PerspectiveThe Strategy of Violent White Supremacy Is Evolving
Distributed leadership is more difficult to combat than more ordinary influence patterns, where one or two relatively prominent figures have a disproportionately large influence over a large number of people. Nevertheless, movements marked by distributed leadership can be addressed through a variety of methods, including countervailing messaging and deplatforming or disruption. If the leaderless paradigm remains complicated, so too does the resistance part of the equation.
Distributed leadership is more difficult to combat than more ordinary influence patterns, where one or two relatively prominent figures have a disproportionately large influence over a large number of people. Nevertheless, movements marked by distributed leadership can be addressed through a variety of methods, including countervailing messaging and deplatforming or disruption. 8chan is currently down after the backlash from El Paso. While many of its denizens will find another online home, past studies of deplatforming suggest that repeated relocations erode extremist communities, even if they are not likely to eliminate the groups entirely.
J. M. Berger writes in Defense One that if the leaderless paradigm remains complicated, so too does the resistance part of the equation. Leaderless resistance was originally conceived as a strategy to directly fight an oppressive government seeking to crush white supremacy under its jackbooted heel. This idea seems almost quaint in 2019.
Instead, something genuinely resembling leaderless resistance is emerging at a time when Americans are soberly debating whether the president is himself a white nationalist, a time when institutional white nationalists find some new presidential pronouncement to celebrate almost every week, and white-nationalist political priorities are being carried out by the government in real time.
