Wronged and Dangerous: Viral Masculinity and the Populist Pandemic 9781529221428

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KAREN LEE ASHCRAFT

WRONGED AND

DANGEROUS VIRAL MASCULINITY AND THE POPULIST PANDEMIC

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

“Toxic masculinity is pervasive in contemporary politics and Ashcraft offers the best analysis to date. Wronged and Dangerous is also a sensitive engagement in the troubled politics of belonging, resentment, and anger.” Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University “Ashcraft’s examination of the relationship of gender and class in our political moment is both urgent and brilliant. It is easily one of the best books on populism in recent years.” Joseph Lowndes, University of Oregon “Ashcraft’s persuasive account of how unhappy masculinities form the bedrock of right-wing populism provides cause for concern: misogynistic dragons we thought had been slain are now rousing. Aimed at an intelligent, general readership, it is a manifesto and call to action; intellectually rigorous, compassionate, thought-provoking, and an excellent read. Its ideas should become part of our everyday conversations.” Nancy Harding, University of Bath “At once personal, searching, and accessible, and often funny, Ashcraft’s gender analysis charts a humane path forward through the political storms of wounded masculinity.” John Durham Peters, Yale University “A unique, passionate reading of the entanglement of gender and New Populism, explaining how the infectious passion of aggrieved masculinity goes viral because it runs on a gender binary code.” Silvia Gherardi, University of Trento

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS Viral Masculinity and the Populist Pandemic Karen Lee Ashcraft

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-2139-8 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-2140-4 paperback ISBN 978-1-5292-2141-1 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-2142-8 ePdf The right of Karen Lee Ashcraft to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Liam Roberts Design Front cover image: iStock/Lefont Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CMP, Poole

To L.L. “Bill” and Beeb, for piloting the route and listening as I veered off course To Rea and K.S., for triggering the alarm and illuminating the exits To Thoney, for joining hands and jumping ship To the East Bay, for making it a choice To the GUs, for opening your home and the door to a different world To C.B., J.B., and my beloved “whatcha doin’ cousins,” I’m sorry I couldn’t hang To PFD, for lifting me up and loving The People To family however you find it

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction Empathy from the side

1

PART I       Gender as an Acquired Taste 1

Reality in Hard and Soft Upgrading gender

13

2

Strongmen versus Sober Women COVID-​19 recycles gendered leadership, again

20

3

From Binary to Biodiversity A sociophysical approach

27

4

Of Masks and Men How to fight a virus by dropping your weapon

41

5

Gender as a Matter of Life and Death New habits to bust the binary

51

PART II     The Feel of New Populisms 6

This Is Populism Starting with the sense made

59

7

Crash Course Populism in brief

65

8

New Populism  Another 21st-century pandemic

71

9

Anger, Downrising An alternative to anti-​populism

85

10

The Problem with Anger Management Pufferfish and the paradox of impermeability

96

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PART III  Probable Cause 11

Class and Culture, of Course Socioeconomics meet demographics

105

12

Aggrieved Masculinity as Animation Ask how, not why, feeling moves

115

13

Perish the Thought of Gender The lengths we go to hide ‘The People’ in plain sight

120

14

Identity Politics for the Universal Human Lead with gender to crack the code

133

15

Not Another Masculinity Crisis Hijacking class, from Fight Club (1999) to Joker (2019)

141

PART IV  Virality and Virility 16

Culture Wars Can Kill Aggrieved masculinity is a public health problem

159

17

Dear Manosphere The transnational movement of manly grievance

174

18

Metaphor Matters: Poison or Pandemic? From toxic to viral masculinity

191

19

Identity Politics 2.0 Senses of self and the critical race theory (CRT) scare

199

20

We the Sleepwalkers Critical feeling as virus mitigation

209

Notes Index

218 242

viii

Acknowledgments This book came to me as a surprise. Unlike most of my projects, it wasn’t planned. I didn’t set out to write it; I didn’t even know I had it in me. I just said “yes”—​or more like, “sure, why not?”—​enough times that a book happened. This means that I owe a great deal to those who asked. To the organizers of the Gender, Work, and Organisation (GWO) conference, who smartly pivoted the June 2020 gathering to a virtual meeting focused on the gender implications of COVID-​19. The basic idea of this book was born when they asked a few of us slotted for keynotes to deliver brief provocations for a public audience instead. These times call for adaptation, I figured, so: sure, why not? Enter Paul Stevens, a senior editor at Bristol, who heard my GWO talk and wondered if I had considered writing a book about it. No, should I? The more we talked, the more I could picture it, and this seemed like as good a time as any to try something new. Why not? Thank you, Paul, for asking, and for your unfailingly generous, insightful, and humorous support along the way. Such a delight to work with a genuine human in inhuman times! Other events also collided to enable this project. Motivated by the world we live in, I got involved in a virtual workshop on “Writing to Change the World” (shout out to Chris Larson, the OpEd Project, CMCI, and CU Boulder) around the same time as GWO. Public-​facing work came hard after decades of academic prose, but even the attempt was energizing. I was primed for Paul’s query. Even more so when I found myself on sabbatical, suddenly with nowhere to go, thanks to COVID-​19. This book would not have happened without that precious research time, stay-​at-​home orders, and a desperate need to channel pandemic and political anxieties toward a useful distraction. There might be a book in this? Let’s see. Nor would the book have happened without the de Castro Research Award I received from the College of Media, Communication, and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am grateful for these funds because they let me work with the great Logan Rae Gomez, whose research assistance proved invaluable. Thank you, Logan, for your brilliance—​ for your sharp eye and candid feedback, always right on the mark; for your ix

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searching savvy and the gems it surfaced; for the fun we managed to find amid utterly depressing research. I can’t say enough. So many dear colleagues and friends listened to me talk about this book and shared ideas and encouragement: Brenda J. Allen, Teri Holleran, Orly Hersh and Sara Jamieson, Pushi Prasad, Tiffany Rieck, Gerardo Okhuysen and Chris Pounds, Will and Mac Simonson, Lisa Flores, Tim Kuhn, Dennis Mumby, Angie Chuang, Ruth Dominiski, and Dave Martinez, to name only a few. Lifelong gratitude to Catherine Ashcraft—​my fearless playground protector, my forever witness and ally, who was part of our tiny quaranteam and struggled right alongside us. You read the whole damn thing and reflected back that magnificent expectation you’ve shown all my life: Of course you can do this, silly! Why not? “Praise be” for that unflinching confidence. On the one hand, this book came out of nowhere. But in another sense, I’ve been revving up to write it my whole life. Thank you to my parents, grandparents, and extended family for all the years of care and sustenance; for instilling so many strong values; for believing in me, for bantering and laughing with me; for putting up with my constant questioning. I hope you can put up with me one more time, for this book comes to you as a loving plea, a far cry from rejection. My deep appreciation goes to Cal State Hayward, and especially to John Hammerback, for the knowledge and encouragement that sent my ass to grad school. There, I found a community that asks questions for a living, and I’m indebted to them too. I am also eternally grateful to Kathleen Stewart, whose stunning writing in 2007’s Ordinary Affects (Duke University Press) opened a doorway for me. Now to you, PFD (just this once, I’ll say your actual name I never call you: Pete Simonson). How can I convey what you are to me and how that closeness has enriched this project? Two years of unexpectedly joyful pandemic living—​a strange and wonderful world of word play and break-​ out dance parties, feverishly stretching “fun” past capacity. Tireless cooking, late night duets, and intense conversations going “deeper still.” No one read this book as carefully, and as many times, as you. Hours and hours you’ve spent on this for me. That fabulous mind and pen of yours (which is in fact not missing) made it infinitely better. My thankfulness for you knows no bounds, even as it escapes words. Forget the book. Life is what you make better, a breathtaking world in unbearable times.

x

Introduction Empathy from the side Anger, thick with anxiety, is a signature of the age. Outrage comes easy, often leads, and thrives like a weed. An affront, a retort, THAT escalated quickly, and who can remember how it began, much less how to stop it. Polarization, they call this: the passing exhilaration of flexing muscle, flying the bird, or clicking send on that crafty tweet; the chronic dread of return missiles, or worse.1 Us versus Them, loathing and fear, bodies braced for what comes next in the gripping drama of demonization. In such times, pressing pause can change the game, bringing other options into play. Like listening to what else ‘fuck you’ might say. I write this in the wake of the 2020 US presidential elections—​the day after, to be precise, when the outcome remains unknown but hope springs eternal. I run errands to distract myself from the endless counting. Unsuspecting, I walk into a glass-​cutting shop, and it is all I can do not to turn and walk out. Three men glance my way, and I cringe as they pull up their masks begrudgingly, eyes rolling. I wince at the multiplying cues I don’t belong, at the dawning: I just strolled into MAGA2 town. I should’ve known; I should’ve avoided this place, stayed in safer space. I’m in no mood for this today, and from the looks of it, neither are they. But I also come prepared, a woman reared on red meat, the religious right, and bottomless awe for rugged, enterprising, down-​to-​earth, red-​blooded, and thoroughly white American masculinity. I may have pulled myself out of it, but I will always be the daughter of a Trump-​supporting family, and I sure as hell know what to do. I’ve got all the snappy quips to needle these dudes. Yeah, my highly raised, highly educated eyebrow is what they’ll remember, when they’re mocking me in a last gasp of deflated manhood. Game on, boys; armor ready. Then he greets me kindly, with the courtesy he’s learned to show a woman—​or some women, anyway. Disarmed, I can’t help but notice that the nerves racking this room are not only mine. These guys are jittery, unsure how to step around me, ill at ease on this of all days, but trying. We share this tension, and it’s an opening. 1

