Digital Images, Globalization and the Aryan Nation

I found this image while searching in Google and found that it was the exact message that members of the Aryan Nation are trying to convey. Additionally, it is the ultimate goal of the group, to secure a "white community" with "white tenants." According to white supremacist discourse, "interracial sexuality is depicted as polluting whiteness" (Ferber, 101), something the Aryan Nation is seeking to control by establishing their White Homeland. Images like this are strewn across the internet and aid in spreading the messages of white supremacist discourse more quickly and at a larger level.

Jessie Daniels, author of Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights,

states "the confluence of global linkages facilitated by Internet technologies means that through Stormfront true believers in White Pride can connect with their translocal and white identity... White supremacy online in the global information era facilitates the formation of a translocal white identity" (54). This idea of trans-local whiteness enables correspondents from multiple locations across the globe to connect over their "whiteness" and express their ideologies. In addition, the internet fosters the hate among the white nationalists (including those of the Aryan Nation) and allows for them to connect with others who share the same ideologies. 

       The ability of these people to connect is beneficial in the Aryan Nations goal of establishing their White Homeland. The Butler Plan, as mentioned in the previous post, calls for those awake white nationalists to relocate to the Pacific Northwest to establish their white community. Thanks to the internet, members of the Aryan Nations who live across the continent or in other countries can connect with members in the Pacific Northwest and connect over their "whiteness, as Daniels puts it. This is also a great example of the affects of globalization and white nationalism.

With access to the internet becoming increasingly easy, its my belief that the message of white nationalist groups like the Aryan Nation and KKK will be able to spread their message to a great number of people and even increase their membership and enrollment numbers. Although Daniels argues the internet has not had an affect on this, I think that some people who come across this information will begin to believe in it and become undercover members. As Daniels states, "What shifts in white supremacy in the digital era is that now this sort of racist rhetoric is no longer simply ideology that is distributed in one direction, from movement leaders to movement followers, but instead is interactive and participatory" (70). They may not admit to being members, fund membership or be active in any movement, however, the reach of the internet allows for them to hide behind an online identity and still participate within the movement. The interactivity of the internet, as well as the anonymity it provides the user, creates a sort of safe haven for a person not willing to go to the extremes of groups like the Aryan Nation, but still actively forward information relevant to the cause.