October 28, 2016

Trump gives boost to white nationalists

Vanderbilt University: “The Trump campaign has given the white nationalist movement a long-awaited opportunity to spread its message to a national audience,” said Sophie Bjork-James, who tracks white nationalist Internet groups and is a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
“Trump’s messages about limiting immigration and banning Muslims from the United States have given the movement one of its largest membership boosts in decades, which will have impact long after this election cycle.”
According to Bjork-James:
  • The founder of the white nationalist website Stormfront, Don Black, claims a 30 to 40 percent spike in web traffic in 2015 after Trump’s anti-immigration and ban Muslim speeches.
  • The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, was created in 2013. The site went from 1.2 million visits per month in 2015 to 1.9 million visitors per month today.
  • Breitbart.com went from 32 million visits per month in 2015 to 75 million visits per month in September of 2016.
  • The “alt-right” term or Alternative Right was started by white nationalist Richard Spencer and is an attempt to rebrand the racist right as a legitimate part of the political spectrum.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It seems there might be an issue over confusing cause and correlation in the examples cited in this post. Dr. Biork-James is dealing wholly with speculation on this and here findings in no way can be termed 'scientific'. Cultural anthropology is one of those fields that Richard Feynman described as 'Cargo Cult Science'. It may involve many of the procedures associated with authentic scientific research, but owing to the fact that results can be subject to a wide range of subjective interpretation that may or may not be repeatable, the field is something less than a real science. The presented conclusions posted here are just as easily attributable to any number of other social events occurring in the time frame involved. Certainly the reactions over the Confederate Flag in the aftermath of the Dylan Roof shootings had to have generated spikes in white separatist activities. The strident anti-Islamic rantings of certain Christian-Right fanatics has to have been a major factor---consider the xenophobic radio programs that saturate the Heartland on a daily basis. How can Dr Bjork-James dismiss that? Why attribute this all to candidate Trump at this time? Me smells a rat, a polemical rat with ulterior objectives. What, this just could be yet one more in the never ending array of Sam's slam Trump hit parade. Christ this is getting old.
Do your readership some good, Sam. How about posting some stuff along these lines?:
https://newmatilda.com/2016/10/28/inside-the-invisible-government-john-pilger-on-war-propaganda-clinton-and-trump/
http://blackagendareport.com/ghost_fascists_vs_real_ones
http://blackagendareport.com/malcomx-on-clinton-vs-trump