"By revealing the machinery and dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta illustrates the way propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work. These invisible rulers create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true. DiResta predicts the consequences...

"This is a book about how global movements build power with Internet memes"--

""SHED MY DNA": three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they've exploded in popularity. What's often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level--the family. In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter...

"Talia Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers. Culture Warlords is the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within...

"Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors...

Media accounts to the contrary, the Alt-Right didn't just burst out of nowhere in 2016. They have been building their network quietly for years, using bulletin boards and social media to spread a toxic hybrid of technological utopianism, reactionary philosophy, and racial hatred. Wendling traces the rise of the movement and the evolution of its ideas, and he introduces us to some of its key figures. Exploring links between Alt-Right rhetoric and hate...