Quick Facts
Biography
Talia Lavin (born 1989) is an American journalist. She is the author of Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, published in 2020.
Life
Lavin grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and was raised Modern Orthodox. She attended SAR High School and graduated from Harvard University in 2012 with a degree in comparative literature. She was a Fulbright scholar and spent a year in Ukraine from 2012 to 2013.
Lavin is Jewish.
Career
Lavin was a fact-checker at The New Yorker. She resigned from her position in 2018 after mistakenly comparing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer's tattoo to an Iron Cross. ICE released a statement via Twitter that the officer's tattoo is a Titan 2 platoon symbol, accompanied by the Spartan Creed. Lavin had deleted the original tweet before the agency's statement. In 2018, she was hired as researcher on far-right extremism by Media Matters for America.
Until January 2019 Lavin wrote a weekly political column in HuffPost, and she also worked as a columnist for MSNBC Daily. Her work appeared in GQ, Jewcy, HuffPost, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The New Yorker, New York magazine, The Nation, and The Washington Post.
Bibliography
Books
- Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy. Hachette Books. 2020. ISBN 9780306846434
Essays and reporting
- "[Untitled review of The Binc bar]". Goings on About Town. Bar Tab. The New Yorker. 93 (10): 33. April 24, 2017.
Critical studies and reviews of Lavin's work
- Culture warlords
- Szalai, Jennifer (2020-10-14). "An Undercover Trip Into the Rageful Worlds of Incels and White Supremacists". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
- Kellogg, Carolyn (2020-10-27). "An Expedition Deep Into an Underworld of Online Hate". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
- "'My goal was to destroy him' – Jewish journalist Talia Lavin on infiltrating white supremacist groups online". independent. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
- "White Supremacy And Its Online Reach : It's Been a Minute". NPR.org. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
- "Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy | Jewish Book Council". www.jewishbookcouncil.org. 2020. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
- Venkataramakrishnan, Siddarth (8 February 2021). "'Culture Warlords' — undercover among neo-Nazis". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- Tuttle, Kate (October 22, 2020). "A writer infiltrates the world of white nationalism in 'Culture Warlords' - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 1 September 2022.