Cascading Activation: The Creation of the Alt Right
Framing and the Alt-right
The political world is infinitely complex and ever changing. We can’t possibly see everything that’s happening or understand everything we see. As Walter Lippmann wrote in Public Opinion, “The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to construct it on a simpler model before we can manage it” (Lippmann, 1922, 16). The way we construct this simpler model is by framing complex issues in ways that we can understand and meaningfully interact with. To frame, in this sense, means “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993, 52). These frames are overwhelmingly created by the administration, slightly modified as they pass through a network of elites and media, and eventually delivered to the citizenry in packages labeled truth with a journalist endorsed stamp of objectivity (Entman, 2003, 5). It’s difficult to recognize frames that have held sturdy for a long time. However, when the political elites change quickly, so to do the frames which best support their narrative, and when these frames are abruptly altered their construction becomes more clearly visible. Donald Trump’s election and subsequent cabinet position nominees mark a uniquely abrupt shift in administrative ideology. When Trump appointed Steve Bannon specifically – former executive of Breitbart news and a widely acknowledged leader in the white nationalist community – to be his chief strategist, it became necessary to normalize an ideology of a group that had been framed for decades as deviant, if not radically dangerous, members of society. This was accomplished throughout November by emphasizing the term “Alt-right,” which was free of the long abiding connotations attached to terms like “neo-Nazi,” “white supremacist” or “white nationalist;” conceptually distancing the Alt-right from these previous titles, and rebranding it as a slightly more extreme version of an accepted ideology rather than extremism itself.
The Alt-right (short for alternative right) is a group of Americans linked not by any formal ideology, but rather a frustrated opposition to mainstream conservatives in favor of more blatant white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and nativism, expressed predominantly via online communities (Kreig, 2016). Its followers are largely members of neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups, leading many to suggest that it’s outlet more than ideology that distinguishes the Alt-right from the two (Fraser, 2016). Libertarian author Leon Wolf wrote, “I am not much for the term “Alt-Right” because it implies that neo-Nazis somehow become new, different, interesting and edgy when they get a Twitter account and express their support for Donald Trump” (Wolf, 2016). But despite glaring similarities between the Alt-right and the established names for white supremacy, the new term comes with much less severe connotations. I argue that the term itself was created for this explicit purpose.
White supremacy is a part of America’s DNA. But rather than confronting it, the modern media framed it episodically, insisting that it was individuals with a radical ideology so far from the normal American conscience that it didn’t need to be dealt with on the larger scale (Entman, 1993). To follow Entman’s rubric, it defined the problem not as persistent and violent racism in America, but rather a group of radically racist individuals. The cause was that their erroneous belief that their white skin made them superior to others and therefore entitled them to more than they were receiving from their country. The moral judgment placed blame on the extremists within these groups who advocated for the cruelty that inspired the Holocaust and the nationally traumatizing violence of the KKK. The remedy, then, was to make these views so socially unacceptable in modern American culture that they were forced to hide in the shadows of society and quietly harbor their hatred, but never allow it to seep into the public sphere or mar the national conscience. This is illustrated in the numerous cases of police officers and politicians losing their jobs due to exposed involvement with the KKK. According to an ABC news report following the termination of two such officers in Texas, the county Sheriff “said there was no evidence that the two men… had committed any acts of discrimination or failed to perform their duties, but said that membership in the notorious hate group was sufficient reason to dismiss them” (Fox, 2016). Thus the frame suggested that involvement with the KKK was a dangerous and deviant act in itself, which made them unqualified to uphold law and order.
Deviance is a common frame used to avoid systemic problems, because it can simultaneously attribute massive amounts of blame and insist that the problems themselves are trivial. Todd Gitlin discussed this process in relation to the ways the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were framed in 1965. “Trivialization and the attribution of menace are not such different frames of reference as they appear to be,” he wrote. “Far from being mutually exclusive, they are alternating expressions of a more fundamental notion: SDS as the deviant other. The marginality and menace themes were… conjoint ways of evading the substantive political challenge proposed and embodied by the New Left” (Gitlin, 2003). When America could marginalize white supremacists, their menace became an individual level problem defined as deviance. But then one of them made it into the White House. Because a frame so firmly rooted in divergence from the nation’s conscience couldn’t possibly describe its chief strategist, Trump’s administration had to choose either to openly acknowledge that white supremacy was no longer an individual problem relegated to the far corners of society, or find another way to define Bannon’s ideological ties. They chose the latter.