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

Absorbing his t-​shirt, which playfully deifies a ‘hick’ icon, I try to relax my body and speech. A smile breaks out behind my mask, and it’s real. Can he sense it? “Strong shirt,” I say, chuckling. I’ve startled him. His body jumps ever so slightly. For a split second, I regret the move. “Oh this?” he replies. “I wouldn’t think you’d even know who this is.” Moments later, still cautiously eyeing me up and down, he adds, “Remember when we used to laugh, like, in public, with other people? Before all this political bullshit?” He blurts it wearily, as if facing down a literal wit’s end. Silence. The proverbial pin drops in slow motion—​you know the feeling. The other men turn to look. “Yeah, I remember. I’ll take more of THAT, please!” I say with confident warmth, still wobbly on my feet. And for the next 20 minutes, we have a genuine conversation. I don’t think I’m the only one who would say: Good feeling flows by the time I walk out the door with a new glass tabletop, and we all wish one another less politics and more laughter with strangers in 2021. I’m not saying the conversation was free of problems, or that it fixed anything. I’m just saying it was something different, something more than compassion or humanization. No grand understanding or profound sympathy achieved here. Just a pause that outstripped us all as individuals, baring—​and momentarily soothing—​the tender belly of our antagonism. If only it could last, or catch on and spread like the wildfire of rage. *** This book calls for empathy, but of a different sort. I will not ask you to understand, sympathize with, or show compassion for others’ declared perspectives and emotions. I will not suggest you try on shoes that don’t fit or imagine how it must be to walk in them. These gestures have their place, but it is not here. The empathy I have in mind is not about our interpersonal dealings. It goes beyond any individual or group and the demands they may shout to notice the weak places patched up by showy fits of strength. Empathy of this sort picks up on less obvious currents of energy, the kind we don’t declare. That gnawing feeling papered over and recognized only faintly. Subtle apprehension in a guarded stance, or signs of vulnerability in the quick leap to ‘fuck you!’ Working with empathy in this way requires that we slow down the motion to perceive what animates hostility, rather than confronting the hostility itself. Take the anger as a curious symptom instead of a known disease. What else can the symptom tell us, beyond what it barks out loud? Better yet, what is it doing, and where is it going? What shelter or comfort does it provide, alongside whatever wreckage it may wreak? 2

Introduction

Pausing to consider these questions, we refuse the temptation to take the symptom at face value, confront it head-​on, or react in any way that meets too quickly on its terms. Approach it from the side instead, where it isn’t clenched in defense. See the soft spot shielded by aggression—​the unease, or let’s call it ‘dis-​ease.’ Address and, dare I say, heal it from the unprotected side angles. This is what I mean by empathy from the side: understanding and care directed not toward another’s position or action, but toward the body’s energetic susceptibility. Empathy like this moves beyond what people expressly communicate to name what has gone communicable between them. Lateral empathy is concerned with exactly this, the communicability of feeling. What might happen if lateral empathy met the current wave of populist politics sweeping the globe? With this book, I slow down long enough to venture an answer. *** It is often observed that ordinary people around the world are fed up and fuming—​at austerity, political correctness, and globalization, at smug professionals and the eternal onslaught of experts who spew annoying facts from their comfortable lives, to name a few objects of scorn. So the sick-​ and-​tired regular folk stoke the rise of populist movements and governments, often nationalistic, xenophobic, racist, anti-​immigrant, anti-​intellectual and illiberal in tone, and typically magnetized by brazen figures ready to fight for the common man. You know the type by now: Trump, Modi, Johnson, Orbán, Bolsonaro, Jokowi, and the list goes on—​lots of variation among them, to be sure, but ample similarity too. The contemporary surge of populism alarms many onlookers with its apparently regressive and destructive character. But what to do about this backlash? Two main options seem to have emerged thus far, by no means mutually exclusive: argue against and/​or affirm populist complaint. The first response is oppositional, confronting populism as invalid at the level of ideology. Your worldview is mistaken and must be defeated. Witness the flood of commentary fretting over the outbreak of populism, the threat it poses to democratic institutions and processes, and how it can be halted.3 Understandably, critics like Thomas Frank4 reject the anti-​populist vein that pulses around this response, that thinly veiled elitism which basically proves the populist point. The second option takes what would seem to be the reverse tack, validating populism at the level of lived experience. Your outlook makes sense and must be heard. This is empathy as we usually think of it, compassion for others’ viewpoints and feelings. Observe celebrated works like Arlie Hochschild’s 3

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

Strangers in Their Own Land or J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy,5 which explain how populist backlash arises from living, breathing circumstances—​justifiably, that is. This second line of response cultivates sympathy for the backlash, even when disagreeing with where it leads. Accepting the populist face put forward, it shows what I call empathy from the front. Though seemingly contrary, both responses recognize contemporary populism as populism. They take at face value, and thus legitimize, what such politics claim to be: the will of ordinary people. With little question, today’s populism is received as a largely socioeconomic standpoint, an authentic voice emanating from those who inhabit lower class status, those with less material and cultural means. In this sense, even the first, oppositional response validates populism as such, in the very act of invalidating it. Put another way, both options meet populism on its own terms, assuming that it is actually animated by the class motives it claims. Yet there is good cause to put the brakes on this interpretive reflex and tune in more closely. On further inspection, the principal participants, agendas, and ethos of many populist movements make it clear: Socioeconomic factors are not the only, or even the primary, force in play. This book will show that class-​based characterizations of populism should not be taken for granted. It develops an alternative approach to the kind of populism booming today, one that begins with gender instead of class yet does not drop or downplay class concerns. This mode of analysis pauses to notice dis-​ease around the edges, attune to its subtle textures, and follow the communicability of feeling. It shows empathy from the side, not the front. *** I take up with an observation that is both fairly obvious and routinely dismissed: the predominance of certain men and manly energies in populist movements. This undeniable pattern is not simply a continuation of patriarchal dynamics that have long haunted public politics; nor is it coincidence. Masculine prevalence is not incidental, superficial, tangential, or any other way we like to shelve it beside the real point of populism. It is the point, that contagious resentment which propagates populist movements but cannot quite be owned outright. Specifically, I suggest that aggrieved masculinity—​a seething sense of rightful virility wrongly denied—​is the beating heart of populism today. Mark the crucial focus on feeling right away. I speak not of a fully formed perspective, ideology, or worldview. Manifestos may certainly follow feeling, trying to make (more) sense of it, or to make it endure. But mainly the feeling comes and goes as an unnerving sense, that is to say sensation, of manliness threatened. Like many feelings that don’t fully register—​at first or maybe ever—​this sense comes over a body, defines it in relation to others, endows 4

Introduction

it with purpose, and moves it to action. That it can spike the pulse, electrify the air, and bulge the chest, yet somehow still trips over the tips of our tongues—​that it is felt better than expressed—​makes it all the more potent. Also take note that the focus on gendered feeling turns the spotlight away from ‘men’ and ‘women’ per se and surrenders any easy claims of men ‘versus’ women. More to the point, it redirects how we see gendered bodies, and gives sensation a stronger role in making them as such. Humans are susceptible to feeling gender in a wild spectrum of ways that exceed their official categorization as male and female, or even their identification as men, women, non-​binary, and more. Binaries fail real life and analyses of it all the time, but especially when it comes to feeling. Let’s face it: Aggrieved masculinity can strike anybody, although certain sorts of men are more likely candidates (targets?). For example, in the name of everyman, many populist rallies whip up pent-​up frustration at the fall of old-​school manhood, dispensing thrilling, if fleeting, doses of virility. This can be every bit as true for a woman participant, and there are many. Her swagger may take a somewhat different form—​say, an outraged wife and mother defending her family from the hostile world ‘real men’ face today. But it’s the strut of aggrieved masculinity just the same. Indeed, on the off chance you missed this detail, her swagger confirms the deep-​seated heterosexuality of manly grievance, which entices many women to invest with a profit-​sharing promise. That last point raises a final thing to note right away about my focus on gendered feeling: It’s never just about gender, so this book won’t be either. To analyze gender well, we must address race, sexuality, class, and countless other factors all nuzzled up together to make the sensation of aggrieved masculinity feel right. Religion, ethnicity, and citizenship status are often indispensable too. An infinite array and combination of factors may determine the right to manly grievance. All these aspects are interwoven, so interdependent as to be inseparable. Single-​factor analysis (be it class, gender, race, or anything else) simply will not do. To complicate matters, regional variations of manly grievance abound. No analyst could possibly encapsulate them, and I do not profess or aspire to here. This book discerns a global thread without claiming to capture all its strands. I try to stay in my lane, so to speak, working from the world most intimate to me while acknowledging the partiality of that world and my resulting limitations. I riff off the US case without generalizing from it, freely conceding what I do not know. My aim is to open a conversation, not proclaim a case closed. This is what I am detecting from here, but what about you over there? What is missing, and can we collaborate? Like this … In the US, manly grievance is most readily available to white, straight, Christian(ish) cis men of varied class standing, though plenty of other factors can also come to matter in the mix. This is strange if you think about it. 5

