Fundamentals of Public Communication Campaigns

CHAPTER 14 Public Communication Campaigns of White Supremacism

White supremacism is an ideology advancing that the White race is superior to other races and, as such, should dominate or exterminate them.¹ White supremacism is rooted in the widely debunked theory of scientific racism and its pseudoscientific assertions. Along the lines of similar movements like neo-Nazism, White supremacists target people of other races, immigrants, and Jews.² White supremacist terrorism is a class of terrorism carried out by nonstate actors whose objectives include, but are not limited to, (1) racial dominance; (2) hostility towards government authority; and (3) virulent disapproval of abortion.³ Contemporary right-wing terrorism is often made synonymous with White supremacist terrorism and became popular in the West in the 1970s.⁴ It is “violence perpetrated by organized groups against racial [and other] minorities in the pursuit of White and Aryan supremacist agendas.”⁵

Notwithstanding the election of the first African–American president in the United States, the danger posed by White supremacist violence is unrelenting. It is imperative that academics and policymakers alike understand the massive motivators of White supremacist campaigns. With the aid of the internet and social media, their public communication campaigns are no longer in the periphery and promote a transnational identity principally based on racial and nationalistic dogmas. The campaigns have also managed to manipulate debates ...