Proctor is a cultural anthropologist whose research concerns identity construction in online spaces, particularly focusing on radicalization into far-right extremist groups.
Devin Proctor, an assistant professor of anthropology, spoke with “Today’s Totalitarianism” about the online literary practices of white nationalists.
The interview, “Reading Scholars Reading Fascists Reading Shakespeare with Drs. Chloe Ahmann and Devin Proctor” teases and discusses a forthcoming article in the journal “Public Culture,” which Proctor co-wrote with colleague Chloe Ahmann, an anthropologist at Cornell University.
The article and interview concerns the white nationalist group Northwest Front, founded by Burlington, North Carolina native Harold Covington. The Northwest Front seeks to prepare “racially aware” folks (i.e. white supremacists) for what they envision as an impending racial war that will end with the Pacific Northwest area of the United States becoming a white ethnostate. Covington himself, before his death in 2018, wrote a series of speculative fiction novels predicting this race war and the establishment of the “Northwest American Republic.”
Proctor and Ahmann focus on how these novels use Shakespearean references, quotes, and allegories to add supposed legitimacy to the white separatist cause. By likening the books’ narratives to historical epics like Henry the Fifth, Covington attempts to elevate the motivations of domestic terrorism. And by placing these books in an online library next to speculative fiction classics like “1984” and “Brave New World,” the books themselves are granted authority in the eyes of the Northwest Front membership.
“Today’s Totalitarianism” is an online magazine that “offers accessible, academically informed commentary on troubling developments around the globe variously described as fascist, majoritarian or authoritarian.” Scott Proudfit read an early draft of the article and provided much appreciated insight into Shakespearean scholarship.