The Far Right and January 6, 2021: How Cyber and Real Life Spaces Became One and the Imagery That Facilitated the Process
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Christian America in Black and White: Racial Identity, Religious-National Group Boundaries, and Explanations for Racial Inequality
1 Forthcoming in Sociology of Religion Christian America in Black and White: Racial Identity, Religious-National Group Boundaries, and Explanations for Racial Inequality Samuel L. Perry University of Oklahoma Andrew L. Whitehead Clemson University Abstract Recent research suggests that, for white Americans, conflating national and religious group identities is strongly associated with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, prompting some to argue that claims about Christianity being central to American identity are essentially about reinforcing white supremacy. Prior work has not considered, however, whether such beliefs may influence the racial views of non-white Americans differently from white Americans. Drawing on a representative sample of black and white Americans from the 2014 General Social Survey, and focusing on explanations for racial inequality as the outcome, we show that, contrary to white Americans, black Americans who view being a Christian as essential to being an American are actually more likely to attribute black-white inequality to structural issues and less to blacks’ individual shortcomings. Our findings suggest that, for black Americans, connecting being American to being Christian does not necessarily bolster white supremacy, but may instead evoke and sustain ideals of racial justice. Keywords: Christian America, racism, racial inequality, black Americans, religion 2 A centerpiece of Donald Trump’s presidency―a presidency now famous for heightened racial strife and the emboldening of white supremacists―is a commitment to defend America’s supposed “Christian heritage.” Trump announced to his audience at Oral Roberts University during his campaign “There is an assault on Christianity…There is an assault on everything we stand for, and we’re going to stop the assault” (Justice and Berglund 2016). -
Pepe the Frog
PEPE THE FROG: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies by BEN PETTIS A THESIS Presented to the School of Journalism and Communication and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Spring 2018 An Abstract of the Thesis of Ben Pettis for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the School of Journalism and Communication to be taken Spring 2018 Title: Pepe the Frog: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and Its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies Approved: _______________________________________ Dr. Peter Alilunas This thesis examines Internet memes, a unique medium that has the capability to easily and seamlessly transfer ideologies between groups. It argues that these media can potentially enable subcultures to challenge, and possibly overthrow, hegemonic power structures that maintain the dominance of a mainstream culture. I trace the meme from its creation by Matt Furie in 2005 to its appearance in the 2016 US Presidential Election and examine how its meaning has changed throughout its history. I define the difference between a meme instance and the meme as a whole, and conclude that the meaning of the overall meme is formed by the sum of its numerous meme instances. This structure is unique to the medium of Internet memes and is what enables subcultures to use them to easily transfer ideologies in order to challenge the hegemony of dominant cultures. Dick Hebdige provides a model by which a dominant culture can reclaim the images and symbols used by a subculture through the process of commodification. -
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Proceedings of the Fifteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2021) A Large Open Dataset from the Parler Social Network Max Aliapoulios1, Emmi Bevensee2, Jeremy Blackburn3, Barry Bradlyn4, Emiliano De Cristofaro5, Gianluca Stringhini6, Savvas Zannettou7 1New York University, 2SMAT, 3Binghamton University, 4University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 5University College London, 6Boston University, 7Max Planck Institute for Informatics [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract feasible in technical terms to create a new social media plat- Parler is as an “alternative” social network promoting itself form, but marketing the platform towards specific polarized as a service that allows to “speak freely and express yourself communities is an extremely successful strategy to bootstrap openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views.” a user base. In other words, there is a subset of users on Twit- Because of this promise, the platform become popular among ter, Facebook, Reddit, etc., that will happily migrate to a new users who were suspended on mainstream social networks platform, especially if it advertises moderation policies that for violating their terms of service, as well as those fearing do not restrict the growth and spread of political polariza- censorship. In particular, the service was endorsed by several tion, conspiracy theories, extremist ideology, hateful and vi- conservative public figures, encouraging people to migrate olent speech, and mis- and dis-information. from traditional social networks. After the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Parler has been progressively de- Parler. -
