Alt-Virilities: Masculinism, Rhizomatics, and the Contradictions of the American Alt-Right
What is the Alt-Right? As a movement still taking shape ideologically and operationally, the Alt-Right demands a research framework for analyzing both what it believes and how it functions. Adopting a morphological approach to analyzing political ideologies, I advance a new criterion for ideological...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2020
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| In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2020, Volume: 21, Issue: 2, Pages: 153-176 |
| Further subjects: | B
Masculinity
B masculinism B Rhizome B Alt-Right B Radicalism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | What is the Alt-Right? As a movement still taking shape ideologically and operationally, the Alt-Right demands a research framework for analyzing both what it believes and how it functions. Adopting a morphological approach to analyzing political ideologies, I advance a new criterion for ideological classification: masculinism. Alt-Right masculinism seeks to define and enforce forms of masculinity as normative and regulative ideals with far-reaching implications for the theoretical sources the movement appropriates, the discourses it articulates, and the organizational and operational modes it adopts. Proposing a Deleuzean approach to analyzing how radical movements operate, I argue the Alt-Right functions as a rhizome. In light of these analyses, contradictions within the Alt-Right come into view: the movement seeks to instantiate patriarchal, hierarchal, and phallocentric masculinities through leaderless, networked, and acentric strategies and practices. I conclude by reflecting on how Alt-Right ideology and practice differ from mainstream rightwing masculine ideals and practices—in nationalism, capitalism, militarism, and evangelicalism—and how the development of the Alt-Right sheds new light on the construction of contemporary political masculinities more broadly. |
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| ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2020.1763319 |