ONE HUNDRED NAZI SCREENS: INTERFACES AND THE STRUCTURE OF U.S. WHITE NATIONALIST DIGITAL NETWORKS ON TELEGRAM

Abstract

The “Alt-Right,” a white nationalist online coalition, has collapsed amidst a revolution in digital governance termed the “regulatory turn.” Nevertheless, the regulatory turn remains incomplete because white nationalists utilize graphical user interface (GUI) design to subvert public stewardship. Why have some former Alt-Right platforms collapsed while others have grown despite increased scrutiny? The field’s account is currently limited to social media networks and rooted in positivist methods, lending a static conception of white nationalist networks that is slow to recognize cultural shifts. This paper fills the gap by comparatively critiquing the interfacing affordances of Telegram, an instant messaging app that functions as an "ideological safe harbor" for U.S. white nationalists with content aggregation, blogging, and activist use-cases. I apply interface critique to index how the manipulation of graphical user interfaces allows white nationalists to frame their browsing as a technology of mastery over and against the regulatory turn. I argue that Telegram networks coopt the enclave public, exploiting an ideology of decentralization to mystify the leverage held by white nationalist developers over their users. This occlusion redirects white masculine anxieties against publicity to justify an intensified racist fanaticism and the exportation of violence against racial, religious, and gendered outsiders. White interfacing frames GUI design as a capitalist technology that weaponizes the racist and sexist logic of the “average user” to secure the reproduction of reactionary platforms. This project furthers Internet research by developing a theory of the interface as an ideological mirror of production.