How Do Internet Memes Speak Security? by Loui Marchant
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The Alt-Right Comes to Power by JA Smith
USApp – American Politics and Policy Blog: Long Read Book Review: Deplorable Me: The Alt-Right Comes to Power by J.A. Smith Page 1 of 6 Long Read Book Review: Deplorable Me: The Alt- Right Comes to Power by J.A. Smith J.A Smith reflects on two recent books that help us to take stock of the election of President Donald Trump as part of the wider rise of the ‘alt-right’, questioning furthermore how the left today might contend with the emergence of those at one time termed ‘a basket of deplorables’. Deplorable Me: The Alt-Right Comes to Power Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency. Joshua Green. Penguin. 2017. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Angela Nagle. Zero Books. 2017. Find these books: In September last year, Hillary Clinton identified within Donald Trump’s support base a ‘basket of deplorables’, a milieu comprising Trump’s newly appointed campaign executive, the far-right Breitbart News’s Steve Bannon, and the numerous more or less ‘alt right’ celebrity bloggers, men’s rights activists, white supremacists, video-gaming YouTubers and message board-based trolling networks that operated in Breitbart’s orbit. This was a political misstep on a par with putting one’s opponent’s name in a campaign slogan, since those less au fait with this subculture could hear only contempt towards anyone sympathetic to Trump; while those within it wore Clinton’s condemnation as a badge of honour. Bannon himself was insouciant: ‘we polled the race stuff and it doesn’t matter […] It doesn’t move anyone who isn’t already in her camp’. -
Who Supports Donald J. Trump?: a Narrative- Based Analysis of His Supporters and of the Candidate Himself Mitchell A
University of Puget Sound Sound Ideas Summer Research Summer 2016 Who Supports Donald J. Trump?: A narrative- based analysis of his supporters and of the candidate himself Mitchell A. Carlson 7886304 University of Puget Sound, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research Part of the American Politics Commons, and the Political Theory Commons Recommended Citation Carlson, Mitchell A. 7886304, "Who Supports Donald J. Trump?: A narrative-based analysis of his supporters and of the candidate himself" (2016). Summer Research. Paper 271. http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/271 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in Summer Research by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Mitchell Carlson Professor Robin Dale Jacobson 8/24/16 Who Supports Donald J. Trump? A narrative-based analysis of his supporters and of the candidate himself Introduction: The Voice of the People? “My opponent asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads: “I’m With Her.” I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads: ‘I’m with you—the American people.’ I am your voice.” So said Donald J. Trump, Republican presidential nominee and billionaire real estate mogul, in his speech echoing Richard Nixon’s own convention speech centered on law-and-order in 1968.1 2 Introduced by his daughter Ivanka, Trump claimed at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio that he—and he alone—is the voice of the people. -
Nationalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Ethno-National Populism
H-Nationalism Nationalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Ethno-National Populism Blog Post published by Yoav Peled on Thursday, December 3, 2020 In this post, Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University, discusses the relations between ethno- nationalism, neo-liberalism, and right-wing populism. Donald Trump’s failure to be reelected by a relatively narrow margin in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis points to the strength of ethno-national populism in the US, as elsewhere, and raises the question of the relations between nationalism and right- wing populism. Historically, American nationalism has been viewed as the prime example of inclusive civic nationalism, based on “constitutional patriotism.” Whatever the truth of this characterization, in the Trump era American civic nationalism is facing a formidable challenge in the form of White Christian nativist ethno-nationalism that utilizes populism as its mobilizational strategy. The key concept common to both nationalism and populism is “the people.” In nationalism the people are defined through vertical inclusion and horizontal exclusion -- by formal citizenship or by cultural-linguistic boundaries. Ideally, though not necessarily in practice, within the nation-state ascriptive markers such as race, religion, place of birth, etc., are ignored by the state. Populism on the other hand defines the people through both vertical and horizontal exclusion, by ascriptive markers as well as by class position (“elite” vs. “the people”) and even by political outlook. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once famously averred that leftist Jewish Israelis “forgot how to be Jews,” and Trump famously stated that Jewish Americans who vote Democratic are traitors to their country, Israel. -
Articles & Reports
