Informing Activists: “How can I actively work against racism within social movements and Social Movement Organizations?”

Pam Oliver:

“How can I actively work against racism within social movements and SMOs?”

Classic:
Morris, Aldon D. 1986. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Simon and Schuster

Review:
Pamela Oliver (2017) The Ethnic Dimensions in Social Movements. Mobilization. December 2017, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 395-416.

Contemporary:
Zakiya Luna (2017) Who Speaks for Whom? (Mis) Representation and Authenticity in Social Movements. Mobilization. December 2017, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 435-450.

Informing Activists: What ways are more or less effective for agreeing or disagreeing with others?

Kate Kenski

Introduction

 

What ways are more or less effective for agreeing or disagreeing with others?

 

Websites referenced in this video: 

https://implicit.harvard.edu

http://politecho.org/

Readings on Effective Messaging

Classic:
O’Keeffe, Gwenn Schurgin, and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson. “The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families.” Pediatrics 127.4 (2011): 800-804.

Review:
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Kate Kenski. 2014. “Political Communication: Then, Now, and Beyond.” Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. Online.

Palfrey, J., Gasser, U., & Boyd D. Response to FCC Notice of Inquiry 09-94: “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape.” Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; 2010. Available here

Contemporary:
Kenski, K., Coe, K., & Rains, S. A. (2017, online first). Perceptions of uncivil discourse online: An examination of types and predictors. Communication Research. DOI: 10.1177/0093650217699933

Earl, Jennifer, and R. Kelly Garrett. Forthcoming. “The New Information Frontier: Toward a More Nuanced View of Social Movement Communication.” Forthcoming in Social Movement Studies. Available online first here

 

White Supremacists go to College: New Tactics, Same Old White Supremacy

By Abby Ferber

The landscape of organized white supremacy has dramatically changed since I conducted my research for White Man Falling: Race, Gender and White Supremacy in the 1990s. At that time, most organized white supremacist groups were isolated, disconnected, disorganized, and difficult to follow. They seemed to be easily identifiable as “extremist.” Since that time, the broad contours of White supremacist ideology appears to be the only thing unchanged.

A Long View on the Alt-Right’s Doomed Emergence From the Shadows

By David Cunningham

August’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where more than a thousand white nationalist adherents conducted a torch-lit march chanting “white lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us” before provoking widespread street violence the following day, was viewed widely as a watershed moment for the burgeoning Alt-Right. As the “largest hate gathering of its kind in decades in the United States,” the Charlottesville rally demonstrated that the diffuse movement – whose vibrancy had been most prominently displayed online – could mobilize in large numbers in physical space. It also showcased a level of organization that seemed far from ad hoc, and a set of media-ready male leaders who sought to embody the modern white supremacist brand: clean-cut, neatly dressed, with coifed “fashy” haircuts.

Why the reduction of racial disparities and expansion of Black mobilization would incapacitate the alt-right

By Kim Ebert

Many of us were introduced to empirical research on racism through popular psychology, which suggests that racism is an individual-level problem among whites. The idea is that racism stems from prejudice, which is “an antipathy based on a faulty and inflexible generalization,” meaning that it’s negative and hostile, irrational, rigid, and inaccurate. According to this perspective, prejudice may be “felt or expressed;” it can involve both the intent to discriminate and actual discrimination. To “cure” white racism and to solve this prejudice problem, then, we should endorse more education, training, and diversity initiatives. Such initiatives would expose individuals to accurate and scientific information, replacing antagonistic and inaccurate information with harmony and truth, resulting in the reduction of prejudice. Policy initiatives that take this approach may address interracial conflict, but what about the underlying racial inequality?

The Alt-Right

In our second month discussing the alt-right, we have additional contributors.

Donald Trump’s recent rise to power has put a spotlight on what has come to be known as the “alt-right.”  Yet the alt-right proceeded the Trump campaign and has, perhaps, contributed to Trump’s victory and also benefited from its close ties with the White House.  This dialogue invites social scientists to comment on its causes, consequences, and its likely trajectory.  What can social movement scholars learn from this movement?  What has contributed to its successes?  What limitations to future growth does it face (if any)?  What type of people are most likely to be attracted to the alt-right, and why?  How can this movement be resisted?  How severe is the threat posed by the movement?  How should progressives respond to the way in which the alt-right prompts debate and contention over the line between hate speech and free speech?