A New Framework
According to Entman, frames function on a continuum from total dominance of one frame to a completely even standoff between two competing frames known as frame parity (Entman, 2003). This requires more than simply rejecting the original frame. Entman writes, “To reach frame parity, the news must offer a counterframe that puts together a complete alternative narrative, a tale of problem, cause, remedy and moral judgment possessing as much magnitude and resonance as the administration’s” (Entman, 2003, 4). The Trump administration titled their counterframe the Alt-right. The problem it outlined was not white supremacy, but rather a culture war against America’s founding principles. The cause was immigrants, racial minorities, feminists, members of the LGBT community and, above all, the oppressive insistence on political correctness, which silenced white opposition even among those who claimed to be conservatives. The moral judgment is that the members of those groups had stolen the bounty they deserved, placing blame on the thieves themselves rather than a heightened sense of entitlement. And finally, the remedy is to break through the oppression, into Washington, and finally give the disenfranchised white American a seat at the table. While those who fundamentally oppose white supremacy would almost certainly find issue with this frame as well, it is decidedly less inherently violent than the images of cross burnings, white hoods, and lynching conjured at the mention of the KKK. Most importantly, the term itself implies that it is on the far end of a spectrum we have already accepted, rather than a kamikaze pilot flying somewhere above rational political conversation.
Once the frame was constructed, it had to travel from the administration to the public. This happens through a process called Cascading Activation, which functions like a hierarchical waterfall (Entman, 2003). Specific associations are enforced by the administration, packaged nicely into a palatable frame and sent down to elites such as experts and members of congress. These elites offer their own contributions to the frame, just as a waterfall picks up debris on its way, but it arrives very recognizably to be unpacked by the media. News organizations and journalists are influential as well, but because they craft their stories from the quotes and insights of the higher levels, they create news frames with the original associations firmly in tact. This was exemplified in George Bush’s framing of 9/11. His persistent use of the words evil and war created powerful associations in the minds of the public. Journalists chose to include pictures of burning buildings in their stories which contributed to the link between 9/11 and war, but an image of a smiling firefighter helping a mildly injured man from the wreckage next to quotes from the president using the phrase “the war on terror” wouldn’t have made much editorial sense (Entman, 2003). Finally, a durable frame is sent out to be accepted or contested by the public.
The Study
To study the cascading activation of the Alt-right frame, I used a Lexisnexis search to examine news articles, opinion pieces and editorials that ran in American newspapers during the month of November. I searched for the terms Alt-right, white nationalist, white supremacist and neo-Nazi, both in headlines and within the articles. My objective was to determine the dominant terms being used and whether they carried negative or normalized connotations. I divided the articles into six categories: 1. Articles that used only terms other than Alt-right, with purely negative connotations, 2. Articles in which Alt-right was used in association with other terms, intending to condemn the ideology, 3. Articles in which Alt-right was the dominant term, but retained negative connotations, 4. Articles that used Alt-right and at least one other term, neutrally or interchangeably, 5. Articles that used Alt-right dominantly and with neutral connotations and 6. Articles which used the term Alt-right to normalize the ideology. I also distinguished between news articles, columns, editorials, and opinion pieces or letters to the editor.
Results
Articles from the beginning of November unanimously fell into the first category.
Straight News Framing: November 2016
Headlines like “KKK, Nazis Hail Trump over Appointing White Supremacist” (Evening Sun, 2016) use only the original titles and carry an undeniably negative connotation, indicating that the term Alt-right had not yet reached the news media. Stories shifted into the second category by the third week, (following Bannon’s nomination on November 13) as journalists grappled with the introduction of the term Alt-right. Articles used phrases like “the so-called alt-right” (New York Times, 19 Nov. 2016) and “the alt-right, a movement broadly associated with white nationalism” (Los Angeles Times, 18 Nov. 2016). This is an example of the “debris” that frames accumulate as they pass through the media. An excerpt from the latter article reads, “Bannon has said he doesn’t agree with the ethno-nationalist part of the alt-right, though critics say that such views are a central part of the movement.” The introduction of the other side of the argument rather than a stand-alone quote from Bannon is an example of the ways journalists resist administrative frames, demonstrating that the frame was still contested. Later in the third week, many articles fell into the third category, accepting the use of alt-right in lieu of other terms, but remaining skeptical of its meaning. However, as the frame strengthened among higher levels in the cascading activation model, journalists had to turn to the public for contesting views. Articles began to have titles like “Civil Rights Leaders Alarmed by Trump’s Staff