Content area
Abstract
White supremacy is enjoying a new era of appeal in the United States. Although racial and religious bigotry are not new to America, today's white supremacists differ from their ancestors in that they agitate for demolition of rather than changes in the existing social order. This study provides insight into the white supremacist movement--a movement whose central objectives are an anathema to most Americans.
Ideologies of women presented in the periodicals, fiction, computer bulletin board messages, and media statements of contemporary white supremacist groups form the focus of this dissertation.
Using Michel Foucault's concept of discursive strategy and his model of power, the dissertation concludes that white supremacy's view of women is informed by four related ideologies: racist sexism, nurturant motherhood, codes of conduct, and the "natural" distinction between the sexes. The dissertation further concludes that these ideologies of women accord with other white supremacist discourses to form a relatively unified ideological framework, although two discontinuities in the ideologies of women are noted. These discontinuities arise in the sexual objectification of Aryan women and in the conflict between the anti-individual and nurturant motherhood elements of Aryan ideology. These discontinuities comprise possible sites of resistance to domination within modern white supremacy.
