This is a talk I gave for the Hunter College Sociology Department, November 9, 2016 about the Trump election and the alt-right movement. Most of this is in the text of this related blog post: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2016/11/09/understanding-trump-moment/
24. From left, Andrew Anglin, The Daily Stormer; Richard Spencer, The Alternative Right; Jared Taylor, American Renaissance; Matthew Heimbach;
David Duke; Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon. (Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Facebook, Getty Images, Reuters)
42. This is a mirror.
Donald J. Trump, 2016White Aryan Resistance,
1997
Notes de l'éditeur
Image from here: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/27/holding-computers-aloft-thousands-march-budapest-against-anti-democratic-internet
Please feel empowered to live Tweet if you’re so inclined.... I might suggest these hashtags for our conversation today.
Nov.9, NYTimes.com
So, sort of by serendipitous accident, I happened to have a kind of “natural experiment” of WS rhetoric before and after the Internet in these two books. One of the big takeaways for me is really the point about digital sociology that I brought up near the beginning. Digital technologies are changing the social world & sociology needs to rise to the challenge of investigating this changing social world.
Source: The History Channel http://www.history.com/images/media/pdf/Men%20Who%20Built%20America.pdf
So, sort of by serendipitous accident, I happened to have a kind of “natural experiment” of WS rhetoric before and after the Internet in these two books. One of the big takeaways for me is really the point about digital sociology that I brought up near the beginning. Digital technologies are changing the social world & sociology needs to rise to the challenge of investigating this changing social world.
More recently, my work has turned to how digital technologies are changing the way we do our work as scholars.
Fox News launched in 1986, and rose to prominence in the 1990s.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/07/07/how-the-rise-of-fox-news-helped-republican-candidates/
When the 1988 strike happened, Fox relied on new shows like “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted,” shows that were basically reality … The networks knew another strike was possible and didn’t want to get stuck with their pants down around their ankles again. “There was a sense of powerlessness of having your product stream absolutely dry up,” said Mr. Littlefield [former NBC vice president], who now heads his own production company. “At some point you say, ‘We don’t want to be in this situation again,’ and you start to build alternatives.
It’s not “new” and they’re not “recruiting.” They’ve been here all along, WS is a consistent feature of our political landscape. Trump (w/ help of both mass media + social media) has amplified WS rhetoric.
Image Source: http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/01/donald-trump-mostly-retweets-white-supremacists.html
In White Lies (1997), I argued that WS rhetoric very close to mainstream, used Patrick Buchanan + Bill Clinton as examples (their political speech not that different from WS). Now, Trump has closed the gap even further between WS + mainstream (+ let’s not forget HRC on “super predator” language.)
This is shocking for some (note the tone in Confessore’s piece in NYTimes, (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/politics/donald-trump-white-identity.html), but not for anyone who has paid attention to the historical legacy of WS in the US in the last 20 years, or the last 400.