Conservative Right-Wing Protest Rhetoric in the Cold War Era of Segregationist Mobilization
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@ Florida International Unviersity
Wright, Devon A
Description
In the early Cold War decades, the Citizens’ Councils of America (CCA) became the flagship conservative right-wing social movement organization (SMO). As part of its organizational activities, it engaged in a highly sophisticated propaganda effort to mobilize pro-segregationist opinion, merging traditional racist arguments with modern Cold War geopolitics to characterize civil rights activism and federal civil rights reforms as an effort to bring about a tyrannical, Soviet-inspired, dictatorship. Through a content discourse analysis, this research aims to contribute to understanding what factors determine how SMO’s deploy propaganda rhetoric. The main hypothesis is that geopolitical factors, defined here as specific geographic contexts in which sociopolitical issues are situated and from which propaganda rhetoric is deployed, are influential determinants. Since SMO rhetoric reflects its larger ideological orientation, SMO ideology is also influenced by geopolitical factors. For comparative analysis, propaganda literature from the Ku Klux Klan, as well as elite segregationist rhetoric from the same period is included. Relying on frame theory all rhetoric is quantitatively analyzed centering on the question of what factors drive SMO frame messaging. To contribute to frame theory a concept is proposed called frame constellation, which is a web of SMO frame rhetoric and symbolism that functions as an overlapping, intersecting and interrelated system of ideas which revolve around a central intellectual logic for collective action.
Guillermo GrenierChris GirardUlrich OslenderAlexandra Cornelius
Record Contributed By
Florida International UnviersityRecord Harvested From
Sunshine State Digital NetworkKeywords
- Collective Action
- Conservative
- Frames
- History
- Human Rights
- Inequality And Stratification
- Political History
- Politics And Social Change
- Propaganda
- Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, And Historical Methodologies
- Race And Ethnicity
- Racism
- Right Wing
- Segregation
- Social History
- Social Movement
- Sociology
- United States
- United States History
- White Supremacist Ideology