Abstract
White Supremacist groups have been an active participant in the digital world since its inception. However, as this technology evolved so too did the opportunities it provided to various iterations of far-right political groups and organizations. Though it would be incorrect to say that the evolving realities of the digital world are the central cause for far-right radicalization, it did provide the opportunity by which those individuals already holding extremist attitudes and beliefs to better consolidate those beliefs, while also embracing a community of like-minded individuals across the country and around the world. Attitudes and beliefs, which were perhaps less welcome in normal day-to-day experience could now be shared and validated in ways that furthered this process extremism and made the possibility of violence more likely.
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- 1.
The U.S. Constitution describes the role of the Vice President, the President of the Senate, in the following way. “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted” (Founding Fathers, 2019, p. 22). The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States of America.
- 2.
This address will not actually take you to Roof’s Jail Journal page; I tried and was unable to access the journal. The journal can be accessed by going to the Age of Treason website and search Dylann Roof. His journal will be the first link that appears.
- 3.
Lastrhodesian.com has been identified as the site where Roof discussed some of the ideas later discovered within the jail journal, explaining both his process of radicalization as well as his attack on The Mother Emanuel Church in Charlestown, SC (Robles, 2015; Wren & Pardue, 2015).
- 4.
Roof made this admission to FBI investigators during their 06/18/2015 interview with Roof. In that interview, Roof refused a lawyer and openly admitted to his involvement in the church murders.
- 5.
The above transcription of the FBI interview occurred 25:25/26:23 of counter of that recorded interview.
- 6.
Bowers built his own computers and per Lord’s reporting was using encrypted communications as early as 1998 (Lord, 2018).
- 7.
Some of the responses to Bowers’ violence can be accessed at age-of-treason.com/2018/10/27/robert-bowers/
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Polizzi, D. (2021). White Supremacy and the Digital World: The Social Construction of White Identity. In: Toward a Phenomenology of Terrorism. Critical Criminological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76405-0_8
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