https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5049-7906
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ABSTRACT
According to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, nonwhites, globalists and elites are plotting to eliminate the white race and its dominance through anti-white policies and increased immigration. In that context, abortion among white women is perceived by white nationalists (WN) as a betrayal of their ‘biological’ and ‘traditional’ gender role – procreation of white babies. While WN condemn abortion among white women as a murderous sin, at times they encourage the practice among nonwhites to solve demographic threats to white dominance. In this study, we use mixed methods, combining unsupervised machine learning with close textual analysis of 30,725 posts including the term ‘abortion’ published on the WN website Stormfront between 2001 and 2017. We identify three broad themes: White genocide, focused on the conspiracy theory and detailing the active actors in its alleged execution; political, focused on political agendas and laws; and WN reproductive reasoning, articulating and justifying the contradiction between supporting abortion for nonwhites but not for whites via politics of difference that emphasize nonwhites’ supposed inferior morality. We discuss WN’s unique and explicitly racist discourse around a medical topic like abortion, a staple of the conservative and religious right for decades, and how it is used to alleviate their cognitive dissonance resulting from their dual-stance on abortion. Such discourse could be harnessed to recruit members into the movement and normalize extreme, racist ideologies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Replacement theory is a reference to the book The Great Replacement (Camus, Citation2012), while white genocide is a reference to the White Genocide Manifesto (Lane, Citation1988). Camus wrote the native French population was being replaced by immigrants and would ultimately result in the destruction of French culture; Lane also writes native populations will be replaced by immigrants, as well as abortion and race-mixing, but strikes a more explicitly racist tone (Bowles, 2019; Davey & Ebner, Citation2019). These conspiracy theories have proved resilient across time and are increasingly mainstreamed as conservative talking points.
2 The current incarnation of Stormfront was established in September 2001 (Caren et al., Citation2012). Our data do not consist of communications between 1995 and 2000.
3 Na Fianna Éireann is an Irish nationalist youth group.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yotam Ophir
Yotam Ophir is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo. His work combines computational methods for text mining, network analysis, experiments and surveys to study media content and effects in the areas of political, science, and health communication. He is the head of the Media Effects, Misinformation, and Extremism (MEME) lab and a member of the Center for Information Integrity (CII) at the University at Buffalo.
Meredith L. Pruden
Meredith L. Pruden is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Fellow with Institute for Research on Male Supremacism and an affiliate with Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism Lab. Her interdisciplinary, methodologically agnostic research examines and critiques supremacisms and far-right politics, including the mis/disinformation circulated by these groups.
Dror Walter
Dror Walter is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. His research combines traditional media effects theories and novel computational methods for the examination of political and health misinformation, and political extremism.
Ayse D. Lokmanoglu
Ayse D. Lokmanoglu is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on malign digital campaigns (hate speech, extremism, disinformation) and utilizes computational methodologies to examine harmful content in mediated communication.
Catherine Tebaldi
Catherine Tebaldi is a postdoctoral research assistant at university college London, part of a Religion, Spirituality and Democratic Renewal funded project on Evangelicals and Trumpism. Her current research focuses on social media, looking at white nationalist women's language and the uptake of nationalism and conspiracy in beauty and wellness vlogs.
Rui Wang
Rui Wang is a doctoral student at University at Buffalo, Department of Communication. Her work examines the effects of artificial intelligence in areas including politics, science, and health. She is a member of the Media Effects, Misinformation, and Extremism (MEME) lab, and Communication and Emerging Media (CEM) lab.