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HOW WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN WHITE NATIONALIST GROUPS AFFECTS THE GROUP’S PROPENSITY FOR VIOLENCE Jordan Mathews Master's Thesis Spring 2021 Department of Peace and Conict Research Uppsala University Supervised by: Kristine Eck Word Count: 20,658 Acknowledgements Thank you to my advisor, Kristine Eck, for encouraging me to study this topic, believing in me that I could, and keeping me from jumping o the metaphorical thesis cli, time and time again. Studying this phenomena has been challenging, terrifying, but ultimately, rewarding. A special thank you to my donor, Mrs. Patricia Blender, Rotary District 5440, the Rotary Peace Fellowship and Uppsala’s Rotary Peace Center for granting me the opportunity to study at the Department of Peace and Conict Research at Uppsala University. I’m humbled by the investment made in me, and I look forward to taking all that I have learned with me as I move forward as an advocate for peace and justice. And, of course, a very special thank you to just a few of my favorite people. Amanda Lanigan, your friendship has been the greatest gift. I look forward to when we can again cry together in Espresso House surrounded by other people’s trash. And to my love, Hannah Lichtenstein, you remind me that I am so much more than just a student of Peace and Conict Studies. I am so lucky. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 2 Abstract Although white nationalism is an ever-growing threat, there has been little research done to extrapolate what makes one white nationalist group more violent than the next, even more lacking is the gender dimensions of these violent propensities. To contribute to this research gap, in this study I ask the question, How does women’s participation in white nationalist groups affect the group’s propensity for violence? To answer this question, I propose a novel theoretical framework that argues white nationalist groups with women members will have a higher propensity for violence than groups without women members. Specically, I argue that when women participate in these groups they weaponize white motherhood which then leads to the reinforcement of a militarized masculinity. This reinforcement subsequently leads to an overall higher propensity of violence. To test this hypothesis, I use a structured focused comparison most-similar case research design to compare three American white nationalist groups- the Proud Boys, Atomwaen Division and the Ku Klux Klan. Due to data limitations, I was unable to test the causal mechanisms. The results of this study did not support the proposed hypothesis; however, I argue that due to research design limitations, more data collection and research is needed in order to fully test the relationship of the two variables and the explanatory power of the theory. 3 Introduction Over recent years, the media’s attention to the rise of white nationalism1 in the US has lled headlines and primetime news slots, with violent events like the ‘Unite the Right’ Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the January 6th attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C. captivating the world. From watching the news, one would observe angry white men as the common thread tying these stories together, yet the role of women’s2 participation in these organizations and movements is too often left out. From a research perspective, there has been some academic attention paid to the recent rise of white nationalism; scholars have studied the rise of the Alt-Right3 (Main 2018; Hawley 2017), how Trump’s presidency emboldened white nationalism (Neiwart 2017), and how anti-feminism serves as a recruitment tool into white nationalism for both men and women (Bjork-James 2020; Lewis 2019). However, besides one study done by (Chermak et. al, 2013), there has been little research carried out to understand what makes one white nationalist group more violent than the next, and even more lacking is the exploration of the gender dimensions of these violent propensities. Yet, when the gender dimensions of violent extremism and nationalism have been studied and reported on, women’s relationship to these organizations are often framed within the explanations of exploitation and victimhood (Carter 2013), while her agency and accountability in the violence is left unprobed (Diaz and Valji 2020; Khelghat-Doost 2019; Reeve 2019). Yet, Black feminist scholars like Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill and others have long alerted the public to white women and their participation in white nationalism (Mattheis 2018, 129-130), with white women’s participation acting as the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Arming this, sociologist Blee (1991; 2007; 2020) has spent her career researching women’s participation in white nationalist groups 1In this paper I will use “white nationalism” as a collective term that also includes white supremacist groups and ideologies. While some scholars argue there are important dierences between the two concepts, for the scope of this study, the conceptual dierences do not matter theoretically, and for that reason, I feel comfortable encapsulating them both within the one term for the sake of simplicity and clarity. 2 For this paper, woman or women is defined as white-identifying cis-gender females unless explictly stated otherwise. 3 The Alt-Right is an abbreviated term for the alternative right, which is a loosely connected right-wing online movement motivated by its rejection of mainstream politics, including an aversion to racial, gender and religious equality. In this paper, when I refer to the alt-right, I am referring to the white nationalist subset within the movement. 4 like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), doing her part to understand the often hidden and complex contributions women make to supporting and perpetuating violent white nationalist extremism in the US and abroad. Cultural studies scholar, Mattheis (2018), examined how alt-right women’s recruiting rhetoric uses discourse to persuade other women to join the movement, while journalist, Darby (2020) has written articles and her most recent book, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Frontlines of White Nationalism, examining the participation and accountability of three women in the most recent iteration of the white nationalist movements within the United States. Even with these considerable contributions there is still no research directly examining the relationship between women’s participation in these groups and violence. In this paper, I will examine this gap by examining the question, How does women’s participation in white nationalist groups affect the group’s propensity for violence? I hypothesize that groups with women members will have a higher propensity for violence than groups without women members. As a main contribution to this research gap, I present a novel theoretical framework to explain the relationship between the two variables. I build o Nielsen’s (2020) argument that although patriarchal in structure, women are invited into white nationalist groups to serve an external purpose- to validate, mainstream and recruit new members and sympathizers to the movements. I argue that when women participate in these groups, they weaponize white motherhood symbolically and functionally in the context of a shared masculinized space. Through this, women’s participation reinforces and emboldens militarized masculinity ideology in three ways. First, her participation within this masculinized space can heighten the sense of a perceived threat to the white nation. Second, her participation in these masculinized spaces invoke the need for men to distinguish themselves from women members by taking on a hypermasculinized warrior role, to defend his purpose and manhood to the organization. Third, women can participate in the explicit goading of men to commit violent acts. All of these eects, I argue, subsequently legitimize and thus lead to higher propensity of violence. This theoretical framework is unique as it is seemingly counterintuitive to previous research which has found that women’s participation in political spaces can have a pacifying eect (Caprioli 200; Melander 2005). My argument highlights the importance of examining women’s role in 5 upholding misogynistic systems and reinforcing norms around militarized masculinity. More specically, my argument signals that under certain conditions women’s participation can actually embolden cultures of violence as opposed to quelling it, meaning that it is gender equal norms rather than women’s participation alone that can have a pacifying eect. In this study, I test the proposed hypothesis through a qualitative most-similar, structured focused comparison research design. I compare three American white nationalist group’s- the Proud Boys, Atomwaen Division and the Ku Klux Klan- varying levels of women’s participation against each group’s propensity for violence. The Proud Boys excludes women from participation; Atomwaen Division includes women members marginally; and the Ku Klux Klan includes women as full members. Through data collection from the Anti-defamation League (ADL), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), and with a mix of scholarly articles and news sources, I created categories for variation on the independent variable. In order to measure the dependent variable, a group’ propensity for violence, I used First-Vigil Database which tracks white nationalist violence across the US. To corroborate these ndings, I used the SPLC Hate Watch Blog, news articles and NPR’s database which tracks arrests from the attempted US insurrection. Although this study did not show support for the proposed hypothesis, I argue that, due to research design limitations, the results are inconclusive. Because of this, more data collection and future research is needed in order to disentangle the relationship between women’s participation in white nationalist groups and the group’s propensity for violence. I begin this paper with a section highlighting previous research on the dependent variable. I then propose my theoretical framework in four parts: women’s participation within white nationalist groups, white motherhood weaponized, reinforcing militarized masculinity and white nationalist violence.
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