Impression Management, “Optics” Maintenance, and Dramaturgical Loyalty Within White Supremacist Organizations

In this article published in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, I analyze the impression management strategies used by various white supremacist organizations that make up the Alt-Right movement in the United States. These fledgling organizations, cognizant of their social stigma, tried to find ways to make their beliefs palatable to the public.

Abstract: Social movement organizations are concerned and cognizant of their public image and typically need to maintain positive public perception to gain and sustain support. White supremacist organizations believe that they are highly stigmatized, reviled, and surveilled groups and go to great lengths to protect their desired self-representation. Through a qualitative analysis of close to 2 million Discord chat messages from white supremacist organizations, I find that white nationalist groups attempt to cater their public appearances through three primary axes: organizational, activism, and individual/membership. This chapter uses concepts from Goffmanian sociology, such as Stigma, Impression Management, and Frontstage/Backstage, to highlight how political movements discuss, argue, and debate the public image they wish to deploy. Studies on right-wing movements tend to be “externalist” in the sense that they look at publicly available documents which privilege the views of leadership. This chapter uses a dataset which delves into the social movement “backstage,” enabling us to view white supremacists' private conversations, their impression management strategies, and how they wish to appear on the “frontstage”.

Image from: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/23/far-right-terrorism-white-supremacy-islamic-state/