Identity & In-Group Critique in James Mason's Siege
A Paler Shade of White: Identity & In-group Critique in James Mason’s Siege J.M. Berger RESOLVE NETWORK | April 2021 Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism Series https://doi.org/10.37805/remve2021.1 The views expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the RESOLVE Network, the U.S. Institute of Peace, or any entity of the U.S. government. CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 2 HISTORY AND CONTEXT ...................................................................................... 4 METHODOLOGY: LINKAGEBASED ANALYSIS ............................................... 6 OVERVIEW OF CONTENT ..................................................................................... 7 INGROUP CRISIS: A PALER SHADE OF WHITE .............................................13 INGROUPS IN CRISIS ........................................................................................20 THE OUTGROUP IN THE INGROUP ...............................................................23 CONCLUSION: INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS .....................................25 BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................28 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Discussions of extremist ideologies naturally focus on how in-groups criticize and attack out-groups. But -
The Radical Roots of the Alt-Right
Gale Primary Sources Start at the source. The Radical Roots of the Alt-Right Josh Vandiver Ball State University Various source media, Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century EMPOWER™ RESEARCH The radical political movement known as the Alt-Right Revolution, and Evolian Traditionalism – for an is, without question, a twenty-first century American audience. phenomenon.1 As the hipster-esque ‘alt’ prefix 3. A refined and intensified gender politics, a suggests, the movement aspires to offer a youthful form of ‘ultra-masculinism.’ alternative to conservatism or the Establishment Right, a clean break and a fresh start for the new century and .2 the Millennial and ‘Z’ generations While the first has long been a feature of American political life (albeit a highly marginal one), and the second has been paralleled elsewhere on the Unlike earlier radical right movements, the Alt-Right transnational right, together the three make for an operates natively within the political medium of late unusual fusion. modernity – cyberspace – because it emerged within that medium and has been continuously shaped by its ongoing development. This operational innovation will Seminal Alt-Right figures, such as Andrew Anglin,4 continue to have far-reaching and unpredictable Richard Spencer,5 and Greg Johnson,6 have been active effects, but researchers should take care to precisely for less than a decade. While none has continuously delineate the Alt-Right’s broader uniqueness. designated the movement as ‘Alt-Right’ (including Investigating the Alt-Right’s incipient ideology – the Spencer, who coined the term), each has consistently ferment of political discourses, images, and ideas with returned to it as demarcating the ideological territory which it seeks to define itself – one finds numerous they share. -
Riots: a Comparative Study of Twitter and Parler
111 Capitol (Pat)riots: A comparative study of Twitter and Parler HITKUL, IIIT - Delhi, India AVINASH PRABHU∗, DIPANWITA GUHATHAKURTA∗, JIVITESH JAIN∗, MALLIKA SUBRA- MANIAN∗, MANVITH REDDY∗, SHRADHA SEHGAL∗, and TANVI KARANDIKAR∗, IIIT - Hy- derabad, India AMOGH GULATI∗ and UDIT ARORA∗, IIIT - Delhi, India RAJIV RATN SHAH, IIIT - Delhi, India PONNURANGAM KUMARAGURU, IIIT - Delhi, India On 6 January 2021, a mob of right-wing conservatives stormed the USA Capitol Hill interrupting the session of congress certifying 2020 Presidential election results. Immediately after the start of the event, posts related to the riots started to trend on social media. A social media platform which stood out was a free speech endorsing social media platform Parler; it is being claimed as the platform on which the riots were planned and talked about. Our report presents a contrast between the trending content on Parler and Twitter around the time of riots. We collected data from both platforms based on the trending hashtags and draw comparisons based on what are the topics being talked about, who are the people active on the platforms and how organic is the content generated on the two platforms. While the content trending on Twitter had strong resentments towards the event and called for action against rioters and inciters, Parler content had a strong conservative narrative echoing the ideas of voter fraud similar to the attacking mob. We also find a disproportionately high manipulation of traffic on Parler when compared to Twitter. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Social Computing, Data Mining, Social Media Analysis, Capitol Riots, Parler, Twitter 1 INTRODUCTION Misinformation of the United States of America’s presidential election results being fraudulent has been spreading across the world since the elections in November 2020.1 Public protests and legal cases were taking place across the states against the allegation of voter fraud and manhandling of mail-in ballots.2 This movement took a violent height when a mob attacked the Capitol Hill building to stop certification of Mr. -
