White Supremacist Ideology Research Articles

Multi-Ideology, Multiclass Online Extremism Dataset, and Its Evaluation Using Machine Learning.

Social media platforms play a key role in fostering the outreach of extremism by influencing the views, opinions, and perceptions of people. These platforms are increasingly exploited by extremist elements for spreading propaganda, radicalizing, and recruiting youth. Hence, research on extremism detection on social media platforms is essential to curb its influence and ill effects. A study of existing literature on extremism detection reveals that it is restricted to a specific ideology, binary classification with limited insights on extremism text, and manual data validation methods to check data quality. In existing research studies, researchers have used datasets limited to a single ideology. As a result, they face serious issues such as class imbalance, limited insights with class labels, and a lack of automated data validation methods. A major contribution of this work is a balanced extremism text dataset, versatile with multiple ideologies verified by robust data validation methods for classifying extremism text into popular extremism types such as propaganda, radicalization, and recruitment. The presented extremism text dataset is a generalization of multiple ideologies such as the standard ISIS dataset, GAB White Supremacist dataset, and recent Twitter tweets on ISIS and white supremacist ideology. The dataset is analyzed to extract features for the three focused classes in extremism with TF-IDF unigram, bigrams, and trigrams features. Additionally, pretrained word2vec features are used for semantic analysis. The extracted features in the proposed dataset are evaluated using machine learning classification algorithms such as multinomial Naïve Bayes, support vector machine, random forest, and XGBoost algorithms. The best results were achieved by support vector machine using the TF-IDF unigram model confirming 0.67 F1 score. The proposed multi-ideology and multiclass dataset shows comparable performance to the existing datasets limited to single ideology and binary labels.

Applications of Transformative Justice Principles for Centering Transgender and Gender Expansive Experiences in Social Work Education and Practice

Social work education has traditionally used frameworks, such as cultural competency, to guide implicit and explicit curricula that shape how we think about communities that live and thrive outside of white supremacist and cis/heteronormative norms and values. While the cultural competency framework intends to promote a level of consciousness and attention that is required to practice with diverse individuals, families, and communities whose identities differ from that of the social worker, it instead inadvertently creates a knowledge base that reinforces harmful power dynamics between social worker and client/community. The cultural competency framework is absent of historical and structural context and lacks critical examination of positionality. The use of such frameworks has positioned social work educators and practitioners as the “experts” about culture, thus reinforcing the oppressive dynamic that allows for transgender and gender expansive (TGE) erasure, white supremacy, and transphobia to go unchecked. Without structural knowledge about the ways in which trans- phobic rhetoric and white supremacist ideology, for example, are reflected in policies and practices, social workers may be unable to develop the skills necessary to challenge these forms of injustice and ultimately hold them- selves, their colleagues, policymakers and the profession accountable. We suggest a shift in positioning that encourages and practices accountability rooted in transformative justice (TJ) principles. Drawing on knowledge and practices which emerge from activist spaces, an accountability frame- work is built upon a systemic understanding that requires shifts in belief, thinking, and behavior at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels. This paper will introduce a suggested framework for social work education to engage in accountability rather than competency-based education and practice, and discuss how it may be applied to guide a response to anti-transgender legislation across the U.S.

The Substantiation of the Cress Theory of Color Confrontation: Connecting Independent Black Scholarship to White Supremacist Ideology

The Substantiation of the Cress Theory of Color Confrontation: Connecting Independent Black Scholarship to White Supremacist Ideology

Editor’s Column: Summoning the “Honest Spirit” of John Steinbeck: Back to Ireland

Editor’s Column: Summoning the “Honest Spirit” of John Steinbeck: Back to Ireland

“Communist Controlled Black Barbarism”: The Citizen’s Councils of America’s Anti-Communist Master Frame Cluster and the Renovation of White Supremacist Ideology

Using insights from a content coding analysis of discourse from the most influential White supremacist segregationist organization of the early Cold War decades, Citizen’s Councils of America (CCA or Council), I argue that social movement organizations use a master frame cluster, a package of closely related, overlapping frames with a core master frame to adapt and update pre-existing, older ideology to contemporaneous sociopolitical currents and thereby mainstream, modernize, and streamline propaganda messaging. From its media outlets and White supremacist ideology, the Council deployed what I call its Anti-Communist Master Frame Cluster, proclaiming that unrestrained Black savagery and misguided White sympathy, including liberals, leftists, and socialists, all followed a downward slope toward communist tyranny or what the Council called, “Communist controlled Black barbarism.” Twenty-first century conservative rightwing media has inherited the CCA’s master frame cluster to discredit Black Lives Matter protests, still using anti-communist messaging, but with a “Black-on-Black” crime narrative as the main propaganda weapon against Black protest.

