The Hate Machine

We all know that there are many people who find themselves in the crosshairs of online hate campaigns. We see the headlines or read their complaints. But every now and then it’s worth hitting pause and taking a hard look at just how extreme this hate can get — and consider how a platform for free speech has, in many cases, been transformed into a hate machine. David French and his family saw this extremity firsthand after he wrote a piece criticizing the alt right. He joined Terry Gross to explain the reality of what it’s like out there: “I began to see images, for example, of my youngest daughter, who we adopted from Ethiopia many years ago, who at the time was 7 years old – images of her in a gas chamber with a – Donald Trump in an SS uniform about to push the button to kill her. I saw images of her Photoshopped or, you know, artist’s rendering of her face in slave fields.” And believe it or not, it got worse.