LSU Sociologist Publishes New Book on Alt-Right Gangs
09/25/20
LSU Department of Sociology Associate Professor Matthew Valasik has written the first book to conceptualize alt-right youth groups and situate their appearance across a broad array of academic literature.
BATON ROUGE – A new book by LSU Department of Sociology Associate Professor and gang
scholar Matthew Valasik aims to shed light on the alt-right, a subset of the white
power movement. "Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White" is the first book to conceptualize
alt-right youth groups and situate their appearance across a broad array of academic
literature.
Valasik and co-author Shannon Reid, an associate professor at UNC Charlotte, write:
"Today the alt-right projects itself as being a loosely organized, leaderless far-right
social and political movement of young, tech-savvy millennials employing facetious
Internet jargon to revamp and mainstream white supremacist beliefs behind a facade
of white identity politics or Western chauvinist convictions."
The authors’ goal is to provide researchers, undergraduate and graduate students,
law enforcement officials and policy makers with knowledge aimed at understanding
and combating membership in these groups. Valasik, Reid and other gang researchers
can further help demystify these groups.
In this book, the researchers aim to provide a timely and necessary discussion of
present- day youth-oriented groups in the white power movement, which they refer to
as alt-right gangs, and how these gangs need to be integrated into the current paradigm
of street gang research.
Historically, gang scholars have explicitly disregarded white youth who are active
in overt white power groups including neo-Nazis, racist skinheads and white separatists
or influenced by implicit white power ideologies such Christian identity, Creativity,
manosphere and the patriot movement. The authors write that this resistance to acknowledging
or discussing alt-right gangs in foundational and accessible scholarly texts has aggravated
the lack of knowledge about these groups. The results have been detrimental.
“While the book is aimed at discussing the intersection of conventional street gangs
and alt-right gangs, there remains a great deal of research to be done to fully understand
the overlap between these groups, especially in terms of how gang prevention, intervention
and suppression programs and policies apply to these youth,” Valasik said.
Additional Link:
"Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White," University of California Press: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300453/alt-right-gangs
Contact Alison Satake
LSU Media Relations
510-816-8161
asatake@lsu.edu