This dissertation examines the rise of the racialized apocalyptic genre from 1978 to 2019. The period chosen reflects the social shift of the American political right into a party that accepts white supremacy as a tenet. In the post-Civil Rights era, white Americans considered the issue of racism to be solved. With the historic Voting Rights Act and other major victories in the 1960s there was a moment when it seemed America may turn a corner. However, when Richard Nixon took office in 1969, he originated what would be a long process of positioning the American right against intellectualism, minorities, and progress. Nixon, and the development of the new southern strategy would reach decades into the future, utilizing coded language and pitting Americans against one another. Research examining the racialized elements of the American right from Nixon to contemporary times is well chronicled and vast.

As growing numbers of people access the internet, it has also grown as a medium for white nationalists. Podcasts in particular present a unique media form for misinformation and white nationalist ideology to spread as they are not regulated by the Federal Trade Commission in the United States. As a result of this lack of regulation, the following questions are central to this paper: what role does misinformation play in influencing white nationalist ideology? What are the consequences? How do podcasts serve as a medium for white nationalist ideology and misinformation to spread online? This research project reveals how white nationalism has become more attractive and mainstream over the past ten years, largely around the Presidency of Donald Trump. Analyzing and researching white nationalism in the present is necessary to better understand and tackle the issue at large. To fully understand these questions, I engage in a summative content analysis of several prominent conservative podcasts and conclude interviews with leading scholars of global studies and global communications, all while using a feminist lens of analysis. While these podcasts differ on the extremity of their views, I find that they share a similar sentiment of resentment and the dear of a loss of identity as a white race, while utilizing and relying on misinformation. The themes shared among all of the shows are identified as: (1) a distrust in institutions, (2) fear-mongering, and (3) a belief that white people - need to “regain their power”. The implications of this loom large due to the sheer number of listeners among the podcasts. Certainly, future research is necessary to fully understand exactly how podcasts impact listeners, yet preliminary evidence is clear that podcasts with a white nationalist ideology presents a danger. White nationalists believe they, as white people, hold an inherent power over people of color, and need to take this power back; the dissemination of this ideology through podcasts only amplifies this message.

Extant literature on White Nationalism illustrate the myriad of social issues members of this racialist extremist group presently recognize as threatening the continuation of the white race and the preservation of white heritage (Swain 2002). One of these threats includes the high incidences of black-on-white violent crime within the United States. The March 2008 murder of UNC student body president Eve Carson, a 22 year-old white woman, by two young black males elicited heated discussion among White Nationalists. This paper analyzes, via content analysis, the thematic discourse surrounding Carson's homicide among White Nationalists on two popular White Nationalist websites. Functionalist theory guides this investigation in the attempt to illustrate how White Nationalists use scientific theories of criminality and government crime statistics as tools for justifying their racist beliefs. Also, this study intended to answer whether or not Carson's murder prompted an increase in online membership on the two websites used for the analysis. Moreover, this study sought to unearth thematic discourse which involved attacking whites who do not subscribe to White Nationalism; Eve Carson as either a sacred or profane symbol of whiteness; criticism of government policies, media, and the criminal justice system; evoking fear within the White Nationalist community; and calls for white solidarity and action. This analysis suggests that White Nationalists primarily used Carson's death as an opportunity to attack whites who do not subscribe to White Nationalist beliefs. / Master of Science

Prior to attacking a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Crusius posted a manifesto on the notorious 8chan website in which he justifies his attack as a self-defensive response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” While this manifesto certainly contains the irrationality necessary to justify mass murder, it also repeats and reinforces language and worldviews present in public discourse, especially in discourse from white nationalists. Analyzing the Crusius manifesto in context of this white nationalist public discourse reveals how language used and worldviews perpetuated by white nationalists ultimately construct an apocalyptic meta-narrative that transforms immigrants and refugees into dangerous invaders. By repeatedly telling stories that frame immigrants or refugees as criminals, invaders, and terrorists, white nationalists have constructed a meta-narrative that subsumes localized narratives, which means that any story about an immigrant seeking refuge in the United States becomes a story of an invader and criminal. Crusius repeats and reinforces this meta-narrative in his manifesto, drawing on the foundational white-nationalist French scholar Renaud Camus, whose “Great Replacement” theory claims that non-white populations are systematically replacing white populations, leading to a “white genocide.” Ultimately, the apocalypse in this meta-narrative is not a violent, devastating end to the United States, but rather the end of a structure dominated by whiteness and Western culture. It’s this perceived apocalypse that inspires Crusius’ violent response. Ultimately, this meta-narrative capitalizes on fear to transform genuine love of nation into a volatile xenophobia that can encourage a perceived need for violent self-defense. On the scholarly front, this research may reinforce the suggestion of scholar Dana Cloud, who claims that scholars and rhetors cannot challenge white nationalist irrationality with a rational approach, but rather with localized narratives that ground the experiences of immigrants and refugees in concrete details that foster empathy and understanding.

White nationalism is an ideology on the rise. Thus, it is important to understand why many men and women chose to engage with the ideology. This study aims to deepen the understanding of how women in online white-nationalist communities construct their gender through discursive practices, by using theories and concepts developed by Judith Butler and V. Spike Peterson. By researching this mostly uncharted phenomenon this study provides insight into how gender roles and white-nationalist ideas intersect and how the female users on Stormfront.org self express in relation to these ideas. Using netnography and thematic analysis the users' posts were presented in themes that illuminate different aspects of how they construct their gender. The key findings of this study reinforce earlier studies in emphasizing the role of motherhood and child rearing as essential parts of being a woman. They also show how femininity and white skin are constructed as inseparable, as women can not have one without the other. The need for a woman to have knowledge about white culture and to be educated is also a recurring theme. Lastly, the study also concluded that a renegotiation of the gender roles is taking place on the forum, where some users object to the overly traditional ideals of how a woman should be, requesting a more progressive way to view gender within white nationalism.