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

I don’t doubt that such men have plenty to complain about, but by and large, they are not the ones bearing the greatest risk or paying the heaviest toll when it comes to socioeconomic and other forms of injustice. How do they hold the rights to being wronged? And when all else fails, is this the most precious right? If you begin with gendered feeling, you can see that, in fact, aggrieved masculinity is not a sense available to every man, though contemporary populism dishes it up with an everyman front. Even when manly grievance is dangled in front of some women and disenfranchised men and passes through them—​as it surely is and does—​it is a feeling specially reserved for only some men and masculinities: those to whom entitlement (relatively speaking) has long come more easily, if not automatically. Who, then, is really aggrieved? Or can we dispense with that tired competition and ask a less predictable question: What is aggrieved masculinity grieving—​where I am, where you are, all over the world? Now how can that be addressed, without caving to the grievances declared? Such a reframe demonstrates empathy from the side. It neither opposes nor authenticates the symptom. Instead, it bypasses the bluster to find out what else is going on. Is there another way to treat injured, angry, distressed masculinity than fighting it head-​on or sympathizing with its open wounds? Yes, and that’s what this book is about. *** Contemporary populism has become one of the most acceptable outlets for aggrieved masculinity, precisely by giving it cover as the will of ordinary people. Bluntly, I am saying that much of what we call populism hijacks actual class bleeding on a trip to restore outmoded forms of masculine power, then has the audacity to claim that bloodshed as its own. No wonder populism is finding root and flourishing around the world, when it’s fueled by a simmering and contagious rage left with few other viable vents. This book reframes the worldwide outbreak of populism as symptom rather than disease or honorable way of life, a signal that the dis-​ease of aggrieved masculinity has gone viral and global in a consequential pandemic of feeling. If this argument is too strong or weird for you just yet, I understand. If you have never considered how gender can help to explain world events, I get it. I spent my masculine-​identified young adult life bored with binary claims that things would be better if women were in charge. That’s too simple, and most of us know it. This is not your father’s—​or do I mean your mother’s (wink)—​gender analysis. Read on and give it a try, even if gender isn’t really your thing. I don’t mean this to sound melodramatic, but the modest truth is there’s no creature alive who doesn’t have a stake in it. 6

Introduction

*** Like most readers, I suspect, I regard the intensification of class inequality as an imperative priority. That’s why it is all the more urgent to disentangle class from the virulent strains of manhood traveling under its good name. Aggrieved masculinity obscures the specificity of socioeconomic hemorrhaging. It holds up certain masculine figures as proxy for common folk, distracting attention from the concrete regional profiles—​racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and more—​of real class vulnerability. The world cannot continue to respond to besieged manhood as the legitimate voice of ordinary people. Aggrieved masculinity serves entitled men and those invested in their power. It hinders effective attention to actual class strain (including—​to be clear—​that among many marginalized white men). Aggrieved masculinity does worse than this, however. It is not overstating the case to say that its global proliferation poses serious danger to the world. The COVID-​19 pandemic has already demonstrated how this is so: Populist governments propped up by aggrieved masculinity grossly bungled the pandemic. Most of them ‘managed’ the virus by stoking outrage at viral mitigation, leading to some of the worst health outcomes.6 On this measure alone, they have proven deadly, and they fail on plenty of other measures I will document too. Up ahead lie even more daunting challenges, like climate change. The health of the planet hangs in the balance. Ignoring the invasive sense of victimized manhood is not an option, for it is dangerous and spreading quickly and widely. And yet, current efforts to engage it on its own terms, through argument or affirmation, aren’t defusing it either. Aggrieved masculinity relishes a fight. Playing offense by defense is its trademark, so it welcomes the attack. Empathy from the front also plays into its hand. There may be nothing manly grievance loves more than a sympathetic spotlight that lets it monopolize the stage and suck up all the air. Ever the protagonist, our browbeaten hero. Make no mistake. Empathy of the sort we normally elevate is not a virtue when it comes to aggrieved masculinity. What would lateral empathy propose instead? On what other terms can the dis-​ease of manly grievance be addressed? How about: as a public health problem? *** No matter how captivating, invigorating, or just plain right it may feel in the moment, aggrieved masculinity is hazardous to everyone, including those who appear to gain from its flourishing. A public health frame is made just 7

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

for this: acknowledging the presence of communal harm matter-​of-​factly and acting to minimize it in a pragmatic and caring way. Public health practices related to virus mitigation lend an especially helpful hand in retooling our responses to manly grievance. Since the entire world recently received a crash course in virus mitigation—​thanks in part to mismanagement by populist governments—​we emerge utterly ragged and all too familiar but, nonetheless, well-​equipped to extrapolate useful lessons from the experience. As COVID-​19 taught us all, virus mitigation is about tracking how something transmissible operates in order to decelerate its circulation and impact. The point is not to judge or demonize a virus, much less those who become infected. Why waste time blaming individual hosts or bemoaning the nature of the virus, empathizing with its need to roam, or trying to persuade it otherwise? A virus is beyond reasonable argument; it’s a traveling force. The modest goal is to slow and, eventually, stop it in its tracks. You ‘outsmart’ and ‘defeat’ it by watching how it moves and minimizing its opportunities. Viral combat is not a moral confrontation or victory. No point in getting mad or virtuous about it when energy is better spent learning how the virus spreads and healing those infected and affected. Simply put, virus mitigation brings a spirit of practical curiosity and care rather than reasoned judgment and righteous anger. This book aspires to cultivate a similar spirit of response to aggrieved masculinity. Stop engaging what it says. Start tracking how it spreads. Debate and indignation will (and must) always have their place, of course. Ideological critique, oppositional protest, and other reliable tools of social justice will continue to stir social movements that vastly enhance the world. I seek to add to, not detract from, such ongoing efforts. My claim is only that, in this historical moment, head-​on tactics alone are not up to the task of slowing populist propagation. *** Aggrieved masculinity thrives on confrontation and empathy from the front. We have seen how it feeds on most any form of recognition that proceeds on its terms, or permits its terms to proceed. What it doesn’t see coming, and cannot contend with, is the kind of empathy that pays attention to what it does and how it moves more than what it says, dodging its front to peek in from the side. Like this, a public health—​and, specifically, pandemic—​frame exemplifies lateral empathy. It works from the vulnerable edges, sidestepping the raging symptom to address the dis-​ease it conceals. I realize pandemic comparisons are everywhere these days. I promise that mine does not hop on that trend to be clever, nor is it a superficial analogy. This book builds a pandemic approach to contemporary populism by 8

Introduction

developing the notion of “viral masculinity” in two ways. First, as a better metaphor for the times, a necessary evolution beyond “toxic masculinity” for grasping the state of manly grievance today. And second, as a real phenomenon beyond metaphor. Ultimately, the book reveals aggrieved masculinity as a physically transmissible social relation. It cultivates new awareness of the ties that bind our social and physical worlds and asks how this can change accustomed habits of orientation and intervention. The abbreviated answer? By introducing a missing paradigm of movement, which pulls back from matters of content to emphasize circulation—​the communicability of feeling—​instead. Let me put that plainly. To understand why populism continues to grow, we need to ask how it moves. I write about aggrieved masculinity from this place not because it comes easy, but because, for the love of one another and the planet, we need to find another way, fast.

9

PART I

Gender as an Acquired Taste

1

Reality in Hard and Soft Upgrading gender Reality divides itself neatly, or so we in the West like to think. There are things fixed in nature, like gravity, or the certainty of a sunrise. Then there are things we can change, like minds. Social behavior and cultural norms are pliable—​ideas about beauty, for instance, or the age at which a child becomes an adult. Whereas biology is more of a given, in that bodies require at least some accommodation. Reality comes in two forms, more or less: immovable and movable. The material world and the socially constructed one. Hard and soft. Like any plague, the COVID-​19 pandemic shattered this neat divide, even as we tried to uphold it. We spoke until our heads spun of COVID-​19 as a cold, hard fact. The virus doesn’t know, or care, who you are. The virus puts a “hard limit” on cultural fancies, as one commentator put it.1 It doesn’t speak social; it exists on another plane. A virus transmits on a frequency more formidable, we said—​comm­unicability instead of communication, physical rather than social. Hard, not soft. Sure enough, COVID-​19 blew right past the human-​made lines some hoped might stop it. National boundaries were no match. Privileged people, everywhere, had to face their sudden lack of immunity to the ills of others. I’m talking about those of us in places spared from prior contagions, such as SARS or Ebola, by the buffers of physical distance and resource abundance. Those of us insulated in dominant groups, oblivious to pandemics that ravaged our marginalized neighbors, like HIV/​AIDS. Those of us who count on the prejudice of plagues. The ‘virus doesn’t discriminate’ mantra was meant for us. We are the ones who had to pinch ourselves that this was happening. The virus did discriminate, though. As we know by now, COVID-​19 tore readily and fatally through some communities more than others, just like our social arrangements ‘told it to.’2 Sure, the virus didn’t exactly ‘see’ race and class. It traveled their well-​worn paths of differential protection 13

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and risk. It exploited the bodily effects of living in habitats of privilege and disadvantage. It took advantage of comorbidities accumulated over years of hard labor and poor health care. It piled on to these biological manifestations of social and economic inequity and, conversely, respected some physical markers of privilege. From one frequency to another, the virus ‘got the message,’ more fluent in social signs than we care to admit. Plagues do show prejudice after all. COVID-​19 served up a fresh reminder of how painfully hard the soft can be. Cultural dynamics spread and control viruses. They contribute to ending or saving lives, and I don’t just mean through social contact or distancing, wearing a mask or not. Look no further than the disproportionate impact of the virus on certain people and places. Social divisions make that so. Their synthetic quality doesn’t make them soft. Fabricated doesn’t mean fake, weak, or trivial. These divisions reside in everyday practices, so they are as real, physical, and consequential to survival as any ventilator. The COVID-​19 pandemic refused our habitual split of hard and soft realities. It showed us that both can be intractable and flexible, and demonstrated how they are entangled. Among the pandemic’s few mercies, it gave us another chance to admit their interconnection and think again. Will we take it? *** A premise of this book is that our social and physical worlds profoundly affect one another. Before you shrug that off as an obvious point, let me be more precise. I mean that they are mutually influential to the point of inseparability. What we call the social world—​human communication, language, culture, identity, relationships, discourse, meaning, and so on—​is, in fact, a physical world too. At the simplest level, all manner of body parts and processes are necessary to communication. Some we acknowledge: mouths moving, eyes seeing or fingers reading, hands signing or ears hearing, brains interpreting. Some we don’t, such as reflexes firing, pheromones wafting, and hormones interpreting. Communication also involves objects and atmospheres, natural and built. It depends (these days, heavily) on devices. And we are just getting started. Likewise, what we call the physical world—​biology, nature, environment, objects, and other ‘stuff’—​is deeply enmeshed with the social as well. Again, we can only scratch the surface, but it’s enough to note that entire fields revolve around their interrelation. Epidemiology, epigenetics, climate studies, biosemiotics, and informatics, to name a few. Yet we marvel at the possibility that trees have a social life because, well, it seems antithetical to hard science.3 14

