Complicit Civility and the Politics of Exclusion: Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Rockefeller’s Response

This essay analyzes the 1964 and 1968 Republican campaigns as a case study in the rhetoric of complicit civility, a strategy of elite cooperation in which one rhetor wields a subtle rhetoric of exclusion while other rhetors, who recognize the undemocratic aspects of that rhetoric but also its potential electoral appeal, challenge the rhetor but not the rhetoric, instead shifting the political argument to other grounds. This combination endorses antidemocratic rhetoric while normalizing it as a routine part of democratic political processes. As a strategy practiced by elites, complicit civility entrenches extant hierarchies and authorizes exclusion.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Western Journal of Communication on 2022-03-15, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10570314.2022.2032819.

Files

Metadata

Work Title Complicit Civility and the Politics of Exclusion: Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Rockefeller’s Response
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Mary E. Stuckey
Keyword
  1. US presidency
  2. US presidential campaigns
  3. US racism
License CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Western Journal of Communication
Publication Date March 2, 2022
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2022.2032819
Deposited June 22, 2023

Versions

Analytics

Collections

This resource is currently not in any collection.

Work History

Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added RWJC-2019-0104.R4.Final_Draft.docx
  • Added Creator Mary E. Stuckey
  • Published
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • US presidency, US presidential campaigns, US racism
    Publication Date
    • 2022-01-01
    • 2022-03-02
  • Updated