The weird intersection of content strategy, voice and tone, and white supremacy: Someone leaked The Daily Stormer’s style guide. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/daily-stormer-nazi-style-guide_us_5a2ece19e4b0ce3b344492f2
What’s worth noting is how aware the style guide is about the importance of maintaining an “ironic” tone when advocating genocide and spreading racial hatred.
It knows its audience — not existing white supremacists, but people just encountering the ideas who are drawn to the “naughtiness” of transgressive speech. To recruit them, it lists specific themes, racial slurs, and topics to repeat relentlessly.
This is the work of content strategy: a clear vision of audience and goals, a messaging architecture designed to further the goals, and lots of hand-holding and do/don’t examples so new writers can pick it up and run with it.
It demonstrates that the rise of antisemitism, misogyny, neo-nazi rhetoric, and more are not accidents of circumstance; they are part of a deliberate campaign, no less calculated than an Apple product rollout or a Coca-Cola holiday can.
The next question is simple. What do we do with this knowledge? What do we do now that we know the stylistic and linguistic tics of the alt-right are not simple coincidence, but intentional parts of a comms strategy and messaging framework specifically designed to sell genocide?
I don’t have any solid answers yet, but I do know this: we MUST NOT give the benefit of the doubt, assuming good faith, when this language and messaging is used. Those who use it admit they designed it to exploit those societal norms.