consequences of the last four years is
that ordinary people have heard of many political figures who once
would have been relegated to the fringe. There’s Mike Cernovich, a
self-styled provocateur and meme creator who is an InfoWars regular.
There’s Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who became
especially notorious during the violent “Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville in 2017. And there’s Lauren Southern, a YouTube
personality and anti-immigrant activist who famously supported the
“Defend Europe” group, which opposes search-and-rescue operations
for refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.

These three individuals are the focus of _White Noise_, an excellent
new documentary from Daniel Lombroso, a journalist at the Atlantic.
The film paints a portrait of the past few years of their lives, but
more than that, it subtly exposes how much of the internet-fueled
alt-right is driven by a desire to get rich, become well-known, and
draw acolytes. Lombroso spent several years tagging along with
Cernovich, Spencer, and Southern, attending their events, letting them
talk, and quietly allowing them to do the work of unraveling their own
arguments.

I recently spoke with Lombroso about how he secured this access, what
he learned, and how it’s changed him. Our conversation has been
lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

[A man and a woman sitting across from each other in a restaurant.]

Students For Western Civilisation President George Hutcheson with
Lauren Southern in _White Noise._ 

The Atlantic

Alissa Wilkinson

How did you get connected with these subjects?

Daniel Lombroso

I started covering the alt-right as a reporter at the Atlantic way
back in 2016, before the figures in the film were especially well
known. It started with a series of short documentaries. I was actually
the guy who caught a roomful of people breaking out into Nazi salutes
[[link removed]] [in
2016], which was a pivotal journalistic moment that solidified the
alt-right as fundamentally a white nationalist — and potentially a
neo-Nazi — movement.

So, I was covering the alt-right in short documentary form. I did a
profile on Richard Spencer
[[link removed]] back
before he was, you know, essentially synonymous with David Duke the
way he is now.

Then I returned to my day job as a video producer at the Atlantic,
covering all sorts of issues, but really carving out a niche around
fundamentalism. I did a piece on far-right Christian media
called _Church Militant_
[[link removed]].
I did a piece on Israeli settlers in the West Bank
[[link removed]] and
spent two weeks there.

Then Charlottesville
[[link removed]] happened.
It was eight months after the Nazi salute excerpt that went viral, and
it was a pivotal moment for a million reasons. In the newsroom, we
knew we had to do something deeper. So, I immediately circled up with
Jeff Goldberg, the editor-in-chief [at the Atlantic], and Kasia
[Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg], who ran Atlantic Studios. All of us had
always wanted to do a feature. I think we didn’t know when it would
happen or what it would be about, but right away when Charlottesville
happened, and when Trump failed to disavow white nationalists
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we knew that this had to be the story.

Alissa Wilkinson

So that was three years ago, and it’s evident in the film that
several years elapse from the beginning to the end. What was it like
to stick with them for so long?

Daniel Lombroso

I spent three years reporting out the film, beginning with Richard,
then meeting [Mike] Cernovich, and then eventually getting access to
Lauren [Southern]. She was the hardest and actually took eight months
to negotiate access to. And for me, she’s the most pivotal to the
film. She is a female face of racism, and she embodies such blatant
contradictions.

The Atlantic was really great about giving me space. I basically work
alone as a reporter and a filmmaker, so I’m a one-man band. I shot
the film and directed it and co-produced it.

I started by reporting and filming with maybe 20 or 30 subjects on the
right. It became clear to me pretty quickly that I didn’t want to
just amplify a fringe voice, someone who wasn’t relevant, and make
them relevant by giving them the credibility of the Atlantic. I
quickly decided, along with Jeff and Kasia, that it had to be these
three figures, because they have followings in the millions and a
tremendous amount of influence. Cernovich can start a meme from his
laptop in Orange County, and a few days later, it’s coming out of
[Sean] Hannity’s mouth on Fox News and then eventually the
president’s mouth.

It was a slow burn. After Charlottesville, I spent two or three months
all over the country. By October or November of [2017], we were
planning on those three [subjects]. And it took until May of the
following year, eight months later, for Lauren to sign on.

From there, I just tracked their stories very closely. For Richard,
it’s a little more than three years; with Mike and Lauren it’s
more than two. At its core, _White Noise_ is a “follow film.” To
do that right, you need time. And thankfully the Atlantic gave me the
space to do that.

