The rise of populist fascism and hate violence across the world has raised alarm bells about the nature of the Internet in the radicalization process. Although there have been attempts in recent years to halt the spread of extremist discourse online, these groups remain and continue to grow. The purpose of this dissertation project was to examine online extremist groups' responses to infrastructural failure, which was defined as an event such as deplatforming and other modes of censorship, to understand how these groups manage to persist over time. Examining the responses of three groups to these failures, r/TheRedPill; r/Incels and Incels.me; and r/AznIdentity; who are affiliated with the larger "Manosphere" (a loosely connected online network of men's rights activists, Incels, Pick Up Artists, etc. connected to the alt right), what was revealed is that these groups' practices not only build their communities and spread their discourse, but sustains them.Previous research on hate groups tends to focus on the role of Internet platforms in amplifying hate speech; the discourses the groups create; or on political strategies enacted by the groups. I argued in this dissertation project that this does not get at the heart of why these groups manage to survive despite attempts to thwart them, and that studying the material structures they are on as well as their social practices are necessary to develop better strategies to combat violent far-right extremism. Using an update to the grounded theory approach known as situational analysis, I observed and followed the groups for two years (January 2017 to 2019) and collected data in the form of text posts, images, and their networks. To inform the project, I relied on a theoretical framework guided by platform and infrastructure studies, communication, anthropology, and social movement studies.Ultimately, I argue that what these groups create through these sustainability practices results in a symbolic infrastructure. Unlike material infrastructures (like large scale electrical grids) or knowledge infrastructures, symbolic infrastructure is made up of not just the material artifacts that these groups create, but is primarily premised on the shared practices of these groups that produce and reproduce their discourse, their identity, and their networks. Specifically, symbolic infrastructure is built up of three subpractices: archiving; fortification; and identity maintenance and network building. These practices, and their resulting product, are made possible by the material structures of the Internet and allows for the preservation and circulation of the group's epistemic/discursive forms.Symbolic infrastructure, due to its nature, is easily transported from platform to platform even after the groups are faced with infrastructural failure or threatened by it. Although it was famously said by Susan Leigh Star that infrastructures only become visible upon breakdown, the case studies in this dissertation demonstrate that the mere threat of breakage is enough for the nature and role of infrastructure to be revealed. Each of the groups case studies navigate and maneuver around the constraints of the platform and digital infrastructure they find themselves reliant on, but also manage to innovatively exploit its affordances. What this dissertation revealed is that the strategy of deplatforming has significant limits because of the nature of the Internet, and that the work of combating extremist thought is not only relegated to the digital realm but must be extended beyond it.
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