The Complexity of "Extremism" and Public Comprehension of the White Right

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 4) From Settler Colonialism to the White Right: Neighborhoods, Schools, and Whiteness

Abstract

Mainstream public responses to the white right embody a set of contradictions, in which white male racial violence is simultaneously naturalized and homogenized, while its significance and critical implications are minimized or sanitized. In the United States, white right populism and white nationalism have persisted as expressions of white collective interests in maintaining dominance. As media, educators, politicians, and faith leaders react to incidents of white nationalist violence, the concept of “extremism” remains a frequent and under-explored element of explanatory public narratives. In this discussion, the authors engage and deconstruct the concept of extremism, and then explore its role in masking the complexity and variation that typify white nationalist internal hierarchies and movements. Utilizing critical race, critical disability, and feminist theoretical frames, white nationalist gender politics are foregrounded as an example of the internal contradictions captured within white nationalist and right-wing populist movements.

Authors

• Leslie A. Bunnage, Seton Hall University

• Beth Ribet, Repair