Communication Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Self-Radicalization of White Men: “Fake News” and the Affective Networking of Paranoia Jessica Johnson Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA This article examines how paranoia is affectively networked through digital technolo- gies, political performances, and social media to radicalize white men. Using actor- network theory and affect theory, this paper analyzes how acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by white men are triggered beyond rationales of self-interest through the cir- culation of paranoia as affective value. Specifically, this piece investigates connections between the online and offline violence spurred by #pizzagate and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, by tracing relationships between U.S. counterterrorism efforts, the online proliferation of fake news, accusations of fake news lodged by the state against the press, Facebook algorithms, and agentive bots. This analysis argues that, rather than an individual pathology or self-contained anomaly, paranoia is an ecology that is affectively networked by state and nonstate actors, materializing in processes of digital communication such that the radicalization of white men has violent physical and structural effects. Keywords: Alt-Right, White Nationalism, Masculinity, Conspiracy Theory, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, Twitter. doi:10.1093/ccc/tcx014 On December 4, 2016, a 28-year old white man from North Carolina named Edgar Maddison Welch drove to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, DC, in posses- sion of an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a Colt .38 handgun, a shotgun, and a folding knife. His aim was to self-investigate a worldwide child sex trafficking ring with ties to Hillary Clinton. Although he searched the premises, threatening an employee in the process, Welch found no children held captive in hidden caverns. Nevertheless, he fired the rifle inside the restaurant. Accounts concerning the shooting varied, including when, how many times, and in what manner the bullets were discharged, but it is their triggering without cause that is the focus of my analysis. Corresponding author: Jessica Johnson; e-mail: trystero@uw.edu 100 Communication Culture & Critique 11 (2018) 100–115 © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article/11/1/100/4953075 by guest on 14 September 2020