![]() This trend led some white supremacists to debate the boundaries of their ethnostate, Panofsky said. Nearly 500 posts made appeals by misapplying theories of genetics or by saying whiteness is a culture, not just biology - an apparent contradiction to the mission of forming a “pure” ethnostate. Many adapted this line of thinking to make exceptions for those with mixed ancestry. If a genetic ancestry test stated someone was 95 percent white European, they would merely count the remaining 5 percent as a statistical error. Many in the online community played a numbers game. Reinterpret: The biggest proportion of responses - 1,260 posts - tried to rationalize the result by offering an “educational or scientific explanation” for the genetic ancestry results. ![]() Others accused the ancestry companies of being run and manipulated by Jews, in an attempt to thwart white nationalism, but even other Stormfront users pointed out the inaccuracy of this idea. “That is to say, humans appear, based on our skin pigmentation, to be much more different from each other than we actually are on a genomic level,” Novembre said. Though the genetics of “whiteness” are not completely understood, the gene variants known to influence skin color are more diluted across the globe than any random spot in the human genome. “Genetically, the idea of white European as a single homogenous group does not hold up.” ![]() Or they looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and ethnicity are directly visible, which is false, University of Chicago population geneticist John Novembre told NewsHour. Some argued their family history was all the proof they needed. Reject! One coping mechanism involved the outright rejection of genetic tests’ validity. These “repair responses” fell into two categories. ![]() Let’s think about how you should interpret this news to make it to make it right.'” “Much more of the responses are what we call repair responses - where they’re saying, ‘OK, this is bad news. “So sometimes, someone says, ‘Yeah, this makes you not white. On the flip side, Panofsky and Donovan found that “bad news” was rarely met with expulsion from the group. No surprise, but white supremacists celebrate the test results that suggest full European ancestry. They then read through the subsequent discussion threads - 2,341 posts wherein the community faced their collective identities. Over the course of two years, Panofsky and fellow UCLA sociologist Joan Donovan combed through this online community and found 153 posts where users volunteered the results of genetic ancestry tests. By housing “nearly one million archived threads and over twelve million posts by 325,000 or more members,” Stormfront serves as a living history of the white nationalist movement. The website resembles a Reddit-style social network, filled with chat forums and users posting under anonymous nicknames. Launched in 1995, Stormfront was an original forum of white supremacy views on the internet. To catalog white supremacists’ reactions to genetic ancestry results, this study logged onto the website Stormfront. How genetics warps the rules of white nationalism “Once they start to see that a lot of members of their community are not going to fit the ‘all-white’ criteria, they start to say, “Well, do we have to think about what percentage could define membership?” said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the study presented Monday at the American Sociological Association’s 112th annual meeting in Montreal.Īnd this co-opting of science raises an important reminder: The best way to counter white supremacists may not be to fight their alternative facts with logical ones, according to people who rehabilitate far-right extremists. Or they looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and ethnicity are directly visible, which is false.īut the real takeaway centers on a new, nuanced pattern within white supremacist groups to redefine and solidify their ranks through genetic ancestry testing, said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the study presented Monday at the American Sociological Association’s 112th annual meeting in Montreal.
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