A Constellation Approach to Understanding Extremist White Supremacy

Authors

Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh
Robert Futrell, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Pete Simi, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-3-2024

Abstract

Reflecting on long-term intensive ethnographic fieldwork, we sketch a “constellation” framework for understanding U.S. extremist white supremacy. Rather than tracing fluctuating people and organizations to explain the persistence of white supremacist extremism, we suggest that focusing on a core set of practices, ideas, and emotions offers a more complex, nuanced, and useful interpretation. We contrast our constellation framework with more typical “bucket” approaches that tend to compartmentalize a complex reality into categories that do not sufficiently match extremism’s dynamism.

Comments

This article was originally published in Mobilization: An International Quarterly, volume 28, issue 4, in 2024. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-28-4-435

Recommended Citation

Kathleen Blee, Robert Futrell, Pete Simi; A Constellation Approach to Understanding Extremist White Supremacy. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 3 January 2024; 28 (4): 435–444. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-28-4-435

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors