Of Mongrels and Jews: The Deconstruction of Racialised Identities in White Supremacist Discourse

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research explores the construction of race and mixed race identities in a wide variety of white supremacist newsletters and periodicals published between 1969 and 1993. While traditional accounts of the white supremacist movement treat it as a movement concerned with race relations, I read this discourse as a site of the construction of race. In white supremacist discourse, interracial sexuality is defined as the ultimate abomination, and mixed race people pose a particularly strong threat. This paper explores the ways in which mixed race people, and Jews in particular, threaten the construction of a supposedly pure white racial identity. Drawing upon the insights of poststructuralism, this analysis will explore the role of boundary maintenance and the threat of border crossings in the process of constructing racial identities.