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Somehow, we continue to believe we can separate the physical and social, and that it’s helpful to do so. Mostly because it lets us grasp their relative power: One is strong, the other weak. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. We imagine a physical realm that is pure material, one that exists alongside yet apart from the comparatively immaterial social sphere. We speak of a soft world built on top of a hard world. As if both exist, but only in the latter do things get real. We say it’s mainly in the physical realm that problems like disease, financial ruin, and environmental disaster reside, impervious to our talk about them. We imagine these things, I said; we speak or say them. But imagining and speaking are also physical acts. To say is to do, no matter how loudly we insist they are opposites (actions speak louder than words!). Ironically, we disprove the hard–​soft split in the physical process of thinking and expressing it. No wonder we cling to it, though. Over a century of Western thinking has implanted this binary in our bodies. Why didn’t I say brain? Because wherever in the body it fires, it’s a physical reflex, yet the split itself makes that hard to remember. This book works from an assumption that the social and physical worlds are already one. As shorthand, we will call this unified quality sociophysical, meaning that reality is social and physical at once. The social is also physical, and vice versa. They’re not divisible in real life, and together they make the world as it is, and is becoming. Just yet, the point may seem too abstract—​overwhelming, perhaps, or underwhelming. To deepen its flavor, we need to let it simmer for a bit. My hope is that Part I lets you taste how a sociophysical approach helps us understand gender differently, as a powerful force that operates under the radar. By the end of the book, I hope you develop a taste for the potential of a sociophysical approach to address big problems in new ways. By drawing a through line from gender to the global surge of populism to public health, for example, as we will do. *** A moment ago, I said COVID-​19 gave us an opportunity to take a long, hard look at the interconnection of social and physical dimensions. The pandemic’s toll is too awful to call this a silver lining, but I would say it’s no small gift. COVID-​19 told a cautionary tale about another pandemic, and I hope we will pause long enough to listen. The spread of populism around the world preceded the rise of COVID-​19 by a good decade. Many observers warn that this new breed of populism threatens democracy.4 That may be so, but this book attends to another concern, one that is both existential and pragmatic. A short version is that today’s surge of populism is permeating governments. Almost everywhere it comes to power, this brand of populism appears to take on the task of 15

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administration by furiously opposing it. Emphasis on the fury. To put it mildly, and not metaphorically, this is proving to be an unhealthy mode of governance. It raises a pressing global concern, especially when you consider the formidable and urgent challenges we face as a planet, like climate change. COVID-​19 gave us a sobering glimpse of the devastation possible when anger is in charge. We will abridge this problem as “anger management,” with a twist—​management by (not of) anger. It’s a state of affairs in which the primary governing platform and strategy is the escalation of outrage. And it’s a management style of deadly consequence. In this sense, the new breed of populism is, literally, a public health problem. COVID-​19 revealed these true colors, granting an opportunity to discern and address anger management before it becomes even more fatal. *** Part I prepares us to take that opportunity, but in an uncommon way. It begins with what may seem like a totally unrelated and trivial observation, which COVID-​19 also confirmed: The way we usually address gender is not up to the present challenge or nimble enough for the task ahead. Mainstream habits of talking about gender are stunted and stuck. Stale reflexes keep tripping us up, deflecting deeper awareness. This is a problem to the extent that we need a good grip on gender to address populism, and I will demonstrate that we do. Right now, though, you may wonder why we would take this ‘lite’ detour when heavy challenges like pandemic recovery and climate change demand our attention. Why on earth would we start with a tangent like gender if matters of life and death hang in the balance? Because gender is a leading sociophysical force that animates populism today. That is the case this book will make, but first things first. So far, we are simply closing in on two lessons from the COVID-​19 pandemic which, respectively, appear major and minor. First, the public health hazards posed by proliferating populism and, second, stubborn habits of analyzing gender. Their character and relation will become clear soon enough, so a plain preview suffices for now. Basically, we need to upgrade our gender skills in order to understand contemporary populism, and we need to address contemporary populism for the sake of survival. As hyperbolic as that may sound, it is not overstated. Nor is it cause for panic. It’s just reason for analysis and action of a different kind. *** Gender is all about hard and soft, or so we continue to make it. For starters, there’s nature versus nurture, that timeworn debate that puts the question in 16

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competitive terms. Is gender hard-​wired or culturally produced? Biologically determined or socially constructed? For a time, some of us tried to have it all by answering “both” with a reassuring distinction between sex and gender. Sex granted hard biological givens, while gender recognized the soft power of culture to make sense of biology. But this handy analytical distinction didn’t hold up well in real life. The two are not easily separated since we live them in light of one another, so the question of which is more powerful persisted. The social construction camp emerged the victor in this fight, or at least the mainstream tide turned in their favor. (I should say our, as I pitched my tent in this camp for years.) Today, many would say that gender is a social construct overlaid on biology. Bodies supply the raw material, but culture mostly determines what we do with them. In this view, biology doesn’t predestine gender, because bodies are amenable to being made over. There it is again, a soft world built on top of a hard world. Only this time, the soft world wins. Not so fast, say populists around the world today, many of whom dub such thinking “genderism” and fiercely oppose it.5 Culture wars over gender and sexuality have become a favorite battle for most populist movements, first on the map of easy roads to outrage. Their cause in that war? Straightforward on the surface: Listen up, you soft “snowflakes,” people are born men and women. The gender binary is the natural order of things. Less clear is what’s at stake in this fight, a matter this book will bring to light. The short answer is just about everything. Populist supporters are not the only ones attached to the gender binary and biological primacy, or vestiges thereof. Strange bedmates can be spotted here. Despite much re-​education around gender pronouns, public discourse continues to reference ‘men’ and ‘women’ as a matter of course, the building block of conversation. Those of us who do this (and I include myself here) take the gender binary for granted and hint its hard reality every time we speak. We agree, if only tacitly and for convenience, that the world mostly gives itself in two, male and female. We may think ourselves enlightened enough to make exceptions when specified. Sort of like, binary until proven otherwise (guilty?). Though it serves different ends, faith in biology also reverberates among the most progressive gender choirs. Advancements in knowledge and thinking around intersex, trans, and non-​binary existence, for example, have many singing ‘born this way’ for good reason. Biological sciences today undercut the binary and support gender diversity.6 The complications don’t stop there. Thus far, we are only talking about hard and soft explanations of gender. There is another layer, which is that ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ are themselves designations that drip with gender. Like so. Hard (natural) versus soft (social) sciences, defined by the divide between material/​physical and social/​cultural realms. The humanities split 17

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from biology, as if human culture isn’t natural but human bodies are. The hard sciences more rigid and technical, real and important. The soft ones more malleable and intuitive, not as difficult. The way people seem impressed when they learn you’re a professor but deflate when they learn your field. ‘Only’ a social science. Oh well, that does make more sense (since you’re a woman). The field and the woman fall together, it seems—​the softer disciplines made in her image and diminished by association. Actually, what I mean to say is that the nature and value of things—​ scientific fields among them—​are secured through relation to the gender binary. Hard and soft, strong and weak, active and passive, wild and domesticated, technical and intuitive, serious and frivolous. Math and engineering versus communication studies. Class struggle versus culture war and identity politics. To live in the West and its long shadow is to be wedged in this hard–​soft binary, which is the gender binary. We may wrestle with it, some more skillfully than others, but few among us wrench free. This book does not advocate the hardness or softness of gender. It neither defends nor dismisses biological or cultural influences. I won’t even try to choose between them, pinpoint their relative sway, or assert their separate but equal power. I seek instead to rethink their dogged separation and to show how that split jeopardizes our common future. Sociophysical: We have more options when we appreciate how social and physical become as one. *** You might recall that gender registered right away in coverage of the developing COVID-​19 pandemic. As a memory jog, two early themes arose. First, men seemed to die from the virus more often than women. Not surprisingly, this observation was met with a hard–​soft debate over cause.7 What’s the main culprit, biological or social factors? Nature versus nurture all over again. A second gender theme arose as lockdowns and layoffs gained steam. While men appeared to pay a greater physical toll, women bore the brunt of the economic toll. This “shecession,” as it became known, hit especially hard for women made vulnerable in compounding ways, for instance, through race and class inequities, sexual marginalization, heightened occupational risks, job loss, and the lion’s share of care and schooling responsibility.8 While I do not dwell on these initial themes here, they return later in the book.9 Instead, Part I homes in on two additional pandemic storylines that stuck around and exemplify what I see as tenacious bad habits when it comes to talking about gender. One concerns the leadership of, the other public compliance with, virus mitigation: 18

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• Narrative 1: Populist “strongmen” are failing at pandemic leadership, compared to the more effective strategies of level-​headed women leaders. • Narrative 2: Men appear more resistant to face-​covering, a trend quickly abridged as “mask-​ulinity.” In different ways, both storylines exhibit worn-​out reflexes of gender analysis. I use the first—​a tired tale of gendered leadership—​to diagnose these bad habits (in Chapter 2) and the second, mask-​ulinity, to model a way out of them (in Chapter 4). What follows is for the gender novice, the seasoned critic, and anyone in between. If you’re new to the subject, my hope is that you’ll acquire a taste (as in appetite and aptitude) for gender in this section. If you’re used to thinking about it, or even well-​versed in gender studies, I hope to join you in developing heightened sensitivity to the taste (as in sensation) of gender. The point is to initiate a shift for all of us: from thinking about gender at some remove to feeling how gender comes to matter in the world. Ultimately, that is where Part I is headed, toward a sociophysical approach that dissolves the man–​woman binary, redefining gender as a substance felt in everyday encounter. The goal is to appreciate how gender is made of real, tangible stuff—​ideals and behaviors, bodies and objects, pressures and fantasies, sights and sounds, odors and textures. In this approach, realms of experience we demarcate as social and physical, soft and hard, collapse into one, developing together in ordinary moments of living.

