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American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate, by Pete Simi and Robert Futrell. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. 167pp. $34.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781442202085.
How do modern U. S. racial extremists sustain their ideas and groups when virtually everyone detests them? Pete Simi and Robert Futrell argue convincingly that the answer lies in the hidden social spaces that nurture Aryan supremacism and embolden its adherents, a racist inversion of the "free spaces" generally seen as supporting cultural and political efforts on the left. Adopting the now-standard definition of white power as a social movement rather than a collective psychopathology, the authors look at how racial extremists use social spaces to build networks and support acts of racial hatred. Such spaces also provide emotional platforms for racist activists. Hidden spaces of extremism allow racists to overcome the negative experiences of isolation, stigma, and alienation that they experience in a world that deplores them. They also provide an arena for developing positive feelings like "pride, pleasure, solidarity loyalty, solicitude, affection, gratification, and love" (p. 17).
Much scholarship on white power movements relies on secondary sources, highly problematic data from racist Internet sites, or very limited interview or observational data. In contrast, Simi...