Thesis (M.A)--Youngstown State University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-121).

No description available.

The purpose of this dissertation is to employ simulation modeling to test theories of group formation as they pertain to hate groups: groups whose hate ideology may or may not condone violent criminal behavior. As of 2010, there were 1002 hate groups known to be active in the United States. Previous examinations of hate groups have assumed formation. This dissertation uses simulation modeling to test Hamm's (2004) criminological theory of collective hate and Weber's (1947) socio-political theory of charismatic leadership. Simulation modeling is designed to create a computer simulation that simplifies people and their interactions to mimic a real world event or phenomena. Three different experiments were tested using five models of hate group formation. These experiments test the importance of personal and societal levels of hate in group formation and the influence of charismatic leadership. These experiments also tested hypotheses regarding the number of groups that form, the speed of formation and group size. Data to test these hypotheses was collected from fifteen thousand model iterations. All three models successfully generated hate groups. Hate groups were generated at all levels of societal hate. An in-depth understanding of how hate groups form may assist in slowing the proliferation of these groups and decreasing their appeal. / Criminal Justice

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The early 1920s are generally described as a period of transition for American society. Many forces of change collided to create an unsettled atmosphere that appeared to threaten traditional American ideas and values. After World War I, the United States fostered a climate of anti-Catholicism and nativism out of fear that foreign ideas spelled the demise of traditional American values. These ideas were certainly not new to American culture as anti-Catholic sentiments figured prominently throughout the founding of the nation. During the early 1920s, however, a resurrected Ku Klux Klan promoted itself as the protector of American institutions. It won recruits with an identity as a secret society for white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant citizens. The organization also exploited the political issues of the day to ingratiate itself within communities across the nation.

No description available.

Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864 -1946) and Thomas E. Watson (1856-1922), two controversial and radical figures, are often credited with the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan. Dixon, writer of novels and plays such as The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905), and Watson, politician, prolific writer, and publisher of Watson’s Magazine and The Jeffersonian, reached the masses and saturated popular culture with their racial agenda. As each of these men had especially long careers, this thesis focuses on particular times and specific issues. With Dixon, the writing of The Clansman (1905) and production of The Birth of a Nation (1915) are key points in his career and exemplary of his feelings about race, gender and power. For Watson, the Leo Frank controversy (1913-1915) demonstrates the same. Moreover, each man’s career was associated by others with the second coming of the Klan in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Thus, this era is significant for analysis of both men’s work. Through their writings, plays, and political stances, Dixon and Watson ensured widespread reception of a racial message aimed at maintaining the Southern social order at the turn of the twentieth century. While desired social order placed white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men at the top of the social pyramid, a viewing of their work through a gendered lens adds complexity to these motivations. This thesis applies a gendered analysis in a comparative study of these two racist publicists in order to identify and analyze what for them, is the fundamental foundation of that social order. In doing so, not only is an obsession with racial control demonstrated, but also a deep-seated desire to protect and control white womanhood—the most important component of the white, Anglo, Protestant majority. In this analysis, gender emerges as a means to augment race and power while maintaining and bolstering the traditional social order.

This diploma thesis deals with the rhetoric of Ku Klux Klan social movement. One of the goals of the work is to analyze through content analysis the codes that construct the categories of good and evil in the Ku Klux Klan movement. The second goal is to use the technique of critical discourse analysis to reveal the hidden power relations and ideologies that are found in the discourse of the movement. The theoretical part deals with the concept of social movement and the role of symbolic communication in it. It also deals with the concept of code and discourse. The chapter about discourse deals primarily with racism and the denial of racism in discourse. The thesis also concentrates on the theme of rhetoric, its development, rhetorical means and a view of rhetoric by Kenneth Burke. Further, the text deals with the context of Ku Klux Klan's birth and development. The last chapter of the theoretical part is describing the methodology that is afterwards applied to the examined documents.

The 1920s represented a time of tension in America. Throughout the decade, marginalized groups created competing versions of a proper citizen. African-Americans sought to be included in the national fabric. Racism encouraged solidarity, but black Americans did not agree upon one method for coping with, and hopefully ending, antiblack racism. White women enjoyed new privileges and took on more roles in the public sphere. Reactionary groups like the Ku Klux Klan found these new voices unsettling and worrisome and celebrated a white, nativeborn, Protestant and male vision of the American citizen. Simultaneously, technological innovations allowed for advertising to flourish and spread homogenizing information regarding race, gender, values and consumption across the nation. These advertisements selectively represented these changes by channeling them into pre-existing prescriptive ideology. Mainstream ads, which were created by whites for white audiences, reinforced traditional ideas regarding black men and women and white women’s roles. Even if white women were featured using technology or wearing cosmetics, they were still featured in prescribed roles as housekeepers, wives and mothers who deferred to and relied on their husbands. Black women were featured in secondary roles, as servants or mammies, if at all. Concurrently, the black press created its own representations of women. Although these representations were complex and sometimes contradictory and had to reach multiple audiences, black-created ads featured women in a variety of roles, such as entertainers, mothers and business women, but never as mammies. Then, in a decade of increased tensions, white-created ads relied on traditional portrayals of women and African-Americans while black-designed ads offered more positive, although complicated, visions of womanhood.