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Strongmen versus Sober Women COVID-​19 recycles gendered leadership, again Pretty quickly, it became clear that COVID-​19 would take command if someone else didn’t. Deliberate leadership was needed now or, really, yesterday. Scientists and medical professionals saw it coming. Yet despite their forewarnings of a looming pandemic just like this, most countries remained underprepared, including those with robust plans and infrastructures. The basic weapons of viral defense were no mystery: testing, tracing, washing hands and covering faces, social (physical) distancing, and other devices now intimate to us all. Little was yet known about COVID-​19, and dwindling stockpiles of personal protective equipment and ventilators were setting off alarm bells, but these things we could do, theoretically. Knowing what to do is only half the battle, as any student of science, health, or risk communication will tell you. The steeper climb is educating and persuading people to comply, or maneuvering politics toward effective public policy. Like it or not, these social realities control whether we flatten that curve (because they’re physical realities too). With wide eyes, many of us discovered what experts already knew. It is no simple matter to mitigate a virus, even when you have the right tools. And so we learned the hard way, as nations reacted differently, the virus adapted, and the international comparisons began. The US and UK—​ ironically ranked #1 and #2, respectively, on the Global Health Security Index published just before the outbreak1—​floundered hard, as did Mexico, Brazil, Russia, India, and many others. Meanwhile, countries as diverse as South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Senegal, Thailand, Finland, and Rwanda emerged as initial success stories to watch.2 Commentators scrambled to account for the dramatic differences, some pointing to national culture. Collectivism and fatalism in South Korea may have facilitated favorable behavior, for example, whereas American individualism and optimism bred high tolerance for risk and low compliance with restrictions.3 Maybe the US and UK, for all their acclaimed plans, were 20

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felled by faith in their own exceptionalism. After all, several of the countries doing well had to confront their vulnerability in prior pandemics, and those lessons were now institutionalized. International leadership patterns began to catch the eye, and two in particular gained steam. First, states governed by populist “strongmen” appeared to be fumbling the worst. Second, nations with women at the helm seemed to be faring better. For concrete examples, think Merkel in Germany, Tsai in Taiwan, Ardern in New Zealand, and Marin in Finland, versus Bolsonaro in Brazil, Putin in Russia, López Obrador in Mexico, Johnson in the UK, Trump in the US, and (eventually) Modi in India. Observers tended to explain the strongmen trend not with gender, but with political persuasion. A New York Times piece,4 for example, begins by observing that the “four large countries where coronavirus cases have recently been increasing fastest” (Brazil, Russia, the UK, and US) have one thing in common: “They are all run by populist male leaders who cast themselves as anti-​elite and anti-​establishment.” Thereafter, “male” is dropped from all description of the pattern, which immediately becomes “the connection between populist leaders and bad outbreaks.” Bolsonaro, Putin, Johnson, and Trump come under fire for minimizing the public health crisis, undermining medical experts and mitigation measures, and prescribing toughness as a suitable antidote. The real issue is populism, not gender, we learn. Gender appears only one more time in the analysis, when the authors remark, “The flip side of the pattern involving illiberal populists is that countries run by women appear to have been more successful.” Mark the terms of comparison here: (Male) populists versus women (of what political persuasion remains unclear). What is clear is that strong men, rather than strong men, are the problem. In a sharp contrast demonstrated by the New York Times piece, commentators on the second pattern led with gender—​women leaders—​and tacked on qualifiers from there.5 Caveats like, there aren’t enough female heads of state to draw firm conclusions, and not all of them fit the trend. Or, the pattern reflects an inclusive, deliberative leadership style associated with women. Also, when you live as a woman, you’re likely to cultivate distinct perspectives and concerns. Read, it’s (probably) not some inborn capacity, but make no mistake that the womanly part is primary. In short, gender was a side story when it came to men and populism but the lead story when the leaders in question identified as women. *** As a scholar of management and organizational communication, I am all too familiar with tales of gender and leadership that sound like the one I just recapped. They’ve been rehashed for years, honestly.6 Men and women have different leadership 21

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styles, or leadership styles can be coded masculine or feminine. Oh, and (surprise!) styles aligned with women and femininity sometimes lead to better outcomes. You might be acquainted with these tales too, or not find them terribly surprising. Beyond their predictability, do they ever strike you as inadequate? They do me. Fair warning: What follows is something of an outburst on my part, and it may get uncomfortable at times. Never fear, the ‘hysterical woman’ in me will calm down and get back to measured discussion in a moment. I jest, but really, there is purpose to my diatribe. I could simply identify the bad habits exhibited by these tales and explain how they limit us. But I seek to activate more than your cognitive processing. I want you to feel the arguments, get frustrated along with me or even at me. For whether you find my tirade refreshing, illuminating, baffling, or off-​putting, it will bring your own gender assumptions and investments to the surface for reflection. Let’s get unsettled and unstuck together. If you’re willing, so am I … *** I find these commonplace accounts of gender and leadership at once heartening and frustrating, sort of on to something but badly missing the mark. Encouraging because gender is at least making the cut of consideration, and because some (like the earlier New York Times piece) at least mention the two trends in relation. Discouraging because we still so readily see men as individuals first, struggle to perceive them as a group, yet fail to extend that latitude to women, easily reducing their behavior to gender in ways we strain to recognize with men. On that note, such tales are confusing too, and inconsistent. For instance, apparently political persuasion drives strongmen’s leadership but doesn’t matter to women’s, even when the moderate-​to-​left politics shared by many of these women is an equally viable point of contrast. More tenable, really, than gender. But again, how we love to see gender first on women! Heartening: I guess it’s nice to hear growing awareness that people who routinely encounter subordination in life—​by living as a woman, for example—​can harbor vital wisdom as a result, and that the world might improve for everyone if they were better represented in government. Frustrating: That said, I long for the day when we’ll take seriously the gender specificity of men’s standpoints, generally shaped by at least some reliable privileges that stem from living as a man. Will we then come to terms with the consequences of their overrepresentation in governance? And when that day arrives, can we please, finally, let go of the mythical ‘woman’s’ standpoint, given the incredible diversity of feminized experience? 22

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On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see women receive credit for strong leadership, and we do need more global leadership in the style commonly attributed to women. On the other hand—​here comes the wearisome part—​women do not own said style. Plenty of men enact it, and lots of women don’t. Besides, many folks are capable of multiple styles. People, women included(!), who might invite participation in one setting can be authoritative, even authoritarian, under different conditions. Vexing: There’s a lurking subtext in these wishful gender divisions of administrative labor. Some whisper to the effect that she may be better at public health leadership but beware when it’s wartime. Ah yes, it’s the old ‘separate but equal specialties’ cul-​de-​sac. Care and cooperation versus discipline and competition; we need them both to stay whole, right? And I suppose her strengths are best suited to tend the home fires while he goes off to fight? Private versus public, domestic versus international, participative versus authoritative leadership … is there anything gender can’t divvy neatly into two? However well-​intended, such attributions patronize and pigeonhole women, echoing admiration of ‘my better half ’ and ‘the fairer sex.’ They pigeonhole men too, raising the specter of unmanliness for men drawn to a participative style. Which brings me to the relentlessly binary tone of such accounts: men versus women (exasperating). As if we’re still convinced by two natural, and naturally opposite, categories, when we know—​from ample research, if not daily life—​that behavior varies widely within both categories and does not always diverge between them. Like men, women differ from one another; and, for this reason, women and men are often more alike than different. Yet the habit of assuming binary variance dies hard. *** Likely, some readers have already noticed all the people made invisible, utterly erased as humans, by binary discussions like this. For example, too seldom is it acknowledged that the gender binary of the West is persistently white—​a point made by feminists of color for over a century, and one that will feature in subsequent chapters.7 When we speak of gender without race, something is amiss. Namely, we are speaking of race—​implicitly centering whiteness—​but do not name or know it. If you are unaccustomed to addressing gender and race (among other factors) together, you will learn how to do so in this book. A related elephant also demands notice. Obviously, there are more than two gender categories. Decades of lesbian, gay, and queer theory and activism as well as biological sciences tell us this.8 Binary tales of gender difference proceed as if this rich diversity doesn’t exist. I want to hope we know better but vocabulary lags. Maybe “cisgender” hasn’t sunk in yet? If you are not familiar, the term means on this side of 23

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gender and is meant to complement the “trans” prefix, which denotes a different way to arrive at gender—​from across. Together, these terms turn alignment between the sex category we’re assigned at birth (It’s a girl!) and the gender we come to inhabit (I’m a woman) into an open question instead of a natural, inevitable state. Sometimes gender identity and expression align with the birth assignment, sometimes not. Agreeing with one’s initial assignment is one possible outcome among others, such as disagreeing, fluctuating, identifying one way and expressing another, remaining agnostic, or—​as happens to some folks who are intersex—​not receiving a definitive birth assignment. To call myself a cis woman is thus to acknowledge that the match I (mostly) experience is only one way—​not the real, natural, or most authentic way—​to end up a woman. Trans woman being another way. Still another way is not to end up as a woman or man at all. What am I getting at with all this? Am I asking observers of gendered COVID-​19 leadership to be more specific—​to say white and cisgender men and women, perhaps also heterosexual (if these fit who we’re talking about)? Sure, greater precision would help to clarify claims that clearly don’t apply to all men and women. But even then, binary claims remain suspect. Oh please. What more do I want? Am I saying that the only way to avoid a binary trap is to report on the leadership styles of women and men of color, gender non-​conforming people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/​questioning and related (LGBTQ+​) heads of state too? No, although the world would surely benefit from their greater representation in government. As with white cis women, I say this not because I think they would bring—​as groups—​some essential, predictable difference or skill to the table. I just think that lives sensitized in various ways to the sharp pains and dull aches of inequity have the potential to bring that sensibility to government, toward the creation of better societies. Notice I said potential. Like anyone else, people shaped by experiences with oppression can also be coopted and corrupted through association with power. Whatever their categories of disenfranchisement, it’s never guaranteed that they’ll represent those interests (which, by the way, are not singular or fixed either) once in positions of influence. Nor is it certain how they would do so, through a certain leadership style, for instance. Examples aplenty will follow, but for now the point is this: We cannot know in advance what, if any, innovations their perspectives might bring, but their regular inclusion would finally open the door to possibility. Back to the question, then. How do people of color, gender non-​ conforming, and LGBTQ+​heads of state lead? What I am saying is that this is a ridiculous question. And precisely what is so absurd about it—​the conviction that, if we just get the categories right, identity can bear the burden of regulating human behavior—​should signal what is already, 24

