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Research indicates a long historical connection between racism and nationalist ideologies. This connection has been highlighted in the resurgence of exclusionary nationalism in recent years, across many multicultural societies. This chapter discusses the notions of race, ethnicity and nation, and critically examines how racism shapes contemporary manifestations of nationalist discourse across the world. It explores the historical role of settler-colonialism, imperial expansions and the capitalist development in shaping the racial/ethnic aspect of nationalist development. Moreover, it provides an analysis of the interconnections between the racialisation of minorities, exclusionary ideologies and the consolidation of ethno-nationalist tropes. This chapter further considers the impact of demographic changes in reinforcing anti-migrant exclusionary sentiments. This is examined in connection with emerging nativist discourse, exploring how xenophobic racism has shaped and is shaped by nostalgic nationalism based on the sanitisation of the legacies of Empire and colonialism.

Purpose – We build on prior research of social movement communities (SMCs) to conceptualize a new form of cultural support for activism – the social movement online community (SMOC). We define SMOC as a sustained network of individuals who work to maintain an overlapping set of goals and identities tied to a social movement linked through quasi-public online discussions.

Method – This paper uses extensive data collected from Stormfront, the largest online community of white nationalists, for the period from September 2001 to August 2010 totaling 6,868,674 posts. We systematically analyzed the data to allow for a detailed depiction of SMOCs using keyword tags. We also used Stata 11 to analyze descriptive measures such as persistence of user presence and relation of first post to length of stay.

Findings – Our findings suggest that SMOCs provide a new forum for social movements that produces a unique set of characteristics. Nevertheless, many characteristics of SMOCs are also in line with conventional offline SMCs.

Originality of the paper – This research broadens our understanding of the differences between online and offline SMCs and presents the special case of the SMOC as a way for scholars to conceptualize and study social movements that use the Internet to form their collective identity.

More than 20 songs by Spanish and non-Spanish bands about the Castilian lord and epic hero Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, account for the topicality of the Hispanic Middle Ages in heavy metal. This chapter explores how diversely El Cid is addressed in 10 of these songs, in particular, from the perspectives of reception theory and both the cultural background of the band (Spanish or non-Spanish) and the language in which the lyrics are written (Spanish or English). Through detailed textual analysis and contextualisation, I will examine how, for Spanish (and Spanish-American) bands, El Cid serves the purpose of naturalising the stereotypical heavy-metal medieval knight, thereby functioning as a vindication of Hispanic cultural heritage within what is perceived to be an Anglo-American (and Germanic-Nordic) dominated musical scene. By contrast, non-Spanish bands resort primarily to El Cid to refresh the overused motif of the medieval knight, but sometimes in a more connoted manner as well, in which his iconic value as a Moor-slayer and a defender of the Western white Christian principles is highlighted. Moreover, I will discuss the appropriation and re-appropriation of El Cid by, respectively, non-Spanish and Spanish heavy metal bands, from the point of view of cultural appreciation and appropriation, and Islamophobia.

When Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, many white evangelicals turned up their noses at his candidacy. By 2020, Trump had garnered such commitment from white evangelicals that not only did 80% vote for him, but 60% also refused to accept the election results after his loss. How did this transformation occur, and with what lasting results for the evangelical vote and US politics more broadly? This chapter shows that in the “new culture wars” of the Trump era, race has played an even more central and explicit role in religion and politics than it did in the past. Christian nationalism and the intersection of religion and race help explain the strong bond between Trump and many white evangelicals. COVID-19 vaccine refusal and critical race theory bans provide examples of the continuing significance of that bond. These cases demonstrate the likelihood that Trumpian politics will maintain influence over white evangelicals in the near future.

Purpose – In order to explore how gender and sexual politics are played out in everyday practice within both the extreme right and jihadi-Salafist movements online, this chapter analyzes the content of two women’s only forums: The Women’s Forum on Stormfront.org and Women Dawah, a Turkish language pro-IS group chat on Telegram.

Methodology – The Women’s Forum and the Women Dawah data sets were analyzed using structural topic modeling to uncover the differences and similarities in salient topics between White Nationalist and Islamic State women-only forums.

Findings – The cross-ideological and multi-linguistic thematic analysis suggests that the safety of online spaces enables women to be more active, and serves digital support network for like-minding individuals. It also highlights that religion and ideology, whilst interwoven throughout posts on both platforms, they were more explicitly discussed within Women Dawah data.

Originality/Value – This research uses a unique data set which was collected over one year to conduct a cross-ideological and multi-linguistic thematic analysis, a relatively uncommon approach.