This study employs an eclectic rhetorical-critical approach to examine the Website of the National Alliance, a prominent White-supremacist organization. This study is guided by research questions that ask what rhetorical strategies the National Alliance uses on its Website, and how these strategies might inform how politically-extreme Internet communities socialize new members into their belief systems. The critical analysis shows that the National Alliance desires its audience to become identified with the goals and program of the organization, redefine their notions of "responsibility" to only encompass the White race, and obsessively endeavor to build the foundation for a new White society. This study concludes by defining "socialization value," a proposed rhetorical-critical construct with special relevance to Internet texts. The National Alliance Website possesses a high socialization value, meaning that it is likely to assist the National Alliance in expanding the size of its Internet community. / Department of Communication Studies

Neoliberalism operationalizes the White Supremacist narrative of meritocracy in spaces like no-excuse charter schools in order to coerce teachers to obediently turn out data that is productive for investors, at the expense of both teachers and Black and Brown students’ humanity. This dissertation defines the coercion teachers experience as a process of mechanization, whereby they are inducted into the narrative of meritocracy and threatened with material loss if they do not comply. However, contrary to current research that illustrates their repeated mechanization, I draw from my own experiences as a teacher at a no-excuse charter school to assert that teachers in these spaces do have the capacity to enact anti-racist teacher agency and resist. This dissertation therefore asks, How do educators at no-excuse charter schools engage anti-racist teacher agency to negotiate mechanization and the narrative of meritocracy? Over the course of 13 months, I engaged with six self-described social justice-oriented teachers from three schools across two New Jersey cities through a methodology I developed called critical storying. Functioning in two parts--The Spiral and Speculation--critical storying first pays attention to participants' affective tensions through dialogic spiraling in order to identify mechanizations they experience, and ways the negotiate those mechanizations. Then, using participants’ own narrative imagining, I wrote each participants’ story centering them as a cyborg protagonist confronting and overcoming a core mechanization. The findings, as well as the framework and methodology developed for this study, contribute to research concerned with no-excuse charter schools, anti-racist teacher agency, speculative fiction, and dismantling White Supremacy from school systems.

White ways of understanding, perceiving, and knowing continue to be centered in the field of psychology, leaving a deficit of knowledge around effective antiracist pedagogy, research, and training. Although psychologists have a natural place in strengthening social justice initiatives to broader antiracist advocacy, the field has had a long history of perpetuating racism, racial discrimination, and human hierarchy in the United States. White Supremacy Culture, outdated professional socialization practices, and hostile training environments continue to lead to high attrition rates, racial trauma, and compounding mental health issues for BIPOC. Moreover, epistemic restrictions and the lack of precise guidelines on implementing antiracism practices remain barriers to advancing racial equity within the field. Using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR), this study identified antiracist frameworks and guidelines that psychology training programs could construct from the experiences, motivations, and practices of White activists in Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), one of the most visible racial justice organizations in the United States. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 SURJ activists, this study generated eight major domains with three to five themes per domain. Applying theoretical frameworks of Critical Whiteness Studies, White Supremacy Culture, and spatial justice, findings revealed the range of ways in which SURJ activists used spatial justice praxis or counter-spaces against White Supremacy Culture to work through the barriers of being an effective White activist and to advance antiracism by finding their mutual interests, or personal stakes, in the racial justice movement. Implications for psychology training programs, study limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Research on social illiteracy (Rand, 2021) and the demographic imperative (Jupp et al., 2019)—as well as teachers’ stated responsibilities in teaching about race and racism in schools (Rand, 2021)—convey the urgency of attending to both barriers and possibilities for white literacy and English Language Arts (ELA) teachers. As literacy is inextricably linked with equity, literacy classrooms mark a site of sanctioning or resisting oppressions rooted in the white supremacist status quo. Following recent articulations of critical race and whiteness frameworks—particularly white supremacy logic (Enumah, 2021)—this research aims to explore white anti-racist educators teaching in the post-2020 evolving and contested field of education. Rooted in a theoretical framework of “rehumanizing praxis,” or simultaneous inward and outward pedagogies, this inquiry prioritizes humanizing research with participants through interviews, observations, reflections, and artifacts. Situated in critical constructivist grounded theory methodology, I enacted a research design intended to explore the internal and external barriers, possibilities, and pedagogies six white anti-racist teachers experience in their endeavors to participate in liberatory education.

This study explores the complex relationship between radical right rhetoric and the genre of apocalyptic rhetoric. The radical right consists of the White Nationalist and Patriot movements, two common "hate group" movements in the United States. The Klanwatch (1998d) explains that the number of hate groups in the United States grew by 20 percent in 1997. They attribute much of this growth to the movement's use of the Internet. Although these hate groups are highly diverse, Christian Identity is a common theology to which many members of the radical right adhere.This study analyzes two artifacts representational of Christian Identity rhetoric. These artifacts were found on the Web site of the Northwest Kinsmen, a radical right group from the Pacific Northwest. Christian Identity is a "pseudo-Christian" theology that claims that white Christians are the true Israelites and that Jews are actually "children of Satan." Christian Identity followers believe that there will be a racial war (i.e., racial apocalypse) in which white Christians will triumph over the forces of evil (Abanes, 1996).This study utilizes the rhetorical method of generic criticism to determine that the Christian Identity rhetoric present on the Northwest Kinsmen's Web site is apocalyptic rhetoric. Generic theory, the theoretical foundation of this study, argues that rhetorical genres have common situational, substantive, and stylistic features and a common "organizing principle" that unifies the genre. Therefore, this study compares the key features of apocalyptic rhetoric to the Northwest Kinsmen artifacts. Through this study, a greater understanding of the social reality, beliefs, attitudes, and values of the radical right, Christian Identity rhetors is obtained.This study discovers that the Christian Identity rhetoric found on the Northwest Kinsmen's Web site is apocalyptic rhetoric. This study illustrates that these Christian Identity rhetors believe that they are living in a chaotic world of inexplicable problems. Through apocalyptic rhetoric, the rhetors help explain the "crises" facing the audience and therefore restore order in their lives. Specifically, this study shows how these apocalyptic rhetors utilize conspiracy theories to restore order. Additionally, it illustrates how the rhetorical strategies associated with apocalyptic rhetoric (i.e., typology, transfer, and style and language) are used to enhance the credibility of the rhetor and the legitimacy of even the most racist assertions. Finally, this study provides insight into the use of the Internet by radical right groups. / Department of Speech Communication