Revisiting the White Boys From Portland to Ukraine: Anomie and Right-Wing Extremism

Abstract

The 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York that targeted black grocery shoppers followed a now-familiar pattern. A white male, radicalized by online disinformation campaigns, including the narrative that whites are being systematically “replaced” in society, engaged in an act of domestic terrorism to further the cause of white nationalism. This article charts the ways that right-wing extremism has evolved in the first two decades of the twentieth-first century. This recent history begins with the racist skinhead and patriot militia movements that dominated the literature 20 years ago and moves through the rise of the alt-right, lone-wolf attacks, the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and finally, situates a globalized movement in a pandemic era of de-globalization that has both direct and indirect connection to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The theoretical theme throughout is Emile Durkheim’s concept of anomie and how white males have responded to the rapid pace of social change. Conclusions are drawn from a wide variety of interviews, from Proud Boys in Portland, Oregon to Ukrainian soldiers, stationed on the Ukraine–Poland border.