Building Resilience & Confronting Risk In
BUILDING RESILIENCE & CONFRONTING RISK IN THE COVID-19 ERA A PARENTS & CAREGIVERS GUIDE TO ONLINE RADICALIZATION POLARIZATION AND EXTREMISM RESEARCH AND INNOVATION LAB (PERIL) PERIL brings the resources and expertise of the university sector to bear CONTENTS on the problem of growing youth polarization and extremist radicalization, through scalable research, intervention, and public education ideas to PARENT & CAREGIVER GUIDE 3 reduce rising polarization and hate. WHAT IS ONLINE RADICALIZATION? WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? 4 SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER NEW RISKS IN THE COVID-19 ERA 5 The SPLC seeks to be a catalyst for racial justice in the South and RECOGNIZING WARNING SIGNS 6 beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS 7 supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the ENGAGE AND EMPOWER 9 human rights of all people. RESPONDING TO HATE 11 HOW TO GET HELP 12 APPENDIX: STAYING ALERT TO SITES, PLATFORMS AND APPS FREQUENTLY EXPLOITED BY EXTREMISTS 17 ENDNOTES 19 CREDITS 20 ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLAUDIA WHITAKER PARENT & CAREGIVER GUIDE Who is this guide for? We wrote this guide with a wide Whether you live with a young person, or work virtually range of caregivers in mind. with youth, radicalization to extremism is something we all should be concerned about. Extremists looking Caregivers living with children and young adults. This to recruit and convert children are predatory. Like all includes parents, grandparents, foster parents, extended forms of child exploitation, extremist recruitment drives families, and residential counselors who are the a wedge between young people and the adults they would guardians and caregivers of children and youth living typically trust. -
Australia Muslim Advocacy Network
1. The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN) welcomes the opportunity to input to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Religion or Belief as he prepares this report on the Impact of Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred and discrimination on the right to freedom of thought, conscience religion or belief. 2. We also welcome the opportunity to participate in your Asia-Pacific Consultation and hear from the experiences of a variety of other Muslims organisations. 3. AMAN is a national body that works through law, policy, research and media, to secure the physical and psychological welfare of Australian Muslims. 4. Our objective to create conditions for the safe exercise of our faith and preservation of faith- based identity, both of which are under persistent pressure from vilification, discrimination and disinformation. 5. We are engaged in policy development across hate crime & vilification laws, online safety, disinformation and democracy. Through using a combination of media, law, research, and direct engagement with decision making parties such as government and digital platforms, we are in a constant process of generating and testing constructive proposals. We also test existing civil and criminal laws to push back against the mainstreaming of hate, and examine whether those laws are fit for purpose. Most recently, we are finalising significant research into how anti-Muslim dehumanising discourse operates on Facebook and Twitter, and the assessment framework that could be used to competently and consistently assess hate actors. A. Definitions What is your working definition of anti-Muslim hatred and/or Islamophobia? What are the advantages and potential pitfalls of such definitions? 6. -
INTRODUCTION and SUMMARY of ARGUMENT January 15, 2021, at 2
Case 2:21-mj-05000-DMF Document 5 Filed 01/14/21 Page 1 of 18 1 MICHAEL BAILEY United States Attorney 2 District of Arizona 3 KRISTEN BROOK Assistant U.S. Attorney 4 Arizona State Bar No. 023121 Two Renaissance Square 5 40 N.Central Ave., Suite 1800 Phoenix, Arizona 85004 6 Telephone: 602-514-7500 Email: [email protected] 7 Attorneys for Plaintiff 8 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA 10 United States of America, MJ 21-05000 11 CR21-00003-RCL 12 Plaintiff, 13 vs. GOVERNMENT’S BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF DETENTION 14 Jacob Anthony Chansley, 15 a.k.a. “Jacob Angeli,” 16 Defendant. 17 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 18 The detention hearing for Jacob Anthony Chansley (AChansley@) is scheduled for 19 January 15, 2021, at 2:30 p.m. For the reasons set forth below, the Court should order 20 Chansley to be detained pending trial. Chansley is an active participant in—and has made 21 himself the most prominent symbol of—a violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow 22 the United States Government on January 6, 2021. Chansley has expressed interest in 23 returning to Washington, D.C. for President-Elect Biden’s inauguration and has the ability 24 to do so if the Court releases him. No conditions can reasonably assure his appearance as 25 required, nor ensure the safety of the community. 26 A federal grand jury indicted Chansley on January 11, 2021. (See Att. A, 27 Indictment.) The indictment charges two felonies and four misdemeanors arising from 28 Chansley’s actions in the Capitol on January 6. -
Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian
Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian This document is an archived copy of an older ADL report and may not reflect the most current facts or developments related to its subject matter. INTRODUCTION Recent years have not been kind to Aryan Nations, once the country's most well-known neo-Nazi outpost. Bankrupted by a lawsuit from a mother and son who were assaulted by Aryan Nations guards, the group lost its Idaho compound in 2001. Though he continued to serve as Aryan Nations’ leader, Richard Butler suffered the effects of age and ill health, and the group splintered into factions in 2002. Butler claimed to be reorganizing Aryan Nations but died in September 2004, leaving the group’s future as uncertain as ever. Founder and Leader: Richard Butler (1918-2004) Splinter groups (and leaders): Tabernacle of Phineas Priesthood ( Charles Juba, based in Pennsylvania); Church of the Sons of Yahweh (Morris Gullett, based in Louisiana) Founded: Mid-1970s Headquarters : Hayden, Idaho Background: Butler first became involved with the Christian Identity movement after serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. He studied under Wesley Swift, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, until Swift died. Butler then formed Aryan Nations. Media: Internet, videos, posters, e-mail, chat rooms, online bulletin boards, conferences. Ideology: Christian Identity, white supremacy, neo-Nazi, paramilitary Connections: Aryan Nations has had members in common with several other white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, including National Alliance, the Ku Klux Klan and The Silent Brotherhood/The Order Recent Developments: Once the most well-known neo-Nazi group in the United States, Aryan Nations has suffered substantially in recent years due to Butler’s ill health, and a lawsuit that cost the group its Northern Idaho compound in 2001. -
Hate Crime Report 031008
HATE CRIMES IN THE OSCE REGION -INCIDENTS AND RESPONSES ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2007 Warsaw, October 2008 Foreword In 2007, violent manifestations of intolerance continued to take place across the OSCE region. Such acts, although targeting individuals, affected entire communities and instilled fear among victims and members of their communities. The destabilizing effect of hate crimes and the potential for such crimes and incidents to threaten the security of individuals and societal cohesion – by giving rise to wider-scale conflict and violence – was acknowledged in the decision on tolerance and non-discrimination adopted by the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid in November 2007.1 The development of this report is based on the task the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) received “to serve as a collection point for information and statistics on hate crimes and relevant legislation provided by participating States and to make this information publicly available through … its report on Challenges and Responses to Hate-Motivated Incidents in the OSCE Region”.2 A comprehensive consultation process with governments and civil society takes place during the drafting of the report. In February 2008, ODIHR issued a first call to the nominated national points of contact on combating hate crime, to civil society, and to OSCE institutions and field operations to submit information for this report. The requested information included updates on legislative developments, data on hate crimes and incidents, as well as practical initiatives for combating hate crime. I am pleased to note that the national points of contact provided ODIHR with information and updates on a more systematic basis. -
The Occidental Observer, Reflects a Sane Approach to What the Coronavirus Represents
THE WEST’S DARKEST HOUR THE SITE OF A MAN FUSED TO A WEIRWOOD TREE Dissident right insanity The Ferdinand Bardamu article I was mentioning yesterday, published on The Occidental Observer, reflects a sane approach to what the coronavirus represents. But a considerable percentage of the dissident-right folk are, literally, insane. Unlike one of my old friends with whom I spoke about the trauma model of mental disorders in the Start reading this!: previous decade, among my racialist readers no If an Aryan man of noble one has thoroughly considered what I say in Day feelings comes to visit this of Wrath where I use terms like ‘psychogenesis’, site, I can assure him that ‘psychoclasses’ and ‘paleologic thought’. If the Day of Wrath content were popular among reading four books will racialists, the conceptual bases for understanding transfigure his way of cognitive distortions in humans in general, including the dissident seeing the world. right, would be better understood. These books are: Hellstorm Today, for example, Hunter Wallace complains about the insults by Thomas Goodrich, the he received from a recalcitrant coronavirus sceptic: abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago, and two There are people who are “dissidents” in the sense that they books that appear within believe things like the earth is flat, the moon landing was a hoax, The Fair Race, whose image the victims of mass shootings are “crisis actors,” viruses are not appears below: Rome vs. real, microchips are being implanted in our brains to create “a Judea and Who We Are (PDF worldwide slave grid,” SARS is the flu, women are the enemy of here, hard copy here).