Swiping Right : the Allure of Hyper Masculinity and Cryptofascism for Men Who Join the Proud Boys (original) (raw)
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Men and Masculinities , 2022
The alt-right community serves as a gateway into the white nationalist movement. However, more research is needed on how the alt-right's virulent misogyny interfaces with white nationalist masculinity premised on patriarchal protection of white femininity. This study addresses this question through a qualitative analysis of a white nationalist forum, Stormfront.org, and finds two masculine strategies vying for site dominance. These two gender strategies draw on different movement ideologies, white nationalist or alt-right. Users battle over the prime adversary used to construct movement identity and mobilize against. I argue forum conflict reveals that defining a central adversary is necessary for a masculine social movement to achieve a collective 'movement masculinity' through a unification of goals and strategies. These findings contribute to research on masculinity and social movements by showcasing that not only is there diversity in extreme-right masculinity but that there is significant contestation among different masculine strategies.
Contextualizing the Proud Boys: Violence, Misogyny, and Religious Nationalism
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2022
One of the most strident voices in the US alt-right scene in the early 21st century belongs to the Proud Boys. Although born only in 2016, the group shares sentiments with older accelerationist groups who seek to return the United States to what they see as its pristine origins. "Alt-right," "alt-lite," and "white" are disputed terms among the group's various chapters, but xenophobia and misogyny are two pervasive themes. Similarly to other voices on the alt-right, the Proud Boys vary in the degree to which they will accommodate racialist Christianity and/or a romanticized Nordic spiritualism. However, to the extent that religion can be made to serve the establishment of a white ethnostate, even the most atheistic among them have come to see religious tolerance as a pragmatic necessity. What is most religious about them, however, can be understood as resembling European metapolitics, which exploits atavistic dreams, mythic symbols, and eschatological values to foster a cultural awakening to nativist dreams. The Proud Boys version of this nativist dream is their aspiration to return to a purported Judeo-Christian ethical foundation for Western civilization, together with a Greco-Roman model of the Republic.
Challenging the Use of Masculinity as a Recruitment Mechanism in Extremist Narratives
2020
This research provides a preliminary evidence base to understand the extent to which violent extremist narratives have a wider resonance with men in Victoria, Australia. It identifies key sites and points at which the construction of masculinity in men intersect with, and challenge, extremist conceptions. It consequently provides an insight into where the potential appeal of extremist narratives can be challenged most effectively.
Extremism and Toxic Masculinity: the Man Question Reposed
International Affairs, 2019
It is more than 20 years since Marysia Zalewski and feminist scholars posed ‘the man question’ in International Relations, repositioning the gaze from female subjectivities to a problematization of the subjecthood of man. The field of masculinity studies has developed this initial question to a deep interrogation of the relationship between maleness and violence. Yet public and policy discourse often reduce the complexity of masculinities within extremism to issues of crisis and toxicity. Governments have prioritized the prevention of extremism, particularly violent Islamism, and in so doing have produced as ‘risk’ particular racialized and marginalized men. This article asks, what are the effects of the toxic masculinity discourse in understanding the British radical right? It argues that current understandings of extremism neglect the central aim of Zalewski's ‘man’ question to destabilize the field and deconstruct patriarchy. They instead position Islamophobia—which is institutionalized in state discourse—as the responsibility of particular ‘extreme’ and ‘toxic’ groups. In particular, the article outlines two ways in which ‘toxic masculinity’ is an inadequate concept to describe activism in the anti-Islam(ist) movement the English Defence League (EDL). First, the term ‘toxic masculinity’ occludes the continuities of EDL masculinities with wider patriarchal norms; second, it neglects the role of women as significant actors in the movement. Using an ethnographic and empathetic approach to this case-study, the article explores how Zalewski's theoretical position offers a route to analysis of the ways in which masculinities and patriarchy entwine in producing power and violence; and to a discussion of masculinities that need not equate manhood with threat.
International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 2020
This article pursues two objectives. First, it provides a literature review of research on group radicalization and, second, building on previous research about narratives and their influence on radicalization, it introduces a new concept for comparative radicalization studies: bridging narratives. We use this term to address commonalities in the ideological elements found across various radicalized groups. As narratives shape perceptions of the world and guide processes of identification, they assume an important (internal) function in group formation. At the same time, various radical groups (ethnic nationalists, Salafist-jihadists and militant leftists) share core ideological elements, commonalities that can lead to the creation of new coalitions and unexpected alliances (an external function). The common factor among them are constructed conceptions of the adversary – be they modernity, universalism, Jewish people or feminism. Such constructions allow for the fabrication of an enemy as well as specific conceptions of hierarchical social orders. We analyze two examples in this context: anti-feminism (including heroic or toxic masculinity) and the resistance dispositif that promotes vigilante terrorism. This approach allows us to investigate processes of group radicalization while also taking into account their ideological content as well as the formal effects of such content on processes of group-building and the dynamics of radicalization. In the final section, we provide recommendations for action.
The Brotherhood of Hate: Hyper-masculinity, same-sex desire and far-right identity in Brotherhood
DiGeSt: Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 2022
The narrative of Danish director Nicolo Donato’s 2009 film, Brotherhood, demonstrates how both the coming out and outing of a gay Neo-Nazi creates dramatic moments of transformation within the film’s storyline. As a result, the audience has to confront the representation of unstable and asymmetrical acts of sexual, social, and political identification. These moments of identification involve acts of violence and betrayal that lead to the creation of a fluid sexual identity on screen. This article examines the choices of the characters within the film and the homosocial world that those characters purposely construct. In order to carry out that examination, key aspects of contemporary Danish political culture are assessed with a view to better understand the ascendency of the far right, anti-migration rhetoric, and the centrality of that political culture within the stories that are told in Brotherhood. The collisions within the Neo-Nazi group over what defines hyper-masculinity, family, violence against migrants, and same-sex desire are best observed through an interdisciplinary analysis that combines film, queer, and sociological research. In the film, a violent, hyper-masculine Neo-Nazi authors a coming-out moment that is both unique and tragic. This assessment of the collisions between homosociality and homoeroticism in the lives of these men creates space for the important and productive analytical deconstruction of hyper-masculinity in a fictionalized Danish far-right political movement.
Online Radicalization of America’s Male Youth
Politika nacionalne bezbednosti
The United States has, in recent years, struggled with the rise of the Alt-Right. A wing of political extremism associated with extreme conservatism, racism, anti-Semitism, and sexist ideals, the target demographic is young, white, Christian males. Multiple mass shootings have been attributed to the ideology and, in tracing its roots, one finds the home of such ideologies to be on online forums such as Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan. This paper analyzes the lax rules and lack of moderation on these sites that makes them a safe place for hateful ideologies. In addition, it finds that the sense of community these potential murders find on such sites can urge them to their hateful acts. Through memes, in-jokes, and manifestoes, the Alt-Right has found a long-term home in these forums.
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