“We are not broken”: using Sista circles as resistance, liberation, and healing

In understanding the systemic effects of White supremacist patriarchal ideologies on the experiences of Black girls and Black women in schools, one must begin with a critical examination of the behavioral practices that govern public spaces in which Black girls and Black women live and learn. Therefore, here we discuss the effects of these White supremacist ideologies on the experiences of Black girls and Black women, which often silence and marginalize them in schools, creating a need for safe spaces where their voices are centered, and they can experience full citizenship. In this article, we use Black feminist thought and Womanism to re-examine the racialized experiences of Black women and Black girls at the middle and secondary level to discuss how they use sista circles as a safe space for them to dissolve the material effects of the White supremacist ideologies to experience healing, citizenship, and a celebration of self as they thrive in schools.

“Say, Who Owns This House?”: US Violence, Indebtedness, and Care in Toni Morrison’s Home

Abstract The simultaneous exclusion from and the complicated desire for inclusion within the narrative of “America” haunts Home (2012), Toni Morrison’s tenth novel. Taking place primarily in 1954, the novel follows two seemingly disparate story lines, the first being that of Frank Money, a Black veteran of the Korean War, the second focusing on his younger sister Cee, who is subject to the eugenics project headed by her employer. As these storylines intersect, by virtue of these two characters being siblings, Morrison addresses the ties between military and reproductive violence and their ongoing legacies in the United States. I argue that military and reproductive violence are part and parcel of Frank and Cee’s possibilities of being hailed as Americans, to feel at “home.” Yet Frank’s interpellation is only possible when he participates in the murderous imperialism that drives US intervention in Asia, and Cee’s body is made fungible in the name of racist scientific “progress.” To be American is to buttress white supremacist ideologies around American empire and exceptionalism, and to be violent. Morrison demonstrates how exclusion from this narrative is fundamentally, necessarily, a Black feminist framework. I also address debt and indebtedness and how we imagine what is owed to whom. Finally, I draw on Christina Sharpe’s theorizing on “wake work” to demonstrate Morrison’s argument that spaces of home divorced from violence are only made possible through a Black feminist practice of care.

Darkness on the Edge: Revisionary Black Radicalism in the Depression Era

Darkness on the Edge: Revisionary Black Radicalism in the Depression Era

FRONTLINE 1: New Zealand’s 23-day Parliament siege: QAnon and how social media disinformation manufactured an ‘alternate reality’

Fires burned across Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament grounds, and violent clashes broke out between protesters and police on the day the law enforcement officers moved to quell a 23-day anti-vaccination mandate siege of the House in February-March 2022 in scenes rarely witnessed in this country. The riot climaxed a mounting campaign of disinformation and hate speech on social media fuelled by conspiracy theorist New Zealand activist media such as Counterspin, which emulated their counterparts in the United States. Vitriolic death threats against political leaders and attacks on journalists and the media on an unprecedented scale were a feature of the protests. Anti-government messages were imported alongside white supremacist ideologies. Researchers have described the events as a ‘tectonic shift’ that will have a significant and lasting impact on Aotearoa New Zealand’s democratic institutions This article introduces three perspectives about the protests and disinformation ecology framed in the journal’s reflexive series Frontline.

Theoretical perspectives for developing antiracist teaching dispositions and practices in preservice teacher education.

For some time, scholars who are guided by critical theories and perspectives have called out how white supremacist ideologies and systemic racism work to (re)produce societal inequities and educational injustices across science learning contexts in the United States. Given the sociopolitical nature of society, schooling, and science education, it is important to address the racist and settled history of scientific disciplines and science education. To this end, we take an antiracist stance on science teaching and learning and seek to disrupt forms of systemic racism in science classrooms. Since teachers do much of the daily work of transforming science education for minoritized learners, we advocate for preparing teachers who understand what it means to engage in antiracist, justice-oriented science teaching. In this article, we share our framework for supporting preservice teachers in understanding, developing, and implementing antiracist teaching dispositions and instructional practices. In alignment with other researchers in teacher education who emphasize the importance of anchoring teacher education practice and research in prominent educational theory, we highlight the theories undergirding our approach to antiracist science teaching. We offer considerations for how researchers and science teacher educators can use this framework to transform science teacher education.