1 Reading & Resource List on Information Literacy Articles & Reports Adegoke, Yemisi. "Like. Share. Kill.: Nigerian police say false information on Facebook is killing people." BBC News. Accessed November 21, 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt- sh/nigeria_fake_news. See how Facebook posts are fueling ethnic violence. ALA Public Programs Office. “News: Fake News: A Library Resource Round-Up.” American Library Association. February 23, 2017. http://www.programminglibrarian.org/articles/fake-news-library-round. ALA Public Programs Office. “Post-Truth: Fake News and a New Era of Information Literacy.” American Library Association. Accessed March 2, 2017. http://www.programminglibrarian.org/learn/post-truth- fake-news-and-new-era-information-literacy. This has a 45-minute webinar by Dr. Nicole A. Cook, University of Illinois School of Information Sciences, which is intended for librarians but is an excellent introduction to fake news. Albright, Jonathan. “The Micro-Propaganda Machine.” Medium. November 4, 2018. https://medium.com/s/the-micro-propaganda-machine/. In a three-part series, Albright critically examines the role of Facebook in spreading lies and propaganda. Allen, Mike. “Machine learning can’g flag false news, new studies show.” Axios. October 15, 2019. ios.com/machine-learning-cant-flag-false-news-55aeb82e-bcbb-4d5c-bfda-1af84c77003b.html. Allsop, Jon. "After 10,000 'false or misleading claims,' are we any better at calling out Trump's lies?" Columbia Journalism Review. April 30, 2019. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump_fact- check_washington_post.php. Allsop, Jon. “Our polluted information ecosystem.” Columbia Journalism Review. December 11, 2019. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/cjr_disinformation_conference.php. Amazeen, Michelle A. -
Classism, Ableism, and the Rise of Epistemic Injustice Against White, Working-Class Men
CLASSISM, ABLEISM, AND THE RISE OF EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE AGAINST WHITE, WORKING-CLASS MEN A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Humanities by SARAH E. BOSTIC B.A., Wright State University, 2017 2019 Wright State University WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL April 24, 2019 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Sarah E. Bostic ENTITLED Classism, Ableism, and the Rise of Epistemic Injustice Against White, Working-Class Men BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Humanities. __________________________ Kelli Zaytoun, Ph.D. Thesis Director __________________________ Valerie Stoker, Ph.D. Chair, Humanities Committee on Final Examination: ___________________________ Kelli Zaytoun, Ph.D. ___________________________ Jessica Penwell-Barnett, Ph.D. ___________________________ Donovan Miyasaki, Ph.D. ___________________________ Barry Milligan, Ph.D. Interim Dean of the Graduate School ABSTRACT Bostic, Sarah E. M.Hum. Master of Humanities Graduate Program, Wright State University, 2019. Classism, Ableism, and the Rise of Epistemic Injustice Against White, Working-Class Men. In this thesis, I set out to illustrate how epistemic injustice functions in this divide between white working-class men and the educated elite. I do this by discussing the discursive ways in which working-class knowledge and experience are devalued as legitimate sources of knowledge. I demonstrate this by using critical discourse analysis to interpret the underlying attitudes and ideologies in comments made by Clinton and Trump during their 2016 presidential campaigns. I also discuss how these ideologies are positively or negatively perceived by Trump’s working-class base. Using feminist standpoint theory and phenomenology as a lens of interpretation, I argue that white working-class men are increasingly alienated from progressive politics through classist and ableist rhetoric. -
A New Study Finds That Trump Supporters Are More Likely to Be Islamophobic, Racist, Transphobic and Homophobic
A ‘basket of deplorables’? A new study finds that Trump supporters are more likely to be Islamophobic, racist, transphobic and homophobic. blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/10/10/a-basket-of-deplorables-a-new-study-finds-that-trump-supporters-are-more-likely-to-be-islamophobic-racist-transphobic-and-homophobic/ 10/10/2016 Last month Hillary Clinton stepped into controversy when she described ‘half’ of Donald Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’. In a new study, Karen L. Blair looks at how Clinton and Trump voters’ attitudes on themes such as sexism, authoritarianism and Islamophobia differ. She finds that Islamophobia is closely linked with support for Trump, and that the strongest predictor of voting for someone other than Clinton or Trump was not disagreeing with Clinton ideologically, but ambivalent sexism. On September 9th, 2016, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City in which she referred to ‘half’ of Donald Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’ who espouse ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic [and] Islamophobic’ sentiments. Although Clinton had prefaced her comments by acknowledging that she was about to make an overgeneralization, the backlash to her comments was swift, with Trump charging that her comments showed her true ‘contempt for everyday Americans’. Clinton apologized for her remarks, but doubled down in depicting Trump’s campaign as one based in ‘bigotry and racist rhetoric.’ Was there any truth to Hillary Clinton’s depiction of Trump supporters? To what extent can -
Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and Its Multifarious Enemies
Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World 10 | 2020 Creating the Enemy The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 ISSN: 2274-2042 Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic reference Maxime Dafaure, « The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies », Angles [Online], 10 | 2020, Online since 01 April 2020, connection on 28 July 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/369 This text was automatically generated on 28 July 2020. Angles. New Perspectives on the Anglophone World is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies 1 The “Great Meme War:” the Alt- Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Memes and the metapolitics of the alt-right 1 The alt-right has been a major actor of the online culture wars of the past few years. Since it came to prominence during the 2014 Gamergate controversy,1 this loosely- defined, puzzling movement has achieved mainstream recognition and has been the subject of discussion by journalists and scholars alike. Although the movement is notoriously difficult to define, a few overarching themes can be delineated: unequivocal rejections of immigration and multiculturalism among most, if not all, alt- right subgroups; an intense criticism of feminism, in particular within the manosphere community, which itself is divided into several clans with different goals and subcultures (men’s rights activists, Men Going Their Own Way, pick-up artists, incels).2 Demographically speaking, an overwhelming majority of alt-righters are white heterosexual males, one of the major social categories who feel dispossessed and resentful, as pointed out as early as in the mid-20th century by Daniel Bell, and more recently by Michael Kimmel (Angry White Men 2013) and Dick Howard (Les Ombres de l’Amérique 2017). -
Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS
Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS Executive Summary ....................................................... 1 What Techniques Do Media Manipulators Use? ....... 33 Understanding Media Manipulation ............................ 2 Participatory Culture ........................................... 33 Who is Manipulating the Media? ................................. 4 Networks ............................................................. 34 Internet Trolls ......................................................... 4 Memes ................................................................. 35 Gamergaters .......................................................... 7 Bots ...................................................................... 36 Hate Groups and Ideologues ............................... 9 Strategic Amplification and Framing ................. 38 The Alt-Right ................................................... 9 Why is the Media Vulnerable? .................................... 40 The Manosphere .......................................... 13 Lack of Trust in Media ......................................... 40 Conspiracy Theorists ........................................... 17 Decline of Local News ........................................ 41 Influencers............................................................ 20 The Attention Economy ...................................... 42 Hyper-Partisan News Outlets ............................. 21 What are the Outcomes? .......................................... -
A Recognitive Theory of Identity and the Structuring of Public Space
A RECOGNITIVE THEORY OF IDENTITY AND THE STRUCTURING OF PUBLIC SPACE Benjamin Carpenter [email protected] Doctoral Thesis University of East Anglia School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies September 2020 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. ABSTRACT This thesis presents a theory of the self as produced through processes of recognition that unfold and are conditioned by public, political spaces. My account stresses the dynamic and continuous processes of identity formation, understanding the self as continually composed through intersubjective processes of recognition that unfold within and are conditioned by the public spaces wherein subjects appear before one another. My theory of the self informs a critique of contemporary identity politics, understanding the justice sought by such politics as hampered by identity enclosure. In contrast to my understanding of the self, the self of identity enclosure is understood as a series of connecting, philosophical pathologies that replicate conditions of oppression through their ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological positions on the self and political space. The politics of enclosure hinge upon a presumptive fixity, understanding the self as abstracted from political spaces of appearance, as a factic entity that is simply given once and for all. Beginning with Hegel's account of identity as recognised, I stress the phenomenological dimensions of recognition, using these to demonstrate how recognition requires a fundamental break from the fixity and rigidity often displayed within the politics of enclosure. -
The Weird History of Usamerican Fascism: a Guide (1979-2019) Phd in Critical and Cultural Theory 2019 M.C
