Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I really wanted to like this book — and I enjoyed parts of it, but it wasn’t what I was expecting, and at points I felt like the author was just arguing with these influencers (who obviously cannot respond) rather than giving a social commentary about how and why these women have become so popular.

I appreciated the history of alt right and far right female influencers, especially how they reflected on their own “origin stories.” It was fascinating to see how various female influencers have created their own niche subcultures, whether it be of the “trad wife”, “media personality,” or “stand by her (alt-right) man” persuasion.” But she spends a great deal of the book explaining how and why these women are wrong, which I felt was a less important facet. I didn’t need to be convinced these women were wrong as much as I needed to know how many women are finding and following them, and how to help friends see the pipeline for what it is. If the parts where she refutes their assertions cut, it would be a much more compelling (and much shorter) read.

If you want to have a lot of research and talking points to deprogram friends and family who may have fallen down the alt-right rabbit hole, I’m sure this book will be thoroughly highlighted for you. It is nothing if not impeccably researched.

The Women of the Far Right coves a very important topic - the place of female influencers in the white supremacist movement and the impact that has. However, I felt the depth of the topic wasn't there. I was hoping for a bit of a deeper dive into each of the personalities Leidig was tracking and maybe more useful tips on how to support those we love and care about from falling down these far right rabbit holes. I do credit Leidig for doing a fairly deep dive on the methods these women use in social media - that was much more the focus of this book. While a bit dry in writing style, I still learned quite a bit and found this to be an interesting and worthwhile read.

This book is a look at the ways in which discourse on the internet is manipulated to further an agenda. I found this work timely and relevant to a modern society, although I would have appreciated if the author applied their methods to platforms such as TikTok, which are seeing a rise in far right and tradwife propaganda.

I found the book to be an engaging read but for someone who does not enjoy reading a more academic based text would probably find this work dry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the eARC.

Used for work purpose in the CVE field. Thank you for providing a copy to me. It was very insightful

I liked that this book followed a few specific people. That made the narrative easier to follow. I also felt I learned a lot about the subject even coming to it with a lot of background already. I felt it was a bit repetitive sometimes but that is likely because I read a lot on this subject so I knew a fair amount already. If I was coming into without that background, I probably would have been glad that I didn't have to keep referencing earlier in the book to know what was going on. There were a couple specific parts that bugged me, like talking about how one woman felt the Mrs. America TV show got things wrong about Phyllis Schlafly but not actually clarifying if the show was wrong or not. There was also a section that talked about the hypocrisy of saying women should not be involved in politics or be politicians and be homemakers instead and yet these women are definitely involved in politics. The part about women should not be working in politics at all is definitely hypocritical, but none of these women are running for office, so saying women shouldn't be in government is not hypocritical.

This is a complicated but important read, especially in recent years, as far right women influencers have begun appearing more and more on mainstream social media platforms. This book took me a while to read, and it requires quite a bit of focus to get through, but it's 100% worth your time and effort. This is an exceptionally informative book, and I will most definitely be buying a physical copy to go through slowly again, take the time to annotate, then lend to my partner and my friends. 10/10 will recommend.

I think i am too chronically online and chronically engaged to have gained any new knowledge from this. It’s very much a beginners course on the subject and I think that’s so important to have for people who touch grass way more often than I do. I am fascinated by this subject and the ways in which white supremacy infiltrates and appropriates every subculture, trend, space to use that as a recruitment tool. The writing is propulsive and engaging and I read this in massive chunks without realizing how much progress I had made.

This book has such an interesting premise and as someone who not only researches political movements and the far right, but spends enough time on social media to see the influence of these women online, I think the author has grounds to make a really stunning argument about the nefariousness of women far right influencers and their value to their movement. Unfortunately, I did not feel as though the book achieved what it could. The arguments did a lot more telling than showing with the phrase “I will argue x in this book” appearing so many times without the corresponding argument being illustrated. If this only appeared in the introduction it would be understandable, but every chapter had multiple examples of this which made it feel as though there was no flow in the argument of the book. This lack of argumentation carries into the rest of the work. In one section in particular discussing incels, multiple times it is stated that incel ideology is violent without demonstrating the violence within the ideology. This occurs again in a chapter discussing the misappropriation of scientific research in which the author states multiple times how these influencers mischaracterized studies without explaining what many of the studies actually said. Further, sometimes a point is articulated with the following paragraphs seeming to diverge from that point into a confusing thought spiral. Beyond this, the author’s own views of the women seem to be inserted throughout the book. Of course, I don’t agree with this ideology and believe that the author doesn’t either, but the use of less gracious wording towards the people discussed in the book made it come across at times as a less scholarly piece of work than it is. Disappointingly, I wouldn’t recommend this book due to the lack of strong, cohesive argumentation despite the really interesting subject matter.

The Women of the Far Right was an academic exploration into social media influencers who post about their far right beliefs, particularly those regarding the need for white women to be traditional wives, homemakers, and mothers. This book felt like it was meant for those who were fairly new to the academic area of far right radicalization, and I felt like I didn't get much new information out of it. Eviane Leidig got her information from publicly available social media posts, and wrote generally about these influencers (who all felt interchangeable by the end). I didn't feel there was much of a thesis behind Leidig's writing, and the final chapter regarding how to combat online radicalization did not feel very useful to the individual. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Will I remember much of this book a year from now? Not likely.

