{"id":23,"date":"2026-05-21T14:43:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=23"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:43:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:43:53","slug":"chud-the-builder-and-americas-tradition-of-white-racial-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"Chud the Builder and America\u2019s Tradition of White Racial Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The latest trend among white livestreamers for generating \u201ccontent\u201d? Approaching Black strangers minding their own business, repeatedly calling them \u201cniggers,\u201d labeling however they respond as \u201cchimping out\u201d and\u2014of course\u2014collecting a pile of money from fans who literally pay to be entertained by racial humiliation.<\/p>\n

Read more Gen Z Women Are Moving Left. Young Men Aren\u2019t.<\/a><\/p>\n

The biggest star of these \u201cragebaiting\u201d videos, as they\u2019re called for obvious reasons, is 28-year-old Tennessean Dalton Eatherly, better known online as \u201cChud the Builder.\u201d Eatherly\u2019s sizable fanbase is built on livestreams in which he sidles up to random Black people, provokes them with racist abuse and dares them to react while threatening to shoot them with the gun and bear mace he carries. This little routine realized its Chekhovian inevitability this past Wednesday, May 13, when Chud shot a Black man\u2014reportedly a disabled veteran\u2014outside the courthouse where he was appearing in one of two criminal cases for which he was already out on bond. (Those cases include an early May incident when Chud refused to pay a $371 restaurant bill; the livestreamed footage of the incident, which you can still watch here, features him berating restaurant employees, including a South Asian server he calls a \u201cjeet\u201d and instructs to go \u201cshit in the street.\u201d) On Friday, the judge overseeing the shooting case announced charges of attempted murder, employing a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, as well as a $1.25 million bond. Along with a Black stranger, according to reports, Chud also shot himself in the arm. As writer Dixon D. White notes, there may be no more perfect metaphor for the self-inflicted wound of white supremacy.<\/p>\n

The charges may sideline Chud for a bit, but a crop of copycats are scrambling to take his place. There\u2019s Hexumlite, a 23-year-old looksmaxxer whose old shtick was insulting anonymous women on the street, but who\u2019s now pivoting to asking random groups of white women what they \u201cthink about niggers\u201d and advising others not to \u201cget attacked by any niggers.\u201d (Sidenote: If you\u2019re unfamiliar with the phenomenon of looksmaxxing, maybe read this.) Then there\u2019s Onlyusemeblade, real name is Brian Russo, a 40-something gaming streamer who in a recent video calls an unknown Black woman a \u201cweird nigger bitch.\u201d Others are surely vying for their time in the spotlight, and they\u2019re joined by white people who aren\u2019t livestreamers but have nonetheless been inspired by them. For example, in a clip widely circulated last week, a white man tells the Black security staff outside a Nashville restaurant they\u2019re \u201cchimping out\u201d after they refuse to let him take his dog inside\u2014which is to say, after doing their jobs. Hexumlite, who just happens to catch the altercation, signals his appreciation by shouting, \u201cChud the Builder!\u201d<\/p>\n

I expect the think pieces implicating social media are being written right now, bemoaning its tendency to reward outrage, humiliation, and spectacle. But I dunno. I actually think the bigger problem might be the racism that has always existed, shaping and grossly contorting American social, economic, and political life. Chud and his imitators aren\u2019t some shocking new aberration wrought solely from the excesses of social media but an old American archetype given new breath by the bully pulpit of his time. White terror\u2014the harassment and intimidation of Black people by white people confident they\u2019ll face little to no meaningful repercussions\u2014is a longstanding American tradition. The brief post\u2013civil rights movement era when this behavior was widely considered socially unacceptable for white people\u2014 that\u2019s<\/em> the actual historical anomaly. A tiny blip along the timeline of an American history featuring a far older pattern of public anti-Blackness.<\/p>\n

Every technological advance this nation has ever produced has inevitably become intertwined with the country\u2019s oldest and most cherished traditions, of which the practice of anti-Black racism is perhaps the most salient. Photography gave us lynching postcards; film gave us Birth of A Nation<\/em>; the Internet offered racists the anonymity that even Klan hoods could not. We are not in unprecedented territory. We are returning to form.<\/p>\n

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