The Weird History of USAmerican Fascism: A Guide (1979-2019) PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory 2019 M.C. McGrady Summary The future, as ever, can be read in comic books. Foretold by the Dark Age of Comics, the doom that now comes to Earth arrives in the form of self-realizing eschatologies, horrors born out of the rutting between unfettered capitalism and its favorite child, technological hubris. When the Big Two comic book publishers began hiring British and Irish authors en masse over the course of the 1980s, these writers brought with them a critical eye sharpened by the political and economic cruelty of the decade. The victims of the Iron Lady came to the New World and set their sights on the empire of the Teflon President, using superhero stories to explore the ideological weapons deployed in the service of global capitalism. The Weird History of USAmerican Fascism tracks the interrelated networks of popular culture and fascism in the United States to demonstrate the degree to which contemporary USAmerican politics embodies the future that the fictional dystopias of the past warned us about. Although the trans-Atlantic political developments of 2016 and their aftermath have sparked a widespread interest in a resurgent Anglophone fascism and its street-level movements – seen most obviously in the loose collection of white supremacists known as the ‘alt- right’ – this interest has been hamstrung by the historical aversion to a serious study of popular and ‘nerd’ culture during the twentieth century. By paying attention to the conceptual and interpersonal networks that emerged from the comic books and videogames of the 1980s, The Weird History of USAmerican Fascism fills a critical lacuna in cultural theory while correcting recent oversights in the academic analysis of contemporary fascism, providing an essential guide to the past, present, and future of the bizarre world of USAmerican politics. -
'Basket of Deplorables'?
Psychology & Sexuality ISSN: 1941-9899 (Print) 1941-9902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpse20 Did Secretary Clinton lose to a ‘basket of deplorables’? An examination of Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism and conservative ideology in the 2016 US presidential election Karen L. Blair To cite this article: Karen L. Blair (2017): Did Secretary Clinton lose to a ‘basket of deplorables’? An examination of Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism and conservative ideology in the 2016 US presidential election, Psychology & Sexuality To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2017.1397051 Published online: 01 Nov 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpse20 PSYCHOLOGY & SEXUALITY, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2017.1397051 Did Secretary Clinton lose to a ‘basket of deplorables’?An examination of Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism and conservative ideology in the 2016 US presidential election Karen L. Blair Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The current study compared attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals, racism, Received 16 August 2017 Islamophobia, ambivalent sexism and conservative ideology across Accepted 22 October 2017 Hillary Clinton voters, Donald Trump voters and third party/undecided KEYWORDS voters in the 2016 US presidential election. Participants (n = 249) intend- Election; sexual prejudice; ing to vote for Clinton had significantly lower scores on all attitude ambivalent sexism; measures compared to Trump and third party/undecided voters, with Islamophobia; Hillary the exception of Islamophobia, where Clinton and third party/undecided Clinton; Donald Trump voters had significantly lower scores than Trump voters. -
From Anti-Vaxxer Moms to Militia Men: Influence Operations, Narrative Weaponization, and the Fracturing of American Identity
From Anti-Vaxxer Moms to Militia Men: Influence Operations, Narrative Weaponization, and the Fracturing of American Identity Dana Weinberg, PhD (contact) & Jessica Dawson, PhD ABSTRACT How in 2020 were anti-vaxxer moms mobilized to attend reopen protests alongside armed militia men? This paper explores the power of weaponized narratives on social media both to create and polarize communities and to mobilize collective action and even violence. We propose that focusing on invocation of specific narratives and the patterns of narrative combination provides insight into the shared sense of identity and meaning different groups derive from these narratives. We then develop the WARP (Weaponize, Activate, Radicalize, Persuade) framework for understanding the strategic deployment and presentation of narratives in relation to group identity building and individual responses. The approach and framework provide powerful tools for investigating the way narratives may be used both to speak to a core audience of believers while also introducing and engaging new and even initially unreceptive audience segments to potent cultural messages, potentially inducting them into a process of radicalization and mobilization. (149 words) Keywords: influence operations, narrative, social media, radicalization, weaponized narratives 1 Introduction In the spring of 2020, several FB groups coalesced around protests of states’ coronavirus- related shutdowns. Many of these FB pages developed in a concerted action by gun-rights activists (Stanley-Becker and Romm 2020). The FB groups ostensibly started as a forum for people to express their discontent with their state’s shutdown policies, but the bulk of their membership hailed from outside the targeted local communities. Moreover, these online groups quickly devolved to hotbeds of conspiracy theories, malign information, and hate speech (Finkelstein et al.