CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Switzer, Ryan Stephen |
|---|---|
| Title | Unhooding the Alt-Right: Framing and Metapolitics in Far-Right Discourse |
| Summary | The 2016 United States presidential campaign propelled the fringe “alt-right” social movement into mainstream American political consciousness. The alt-right, a loosely organized network of web-savvy young men, threw its collective weight behind Donald Trump, the politically incorrect, provocative outsider. Though failing to disavow the white supremacist alt-right throughout the campaign, a series of unhooding events following the election brought the movement greater notoriety, forcing the President to condemn his loudest online community. An unhooding event (Atkinson 2018) is an instance that exposes a far-right movement’s potential for violence or connection to neo-Fascism. From 2016 to 2018, following three keys unhoodings analyzed in this study, a decline in movement mobilization is observed. This study utilizes the framing theory of social movements (Benford & Snow 2000) to consider how grassroots members of the alt-right react to an affront to their carefully constructed framing. With explicit connections to violence or Nazism being politically untenable, alt-right participants engage in a metapolitical framing that shields their affinities for violence and fascistic elements (á la Nouvelle Droite or French New Right). In the month following an unhooding event, I mine alt-right online forums for activist’s reactions and find four distinct proposed framing strategies: commitment to the metapolitical, claims of conspiracy, concessions of defeat, and radicalizers. This study provides insight into the internal communications of white supremacist activists; providing a novel perspective on the dynamics of a movement’s decline. To conclude, I question the implications of an unhooded social movement in the social media age. |
| Supervisor | Greskovits, Béla |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/switzer_ryan.pdf |
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