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terribly wrong with our chronic, and far more simplistic, confidence that one’s status as man or woman alone (by cis, trans, or any other means) can explain much of anything. *** Deep breath. As it turns out, gender can explain an awful lot, though always in concert with other factors. By gender, I don’t mean women and men. I mean the ongoing sociophysical encounters that make gender real, or make bodies and things feel compellingly gendered, as if they must ‘have’ a gender of some sort—​womanly, manly, or otherwise. More on this soon. For now, I’ll go ahead and make the point that’s been building. The moment we fall back on men and women (male and female persons, as a given) for our main analytics, gender loses most of its powerful explanatory potential. Put bluntly, gender analysis that succumbs to the convenient lure of a naturalized binary is no longer compelling. This might sound strange, but gender is not about men and women as we know them. The power of gender as a mode of explanation is its capacity to unsettle how we know them. To be sure, women and men are far from obsolete, and their recognition as such continues to exert profound impact on the world. We cannot simply stop using the terms, because that would deny their durable presence. And also, we cannot take them for granted as given persons or established individual agents from whom all action springs. As units of analysis, men and women merely skim the surface of the very real and complex body parts, physical encounters, social interactions, cultural norms, and human lives they reference, erase, and deny. We can do better. Here, then, we reach a whole-​hearted assumption of this book. If you think women and men are born as such, I invite you to learn that they aren’t. Babies are categorized based on a limited set of available cues. These birth assignments are social agreements that (a) gender ought to be assigned right away; (b) apparent physical features (like what’s observed between the legs) work well enough to determine it; and (c) there are two main options. Gender is sociophysical from the beginning, in other words. Body parts—​ vaginas, penises, breasts, chromosomes, hormones, and such—​present in a range of ways and configurations, which may develop and reveal themselves over time. Having or acquiring certain parts absolutely matters yet determines nothing. This is not to say that men and women don’t exist. They do, but only because they are made into gendered people, over and over, throughout their lives. It bears repeating. Men and women are real because they occur, and continue to happen, not because they arrive already formed as such. This is as true for cisfolk as it is for transfolk. The major difference is that cisfolk tend 25

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not to admit it, so transfolk must struggle to even establish their existence because cisfolk claim realness for themselves. Likewise, non-​binary people exist by persisting, continuing to happen. This is the realness of gender, the status of its existence: It’s always happening. The interesting question is how. Gender happens all around us, all the time, in sociophysical encounters mundane and extraordinary. In the hopeful decoration of a nursery, or gender-​reveal parties and birth certificates. In a boy wearing nail polish to school, and the knots twisting his stomach as he faces the playground again. In chemical swells of belonging and pride as they parade some ritual uniform or endure the wondrous horrors of puberty. In finding your way through the eternal ceremony of binary everything—​toys, clothing, sports competitions, personal grooming products, eating and exercise habits, asking a simple question or walking down the street—​every activity somehow laced with gender expectation. In the courage to come out or use the ‘wrong’ bathroom. In throwing your first punch like a man, or throwing like a girl and leading like a woman. In acts of sexual pleasure and assault. In hearts pounding at the scent of some impending gender threat that just came on scene—​a bully maybe, the prospect of scorn, humiliation, intimidation, emasculation, beating, rape. These everyday encounters do not simply affirm an underlying reality, as we like to think of it. They produce what is. They make gender real and keep doing so. *** Phew. A lot just happened, and I find myself wanting to ask how you’re doing. Perhaps you are finding points of resistance to and/​or resonance with my outpouring? Either and both are welcome. As noted earlier, this chapter gave vent to my ambivalence not on a lark, but for a reason: to incite the very feeling of frustration I describe, the sensation of being wedged in a constricting binary. If you end this chapter agitated by my words, don’t worry. I get it, and I will not leave you hanging. The truth is, by unsettling ‘men’ and ‘women’ as we usually know them, I hoped to unsettle you, at least a little. I hoped to call up your own habits with respect to gender, whatever those might be. Binary accounts like ‘strongmen versus sober women’ are fairytales, too simplistic to be true and appealing for that reason. Many of us still live in this mythical world. We may sense the spell lifting yet feel uneasy, uncertain as to what comes next. Meanwhile the world is jarring us awake, clamoring for a gender story true to life. Let’s pause and take stock of where we are left. And then tell one.

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From Binary to Biodiversity A sociophysical approach Some readers may be thinking that the last thing we need is another round of gender wars. With all the rage over ‘political correctness’ and ‘cancel culture,’ what we need is to defuse gender. To talk about it without pronouncing in advance the right way to talk about it. I get that, believe me. The way I grew up, we were always rolling our eyes at the ‘semantic police.’ And yet, our patterns of language and logic really do matter. Sometimes, they keep tripping us up when we have further to go. These are the kinds of hitches and snags I care about. Please know that I write about them in the spirit of disarming gender—​the hope of reaching a more productive common understanding. When I say we have some ‘bad’ habits, I mean bad as in limiting or hindering. They’re holding us back from making a better world together. I don’t mean bad in a moral sense. I’m not trying to scold you; I’ve got my own problems to worry about. Just as there is no need to moralize these habits, there is no need to politicize them. No political party or orientation owns the tendencies I’m about to summarize. They are rampant from left to right, and most of us fall prey to these patterns. Let me be the first to admit openly that I am still plagued by them, despite how hard I’ve worked to shake them. Changing something embedded in our routines takes time, practice, collaboration, and endless grace. I want to make and mend mistakes together, not perch my virtue on your sins, which—​let’s face it—​I will commit again myself. If you’re looking to be put off by piety here, you won’t find it. What you will find is an alternative way to address gender, in three steps: • First, I distill my venting from Chapter 2 into five habits I think we need to lose, complete with practical suggestions for how to leave them behind. • Second, I explain what is ‘wrong’ with these habits—​not why they are improper, but what they do and how that holds us back. • Third, I map out what I think is a more promising way to go. 27

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Hard habits to break and how to start trying Habit 1: Gender =​women. Thinking gender is relevant primarily when women are involved, in which case it’s the first thought. The corresponding struggle to see gender on men—​to regard men in group terms, not just as individuals. The related difficulty of seeing women as diverse individuals first and not as a group. To break it: Consider how gender might be a relevant factor no matter who (or what identity) is involved. Attempt to see gender more on men, less on women. Where men are involved, for instance, ask how might this be gendered? With women, ask what else might this be about? For both, consider race, sexuality, and whatever other factors can shed light and nuance. Habit 2: Women are gendered; men are human. Assuming that women have standpoints and skill sets invariably shaped by their experience as women, whereas men’s aptitudes and insights are more gender-​neutral or universal, less tinged by their experience as men. To break it: Consider how everyone’s standpoints are shaped by gendered living. Given the rich range of gender experiences, however, expect interesting and unforeseen variations within groups rather than fixed or predictable group capacities. Start asking what kind of masculinity or femininity we are talking about. As with the first habit, work harder to see men’s standpoints as gendered and women’s as not only that.   Realize that many apparent differences between women and men are simply the effects of their contrasting experiences with power. A good example is the oft-​made comparison between women’s participative, indirect, or deferential styles and men’s dominant, confrontational, and assertive styles. When you are rewarded for firm and direct communication, you’re likely to double down on it; it comes ‘naturally.’ When you are chastised for asserting yourself (don’t be ‘bitchy’), you learn how to do it obliquely if at all, even passive-​aggressively. Such that when you try it directly, it can seem ‘unnatural’ or forced. Others may almost feel you wincing or overcompensating in anticipation of the discipline you’ve come to expect.   Understanding that power accumulates in our bodies like this, you can redirect assumptions of natural or innate gender difference by asking how men’s perspectives are influenced (and warped) by privilege and women’s, by subordination. Habit 3: Treating under-​(not over-​) representation as the problem. Focusing on underrepresentation and advertising the benefits women and other excluded groups can bring to fix it. The related tendency to ignore overrepresentation and its consequences as the real problem that needs fixing. 28

