Constructed Victimhood: A Pathway to Mainstreaming Hate on Social Media

(Hardback)

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In this book, Carmen Celestini performs analyses of social media posts on both mainstream moderated platforms and low- to non-moderated platforms to assess the presence of 'anti-woke' extremist content in Canada's online and offline landscapes.

Through networked thematic analysis, Celestini examines the social media possts of white nationalist and far-right social media accounts to build a fuller understanding of how these groups use tropes of victimhood and persecution to influence political discussions on social media and to mobilize emotions into real-world political action. Each chapter looks at specific hashtags, groups, and movements online who foment the fires of victimhood, anti-wokeism, anti-feminism, and anti-LGBTQ2SA communities and who construct a Christian victimhood to create a dystopian view of the nation for those who are cisgender, Christian, and white. As this population is driven to feel increasingly disenfranchised by perceived injustices, these groups turn to conspiracy theories and to propagating support for conservative, Christian leaders as the explanation and solution. By focusing on the Canadian landscape, Celestini demonstrates the growing influence of globally-elected populist leaders and the impact these trends have on the democratic foundations of countries across the world.

Author Bio

Carmen Celestini is Definite Term Lecturer in the Arts First Program and Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo. She has also held post-doctoral fellowships on religion, extremism, conspiracy theories, and politics (Queen's University School of Religion, 2022-2024); right-wing extremist narratives, conspiracies, and discourses (The Disinformation Project, Simon Fraser University, 2021-2022); and anti-hate and anti-extremism policy (The Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism, 2020-2021).