The Culture of Violent Talk: An Interpretive Approach

Pete Simi,Steven Windisch

doi:10.3390/socsci9070120

Abstract

One of the defining characteristics of extremist movements is the adherence to an ideology highly antagonistic to the status quo and one that permits or explicitly promotes the use of violence to achieve stated goals and to address grievances. For members of extremist groups, talk is one of the most concrete manifestations of how adherents communicate their ideas to each other and the general public. These discussions, however, do not necessarily involve a direct correspondence between words and future behavior. To better understand the culture of violent talk, we investigate how white supremacist extremists use these discussions as a rhetorical device that provides them with a sense of doing and an opportunity to express their frustrations and anger. Our analysis is grounded primarily in the ethnographic data we collected on a variety of US white supremacists since 1997. Our investigation offers important insight regarding the interactional qualities of extremist culture as well as policy implications regarding the assessment process.

Highlights

Talk is one of the most concrete manifestations of how adherents of an extremist movement communicate their culture to each other and the general public.1 The words extremists speak and write is often understood as a proxy for behavior
We ask the following: what is the relationship between violent talk and extremist culture? we focus on the contemporary US white supremacist movement (WSM) to explore how members express violent talk across different spatial locations
An essential component of these settings includes the different types of identity talk that occur, which helps participants align their personal identities with their collective identities

Summary

Introduction

Talk is one of the most concrete manifestations of how adherents of an extremist movement communicate their culture to each other and the general public. The words extremists speak and write is often understood as a proxy for behavior. Talk is one of the most concrete manifestations of how adherents of an extremist movement communicate their culture to each other and the general public.. The words extremists speak and write is often understood as a proxy for behavior. The content of violent talk, can be highly misleading, especially if there is an assumption that a straightforward one-to-one relationship exists between words and action or even between words and meaning. Talk involves “figures of speech” (Drew and Holt 1998), where extremists rely on dramatic phrases to express emotions or a general frame of mind. There has been little effort to use symbolic interactionism to examine the potential disjuncture between talk and action among extremists (for exception see Mitchell 2003). We ask the following: what is the relationship between violent talk and extremist culture? We ask the following: what is the relationship between violent talk and extremist culture? we focus on the contemporary US white supremacist movement (WSM) to explore how members express violent talk across different spatial locations

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