Online Hate: From the Far-Right to the ‘Alt-Right’ and from the Margins to the Mainstream

Winter, Aaron

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-12633-9_2

Cited by 82 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Similarly, American voters for Trump apprehended a 'collective status threat' to majority ethnicities and gravitated towards his campaign (Bonikowski 2017). Data on Brexit also confirms that the result was a consequence of middle class white voters rather than the 'white working class' imagined by contemporary work on populism, an elision that Bhambra refers to as 'methodological whiteness' (see Bhambra 2017, Mondon andWinter 2019). This body of work (of which just a few examples are referenced here) stresses the role that white identity, rather than class, plays in support of the populist radical right.…”

Section: Thymos and White Entitlementmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Based on a study of the activity of an audience of a set of influential alt-right accounts on Twitter, this paper argues that their discourse constructs whiteness as a state of marginalization and oppression. It is thus deeply connected to the mythologies of the radical right, white supremacists, ultranationalists, identitarians, and nativists in Europe and North America (Ferber 1999a, Zúquete 2018, Winter 2019. This paper focuses on the activity of the followers of a range of influencers in alt-right networks to expose how the audience of the alt-right on Twitter describes itself and the central role played by the aspiration to 'take back' their societies from an invented crisis of white culture.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the alt-right

Ganesh

2020

Cultural Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The alt-right is a growing radical right-wing network that is particularly effective at mobilizing emotion through digital communications. Introducing 'white thymos' as a framework to theorize the role of rage, anger, and indignation in alt-right communications, this study argues that emotive communication connects alt-right users and mobilizes white thymos to the benefit of populist radical right politics. By combining linguistic, computational, and interpretive techniques on data collected from Twitter, this study demonstrates that the alt-right weaponizes white thymos in three ways: visual documentation of white victimization, processes of legitimization of racialized pride, and reinforcement of the rectitude of rage and indignation. The weaponization of white thymos is then shown to be central to the culture of the alt-right and its connectivity with populist radical right politics. KEYWORDS Alt-right; populist radical right; white nationalism; social media; affect; Twitter The recent increase of research into the alt-right has uncovered much of the structure and ideology of this movement. However, how the alt-right captures the attention of its audiences and the forms of affect and emotion that it mobilizes are aspects of this movement that are not well understood. While the 'alt-right is unlike any racist movement we have ever seen. It is atomized, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous' (Hawley 2017, p. 3), it is a product of decades of white supremacist organizing in the United States and far right ideology and narratives in Europe and North America. Moreover, the term alt-right is challenging to define, but it can be understood as an umbrella term for a set of radical right social movements active primarily (but not exclusively) in Anglophone countries. It has come to be understood in the literature as a contingent coalition of activists, usually networked online, that span online troll cultures, misogynists in the manosphere, neofascists, ultranationalists, identitarians, and white

show abstract

Section: Thymos and White Entitlementmentioning

confidence: 60%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the alt-right

Ganesh

2020

Cultural Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In 2018, this statistic rose to 98% (The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, 2019). The increasing severity of far-right extremist violence, as well as the associated rhetoric on social media (Davey and Ebner, 2019;Winter, 2019), has generated public concern about the spread of radicalization in the United States. Former extremists have referred to it as a public health issue (Allam, 2019;Bonn, 2019), an idea advocated for by some policy experts as well (Sanir et al, 2017;Weine and Eisenman, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, I aim to determine whether individual-level variables, such as social media use, enhance the spread of far-right radicalization over space and time. Social media platforms increasingly appear to play a role in radicalization, both as formal recruitment tools (Aly et al, 2017;Awan, 2017, Bertram, 2016Wu, 2015) and spaces for extremist communities to interact (Amble, 2012;Dean et al, 2012;Pauwels et al, 2014;Winter, 2019). If social media platforms augment physical organizing (Bowman-Grieve, 2009;Holt et al, 2016), then they may also enhance the spread of radicalization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extremist ideology as a complex contagion: the spread of far-right radicalization in the United States between 2005 and 2017

