THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE OF WHITE SUPREMACY
Open Access
- Author:
- Gerber, Isaiah
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- August 27, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Gary J Adler, Jr., Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
John David Mccarthy, Committee Member
Charles Seguin, Committee Member
Jennifer Lynne Van Hook, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- social movements
organizations
white supremacy - Abstract:
- Little past research has examined how the partitioning of the white supremacist social movement industry (SMI) compares to other SMIs. This is in spite of evidence that organizations within this SMI may be unique in their deployment of protest tactics and willingness to utilize violence. Scholarly analysis of other SMIs indicates that identifying diversity in organizational characteristics like professionalization, membership, frames, and organizational strategies is useful for partitioning SMIs. By evaluating the white supremacist SMI in terms of these four organizational characteristics, this study finds substantial evidence that there are eight distinct organizational clusters operating within the white supremacist SMI, that this diversity is driven by deployed organizational strategies, and that this SMI is unique in its use of violence and willingness to deploy a merchandizing-based organizational strategy. These findings provide both an alternative framework through which to understand diversity in the SMI of white supremacy, as well as evidence that the SMI of white supremacy is distinct within the US social movement sector in its deployment of violence and the merchandizing organizational strategies.