ATLANTA — As part of a series created for VOX-Pol to complement forthcoming journal articles, Georgia State University researchers including Transcultural Conflict & Violence faculty and students, Dr. Anthony Lemieux, P.I., Dr. Dror Walter, Rebecca Wilson, Katherine Kountz, John Hendry, Allison Betus, and Mor Yachin, along with the University of Cincinnati’s Dr. Michael Loadenthal are working on analyses of a corpus of leaked interviewing and vetting calls provided to our research team by the Southern Poverty Law Center ( n = 127) for membership in the white supremacist, neo-nazi accelerationist group The Base.
Part 2 entitled Affiliative Hopes, Survivalist Fantasies, and the Motivations of Recruits for Membership in The Base. has been published. Written by Rebecca Wilson, Allison Betus & Dr. Anthony Lemieux the article dives into the complexity of domestic terrorism threats and how groups are constantly evolving in their strategies and tactics to achieve objectives harmful to U.S. national security interests.
Rebecca Wilson, M.A. is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University. She has served as a Research Fellow on research supported by the U.S. Department of Defense Minerva program and as a fellow of the Violence Against Women Research Prevention lab. She has extensively analyzed the behavior of jihadi and far-right violent extremist groups including inter/intra group dynamics, communication strategies, cognitive and behavioral correlates of radicalization, recruitment, and operational strategies.
Allison Betus is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University who researches white supremacy, far-right terrorism, media depictions and public perceptions of terrorism, bias, and intergroup dynamics. She has an MA in Psychology from The New School for Social Research and her work has been featured on media outlets including NPR, National Geographic, and The Washington Post.
Dr. Anthony F. Lemieux is a Professor of Communication, founding co-director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center, and a lead researcher in the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative at Georgia State University.