[Mike Cernovich in a corner of a room in his house, with his computer
and flanked by advertisements for a brain supplement.]

Mike Cernovich in _White Noise_.

 The Atlantic

Alissa Wilkinson

This film struck me as a portrait of what it takes to be a grifter
today, or at least it explains the social and financial rewards
inherent in taking extreme positions on the internet.

DANIEL LOMBROSO

They’re opportunists, they’re hucksters, and I would say it’s
fair to say they’re grifters, too. It’s tricky, because they do
believe what they say — Cernovich a little bit less than the other
two, but they definitely believe it enough to say it.

But, they’re also in it for the fame and for the money. I think
Cernovich is the most extreme example of this. He starts the film very
comfortable using the term “alt-right.” When that term becomes a
little bit more toxic after Charlottesville, he says, “Fuck the
Nazis,” and gets away from them and re-brands. And then at the end
of the film, you see he’s selling supplements and lifestyle
regimens.

Lauren is really interesting. She knows what her package is. She is
very articulate, and she can use her looks, and she’s very
convincing — and on YouTube, that’s the sort of thing that works.
It almost feels Stalin-esque, like old Russian propaganda stuff; if
you look down the barrel of the lens and say something that’s
convincing, it _feels_ true. And she’s able to back it up with
pseudo-science that’s usually not accurate.

Their motivations are so mixed, and at its core, that’s what the
film seeks to expose. The real power of the alt-right is that
they’re selling a narrative, that they understand life, and that if
you feel lost or depressed but follow them, you’ll be connected to
the great history of white civilization.

By allowing you to sit with the subjects for so long, the film lets
you see how mixed their motivations really are. They have a vested
interest. They want to be famous. They want to get rich. And they are
constantly contradicting the things that they believe.

Alissa Wilkinson

A challenge in this era seems to be figuring out how to write about
these folks without aestheticizing them, without talking wonderingly
about the “clean-cut” neo-Nazi. The film shows that a lot of what
they’re doing is essentially leaning on an appealing aesthetic.
They’re presenting a picture to people of who _they_ could be. Are
there special challenges in presenting that in film, which is a visual
medium?

Daniel Lombroso

We didn’t want the film to glorify them in any way. That influenced
everything from the scene selection to the shot selection. We had very
spirited conversations about everything from the way we cover the
subjects down to shot-level decisions. We screened for diverse
audiences and built a really diverse team around the film.

What they’re doing _is_ fundamentally aesthetic. They’re so
obsessed with their appearance that it is obviously part of the story.
I think it’s our responsibility as journalists to cover that
ethically and responsibly, and to be highly critical. I think the film
does that.

And you are missing the mark if you ignore it, because the appeal of
the alt-right is to upper-middle-class, highly educated white kids in
New York and LA. It’s hardly about the white nationalism. It’s
about the community. It’s about a clique. It’s about the way you
look and dress, and the way you say, “Hello” — all of their
interesting codes of communication, different kinds of ways they
communicate online but also in the physical sphere. That’s pretty
fundamental to understanding the movement.

[Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes on a TV set.]

Lauren Southern with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in _White
Noise._ 

The Atlantic

In the film, you see that in various ways. In the conference at the
beginning, when Richard says, “Hail Trump!” — we really dwell on
the fact that they’re young. He says, “Stand up if you’re under
the age of 30,” and the whole room stands. Most of those kids went
to college — I interviewed a lot of them — and they are educated.
They have a very clear aesthetic. You might call it Hitlerjugend
[[link removed]], 20th-century fascism,
but it’s like suit and tie, and they all have a haircut that they
call “the fashy.”

Lauren’s package is all about her image. I have a story on this
[[link removed]];
she’s very conscious of her image and she uses it. She very
consciously uses it. She’s an intelligent person and knows how to be
convincing, but she knows the package she’s selling and uses it to
maximize her effect and her influence.

There are really dangerous ways to cover that. I mean, there was a
botched profile early on — I don’t want to call out who wrote it
— that really dwelled on Richard being a dapper white nationalist.
We’ve seen all sorts of iterations of that. I think it just comes
down to being very, very careful, from the shot selection to the way
you talk about the subjects. But their aesthetic is really fundamental
to the whole project, in the way it always has been for fascist
movements.