Ecofascism: An Examination of the Far-Right/Ecology Nexus in the Online Space

ABSTRACT With Patrick Crusuis’ 2019 attack that killed twenty-two people in El Paso, Texas, discussions of ecofascism were thrust into mainstream news outlets and magazines. In his manifesto, Crusius described himself as an “ecofascist” seeking to challenge the “environmental warfare” of immigration. His choice of target, a Walmart frequented by Mexican immigrants, reflects this ideological connection between ecological priorities and violent white supremacist ideology. In this paper, the authors provide a review of existing theoretical literature on ecofascism to identify its key characteristics, namely, its Romantic sensibilities, anti-humanism, and mysticism. The authors argue that these features distinguish ecofascism from what other scholars have deemed “far-right ecologisms.” Following this, the authors draw on a larger corpus of data gathered from Twitter and Telegram between November 2019 and November 2020 to identify common themes in ecofascist circles, including the thinkers they frequently cite. The dataset examined shows notable differences in the types of content shared in ecofascist groups compared to the far-right more broadly.

Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie

Reviewed by: Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie Greta De Jong (bio) Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. By Jefferson Cowie. (New York: Basic Books, 2022. Pp. x, 497. $35.00 cloth; $19.99 ebook) Jefferson Cowie provides a comprehensive and timely analysis of white racists’ longstanding antipathy toward the federal government in this book. In recent decades, scholars such as Joseph Crespino, Kevin Kruse, and Matthew Lassiter have examined connections between antigovernment beliefs and opposition to racial equality that were evident in the mid-twentieth century as white southerners mobilized to fight the enforcement of civil rights legislation. Similarly, Kathleen Belew has shown how white supremacist ideologies motivated antigovernment groups and domestic terrorism after the 1960s. Cowie extends the story back in time, arguing that for most of the history of the United States—from settler colonialism to Trumpism—attacks on federal “tyranny” and resistance to government power aimed to preserve white Americans’ freedom to oppress other people. Cowie uses developments in the town of Eufaula in Barbour County, Alabama, to trace the evolution of what he calls “racialized anti-statism” through four key periods in the nation’s history: the dispossession and removal of Indigenous people from their lands; the violent destruction of interracial democracy during Reconstruction; [End Page 201] the license to murder provided to white southerners during the Jim Crow era; and the nationalized opposition to government action on behalf of racial and economic justice in the late twentieth century (p. 5). In each case, antigovernment rhetoric and calls to defend “freedom” were used to justify actions that only protected the ability of some Americans to deny freedom and democracy to others. Conflicts over the enforcement of the Treaty of Cusseta in the 1830s provide an early instance where arguments over federal power, states’ rights, and white freedom emerged and were resolved on the side of white dominance. Armed white invaders illegally squatting on Creek land refused to abide by the law and violently resisted the federal agents sent in to remove them. The deaths that resulted and accusations that the government’s actions amounted to “tyranny” weakened the resolve of U.S. forces, and they eventually abandoned their efforts, setting the pattern for later interventions. Creek dispossession allowed the rise of a slaveholding economy where white freedoms were based on extreme exploitation and abuse of African Americans. When this system was destroyed and Black people gained citizenship rights during Reconstruction, white supremacists mobilized to cast the experiment in interracial democracy as an illegitimate form of coerced equality that they were justified in overthrowing through fraud and violence. The federal government’s withdrawal of support for racial equality helped to usher in the Jim Crow era, when adherence to the doctrine of states’ rights meant white southerners could cheat, imprison, beat, maim, and kill Black southerners with impunity. Despite the civil rights movement’s success in ending legalized racial discrimination in the 1960s, angry white resistance and the resurgence of racialized anti-statism once again undermined federal efforts to fully enforce civil rights laws. Cowie’s analysis is persuasive and supported by evidence drawn from government records, the papers of political leaders and activists, presidential speeches, oral histories, and other archival sources. The book’s most important contribution is its powerful demonstration of [End Page 202] the need for the federal government to play a forceful role in expanding the definition of freedom beyond the narrow vision of those who think it means the unrestrained ability to dominate others. Greta De Jong GRETA DE JONG is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her most recent book is You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (2016). Copyright © 2022 Kentucky Historical Society

The Art of Ridicule: Black Queer Joy in the Face of the Fatigues

Queer Black joy is the grand ridiculer creating possibilities for organisms to collaborate, fracture, rock with, and throw shade. In this paper, the collective analytical frameworks of racial and Queer battle fatigue are brought together to consider the implications for Queer Black communities in light of the simultaneous disparagements created through normalized violent collectives of heteronormative, cisgender White supremacist ideologies. As exemplars of Queer Black joy, an analysis of the embodiments and music from disco innovator Sylvester and New Orleans bounce artist and “Queen Diva” Big Freedia are examined to consider the ways in which they enacted Queer Black joy in the public sphere, simultaneously in connection with the witnessing ways in which their Black Queer joy was and is attacked. In conclusion, Black Queer joy is situated as an enlivenment to embolden qualitative research lenses in the equity imagining/building project for the overall eradication racial and Queer battle fatigue.

