For the 17th annual Jack Gravlee Lecture, the department of communication studies at Colorado State University hosted Casey Kelly, a professor of rhetoric and public culture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, whose research tackles the cultural and political rhetoric of the U.S. far right along with the presence of white nationalism in television, film and digital culture.
Kelly’s lecture, “From Keyboard Warriors to Street-Fighting Men: Fitness, Active Clubs, and the New Rhetoric of White Nationalism,” explored the evolving tactics and rhetoric of white nationalist movements.
“My hypothesis is that the far right, particularly the digital far right, is preoccupied with bodies,” Kelly said. “What I mean by that is strong bodies, weak bodies or ambiguously gendered bodies. The body represents an ultimate signifier of social difference — a material item that can be held up as evidence of innate natural differences between races, sexes, genders and so forth.”
Kelly said this extreme far-right ideology, which differs from traditional conservatism, has a target demographic of young white men. Strength, muscularity and fitness are leveraged to attract men into groups with underlying currents of white nationalism and neo-Nazi ideals that promote ideas of innate racial and sexual differences.
“Why are muscles signs of dominance? Why is weightlifting in nationalist politics? I believe that articulation is an interesting way of talking about that.” –Casey Kelly, UNL rhetoric and public culture professor
Elizabeth Williams, chair of the CSU department of communication studies, conveyed the value of exposure to extreme perspectives to better understand the compositional strategies and rhetorical implications behind them.
“Tonight’s lecture highlighted for students how online propaganda works and explored the strategies the far right is using to attract young men to their ideologies,” Williams said. “Understanding the rhetorical tools groups use to influence and attract individuals allows students to be more critical of the messages they receive. In a time marked by divisive, extreme rhetoric, the ability to recognize and critique rhetorical strategies is of utmost importance.”
A key point of reference in Kelly’s research is the presence of alt-right mixed martial arts gyms — or active clubs — to recruit white men into the nationalist movement. These gyms intend to emulate Spartan warrior society through combat sports, street fighting and intense fitness regiments and diets that seek to encourage a body that represents a political imperative of self-mastery, masculine supremacy and militarism.
“Alt-right fight clubs are reliant on the rhetoric, aesthetic and fantasy structure of the street fighting man as the ideal subject of white nationalism,” Kelly said. “Active club videos feature texts about resisting degeneracy and embracing pain, but they primarily engage in a visual type of storytelling that illustrates the process by which an individual body becomes hardened, capacitated and then assimilated into the larger white national body.”
These fast-moving videos juxtapose fitness and martial arts with images of white supremacist symbols, flexed muscles, clenched fists and scars and bruising, typically with a score of hardcore metal or hip-hop to encourage the viewer to get up and be active.
The Active Club Network is used as a form of propaganda for movements such as the Rise Above Movement, which promotes these MMA gyms as hubs for young white men looking for community and comradery.
Court Fallon, a third-year Ph.D. student in the department of communication studies who attended the lecture, said research into far-right rhetoric is continuing to evolve as the field grows.
“Dr. Kelly is a very prominent scholar in our field — I’ve read his work before and in my research in the past, (and) it’s been super helpful (for) understanding how this far-right rhetoric has been shifting over time,” Fallon said. “As someone who is going into rhetoric, I just had so many different questions that I was thinking of as he was talking. It really helped me think about some possibilities in terms of rhetoric research and how he is talking about things that are very real — it’s happening right now.”
Far-right ideology is a progressing field of study. Kelly said by studying the underlying principles and methods of communication, he hopes to better understand the motivation behind such ideologies.
“Why are muscles signs of dominance?” Kelly said. “Why is weightlifting in nationalist politics? I believe that articulation is an interesting way of talking about that. When I’m talking about rhetoric, I’m thinking about it in semiotic terms of how symbols and signifiers are mobilized in order to organize a political movement.”
Reach Claire VanDeventer at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.