Thank you to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This was good as a primer on the topic though it wish it had gone a little deeper. The highlights of a few names in the space was neat but I requested the book more because I wanted to see how these influencers really impact regular women who consume their content and that I was left wanting.

“The women of the far right” was a great introduction to female online radicalization in the age of social media.
The book was neatly structured but sometimes I felt like the author lost herself in terms of sticky to the topic of the chapter.
Picking out some key women figures in the digital far right world was really compelling and interesting. But I wished that the author also explored more the impact of those women’s voice on day to day women who feel seen by their arguments, what it does with them, how they radicalize them through those influencers.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I've been sitting with this one for a few days. I enjoyed my time with this book well enough, I thought that Leidig's writing style was pretty engaging and honest but ultimately, I was left wondering who is this book trying to speak to? The main reason I felt this way is that there really isn't a deep cut about any of the women presented or their methods. It's really a primer on the topic of the tradcon women influencers and their impact in mainstreaming extremist views but a lot of it was just confirmation of things people who have the vocabulary to look for such a book would have most likely already observed with just a quick scroll through a few of these women's IG feeds. Long story short it was good but I wish it went deeper.

While we get to "meet" a small selection of the women of the far right, it was shocking how interchangeable they came across as compared to the men who occupy similar spaces of the "manoshpere".

Some of the criticism was a little far-fetched too, like at one point there's a tangent about how most of them felt the need to use screen names when creating their accounts as if it isn't the norm to use a screen name when creating a social media account that isn't a Facebook account no matter where on the political spectrum you fall.

There is also an undercurrent of presumption that platforms/authorities have a desire to curtail these people's influence at all that I found rather questionable. I enjoyed that Leidig really pointed out that social isolation seems to be one of the biggest factor leading a lot of women down that particular rabbit hole but that this premade community will spit them out just as easily as it took them in. I feel like there was something to lean in there in how we can counter that particular brand of extremism, but that Leidig didn't do much with it.

More of a 3.25/3.5 than an actual 3.

Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC of this title.

This came on my radar when Tressie McMillan Cottom mentioned she'd be reading it as part of a book group this fall, and I trust her suggestions. This was good, though I'll caution that it's definitely on the drier, more academic-y style of writing that may not be for you (especially if you come directly from the other book her book group's reading, Kristen Kobes Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, which definitely pairs well with this, though it's much more "digested" and readable than this is - this is the sort of thing the more digested book cites in its footnotes).

This is doing good, important work explaining how the Far Right movements are utilizing the tools provided by social media and influencer culture to attract more members to their cause through online radicalization. It can get a little repetitive - we go through the same three or four influencers and what they're doing multiple times - but that's definitely part of the writing style where this feels like someone citing their sources as part of a thesis or other scholarly work. You can generally get the vibe of what each chapter is pointing out and go into skim mode when it comes to the examples if you're more of a layperson like me.

Eviane Ledig creates a fantastic view into Far Right and the effect that women have had on the political movement with The Women of the Far Right.

Ledig allows readers to dive deep into the politics that fuel the Far Right and how many women have helped propel the agendas through social media and other styles of information spreading.

Too often, the role of women in the far-right is underplayed, so I was relieved to see a book on this very important and timely topic. I had already started reading Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby and was pleased to see that this book actually referenced it, and I think those who got something out of that book would find this one to be highly informative as well.

Published by Columbia University Press, this well-researched, well-cited book tracks the rise and fall of the online “alt-right”, with a focus on the female influencers within its sphere. The book leans away from stereotypes on both sides of the metaphorical aisle that imply women are harmless and can do no wrong, describing how these women can and do spread damaging and hateful ideas online in an effective manner. As well as the general history of these influencers and how they came to the Internet’s attention, their tactics for drawing views to their content, building an audience, making their messages seem reasonable, and marketing themselves are explored in-depth. There is a lot of good stuff for those interested in propaganda tactics and media literacy, topics that have intrigued me since I was about 10.

I recommend this book as an invaluable resource that deftly explains a small but influential segment of modern internet culture, and I would even go as far to say that it is of enough relevance that public and school libraries should purchase a few copies. While the books is not oriented towards youth, older high school and college students with a lot of exposure to online influencers would probably find the book digestible and learn a lot from the engaging, highly-readable text. It is also an important read for anyone unfamiliar with the world of online radicalization.

I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately this was a DNF for me. This book was very dry, and I could not concentrate on it because the writing felt like a textbook. The author tended to do a lot of telling about the points she was going to make, rather than just making the point and getting on with it, so I felt we were going in circles. I have seen other readers enjoy this one, but I did not.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

*3.5
Women of the Far Right is a good introduction to how women in this movement influence and recruit people to extremism. Overall, I wished it was more of a deeper dive into their tactics but I still learned a few new things about these women.

I started this book because I find social media influencers fascinating and I'm aware of a large number of women who I'd identify as being on the right. However, this book was a completely eye-opening (and terrifying) look at the far right and alt-right that I was not familiar with.

On the one hand this book would have been easier to read if I'd been more familiar with these women, but this is not exactly the scenario in which you want to become more familiar with them either.

This is definitely a more academic read than I'm typically drawn to but the topic itself was so interesting that it drew me in. A really fascinating study into the topic of social media, and the ways it can be used.

An interesting examination of female social media influences of the Far Right movement. I wish I had known a bit more about these women before starting this book, as I struggled with remembering who was who and didn't want to look them up and give them the views. The way the women use social media to make their views more palatable and recruit to the movement was interesting.