Civil Rights in Times of Uncertainty (The Anthropocene)

Although there have been significant civil rights gains made in recent decades, the United States is now experiencing a resurgence of many of the societal ills that have plagued the country for decades. From an insurrection that was seemingly inspired by white supremacist ideology to ongoing examples of police brutality against Black people, anti-Asian violence, anti-LGBTQ violence, and recurring islamophobia, the country sits at an apparent crossroads. There is an urgent need to advance a civil rights agenda that addresses the impact of these societal ills on the affected communities. At the same time, however, we are confronting these ills during a point in history that urges us to think both within and beyond our national borders and boundaries. For many citizens across the globe, similar societal ills exist and are coupled with the challenges presented by our warming planet. Moreover, since the spring of 2020, these dilemmas have been embedded within the throes of an ostensibly unending global pandemic. Indeed, the COVID-19 virus has, in many ways, exacerbated our societal ills and amplified existing inequalities. For instance, more privileged global populations have priority access to lifesaving vaccines. Meanwhile, the risks presented by climate disruption are also unevenly distributed, with such risks being mitigated more by economic comfort than by geography or preparedness. As if these challenges were not enough, online disinformation is a growing concern in this era of COVID-19 and climate disruption. The spread of misleading or patently false information about both the pandemic and global warming poses significant threats to alleviating the harms of each. By creating collective uncertainty about the pandemic, climate change, and a host of other societal issues, disinformation undermines public trust in governmental institutions and, in many cases, adversely affects the already frayed relationship these institutions have with vulnerable populations. Moreover, in a world where communication increasingly happens online, digital disinformation challenges the meaning of truth and breathes life into the extremist ideas that often proliferate on social media. Yet attempting to curb the harms of online disinformation implicates concerns over free speech and free association in cyberspace, which in turn implicates broader concerns over digital rights. Along with climate change, both of these emergent themes—COVID-19 and online disinformation—represent the uncertainty of our changing times and, because they often disproportionately or adversely impact vulnerable populations, pose new challenges for civil rights and democracy. Each of these themes also links two different but interconnected affairs: one that focuses on the civil rights issues of our local and national communities, and the other that focuses on the related wellness of our global neighbors and larger concerns over planetary life. Connecting local civil rights–based issues to similar global matters is of increasing importance because it coincides with the emergence of the Anthropocene: the “catch-all description of the overwhelming impact of human activity on the planet.” While often viewed through the lens of climate change, the Anthropocene is also a theoretical tool for contesting the deep-rooted political and socioeconomic inequalities of the present. Social scientists have employed this theory to examine such socioeconomic and governmental issues arising from systematic inequalities and injustices on a global scale. This Foreword therefore highlights how recent transnational debates regarding issues presented by COVID-19 and online disinformation implicate broader civil and human rights concerns. It argues that being mindful of these pervasive issues—which affect the local, the global, and the planetary—is paramount to the ethos of civil rights and democracy in the uncertain times of the Anthropocene. As the Articles in this Colloquium reveal, promoting civil rights at home is an ongoing, multi-dimensional project. This Foreword advocates a broader view of that project as encompassing the range of issues that define our current struggle with planetary and global justice.

Speaking Up: School Climate and Language Politics in the Trump Era

Identity politics are fraught. High school is a prime location where such politics play out and interface with state-dictated norms and values about acceptable social behavior. This article examines identity politics during the Trump era in two far Northern California high schools to better understand the impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students. I argue that while the Trump effect allowed hostility towards BIPOC people to be expressed more openly in general, schools can also be sites of resistance to culturecide—the killing of culture—that diminishes the role of minority ontologies and epistemologies in the formation of young people. Yurok and Spanish language courses serve as spaces of heritage language revitalization that challenge White supremacist ideologies embedded in curricula as well as wider US culture.