Alissa Wilkinson

So much about fascism is about the myths and legends that the look of
it calls to mind.

Daniel Lombroso

Exactly.

Alissa Wilkinson

Sometimes when I’m watching a documentary, I feel like I’m just
reading a magazine article. So one thing I appreciate about _White
Noise_ is how skillfully you use the visual medium to reinforce and
undercut what people are saying out loud, or to get at elements that
you couldn’t easily capture in a piece of writing. I’ll never get
over the look on Cernovich’s face when he is hawking skin care
products.

Daniel Lombroso

Or in the car wash. He’s sitting, depressed, going through a car
wash.

Alissa Wilkinson

Are you looking for those images as you shoot?

Daniel Lombroso

When people watch a movie, they want to see a _movie_. What I’m
really looking for are quiet, telling moments that don’t require
dialogue. What destroys most Hollywood films is exposition, or saying
something in dialogue that you would never say in real life, just to
set up the audience. That’s the bane of everything I wanted to do.
In the edit, I was trying to find ways to set up and say things that
are very subtle.

I’m always looking for ways to let the subjects hang themselves. For
instance, in one scene, Richard says very proudly, “I’m bigger
than the movement” — which is insane for a million reasons. And
then five minutes later in the film, which was the following day in
real life, he gives a speech in a school of agriculture, and six
people are there, maybe 10.

This is my first feature, but I’m always looking for visual ways to
tell the story and to stay subtle. I think that’s ultimately a lot
more powerful than a talking head or someone telling you, “This is a
racist movement. Cernovich is a grifter.” I think it’s much more
revealing when you just see him putting on facial serum and talking
about how that’s his latest pivot.

Alissa Wilkinson

There’s a bit where Lauren is watching a video of herself talking,
and she’s sitting with another woman who is side-eyeing her the
whole time. It felt like that scene encapsulates something else the
film shows: the kind of bubble that your subjects built around
themselves to elevate their importance. Richard’s statement is a
good example of that. They know they’re influential, but they also
have surrounded themselves with people who keep saying “You’re
influential” to them.

Did you get a sense of that while following them around? Were there
times where you were, like, “Wow, your sense of reality is so far
from reality”?

Daniel Lombroso

Absolutely. There’s so much disinformation on the far right. People
just casually joke about things like Pizzagate
[[link removed]],
which is just false. There’s not even a basement at Comet Pizza,
where [according to the disproven Pizzagate conspiracy theory] there
was allegedly a pedophilia ring in the basement.

But all of them have a sense of inflated importance. I think that’s
because they very intentionally surround themselves with yes men, or
with people who play to their ego.

Richard is the most obvious example. He’s constantly followed by
mostly younger kids in their 20s, college kids or kids right out of
college, who have this dated but modernized fascist aesthetic. On a
typical day, especially when I’m not filming and just sitting with
them, they’re pouring him whiskey and buying him dinner and
they’re fulfilling his every command. He has the air of a cult
leader.

[A woman in a helmet bearing a “MAGA” sticker and carrying a
cellphone in a hand-held camera rig.]

Lauren Southern livestreaming a rally in Berkeley, California in April
2017.

 Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

With Lauren and Mike, it’s to a lesser extent. This might be
surprising to people, but Mike is sort of a father figure to people in
his sphere. In that alpha-male section of the alt-right, called “the
manosphere” or whatever, people really trust Mike and turn to him
for advice. So, when Lucian Wintrich — who we ultimately played down
a little bit, he’s a far-right provocateur who started the
“Twinks4Trump” meme
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went through a breakup, Mike was one of his first calls. He wanted
Mike’s advice. I think that’s what sets apart Mike from the other
two characters: In his world, people really trust him, and that might
be surprising.

Lauren is going through a transformation in the film, and ultimately,
it’s an incomplete one. She’s always doubting herself. She gets
her validation online, and I think the moment you mentioned is a
really good example. Everything’s mediated through screens. She’s
in Moscow, watching herself speaking in London through a screen, and
then Brittany, who’s jealous of her, is side-eyeing her watching
herself.

Lauren derives a lot of her confidence from comments, and she obsesses
over negative comments and things that don’t go her way. That’s
been hard for her, and continues to be hard for her. I think part of
it is just that she was so young when she got into this, and this is
all she knows. It’s all she’s ever known.

