Angela Nagle is an academic and non-fiction writer who has written for The Baffler, Jacobin, and others. She is the author of the book Kill All Normies, published by Zero Books in 2017, which discusses the role of the internet in the rise of the alt-right and incel movements. Nagle describes the alt-right as a dangerous movement, but she also criticizes aspects of the left that have, she says, contributed to the alt-right's rise.
Life
Nagle graduated from Dublin City University with a PhD for a thesis titled 'An investigation into contemporary online anti-feminist movements'.
Nagle's book Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right discusses the role of the internet in the rise of the alt-right and incel movements. She describes the alt-right as a counterculture of young men who reject taboos on race and gender. While many young people in the alt-right started simply as trolls, she says the movement has developed into something much more serious. While she supports identity politicsin general, she says that some on the left have contributed to the rise of the alt-right with their "performative wokeness", which often involves censoring people and ganging up on them. The book received many positive reviews, and Nagle became a welcome commentator on the topic of online culture wars. Columnist Ross Douthat of The New York Times praised Nagle's "portrait of the online cultural war". Another New York Times contributor, Michelle Goldberg, wrote that Kill All Normies had "captured this phenomenon". Novelist George Saunders listed Kill All Normies as one of his ten favorite books. An episode of the Fusion Networks' TV seriesTrumpland directed by Leighton Woodhouse was based on Kill All Normies. In May 2018, The Daily Beast accused Nagle of "sloppy sourcing", including not citing sources and drawing heavily from Wikipedia and RationalWiki. Nagle and her publisher both issued detailed statements rebutting the accusations, and The Daily Beast adjusted some of the article's wording.
In November 2018, American Affairs published Nagle's essay ”The Left Case against Open Borders.” Writing in The Independent, Slavoj Žižek referred to the “ferocious attacks on Angela Nagle for her outstanding essay." The Nation responded with a critical essay, calling it "just one of the volley of pieces by liberals and people to the left of center who have derided the out-of-touch utopianism of open-borders advocates." Author Atossa Araxia Abrahamian identifies Harvard president Larry Summers, author John Judis, and former secretary of stateHillary Clinton as others promoting similar views.
