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Why does white nationalism continue to exist?
Why does white nationalism continue to exist?
WHERE WHITE NATIONALISTS EXIST, HOW DO THEY IMPEL, PROMOTE, AND ENGAGE IN POLITICAL VIOLENCE?
WHERE WHITE NATIONALISTS EXIST, HOW DO THEY IMPEL, PROMOTE, AND ENGAGE IN POLITICAL VIOLENCE?
These are the questions I care about, and they're the ones at the heart of my present research agenda. Why this agenda? I came of age during the first Trump presidency and as a native Virginian and Southerner too, I've seen and wondered about how contention over the glories of the inglorious past matters today. As a result, I study white nationalism in its varied organized forms, though with a special interest in violent groups. Below I present some of the work I've done and will do that's specifically in an article-based format. For further information on my dissertation, see the page on my Dissertation Book Project.
First and foremost, you can find a link to the working paper I presented at the Peace Science Society Conference in Orlando, Florida in November 2025. Below the bit about Forged in Firing, I discuss some ongoing work-in-progress I'd be happy to discuss at any point over email or in-person!
SELECT Works In progress
SELECT Works In progress
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
All of these works listed are very much in development. They will grow, they will change, so will I. I am happy to discuss these in more detail, but realize there's less I can appreciably say yet about the latter two items.
- "...ghosts never come back again": Introducing the Ghost Hunter Dataset
This project involves me engaging in hand coding of the 1872 Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire in to the Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States to determine the scale and scope of Ku Klux Klan violence in the Reconstruction-era American South. This particular report gets overshadowed by its more famous predecessor, the Reconstruction Committee, but encompasses 12 volumes of testimony and documents given by witnesses in at least 6 Southern states and an additional summary volume. It is the most comprehensive record of first wave Ku Klux Klan violence collated in series of documents and has not, to my knowledge, had its contents systematically examined to determine how many victims of Klan violence there were until now. Curiously though, it has not been the subject of major scholarly attention outside of a subchapter of Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 and Allen Trelease's White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. This project is in an intermediate stage of development at the moment as I am still engaged in hand coding but have begun the process of writing.
- "Were you not around to the burning?": Exploring Proximate Causes of Racial Violence in the American South
This project is in an early stage compared to the one above. However, it will argue that Byun and Kwon (2024), while very important, ignored a significant and closely temporally related result of the federal occupation of the South, Klan violence, that is more readily explained than lynching.
- "...a burnt child fears the fire": Understanding White Supremacist Victimization Experiences
In an even earlier stage of development than the above two works, this paper will look at the voices of the victims who testified in the 1872 Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire in to the Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States. Specifically, while my work acknowledges, and will continue to acknowledge, the lightly networked nature of the first Klan, this paper will inquire into commonalities both within and across space of victims' diverse experiences and try to contribute to the victimology of white supremacy.
Counts of racially violent incidents indicated in the 1872 Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire in to the Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States. Basically a sneak peek of item 1 in the Works in Progress!
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