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To break it: Lack of diversity causes distortions in thinking and practice, so focus on those distortions. You might think that touting the virtues of including marginalized groups makes you sound appropriate or generous, but that is beside the point. This isn’t a moral proving ground. If you’re not sure why diversity is a good practice beyond virtue, you’re probably placing a whole lot of expectation on them, and their alleged difference, to fix a problem you don’t even know how to articulate. That’s an unfair set-​up.   Not to mention, justifications of virtue hide the warping effects of privilege under a bogus cloak of benevolent inclusion. For example, if you have a panel on health care populated exclusively by elite white men, their class, race, and gender partialities are as much the problem as the absence of other bodies. These men aren’t being generous to diversify the panel; they lack the knowledge to build a good system on their own. The experience of wealth alone can leave one with a dearth of insight. Learn how to name those limitations, so we can better express what diversity does and why we need it. Habit 4: Celebrating binary difference. Praising women’s leadership (and other skills) in ways that pigeonhole their contributions, limit them to devalued activities and arenas, and deny their diversity. The associated tendency to disqualify men from arenas and activities where women are said to shine, thereby reserving valued spaces and practices for men, while also erasing and/​ or feminizing men who enjoy and excel at so-​called women’s ways. To break it: Resist claims that particular skills are owned by women, men, or any other group. Even if more women or men (seem to) gravitate toward a certain style, remember that this tendency is likely shaped by their experiences with power (see habit 2). Start asking instead how gender generates value, such that styles associated with women—​skills that are feminized—​appear more intuitive and less interesting, complex, and worthy, whereas those aligned with men and masculinity seem harder, more laudable, worth more. Habit 5: Binary everything. Using gender to carve the world in two, creating endless binary oppositions in which one side is (tacitly) preferable to, or more valuable than, the other. Man–​woman, male–​female, masculine–​ feminine, strong–​weak, dominant–​submissive, active–​passive, top–​bottom, reason–​emotion, wild–​domesticated, civilized–​primitive, culture–​nature, public–​private, authoritative–n ​ urturing, competitive–​cooperative, physical–​ social, hard–​soft … a list so inexhaustible I can’t pretend to complete it. The corresponding tendency to reference men and women as if they are encompassing groups and the only two options. To break it: Specify, as a matter of course, which women and men you’re talking about, or neither—​cis, trans, straight, bi, queer, they, radiating 29

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out to any relevant category, including race, class, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, and more. Single-​factor and/​or binary analyses are too simplistic, full stop. Approach all categories gingerly, as the start of making sense, not the end. No category is a comprehensive essence, and no one grouping can bear the weight of explaining difference. So avoid speaking of identities in determinative ways, and leave ample room for variety and surprise. Also, start noticing how often we lean on the gender binary to create hierarchies of value (revisit those binaries in the preceding paragraph). More on that coming up.

Farewell to the binary, ‘ladies and gentlemen.’ Hello, biodiversity Glaring across the five habits is a durable power relation as old as a day in lockdown is long. This is the second step of the chapter, the part where I specify what’s ‘wrong’ with the preceding habits, and why we must finally dispense with the gender binary. The concepts introduced here are crucial to the rest of the book. Are you ready? Here we go. First, women and gender outcasts bear the stain of gender—​wear its conspicuous blotches of difference—​so that men don’t have to. The gender binary dumps all the burden on women and feminized others, so that men and things associated with them go unscathed by the ‘drag’ of gender. Men therefore appear to be normal, generic, ordinary people. They are the specific ones to whom the nonspecific “one” refers (as in, one would think …). Forever the protagonist, history’s main character. The rest of us are supposed to crane our necks to follow his gaze. In feminist studies, this concept is called the universal subject, the distorting idea that men—​though (less than) half the population—​are the world’s generic actor, somehow more universally human than women.1 Not all men, though, which makes the idea even more statistically odd. The universal subject trophy is reserved for men made dominant by relations like race and sexuality. In colloquial terms, straight white men fare best in the West. Studies in step with the interconnectedness of race, gender, and sexuality thus specify the universal subject as Western Man.2 When I invoke either term in this book, I intend this specificity. The universal subject, or Western Man, becomes the ‘normal’ human and center of attention through an ongoing process known as Othering.3 The capital O is intentional, and you will see it over and over throughout the book. In a nutshell, Othering defines Man by what is not Man. Othering makes an ‘inside’ based on a constitutive ‘outside’—​constitutive because the inside depends, for its very existence, on the exclusion of Others. The universal subject stakes his nature and value on that boundary and what it rules out. 30

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He becomes generic against the particularities of Others: women, indigenous people, gender non-​conforming and LGBTQ+​people, people of color (especially those marked closer to Blackness), people with disabilities, and the list goes on. I’ll say it again for emphasis. If Others are not held at bay from full inclusion, Man would cease to have the same character and worth. Devaluing the Other is what anchors his value. To be the universal subject, one cannot be stained by difference. That’s what brings the Others down. In review, these are some of the premier services offered by the gender binary: (1) the ‘second-​sexing’ of all women, though not in the same way or to the same extent (think: the privilege of white relative to Black and Brown women);4 (2) the abjection of those who do not conform to gender and sexual normativity (to varying degrees); and (3) the subordination of men (variously) made lowly too. Such oppressions range from systematic belittling to utter dehumanization and disposability. In other words, the gender binary lends certain men not only generic, but also primary human status. To be universally human is also to be the most human. Rightfully, this has drawn the critical ire of feminist, queer, and racial justice theorists and activists for generations. Going unmarked by difference is a giant gift. As the gender binary lets dominant men be neutrally human—​just your average person—​it also makes them fully human, deserving of sympathy as well as control over the conditions of their lives. Especially in the West, they are uniquely equipped to aspire toward what the late feminist philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Teresa Brennan calls the fantasy of the self-​contained individual.5 The self-​made, self-​governing person whose thought, feeling, and action are all his own. Master of his domain. A free agent or independent actor. Western Man is his own man. So far, things may seem rosy for the Man, but now we arrive at the cost of being crowned the universal subject. The self-​contained individual carries a lot on his shoulders. He epitomizes the autonomous actor, so he is charged to maintain the borders that are the secret to his strength. He must stay impervious to outside threats—​an armored warrior, a resolute commander, a lone wolf, or a thousand other versions of this character. He should be physically and mentally, emotionally and sexually impenetrable. Like Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine (for all you X-​Men fans), he must steel himself. Above all, the self-​contained Man is impermeable, because porosity, susceptibility, vulnerability—​well, such is the weakness of women. Yet this is too much pressure for any man or, really, anybody. It flies in the face of bodily fact. Hard though we may try, reality does not sustain self-​containment. Bodies are permeable, no matter how we armor them. One more thing. The gender binary isn’t just about valuing select people over Others. You may recall, at the end of the previous section, I asked you 31

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to begin observing how we use the gender binary to create hierarchies of value. Hard–​soft, strong–​weak, dominant–​submissive, active–​passive, reason–​ emotion, civilized–​primitive, culture–​nature, and so on. Well, thanks to the binary, we know not only people but an endless spate of things—​say, leadership styles and other stuff that need not have anything to do with men and women—​through gender opposition. Remember my example from Chapter 1: the division and hierarchy of physical and social sciences. Like that, we use gender to tell us what things are (their essence or nature) and what they’re worth (their value). We prefer things on the basis of their association with men and masculinity. Or devalue them, in the case of women and feminization. Engineering and math versus communication studies. Hard and soft. Let’s boil it down now. In the West, at least, the gender binary is a scale for assessing the character and worth of people and things. The binary is a shortcut to order based on a perpetual hierarchy of opposites. This is no Lady Justice (wink), nor is it justice. It is inequity standing in for discernment and sentencing all to harm. Why did I say all just there? Because women aren’t the only people losing, and people aren’t the only thing suffering. What we call the natural world is languishing from feminization too. Civilized against primitive, culture over nature: The binary diminishes nature as culture’s ‘second sex.’ Intensifying climate change shows that even the kings of civilization will pay a hefty price for that hierarchy. And that’s just it. In the end, Others aren’t the only ones who lose. Even those closest to the binary’s sacred trinity—​the universal subject, Western Man, and the self-​contained individual—​are haunted by its hierarchies. From the looks of things, however, some are willing to die in order to keep the Man alive, a theme that will take on dimension as the book unfolds. This is how talk of gender becomes stunted and stuck: We retreat to some form of inherent binary instead of refusing the cruel security of its fold. No benign impulse, it is killing us. *** For all the hard work we just did, the reward is a bit of good news. There is no need to wait. We can start to break our binary habits right now, the very next time we bump into them in our own thinking, conversations, and media feeds. The suggestions that began this chapter are practical in that they can be practiced. It may be slow going, and many mistakes will be made, forgiven, and learned from. But practice will pay off. How, you ask? By bringing into our most ordinary sensations the infinite living diversity—​in a word, biodiversity—​of women, men, and a host of other gender-​sexual possibilities. Imagine it with me. 32

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You start to pause in the split second of binary perception, pry it apart and shake it up. Not look at her lead like a woman, or he carries authority naturally. More like, how is the gender binary affecting what I perceive, and how could I be more nuanced about that? You learn to pick up on variety and subtlety, begin to discern different types of masculinity and femininity. Loads of them, really, changing in relation to context and so many other factors you’ve already lost track, intoxicated by variation you hadn’t noticed before. You detect forms and expressions that exceed the binary—​play with it, tweak it, confound it, or upend it altogether. You come to appreciate these and feel curious, forgetting for entire minutes to worry whether you’re offending someone and wondering instead what else you might be missing. Maybe you observe the diversity of genderings that pass through you. As practice like this turns into reflex, the binary takes so many hits, it starts to crumble like the brittle facade it is. And as it erodes, an opening occurs. Cisfolks (like me) lose their place as the gender nature intended. This may initially feel scary or uncomfortable, but it can also be a relief. The pressure’s off! ‘Real’ men and women as they are too often known—​natural-​born and nurtured accordingly—​become increasingly flimsy characters, no longer able to hold all the projections of agency, authorship, and authenticity we throw at them. Real men of the West become permeable like the rest of us, and oddly stronger for reclaiming all that energy once spent steeling themselves. As innate men and women fade into figments, gender can thrive in ever-​ lusher variety. We get a glimpse of the true gender nature intended, which is biodiverse. For those who like to nerd out on gender and sexuality (feel free to ignore if you don’t), I’m saying this: It’s only natural that gender occurs in infinite ways given its constant sociophysical becoming. Karen Barad abridges it more lyrically, as “nature’s queer performativity.”6 My point is that gender biodiversity is already here, but the gender binary prevents us from socially and physically perceiving it. If you struggle to make it out and wonder where to look, you’re not alone. I’d suggest turning to places where conformity and passing are not (or less) obligatory,7 like the student body. Guided by gender biodiversity instead of the gender binary, we are equipped to absorb the realness of gender in a new and generative way. Ultimately, that is the goal of Part I: to retrain our senses, long blunted and stunted by the binary. Earlier (in Chapter 2, when I declined to use women and men as our main gender analytics), I redefined gender as the ongoing sociophysical encounters that make gender real, or make bodies and things feel compellingly gendered, as if they must ‘have’ a gender. Are you starting to get a taste of what this means? Despite all our training to the contrary, there are far more than two genders happening around us. Our senses need to catch up with science. We must learn to feel gender differently. That’s the third and final step of the chapter. 33

