The result is The Atlantics first-ever feature-length documentary, White Noise, which focuses on the lives of three far-right figures: Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy theorist and a sex blogger turned media entrepreneur; Lauren Southern, an anti-feminist, anti-immigration YouTube star; and Richard Spencer, a white-power ideologue.

J.M. Berger: Trump is the glue that binds the alt-right

Progressives like to believe that racism is an opiate of the ignorant. But the alt-rights leaders are educated and wealthy, groomed at some of Americas most prestigious institutions. The more time I spent documenting the movement, the more ubiquitous I realized it was. I bumped into one subject dancing in Bushwick with his Asian girlfriend, and another walking around DuPont Circle hitting a vape. Their racism is woven into the fabric of New York, Washington, D.C., and Paris, just as much as Birmingham, Alabama, or Little Rock, Arkansas.

During a visit to Richard Spencers apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, I began to understand how the alt-right works. Evan McLaren, a lawyer, wrote master plans on a whiteboard. A band of college kids poured whiskey for Spencer, adjusted his gold-framed Napoleon painting, and discussed the coming Identitarian revolution. Spencer offered a sense of historical purpose to his bored, middle-class followers. In his telling, they werent just white Americans, but descendants of the Greeks and Romans. Myths are more powerful than rationality, Spencer told me. We make life worth living.

Read: Trumps white-nationalist pipeline

White Noise is about the seductive power of extremism. Hatred feels good. But the fix is fleeting. As the film progresses, the subjects reveal the contradictions at the heart of their world. Southern advocates for traditional gender roles, but resents the misogyny and sexism of her peers. Cernovich warns that diversity is code for white genocide, but has an Iranian wife and biracial kids. Spencer swears hell lead the white-nationalist revolutionuntil its more comfortable for him to move home to live with his wealthy mother in Montana. For so many who feel lost or alone, these avatars of hate offer a promise: Follow us, and life will be better.

White Noise shows how empty that promise is.

Toward the end of my reporting, my family traveled to Kielce, Poland, with my sole surviving grandmother, Nina Gottlieb, to retrace her steps fleeing the Nazis. They had signs: Jews and dogs are not allowed, she told us, as we gathered near her childhood home. My grandmother spent the war hiding under a Polish Catholic name, Janina Winiewski, until she was eventually resettled by HIAS, the Jewish refugee resettlement organization targeted by the white nationalist who murdered 11 people as they worshipped at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Were all born innocent babies. What happens to us? my grandmother asked.

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Four Years Embedded With the Alt-Right - The Atlantic