Many thanks to our wonderful group of contributors.

Abby Ferber, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (essay)
David Cunningham, Washington University in St. Louis (essay)
Kim Ebert, North Carolina State University (essay)

Editors in Chief,
Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, Guillermo Trejo

What the Alt-Right Tells us about the Strategic Uses of (Racial) Identity

By Hajar Yazdiha

Just nine months prior to the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, a New York Times profile of the alt-right explored the potential force of the movement but tempered the immediacy of the threat, explaining, “…at this point, [they] would have trouble holding a serious street rally, let alone turning into a mass political party.” Many journalists and scholars alike highlighted the “nebulous,” “loosely-assembled” nature of the alt-right, as a disparate collection of largely anonymous online communities – white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, neo-fascists, masculinists, conspiracists, nihilists – without any clearly shared goals or motivations. Yet, less than a year later, they marched unified through the grounds of my alma mater, tiki torch-wielding young men clad in polo shirts and khaki pants, angry faces illuminated in collective rage. Horrified publics grappled with the seemingly spontaneous re-emergence of overt, unapologetic white supremacy, the explosive violence in the streets, and the question of how our political polarization reached such depths.

Explaining Contemporary Extreme Right Mobilization in the U.S.

By Nella Van Dyke

On the weekend of August 11, 2017, right-wing extremists, or what many call the Alt-Right, gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the pending removal of a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee from a city park.  Many were shocked to see images of the protest on Friday, with Neo-Nazis and other extreme right supporters carrying torches en masse, in one of the largest extreme right protest events in recent history, and were horrified when participants in the protest on Saturday murdered a counter-demonstrator and injured dozens more.  President Trump suggested that both sides were to blame for the violence, generating an outpouring of dismay and arguments that he was “Giving the right a boost,” and sanctioning the violence.  However, while many may have been surprised by the protest, those of us who study the extreme right were not.  And, while President Trump’s support for the Alt-Right does enable them, their mobilization started long before he became a candidate for President.  I argue here that social movement scholarship on extreme right mobilization predicts this contemporary mobilization.  Particularly relevant are theories regarding the mobilizing effect of economic and political threat, including power devaluation theory, as well as scholarship on political and discursive opportunities.

The Alt-Right

Donald Trump’s recent rise to power has put a spotlight on what has come to be known as the “alt-right.”  Yet the alt-right proceeded the Trump campaign and has, perhaps, contributed to Trump’s victory and also benefited from its close ties with the White House.  This dialogue invites social scientists to comment on its causes, consequences, and its likely trajectory.  What can social movement scholars learn from this movement?  What has contributed to its successes?  What limitations to future growth does it face (if any)?  What type of people are most likely to be attracted to the alt-right, and why?  How can this movement be resisted?  How severe is the threat posed by the movement?  How should progressives respond to the way in which the alt-right prompts debate and contention over the line between hate speech and free speech?

Many thanks to our wonderful group of contributors.

Hajar Yazdiha, University of Southern California-Dornsife (essay)
Robert Futrell & Pete Simi, University of Nevada-Las Vegas & Chapman University (essay)
Nella Van Dyke, University of California-Merced (essay)
Ziad Munson, Lehigh University (video)

Editors in Chief,
Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, Guillermo Trejo

The “Alt-Right” ideas are nothing new but they are taking advantage of new opportunities

By Robert Futrell & Pete Simi

Since the 2016 US presidential election, observers have tried to explain the sudden rise of the “new alt-right.” This focus on newness belies the persistent and continuous aspects of US white supremacist activism. In our new research, we explore the ebbs and flows in white supremacy over the last several decades. We identify two phases and describe the longest one as a period of “active abeyance,” in which white supremacists embraced a conscious strategy to withdraw from traditional public activism and recruitment, in favor of more informal, private activism directed at sustaining the movement. Recently, white supremacist leaders and networks have pushed to more openly advocate for white supremacist goals. The “alt-right” is one manifestation of a broader effort to rebrand racial and anti-Semitic extremism and move it from the shadows into mainstream politics, culture, and consciousness.