Seeing Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right Through an Existential Lens: From Responses to Death to Rebellion and Revolution

Abstract

This dissertation examines the potential existential roots of contemporary American social movements. I extract an existential social movement theory from Albert Camus’s philosophy that can elucidate surprising similarities and tactical differences across ongoing movements. I then apply the theory to Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right which helps demonstrate that both movements express existential anxiety related to collective, racialized death. The social movement theory also clarifies the movements’ divergent political tactics as Black Lives Matter responds to existential anxiety by collectively acting to relieve immediate Black suffering and death which I argue is a Camusian rebellion. The Alt-Right conversely responds to existential anxiety by directing their energies towards achieving a teleological goal of racial homogeneity which I argue is a Camusian revolution. I use a variety of first-person sources including memoirs, interviews, and undercover exposés to support my thesis that Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right are both responding to feelings of racialized existential anxiety, although they traverse disparate pathways.While the dissertation is primarily focused on racially motivated social movements, I argue that American environmental activists can learn from, and emulate Black Lives Matter’s tactics. Environmental activists argue that climate change is an existential crisis, and the anxiety of the death and devastation of climate catastrophe underlies much of today’s climate activism. Black Lives Matter has successfully transformed existential anxiety over state sanctioned Black death into meaningful and immediate reforms, without sacrificing its radical critiques of racial capitalism, mass incarceration, and white supremacy. I argue that environmental activists can likewise energize their existential anxieties into reforms that slow climate change, while continuing to challenge systemic degradation of the global environment. I conclude the dissertation by examining the 2020 Black Lives Matter activism in response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Ongoing and recent Black Lives Matter protests are rooted in the same collectively anxious response to Black death and have achieved even greater sociopolitical and cultural changes than the protests of years prior, providing further evidence for my thesis.