Picks,” in which the alt-right is painted negatively, but only through quotes from leftist members of the public (Associated Press, 19 Nov. 2016). Then, rather quickly, the voices of public dissent became less and less prominent aspects of the story. A Washington Post article from November 20 titled, “Heartened White Nationalists Met With Protest” read, “The gathering… hailed what they called the ‘mainstreaming’ of ideas that were only recently confined to the shadows of the Internet. But they met fierce resistance during their two day gathering, with protesters disrupting an NPI dinner Friday and crowding the pavement outside the conference Saturday” (Washington Post, 20 Nov. 2016). In this article, the dissent is framed as deviant and disruptive, rather than the conference itself. The Alt-right frame was tested the next week, when Nazi salutes took place in front of the White House. This effectively placed the symbol of the old frame in front of the establishment that was attempting to distance itself from that image. Though the terms Nazi and white nationalist had all but disappeared from the news at that point, the story would’ve been impossible to ignore. USA today took an approach similar to many of the news outlets that reported the sighting. The article read, “Trump’s behavior seems calculated to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he wants the support of voters who could be sympathetic to alt-right and white nationalist causes…” (USA Today, 2016). Not only does this approach manage to report Trump’s lack of condemnation for the salutes without aligning Trump as a Nazi supporter, it also differentiated between Alt-right and white nationalist supporters, even within the same group of voters. This effectively marked the definition of the Alt-right as a distinct movement. By the end of November, Bannon was being referred to as a “combative populist” (New York Times, 27 Nov. 2016), Breitbart a “politically conservative news outlet,” and the alt-right “conservatives estranged from mainstream Republicans” (Washington Post, 24 Nov. 2016). Thus the normalization of the Alt-right had made it into the news frames.
So far I have discussed only straight news articles, and they follow a rather uninterrupted progression through the 6 categories. However, though there is still a clear shift in framing when you consider opinion pieces and letters to the editor, it’s not without resistance. Entman likens these types of articles to pumping mechanisms which help ideas swim upstream in the cascading activation model. He writes, “As is true of actual waterfalls also, moving downward is relatively easy, but spreading ideas higher, from lower levels to upper, requires energy – a pumping mechanism, so to speak” (Entman, 2003, 6). Citizen articles emerged in the latter half of November with titles like, “Alt-right is the New Name for Neo-Nazi in the U.S.” (USA Today, 25 Nov. 2016), which condemned the media’s easy adoption of the term. A letter to the editor from the New York Times read, “Alt-right sounds like an FM radio station. Harmless. But when a meeting ends in a Hitler salute, the only correct term is neo-Nazi. This is hate speech. Please stop normalizing it” (Campbell, 2016). When the public actively uses these pumping mechanisms, it has the power to alter the way the media chooses between the frames presented to them. Evidence of their efficacy came on November 28, in a New York Times article titled, “News Outlets rethink Usage of the Term Alt-Right” (New York Times, 28 Nov. 2016). The future of the Alt-right frame will likely depend on how the upper levels respond to the current resistance from the public.
Conclusion
Understanding the way frames are constructed is an essential part of an enlightened citizenry, because it disrupts the notion that the media is immune to the government’s agenda. As Entman put it, “Understanding how frames work allows us to measure the distance between the White House’s preferred version of… affairs and the ways the media actually report them” (Entman, 2003, 3). Throughout November, the Alt-right frame was meticulously crafted and delivered through each stage of the waterfall, eventually landing in the hands of the people relatively unscathed. But the alt-right is not a new establishment; it is a centuries old ideology rebranded and disseminated over the Internet. It is a palatable frame for a history of horrific violence. It’s an alias. It was created by the administration, absorbed by the elites, begrudgingly accepted by the media and now rests with the people. A look at the New York Times’ November “Briefings” illustrates the waves of contestation that have followed since the conception of the alt-right frame.
November 14: “Warns that Bannon represents racist and nationalist views”
November 16: “White nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic views”
November 20: “White nationalists of the so called Alt-right.”
November 21: “The Right wing’s extremist fringe, the alt-right”
November 28: “An alt-right gathering”
November 29: “US news outlets are assessing whether to use the term ‘alt-right.’”
Though it was contested at nearly every level, the fact that the Trump administration was able to activate this frame so quickly before they’d even taken office is indicative of the power his rhetoric will have over the next four years. However, through the use of letters to the editor, opinion pieces, rallies and other news worthy events and, increasingly, social media, the public has mounted a substantial resistance. The future of this frame, and the countless others that will be constructed in the future, will depend on how persistently we, as informed, vigilant citizens, are able to use the pumping mechanisms at our disposal.
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