Understanding Racist Activism Theory, Methods, and Research

Studying racist activism: methods and lessons

Preface to Section I 

1 Studying the enemy

2 Why I returned to studying the far-right

3 White-knuckle research: emotional dynamics in fieldwork with racist activists

Preface to Section II

4 White on white: interviewing women in United States white supremacist groups

5 The banality of violence

Preface to Section III

6 Positioning hate

7 Does gender matter in the United States far-right?

8 Methods, interpretation, and ethics in the study of white supremacist perpetrators

Preface to Section IV

9 Women in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan movement

10 Becoming a racist: women in contemporary Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups

11 Personal effects from far-right activism

Preface to Section V

12 Women and organized racial terrorism in the United States

13 Women in extreme right parties and movements: a comparison of the Netherlands and the United States (co-authored with Annette Linden)

14 The duality of spectacle and secrecy: a case study of fraternalism in the 1920s US Ku Klux Klan (co-authored with Amy McDowell)

Biography

Kathleen M. Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

Over the past three decades, Kathleen Blee has done more than any other social scientist to expand our understanding of racist activism. Here, she presents and reflects upon her prodigious body of work, interrogating common assumptions as well as her own findings. Both a deeply honest portrait of the perils and payoffs of studying racist hate and an incisive examination of white supremacy’s past and future, this volume is expansive in every sense—traversing historical periods, geographic boundaries, and theoretical orientations. Understanding Racist Activism is an indispensible resource for researchers, policy-makers, and anyone else concerned with the specter of organized racism.
David Cunningham, Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

For over three decades Kathleen Blee has produced ground-breaking scholarship on the contemporary US far-right. Her body of work represents the most insightful and sustained effort to help us understand the individuals and organizations that continue to mobilize around hatred and fear and some notion of racial and cultural exclusivity. This collection of her work is much needed and a "must-read" for a broad range of students and anyone else interested in learning more about where some of the current political polarization emanates from.
Peter Simi, Director of Earl Babbie Research Centre, Chapman University, USA

From one of the very best scholars of the American racist right—an unusually brave scholar who examines it from the inside—we now have a collection of her superb articles on investigative methods as well as the substance of its ideology and organization. The book is both a guidebook for those who want to study the far-right and a fine introduction to general readers who want to understand it.
Linda Gordon, Professor of Humanities, New York University, USA

Kathleen Blee is unparalleled in her knowledge of America's white supremacist movement. For decades, she has delved personally into the worlds of racists, taking the time to hear them out and learn about their real lives. This makes her work uniquely insightful. Anyone who wants to really know the world of white supremacy needs to read Blee's masterful research.
Heidi Beirich, Director of Intelligence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, USA