Experiential Learning in Ghana: Decentering the White Voice

White supremacy served as the foundation of the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent practice of chattel slavery in the United States.[i] As such, it is not an exaggeration to say that US history is rooted in the oppression of non-white populations who have experienced and continue to experience various forms of physical and emotional harm. It is in this context that we examine how undergraduate students from XXX University, a predominantly white liberal arts institution, experienced the summer 2019 study abroad ‘Maymester’ excursion to Ghana where the transatlantic slave trade was the main focus of one of the courses, Precolonial African history.[ii] We argue that an interracial dialogue on the terror of whiteness on Black bodies and in Black spaces, which is steeped in historical context, develops when white student voices do not predominate classroom discussions. By centering the co-author’s account of the program, we show that when decentering the white voice, which is generally that of the dominant student population, white students can achieve a reconsideration of their understanding of self, others, and of African and global histories. This article also stresses the importance prioritizing cultural competence as a student goal in light of some of the preconceived notions they held about Ghana and Africa, and finally, we argue that universities have a moral responsibility to introduce Anti-racist pedagogy into the classrooms as a measure to fight white supremacist ideology.
 
 [i] Gary Dorrien, “Achieving the Black Social Gospel, “ Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospe (New Haven, CY: Yale University Press, 2018), 1.
 [ii] Split into two courses, the four-week study program spanned two weeks each.

Legitimation crisis, memory, and United States exceptionalism: Lessons from post-communist Eastern Europe

The article examines how the experiences of post-communist transitional justice policies could inform current controversies in the United States regarding its reckoning with the past. To lay the ground for this analysis, three facets of American exceptionalism—the dual state reality, the triumphalist myth, and the denialist myth—are identified as principal obstacles that have preempted any substantive reparations for the crimes against humanity perpetrated against enslaved Africans and their descendants. This is followed by a presentation of how the 1989 revolutions in East and Central Europe failed to promote an inclusive and pluralistic model of the past. Instead, current representations of the past rooted in essentialist and ethnocentric historical narratives are weaponized by non-democratic political actors. Finally, the authors caution against misguided representations of historical trauma and memory wars in the United States that could potentially reproduce White supremacist ideologies and escalate existent political and cultural divisions.

Towards a Theory of Critical Consciousness: A New Direction for the Development of Instructional and Supervisory Leaders

COVID-19 and the demand for racial justice caused the dark underbelly of white supremacy to be laid bare during 2020. These events call for a reexamination of the ontological and epistemological frameworks in academe and specifically within the field of educational leadership. The legacy of white supremacist ideology prevails as the existing and accepted ontological and epistemological perspectives of history offered in PreK-12 through post-secondary education. The political, economic, and social context highlights the need for instructional and supervisory leaders to be culturally responsive school leaders. This requires that programs preparing these leaders must grapple with and problematize the existing narratives purported in PreK-12 and post-secondary education; and recognize that racism, implicit bias, discrimination, and anti-Blackness are foundational issues in the field. Reimagining preparation programs by incorporating critical theories and liberatory praxis to support the development of culturally responsive instructional and supervisory leaders is imperative.

Between privileges and precariousness: Remaking whiteness in China's teaching English as a second language industry.

This research examines the multiple and contradictory racialization of white identities in China's booming ESL (English as a second language) industry. China represents a new geography of whiteness studies beyond Euro‐America due to the transformation of corporeal whiteness into a minority identity as a result of international migration. This research makes distinctions between white privilege as a form of structural domination in Western societies and white‐skin privilege as a form of embodied racial capital in China, which can be easily transformed into white‐skin vulnerability. It interprets the tension between white‐skin privilege and precariousness as a concurrent and mutually constitutive process that foregrounds the open‐ended nature of white racial formation in China. By focusing on the intersections between global white supremacist ideologies and local Chinese constructions of self/Other relations, this project explores new forms of racialization beyond the Black/white, superiority/inferiority binaries in the Western context.

A qualitative exploration of Black women’s familial socialization on controlling images of Black womanhood and the internalization of respectability politics

ABSTRACT A growing number of scholars have considered how young Black women develop their identities within and against White supremacist ideologies of Black womanhood. The current study offers an analysis of how the ongoing socialization of respectability politics in some Black family contexts can contribute to the vilification of the ‘the wrong type’ of Black girls and women. Using Black feminism as a theoretical and methodological lens, we explored how 33 Black college women (18-24 years) described and interpreted familial socialization messages on ‘poor examples of Black womanhood.’ Four themes, consistent with prior literature on controlling images, emerged: the Gold Digger/Jezebel, the Welfare Queen/Teenaged Mom, the Angry, Black woman, and the Hoodrat/Ratchet Chick. Participants described how these stereotypes of Black women were framed as cautionary tales to avoid during their journey into adulthood. The findings also illuminated how the young women internalized, negotiated, or rejected certain socialization messages, as they worked towards their own self-definitions of Black womanhood. Authors discuss how Black families can resist socialization practices that reinforce classist and misogynistic notions of Black womanhood.