The gradual disappearance of the so-called ‘alt-right’, caused in part by the gradual deplatforming of its figureheads has created somewhat of a power vacuum, allowing for a new generation of far-right influencers to take over. The Groyper movement, led by 23-year-old Nicholas J. Fuentes, could in this sense be described as one of the successors of the alt-right. The Groypers are youth-led and youth-oriented, insofar as their primary aim is to radicalize – or ‘red pill’ – Generation Z, a strategy outlined both in their speech and their use of social media platforms primarily used by young people, with TikTok being the most notable example. Despite the movement’s relative infancy, it could easily be described as one of the fastest growing far right group in the modern era – in large part due to the perfect storm created by the COVID-19 lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter protests – and has recently begun to spawn culturally distinct offshoots outside of the United States into countries like Canada. This thesis will therefore examine the discursive practices of the Canadian ‘branch’ of the Groyper movement on TikTok in order to identify some of the tactics it uses to facilitate the radicalization of teenagers and young adults by drawing on Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical framework. The findings of this project add to a growing body of research regarding youth-oriented far-right movements, the use TikTok for propaganda purposes, and the broader literature of discourse analysis.

Emerging in the 1970s, the White Nationalist movement resurfaced in the late 2010s with the election of President Donald J. Trump. This far-right White supremacist movement is a breeding ground for domestic terrorist groups, and lone-wolf attackers. White Nationalism is predicated on the belief in White racial superiority and the belief that White people need a racial homeland in order to survive. Originally sparked as part of the White backlash to the Civil Rights movements and Black Power movements of the 50s and 60s, the ideas that animate this racialist movement go back even further. Analyzing the trajectory of White supremacist ideas and violent White Nationalist groups since before the 1970s is vital for understanding the re-emergence of the White Nationalist movement and the real political impacts this ideology is having in early twenty-first century American society. This thesis seeks to understand this re-emergence by analyzing how White Nationalist thought has evolved, and the ways that White Nationalist groups use gender-based appeals to recruit members and promote their ideology. This movement and its ideology have been attractive to disaffected White men who believe that society has passed them by and who may be experiencing what scholars have called a "crisis of masculinity." This thesis will examine how the White Nationalist movement has used the concept of masculinity in its publications, literature, and counter-media. The White Nationalist movement relies on propaganda that promotes the idea that the White race is in danger of going extinct, and that the White race needs saviours and protectors. In this way White Nationalist propaganda makes appeals to the manhood of their target audience while also promoting racial animosity and hatred. Their propaganda also relies upon scapegoating and the demonization of "others." This movement has been growing since the 1970s and has become influential due to the success of White Nationalist groups using the Internet to promulgate their ideas. This thesis seeks to understand the history of this radical ideology and the ways that this movement has used appeals to masculine identity to reach new adherents.

Following the end of the Civil War, the revisionist myth of the Lost Cause spread over the South as an apologist narrative for white hegemony and slavery, which protected the former Confederate states from the devastating effects of their loss. Pro-Confederate organizations lobbied to replace real history with this collective memory of the South through education and memorialization. This national myth then served as a legitimization of white Southern nationalism that sought to restore white hegemony of the antebellum racial order. The white nationalist organization League of the South, whose goal is the second secession of the Southern states, embraces and manifests the ideology of the Lost Cause in its textual and audiovisual discourse and use of iconography. This discourse anchors their separatist intentions in the context of postwar collective memory, and aids the organization in the legitimization of their actions on the basis of revisionist history. The League derives its identity from this collective memory as the self-established white Southern ethnicity of Anglo-Celtic origin and the descendants of Founding Fathers as well as Confederate leaders. In doing so, the League identifies itself as the organization of true heirs of America stigmatized by the external aggression of the federal...

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There has been a rise in Right-wing extremism (RWE) mobilizing within what is known as the setter-colonial state of Canada, with some groups espousing values and narratives grounded in White nationalist ideology which have led to instances of violence and harm against community members. These incidents of harm and violence occur in the context of the Canadian state's claims to inclusive multiculturalism, civility and benevolence. While there are many looking into the presence of RWE groups to document their existence, mobilizing patterns and tactics, very little analysis exists that offers a deep analysis into these groups and situates their political ideology within the broader context of the Canadian state’s governance logics. Therefore, to push the discussion on this topic further, this project looks at the specific case of the Canadian Nationalist Front's (CNF), a White nationalist group in Canada, and unpacks the discourse shared on their blog. Through dissecting the CNF's blogpost with a theoretical framework of analysis that moves beyond understanding this group as merely a fringe group which holds fundamentally different values than the Canadian state, I make links to the existing literature that demonstrates the parallels between the two. I argue that the racialized governance logics of White nationalist groups, like the CNF, are also shared in the settler-colonial logics of the Canadian state's border governance strategies. Further, I highlight the ways in which groups like the CNF ground their movements in the superiority of Whiteness, while using the state's claims of inclusivity and multiculturalism to justify their entitlement to hold these exclusionary ideologies while presenting themselves as victims of those that they "Other". Finally, I contextualize their discourse within the context of neoliberalism, which has intensified the harms of racial capitalism in a way that has also impacted the White working class and allowed groups like the CNF to use economic grievances to mobilize their movements.