Impression management for the thinking racist: A case study of intellectualization as stigma transformation in contemporary white supremacist discourse

Contemporary white supremacists have been working to publicly legitimate th eir movement. This article presents a case study of the magazine Instaurati on and its editor, Wilmot Robertson. The study indicates how "new racist" w hite supremacists present a discourse of "stigma transformation." First, I introduce Instauration and Robertson's books and review his longstanding ef forts to present an intellectualized rhetoric of racism and white supremacy . I then analyze other impression-management techniques suggested in these writings. Both Robertson and contributors to Instauration proffer technique s to neutralize and/or transform the stigma of "racism'. I discuss some of the broader implications of racism that is framed as intellectual argumenta tion.