(Re)framing rape: A sociocognitive discourse analysis of sexual violence at the intersection of white and male supremacy.

The emergence of the Alternative Right (Alt-Right) redefined far-right extremism and enabled white male nationalists to unify online (Neiwert 2017, p. 258). While its racist rhetoric and white supremacist origins have received academic attention, the misogyny and explicit anti-feminist stance (Hermansson et al. 2020, p. 181) expressed between members of these groups, specifically regarding sexual offences against women, remain underexplored. The affordances of the online environment have also united supremacist groups which blame feminism for a perceived degradation of men: collectively, this “loose confederacy of interest groups” is known as the Manosphere (Ging, 2019). While both the Alt-Right and Manosphere incorporate anti-feminism in their collective ideologies, there is a lack of linguistic analyses on the extent of this overlap and how these positions manifest in the groups’ online discourses. Utilising van Dijk's (2011) approach to critical ideological analysis—namely Epistemic Critical Discourse Analysis—as the underlying foundational theory, this thesis investigates how violence against women is (re)framed across 99 blog posts collected from Alt-Right sites and from the Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) subcommunity of the Manosphere. Within this theoretical foundation, analytical frameworks relating to social actor representations van Leeuwen, 2008); legitimation strategies (van Leeuwen, 2007; Reyes, 2011); and narrative construction (Labov and Waletzky,1967; 1997) are employed. The findings indicate varying degrees of convergence in the ways anti-feminism and misogyny are articulated among the Alt-Right and MRAs, particularly around legal cynicism, male victimhood, and a shared alternative rape culture which excuses sexual violence against women while promoting white male protectionism. The study contributes to linguistic work on how in-group and out-group identities within the extreme right-wing are indexed; ideological stance is legitimised; and narrative discourses are constructed within extremist rhetoric. It concludes with suggestions on how this work can contribute to measures designed to counter violent extremism online