In the wake of news reports that Dylann Roof, the suspect in last week's horrific massacre at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, had become attracted to the ideology of white supremacy, I decided to make a visit, albeit a virtual one, to that world.

I came away shaken by the experience.

This is a preliminary analysis, based on visits to seven sites, a couple of them difficult to track down. I'll write later with more detail. For now, I want to record some general impressions. Note that there are no links, no site names and no direct quotes here. As regular readers know, I am pretty nearly a First Amendment absolutist, so I don't believe the supremacists' message should be squelched. That doesn't mean it's my job to make their message easy to find.