Philippe-Joseph Salazar, The Alt-Right as a Community of Discourse (2018)

Philippe-Joseph Salazar, The Alt-Right as a Community of Discourse (2018) Javnost – The Public, 25(1–2), 135–143.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1423947

Abstract
This paper suggests ways to examine the American Alt-Right as a community of discourse. It relies on Michel Foucault’s notion that discourse is marked by external procedures of prohibition, division and will to truth, and it shows how the Alt-Right owes its powerful emergence in the public sphere to these procedures. It concludes with a brief recall that internal procedures also shape a community of discourse, by giving its actors access to commentary, providing the community with a sense of shared authorship and leading to a “fellowship” of discourse. This paper was researched and written before the Charlottesville fracas (12 August 2017) that propelled the Alt-Right into the limelight, and further obscured its discursive construction.

Author Keywords
Alt-Right; discursivity; fascism; Michel Foucault; racism; Richard Spencer; supremacism; United States