"Half the battle": Cultural resonance, framing processes, and ethnic affectations in contemporary white separatist rhetoric

A recent critique of frame analysis in social movements suggested that futu re studies (1) be sensitive to bridging micro- and macro-levels of analysis , and (2) attend better to human agency and emotions in the framing process . This payer addresses those and other issues in an examination of the "new racist" (NR) rhetoric of contemporary white separatists (WS's) who focus o n legitimating their movement using a cultural pluralist master-frame. In t he context of theories about social movements, affect, and the social const ruction of ethnicity I describe how NRWS's engage in frame-transformation a nd frame-alignment by (a) consciously packaging a "hate-free" racism, (b) d eveloping strategies of equivalence and reversal-presenting whites as equiv alent to ethnic and racial minorities, and (c) deploying ideas about "love, " "pride, " and "heritage-preservation" to evidence bath their putative lac k of animosity toward others as well as their ethnic credentials. I interpr et these ethnic affectations as contextually bound efforts at truth constru ction that offer an opportunity to explore the role of affect in social mov ements. I conclude that the product of these claims is Kultural Pluralism: a blurring of distinctions between Cultural Pluralism and while supremacist racism, designed to emotionally appeal broadly to moderate and mainstream conservative whites.