BREAKOUT SESSIONS 6
Panel 6A: The far-right
Chair: Dr Bàrbara Molas (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague)
Hate in the ‘Schoolyards’: examining the transnational identity of white supremacist music and merchandise Bradley J. Galloway (Ontario Tech University) [Co-author: Jamie R. Noulty (Queen’s University)] Abstract: White power music and its merchandise is one of the most visible components of right-wing extremist propaganda. The term ‘White Power’ signals that the music and its corresponding ideology belong to the explicit extremist far-right. It can also signify affiliation with certain underground movements, or movements which are nationalist or internationalist. The music has been utilised by ideologically motivated violent extremists for multiple proposes, which includes youth recruitment and radicalisation to support various national and transnational groups. In 2001, the Southern Poverty Law Centre estimated there were more than 350 bands worldwide. Our project will examine how the movement has continued to target children and adolescents through music and merchandise over the internet. We will indicate why groups embraced this technology and moved from closed forums and mail-order sites to open mainstream forums and accessible on-line stores. The music is immediately available on multiple platforms to buy, sell, and trade despite it being illegal to own in certain countries. As the music incudes brash, powerful lyrics, and its merchandise contains similar thematic imagery, which is used to engage with children and adolescents, the paper will examine how sales are used to not only indoctrinate, but to keep their organisations funded.
Analysis of Hate and Heuristics in the Buffalo Shooter Manifesto Dr Michael Waltman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Abstract: This presentation explores the rhetors’ use of persuasive heuristics to influence readers to understand and accept the threat posed by various enemies of White people (Jews, Black people, Brown immigrants, a liberal press, a Zionist Occupied Government, multiculturalism, and equality, to name but a few). Persuasive heuristics are cognitive short cuts that people employ when deciding if they will comply with a persuasive request. For example, people may rely on their perceptions of the rhetor’s credibility, likeability, or the consensus of others when considering persuasive requests. Research has also explored how unscrupulous rhetors may use communication to encourage people to employ these cognitive short-cuts rather than give due consideration to the quality of the argument or reasoning of the rhetor. Such heuristics, thus, represent attempts to encourage readers to rely on inferior forms of information processing when considering persuasive requests (such as the request to commit ethnoviolence or hate crimes). However, this critique will also introduce the use of a new heuristic that is relevant to the use of hatred as a form of persuasion. I am proposing the “racial threat heuristic.”
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