"Formers" Lecture Circuit and Community Dissent: A Case Study of Ex-Neo-Nazi Platforming

Location

Sasquatch Room 124 C

Start Date

21-4-2023 1:00 PM

End Date

21-4-2023 2:15 PM

Publication Date

2023

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Law | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Description

This roundtable offers a case study of the phenomenon of former white nationalists (“formers”) marketing themselves for speaking events, especially at higher education institutions. It brings together faculty, students, community members, and local activists/organizers who worked to block a “former” from speaking at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in spring, and then again in fall, of 2022. It offers a current, concrete example of the ways “formers” market themselves, are able to gain strategic support from certain communities or organizations. In these platforming efforts we see the wielding of free speech discourse, empathy/second-chance rhetorics, the fostering of victim-blaming, and often misleading or obscuring information about the formers, including their motivations and organizational ties. Members of this roundtable talk about how they organized to challenge this event and think collectively about how we all can address these threats in the future. Using the proposed EWU event as an example, we examine how these events center the perpetrators of hate/violence, rather than victims/survivors, thereby perpetuating the very thing they are purportedly opposing, white supremacy. We found at the local level that an event was organized with a lack of transparency and that fascination with stories of redemption may have led to ignoring concerns raised by multiple organizations in the process, including BIPOC-led community groups, student groups, and campus programs.We consider the following questions: how do we effectively communicate our opposition across different constituencies; how do we convince university leadership to take these potential harms seriously; how do we work more collaboratively and effectively; how do we insure that students are educated and how do we sustain institutional knowledge about these struggles; how do we share information, strategies, and resources with other universities/communities facing these events; how do we keep each other safe in this organizing?

Description Format

html

Full Text of Presentation

wf_no

Media Format

flash_audio

Type

Roundtable

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS
 
Apr 21st, 1:00 PM Apr 21st, 2:15 PM

"Formers" Lecture Circuit and Community Dissent: A Case Study of Ex-Neo-Nazi Platforming

Sasquatch Room 124 C

This roundtable offers a case study of the phenomenon of former white nationalists (“formers”) marketing themselves for speaking events, especially at higher education institutions. It brings together faculty, students, community members, and local activists/organizers who worked to block a “former” from speaking at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in spring, and then again in fall, of 2022. It offers a current, concrete example of the ways “formers” market themselves, are able to gain strategic support from certain communities or organizations. In these platforming efforts we see the wielding of free speech discourse, empathy/second-chance rhetorics, the fostering of victim-blaming, and often misleading or obscuring information about the formers, including their motivations and organizational ties. Members of this roundtable talk about how they organized to challenge this event and think collectively about how we all can address these threats in the future. Using the proposed EWU event as an example, we examine how these events center the perpetrators of hate/violence, rather than victims/survivors, thereby perpetuating the very thing they are purportedly opposing, white supremacy. We found at the local level that an event was organized with a lack of transparency and that fascination with stories of redemption may have led to ignoring concerns raised by multiple organizations in the process, including BIPOC-led community groups, student groups, and campus programs.We consider the following questions: how do we effectively communicate our opposition across different constituencies; how do we convince university leadership to take these potential harms seriously; how do we work more collaboratively and effectively; how do we insure that students are educated and how do we sustain institutional knowledge about these struggles; how do we share information, strategies, and resources with other universities/communities facing these events; how do we keep each other safe in this organizing?