Erasing historical violence from the study of violent extremism: Memorialization of white supremacy at Stone Mountain, United States

ABSTRACT

There has been a rise in far-right extremism (FRE) globally, with a related rise in white nationalist and white supremacist violence. In all this, places connected to white supremacist violence remain less well-studied. This article reflects upon the politics of commemoration at the largest Confederate memorial in the world, Stone Mountain, Georgia in the United States. We analyse visitor reviews on TripAdvisor and YouTube videos about commemorative events to illustrate how visitors to Stone Mountain erase its and, more broadly, the United States’ history of white supremacy. Instead, there are claims that this is a tourist site, a place for leisure where violence and politics have no place. Such claims evade the issue of white supremacist violence that was foundational to the Confederate cause and to the production and development of memorials like Stone Mountain. Such erasure means understandings of “violent extremism” in the United States – wherein events like the Confederacy and its aftermath in relation to racial injustices are not discussed – is limited and incomplete. This article argues that before debating what is or is not “violent extremism”, this history of white supremacist violence needs to be reckoned with, especially regarding its presence and its traces on the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• United States
• Confederacy
• violent extremism
• white supremacy
• race
• memorialisation

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the editors of this Special Issue who have been encouraging from the start of this paper. The article has been strengthened due to their very helpful feedback. Our thanks, too, to the editors of CST and to the reviewers of this article. We are also grateful to Maddison Berlinghoff for her assistance with YouTube video analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. This does not mean there have not been protests and pushbacks against these Confederate memorials, even in the early days of their establishment. Cox (2021b, 2021c) explains the history of Black people-led protests against Confederate memorials. However, white organisations and politicians generally ignored or overrode these protests.

2. This language of “promoting the superiority of the white race” is used by US government documents on countering extremism, including the recent National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism (2021).

3. The concept and theorisation of the “afterlife of slavery” is from Saadiya Hartman’s book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. In it, Hartman illustrates how the after effects of slavery’s racialised violence is present in all sectors of US society and affects life prospects for African Americans living in the US today. Hartman writes, “ … black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery – skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment. I, too, am the afterlife of slavery.” (2008, 6).

4. UDC continues to push against the removal and even recontextualization of Confederate monuments (Breed 2018).

5. As scholars of extremism and terrorism, we are all well aware there is a word that is used for non-state actors who take up arms against the state for a political goal. As it is, that word has rarely been used to describe these specific set of actors and actions. One can wonder why not.

6. The videos were chosen randomly and also based on availability. Two videos were chosen from 2020 and one each from 2018 and 2019. Additionally, seven videos were viewed from 1993–2018. Additionally, a search for “Laser show Stone Mountain” and “Stone Mountain” (various iterations of this) was conducted for additional videos. A number of the videos were similar as the light show was from the same season or similar to previous/next years.

7. In the June 2021 National Strategy on Countering Domestic Terrorism, militia are counted as “domestic violent extremism” only when they use violence. Such leeway is not provided to those considered “anarchist violent extremists” and “animal rights violent extremists”, both of whom do not have to use violence to be considered such. This has in-depth analysis of some of these discrepancies: https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1405686547710570497 while this outlines some additional limitations: https://twitter.com/APerliger/status/1406933502038323204