Youngblood

2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Increasing levels of far-right extremist violence have generated public concern about the spread of radicalization in the United States. Previous research suggests that radicalized individuals are destabilized by various environmental (or endemic) factors, exposed to extremist ideology, and subsequently reinforced by members of their community. As such, the spread of radicalization may proceed through a social contagion process, in which extremist ideologies behave like complex contagions that require multiple exposures for adoption. In this study, I applied an epidemiological method called two-component spatio-temporal intensity modeling to data from 416 far-right extremists exposed in the United States between 2005 and 2017. The results indicate that patterns of far-right radicalization in the United States are consistent with a complex contagion process, in which reinforcement is required for transmission. Both social media usage and group membership enhance the spread of extremist ideology, suggesting that online and physical organizing remain primary recruitment tools of the far-right movement. In addition, I identified several endemic factors, such as poverty, that increase the probability of radicalization in particular regions. Future research should investigate how specific interventions, such as online counter-narratives to battle propaganda, may be effectively implemented to mitigate the spread of far-right extremism in the United States.

show abstract

“…Deze verkennende studie illustreert dat het gebruik van social media door groeperingen als de NVU, Pegida en Voorpost ertoe leidt dat extreemrechtse groeperingen niet langer enkel actief zijn in de marges en krochten van het internet, zoals 4chan of Stormfront, maar zichtbaar en openlijk op mainstream-socialmediaplatforms (vgl. Winter, 2019). Onze eerste onderzoeksvraag richtte zich op het gebruik van social media door de drie extreemrechtse groeperingen.…”

Section: Discussieunclassified

Het aanpassingsdilemma online: een verkennend onderzoek naar extreemrechts op social media

Roks¹,

Schoot²

2019

Tijdschrift Voor Criminologie

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar offline manifestaties van extreemrechts wordt bemoeilijkt door het zogenaamde aanpassingsdilemma: individuen en groepen die hun extreemrechtse ideologie verhullen of matigen om sancties of stigmatisering te voorkomen. Al sinds het ontstaan van het internet wordt er door extreemrechtse groeperingen en individuen gebruik gemaakt van digitale kanalen en middelen om een omgeving van gelijkgestemden te vinden waar zij openlijk uit kunnen komen voor hun extreemrechtse ideeën en minder maatschappelijke weerstand ervaren dan offline. In toenemende mate wordt daarbij niet langer gebruik gemaakt van specifieke websites en fora met rechts-extremistische content of deepen darkwebpagina's, maar ook van mainstream-socialmediaplatforms zoals Twitter en Facebook. In deze bijdrage wordt verslag gedaan van een studie naar de wijze waarop drie Nederlandse rechts-extremistische groeperingen, te weten de NVU, Pegida en Voorpost, gebruik maken van diverse socialmediaplatforms in het jaar 2017. Onze resultaten laten zien dat deze extreemrechtse groeperingen social media gebruiken om hun ideologie uit te dragen, een groepsidentiteit te construeren en op te roepen tot (democratische) vormen van verzet. Daarnaast illustreert deze bijdrage dat het aanpassingsdilemma van extreemrechts ook een digitale equivalent kent. De extreemrechtse ideeën worden op social media niet per definitie verhuld, maar wel aangepast aan de gestelde eisen van de digitale omgeving. Het gaat hierbij niet om 'impression management' in termen van het uitdragen van identiteit, maar eerder om 'content management' om ervoor te zorgen dat de extreemrechtse ideologieën via social media blijvend kunnen worden uitgedragen. Inleiding Na een periode van neergang lijkt er in Nederland sinds 2014 een lichte opleving van het rechts-extremisme, 1 zo blijkt uit een recente publicatie van de Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD, 2018). Wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar extreemrechts wordt bemoeilijkt door het zogenaamde aanpassingsdilemma: individuen en groepen die hun extreemrechtse ideologie verhullen of matigen om sancties of stigmatisering te voorkomen (Van Donselaar, 1991, 15-17; Van der Valk & Wagenaar, 2010, 30). Diverse internationale studies schetsen echter dat rechts-extremistische groepen en individuen al sinds het ontstaan van het 1 De termen extreemrechts en rechts-extremisme worden in deze bijdrage inwisselbaar gebruikt.

show abstract

Online Hate: From the Far-Right to the ‘Alt-Right’ and from the Margins to the Mainstream

Cited by 82 publications

References 13 publications

Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the alt-right

Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the alt-right

Extremist ideology as a complex contagion: the spread of far-right radicalization in the United States between 2005 and 2017

Het aanpassingsdilemma online: een verkennend onderzoek naar extreemrechts op social media

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About