| This dissertation explores the rise of certain American white supremacist right wing groups between 1960 and 1995 that operate primarily in western American states. These groups envision the West as an eventual site of a white American homeland. This dissertation also examines how these groups express gender and race through ideas about manhood and masculinity and how these constructions, in turn, reflect popular historical conceptions about the West as a symbol of freedom, an opportunity for conquest, and an escape from modern industrial society.;The groups and individuals I examine include Idaho's Aryan Nations, and Randy Weaver, Washington State's The Order, the Kansas and Colorado Posse Comitatus, Arthur Kirk of Nebraska, Gordon Kahl of North Dakota, and the Militia of Montana. In order to examine the late twentieth-century white supremacist right, this dissertation historically contextualizes the topic in terms of American right-wing extremism prior to and throughout the twentieth century and in terms of historical constructions of white American masculinity and manhood. This dissertation ultimately links white supremacy to American nationalism, westward expansion, and popular ideological constructions of American "character.";White supremacist groups, though considered "fringe elements" in American society, nevertheless espouse ideas that have circulated through social and political institutions in the United States since the arrival of the first English settlers on the country's eastern shores. In essence ears. In this sense, these groups are not "fringe" at all. They are, therefore, quintessentially American. |