Alissa Wilkinson

That attention bubble seems so warping. I had the feeling
watching _White Noise_ that I had watching the two
[[link removed]] documentaries
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Steve Bannon that’ve come out in the last few years, or that I have
every time I read one of those explosive
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Chotiner
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at the New Yorker. I wonder, why on earth would these people talk to a
journalist or filmmaker, or let cameras follow them around? What do
you think is the character trait or quality that makes a person
willing to have a filmmaker follow them around for a few years when
they know that person is is not sympathetic to their views?

Daniel Lombroso

Part of it is narcissism, and that comes across pretty clearly in the
film. The other is that I work really small. I shoot alone, I’m a
one-man band, and that helps neutralize them. They’re all willing to
sit and give a quote here and there. But it’s sort of a
misconception that the alt-right wants attention — they’re happy
to give you a quote here and there, or sit for an interview, as long
as they’re in control. This sort of unvarnished, all-access thing
was incredibly difficult to achieve. And I think part of the reason
they did it was that I was genuinely curious, and I kept coming back.

But part of it was their narcissism. I think they thought that they
could outsmart me, that if they only depict a positive part of their
life — for instance, Cernovich’s sunny, southern California life
— that could help redeem him or rewrite his public image.

Part of it, too, especially with Lauren — I’m a little bit older
than her, but I’m around her age, and we grew up experiencing a lot
of the same things. So there are enough reference points in common
that, when you’re spending hundreds of hours off-camera just killing
time in an airport or getting lunch, there’s enough to talk about to
kind of get them to that place where they’re willing to open up.

In the film, you see many of the juiciest moments. But all documentary
filmmakers know that you spend hours and hours to get people to that
point. The three minutes of Russia in the film was a 10-day trip. It
was that way across the board.

Alissa Wilkinson

You said you covered fundamentalism in the past. Is there an overlap
between fundamentalism and this topic?

Daniel Lombroso

There’s absolutely overlap. Extremism allows you to feel like
you’re part of a historical narrative. You feel like you’re living
for the past and for the future, that you’re part of something
larger than your mundane, day-to-day, even boring experience.

I don’t mean to conflate these things because they are different,
but you see that with far-right evangelicals. In the _Church
Militant_ piece, I interviewed a bunch of interns who were working at
this far-right media company, and it was the same narrative. One of
them said, “I was lost for years and years and years, wandering in
the darkness, until I met Michael Voris,” the person who started
Church Militant. It’s the same narrative.

[Leading Conservatives Gather For Annual CPAC Event In National
Harbor, Maryland]

Richard Spencer at CPAC in February 2017.

 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

With Israeli settlers — again, I don’t mean to conflate the
situation there with white supremacy! — but there’s this feeling
that in settling the West Bank they’re writing the next chapter of
Jewish history. That’s a lot more fun, in a way, than just being a
person who will die and everyone will forget you.

So, there is this gravitas to it. At its core, it’s the same appeal
— a profoundly emotional or even metaphysical appeal.

Alissa Wilkinson

So you spent three years in the alt-right’s world. How did the
experience change the way you think about American politics?

Daniel Lombroso

I don’t know that I was ever naïve enough to think that we lived in
a post-racial America, but I was probably a little bit more hopeful
going into the project, and now I’m a lot more cynical about the
whole thing. The film is an unsympathetic eulogy to the alt-right. You
see the figures fall off at the end, but their ideas are now so
clearly part of our discourse. They’re on Fox News every night.
There are newer influencers coming up who are saying things a whole
lot worse. Tucker Carlson is now the highest-rated person on broadcast
TV and he’s saying things that I heard Richard say three or four
years ago.

It’s been very depressing to see the scale of white nationalism and
conspiracy in both American and especially European politics, and I
just don’t see it going away. I think it’s wrong to think that if
Trump loses the election, it’s done and it’s over, because even if
a section of his base lost, they’re still there. There are still
kids who are finding these videos on YouTube and being radicalized by
them.

In the way we talked about radical Islam, for better or for worse, as
being a defining issue of the late ’90s and early ’00s, I think
white domestic terrorism and white nationalism are issues we’re
going to be dealing with for a long time.

White Noise_ is available to digitally rent on platforms including
Apple TV and Google Play; __see the website for details_
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