The Rise of a New Anti-Feminism: Spokeswomen of the Alt-Right and their Appeals to Women
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Date
2019-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
In my paper, I identify appeals that spokeswomen of extreme right-wing movements make to encourage women to join or identify with those movements. Using scholarship on right-wing movements in US history by Kathleen Blee, Ronnee Schrieber, and Andrea Dworkin, I examine these appeals in order to discern whether the contemporary Alt-Right uses the same appeals and movement strategies to recruit women. For this analysis, I transcribed YouTube videos and speeches by Alt-Right spokeswomen Lana Lokteff, Brittany Pettibone, and Lauren Southern. Using the categories of appeals to women constructed from preexisting research on women in extreme right-wing movements, I compare and contrast methods of creating and disseminating appeals to women in early right-wing movements and the contemporary Alt-Right. In my research, I identify appeals to the white “Race,” socialization, a white race aesthetic, religious tradition, and sexual complementarity. I identify some continuities as well as differences between appeals to women in extreme right-wing movements in US history and the Alt-Right. Differences include: the disappearance of explicit appeals to religion and the use of the internet for recruitment. My paper shows how important it is to include women in analyses of extreme right-wing movements, as their participation has been and continues to be central to movement sustainability.
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Keywords
Anti-Feminism, Women, Alt-Right, Appeals, Digital Feminism