Victimhood Rhetorics: How Stormfront Spread White Nationalism Online and Beyond

Abstract

This article theorizes how white victimhood rhetoric functions as a subset of the undertheorized rhetorics of blame (psogos) using Burkean identification. An analysis of the website Stormfront illustrates how white nationalists have increased their reliance on rhetorics of victimhood in order to appeal to larger audiences by (1) obscuring the ideology’s connections to white supremacy; (2) sanitizing their language; and (3) rebranding antiracism as the perpetrator of their victimhood. This article posits this proliferation of white victimhood rhetorics, which heavily relies on the rebranding of antiracism, requires antiracists to reconsider how we engage and respond to white nationalist rhetoric.

Publication Title

Rhetoric Review

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