is Associate Professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University.
They applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White, and reported the following:
Page 99 places the reader in the middle of a quintessential chapter on understanding the evolution and use of digital technologies (i.e., the Internet, social media, etc.) by the white power movement over the last three decades. Page 99 also examines the emergence of the broader alt-right social movement. The page starts with providing an example of a cloaked website, which intentionally disguises the authorship to conceal a political agenda and acts as a form of propaganda. These cloaked websites are a precursor to today’s “fake news.” As individuals are further removed from an event, either temporally (e.g., the Holocaust, the Civil War, etc.) or spatially, their ability to discern the legitimacy of a website is reduced. This is particularly concerning for youth who may be digitally savvy but lack literacy in critically evaluating media or lack an understanding of racial inequality making them susceptible to cloaked white power websites and providing an entry point for youth into the alt-right rabbit hole.Learn more about Alt-Right Gangs at the University of California Press website.
Page 99 then transitions to talking about an incident in video game journalism referred to as Gamergate. While the events behind Gamergate are tangential to the alt-right, the repercussions of this event are quite substantial for the alt-right in two distinct ways. First, alt-lite provocateurs (e.g., Mike Cernovich, Milo Yiannopoulos) gained notoriety among both the alt-right and manosphere, providing a bridge between the extreme and mainstream. Second, Gamergate greatly influenced the online activism of the alt-right, particularly their online trolling techniques, which mirrored the misogynistic practices of manosphere trolls.
While the Page 99 test does showcase an important element of alt-right gangs, their adeptness in the digital realm, it fails to capture the large argument that the book is setting out to make. The argument is that these white power groups, particularly alt-right gangs, may originate and exists in an online environment, however, their actions do not solely remain in a digital setting but transcend and manifest in the real world. The results of which are often violent in nature. As such, it is necessary to actually think of practical solutions that have been successfully used on similar groups (i.e., street gangs) on how these prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies can be adapted and utilized to combat alt-right gang violence. Overall, the Page 99 test does a mediocre job at introducing browsers to the gist of the book.
Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White provides a concise synthesis of alt-right gangs through an interdisciplinary perspective by engaging with an array of academic literatures to develop a more holistic understanding of these white power groups. It is through this broader perspective that enables one to identify the limits of existing studies and what research is still needed. The overall goal is to provide a foundation, such as a usable definition that is operationalized, for future studies and/ policy initiatives to be able to systematically examine alt-right gangs.
--Marshal Zeringue
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