Intersectional hate: race, gender and violence on the transatlantic extreme-right, 1969-2009.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20409486

This dissertation seeks to get to the core of the racist extremist social structure, focusing on the intimate and personal politics of the movement and shifting our understanding of the neo-fascist weltanschauung on a global level. I explore the social, political and ideological motivators that drive people towards the extreme-right and ultimately dictate their actions and beliefs once they are firmly within the movement, and my research highlights important trends and patterns that can have real-world impacts. For example, by exploring the intricacies of far-right masculinities in historical context we can determine key factors contributing to radicalization towards violence, and can isolate particular warning signs that may be of great use to the professional Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) community. This dissertation is highly interdisciplinary and bridges the gap between academia and an important nexus of policy, violence prevention, and security. My dissertation research has explored the intersection between race and gender on the global extreme-right between 1969 and 2009. By examining the publications of violent extremist groups in the United States and United Kingdom, I offer a transatlantic historical analysis of the ways in which gender was constructed and defined on the extremist fringe. I explore the ways in which group leadership defined the identity of White femininity in opposition to White masculinity, and how Black and Jewish masculinity was constructed as a direct threat to White womanhood by members of these groups. Ultimately I argue that these writers and activists mobilized idealized images of both masculinity and femininity as both propaganda and as a deliberate limitation on the role of women within their movement. These groups promoted an image of a morally pure, dutiful mother in order to portray women as potential victims - thereby justifying retributive and pre-emptive violence - and to limit their engagement to reproduction and home-making. However, by incorporating the writing of women within the movement and looking at the many magazines and newsletters published and distributed by groups such as the Women's Aryan Union and Patriotic Women's Front, I suggest that more often than not women within racist extremism rejected these restrictions and engaged in more direct activism through publishing, organizing, network-building and even violence. In doing so, white supremacist women were able to forge their own paths within the movement, often reaching senior positions and gaining significant degrees of influence in their extremist circles. Despite male activists' attempts to circumscribe it, I show, women' racist activism has and continues to be both significant and dangerous.--Author's abstract