My Vingren is a well-regarded and award-winning Swedish journalist. Deemed by the media as “the real life ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’” she is known for her in-depth investigations, especially into white supremacist networks. However, her latest journalistic pursuit is about to bring her into considerably dangerous territory. With the use of a fake profile, Vingren dives deep undercover online as a white supremacist and begins to thread together the extreme right’s campaigns to recruit and influence individuals, radicalizing them into a discourse of hate speech and xenophobia. But her ambitious embedded approach comes at a price. 

My’s meticulous investigation eventually leads her to Anika Collier Navaroli, the instrumental whistleblower at X (formerly Twitter) who initially kicked Donald Trump off of the platform, and to Imran Ahmed, a researcher who was sued by Elon Musk for exposing the hate speech culture on X. Together, My, Anika and Imran determine the ways that tech companies can be held accountable and how white supremacy and its violent tendencies can be disrupted forever. 

Hacking Hate’s no-holds-barred approach soberingly uncovers the epidemic of hate that manifests itself online (as well as in plain sight) and starkly highlights the vulnerability of democracy.––Jose Rodriguez

Simon Klose