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Gender before men and women (or, gender as a definitive feeling) One aim of this book, which I have begun to model, is to unravel the surface appearances of gender. To zoom in on women and men in fine and finer grain, until we begin to grasp the gravity of all that the binary does without lifting a finger. The worlds it makes probable and inconceivable. The energy poured into maintaining, resisting, and surviving the realities it hands down. The anger it is stoking right now. The idea is to adjust your focus until presumed women and men recede into the background. Let the borders around them flicker and fade, so that the energies which bring them to life as gendered people can come to the fore. This reframe might help: Instead of seeing people with gender in front of you, picture people as just bodies. See the body, not the person—​a blank canvas about to be painted with gender (for another next time). The subtitle of this section signals just this: “Gender before men and women,” not after. Mine is no ‘post-​gender’ analysis. I am neither ruling women and men out of existence nor attempting to discard them for some genderless future. I am only asking what makes them as such. How do bodies turn into men and women? How do gendered people happen and, thus, become real? This is my answer, which the rest of this chapter will chain out: Sensation produces gendered people, not the other way around. No matter how much we like to think so, individuals don’t come first. To really get the magnitude of this claim, we need people to step aside and give up the spotlight for a minute, so we can see how they become individuals who appear to ‘have’ gender already. This is hard to do in the West, where we prefer to start with individual actors, then assume that all intention and feeling spring from within them. We assume they drive action; they make the first move. Admittedly, I am asking for a seismic shift in thinking, but we can make it slowly. Put gender aside for a moment and try this thought experiment. Think of a time, any time, when you were deeply affected, rendered speechless, somehow altered—​an impactful occasion full of sensation but hard to describe. We call these formative encounters, and we know they change us. What we don’t know is that they’re happening all the time, even when unmemorable. Most times, in fact, they fly under the radar altogether. So take it one step further. Try to think of yourself as a porous vessel all the time, not just on special occasions. What if you are not a bounded individual, the same person moving from situation to situation? Picture yourself as an impressionable body that is affected subtly by everything you encounter, not just other humans but animals, objects, symbols, shifting temperatures, invisible forces of nature and culture—​anything you come into contact with. Picture your body constantly absorbing the world, transforming through 34

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relation to it. Think of the world as swirling right through (not just around) you. I’m not talking about individual and environment here, more like individual through environment. A well-​known line from the 13th-​century Persian poet Rumi might be helpfully repurposed: “You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.” Think of yourself as not just socially but physically constituted through ordinary acts of living that accumulate in and on your body. Your sense of self is born of precisely that—​sensation. What we call social identity is actually a sociophysical self. If asked how you became who you are, what would you say? Perhaps you would claim some inborn tendencies, but I bet you would emphasize defining experiences. At base, this is what I mean to highlight, the eventfulness of identities. They don’t so much exist as happen; or, happening is how they come to exist. Now let’s bring gender back in. By this dim but growing light, ‘your’ gender ceases to be a set property of your person carried from one place to the next. Instead, ‘being’ a man or woman emerges constantly from the physical forces of social encounter. You might catch a vibe, a sharp intensity, some rhythm or vibration, a sudden or slow depletion. In any case, you feel it. Gender is something with which we make contact every day. To be sure, gender is one among many currents and interacts with other energies. Far from minor, however, gender is a definitive vitality, one that operates in tandem to help make things as they are and are becoming. To say that gender is a definitive voltage really just means it has substantial impact on normal encounters. It exerts enough force to define things. It is felt repetitively as an imperative—​a necessary, enticing, guiding, even authoritative energy that enlivens action and affects what happens next. It’s a scene-​maker, you might say. Gender animates human bodies into apparent individual actors, lead characters with intelligible identities and motives. It activates objects and spaces into meaningful artifacts and atmospheres. More profoundly, ‘it’ is really nothing but a perpetually felt imperative. Boys don’t cry. Girls play nice. Men hold their liquor. Sit like a lady. Don’t throw like a girl. But that doesn’t make gender any less real. That’s just the quality of its realness: felt so urgently it must be true (surely this is concrete!). Gender exists as a compulsion that is thoroughly sociophysical and, exactly for this reason, oh so very real. *** When I talk about gender as feeling, I am not referring to emotions we may hold about gender. Rather, sensation supplies the substance of gender. Gender is only sensible as an idea, identity, trait, expectation, structure, or however 35

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else we like to speak of it because it is sense-​able. We know it because we encounter it. Gender is tangible. How does this show up in daily life? Readers with visual capacity and orientation may be most familiar with the look of gender. If this includes you, I bet you calculate someone’s gender on the spot, for instance, rolling through a quick hierarchy of visual cues. Maybe you start with basic self-​ presentation, clothing and hair style: How do they identify; who are they inviting me to see? If ambiguous, you likely glance to the body, how they’re carrying it, gesturing, what parts appear to be under the clothes. Maybe you unconsciously check, has the larynx formed an Adam’s apple? You might search for signals of sexuality, in case that helps, a wedding ring or queer aesthetic, a casual reference to a girlfriend. You might listen too, for pitch or intonation, name or pronoun, qualities of voice or content. All these cues may tell us nothing, and we may misread them. But we read them anyway. For the most part, you don’t consciously think about any of this; you don’t have to. We learn how to distinguish bodies as men and women before we even have words to describe it. It starts so young that we forget we ever had to learn. Gender detection passes through the senses swiftly, arriving at conclusions before cognition has a chance to catch up. It’s an identification ritual repeated so often it precedes awareness, unless you’re presented with something that puzzles you. Abridged, gender recognition occurs pre-​cognition. You’ve been doing it your whole life, and you do it by reflex. Why? Because gender remains fundamental to living. We track it like an indispensable guide, to what kind of person this is and how I should treat them, what is my role here, can I say no and how, do I have to be gentle, who has authority, what desires if any are permissible, and so forth. A guide to what happens next. Sight and sound aren’t the only senses in play. Gender is a relation conveyed and regulated through touch, who can touch whom, how, and how much. Gender is lavished on the body in a nurturing embrace, a dutiful (or spicy) kiss, a guiding hand on the small of a back—​by applying makeup, kicking a ball, and gravitating toward certain colors and fabrics. It is perpetrated on the body in friendly locker room towel snaps and unwanted public gropes—​through all kinds of physical contact ranging from affection and play to discipline and violence. Don’t forget smell. Sweat and body odors, and products to combat or enhance them, carry gender through the air (especially in North America), as do all kinds of other aromas, from scented candles to meat on the grill and sweet desserts baking. Speaking of which, gender stimulates our palates too, motivating our basic food choices and preparation practices, our culinary pleasures, flavor preferences and tolerances, and divisions of cooking labor. 36

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Let’s cut to the chase: If you were asked how gender tastes, you might balk at the odd question. But after some hesitation, you could answer without much strain and, I suspect, with impressive creativity tailored to your history and surrounds. Gender is, after all, an acquired taste. The same goes for all the senses. What does gender smell, sound, feel, and look like? We may not give the same answers, but I think you already know. *** In the process of illustrating how gender is felt in ordinary encounter—​not merely as sensory, but as a defining sensation—​two other noteworthy things occurred. First, did you notice that we began by asking how we know ‘someone’s’ gender, yet concluded without individuals in the limelight? By the end, focus shifted to stuff and practices that spread gendered feeling. Individuals are not the origin of gender, nor are human bodies its only object and carrier. In fact, we depend on stuff and practices to recognize human bodies as gendered people. Mundane objects and routines are critical to the production of apparent individuals with gender identities. Second, the examples above (which reflect my own partiality, so do enrich with your own!) suggest that gender often strikes the senses without reaching consciousness. Gender is typically discerned through “fast thinking,” a mode of knowing that is still social but bypasses conscious processing, or operates on its edges.8 You have to really slow down to register the feeling and, even then, you might not be able to put into words how you know what you know. Return to the scenario that opened this book, for example. How did I know I had walked into MAGA space? Moreover, how did I know so quickly, within seconds, such that I still perceived time to back out? It must’ve been the music, some 1980s metal hair band anthem blasting from the back workshop, combined with a vaguely industrial smell and an almost premeditated lack of design, the front office all messy desks and drab colors. The old phone, awkwardly held by a man who looked as if this should be someone else’s job. Or was it the visual preponderance of a certain strain of cis men with generously padded bodies, wrinkled shirts, and slouching pants exposing browned necks but snowy white middles. Their middle age and ‘I don’t (have to) care’ hair, or lack thereof. Hard living etched around the eyes. Working class, or some rural echo; is that a slight drawl? Relaxed postures stiffening at my entry. Maybe it was the masks worn awkwardly, or was that disdain? The ‘Cousin Eddie’ tee (of the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise) spilled redneck affinity, though I didn’t notice it right away. And the fact that Randy Quaid had become an iconic Trump fan/​conspiracy theorist was lost on me at the time. Let me put it this way. Words are failing again. But in the moment, almost instantaneously, I was as sure as a body can be. The last thing I registered, 37

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halfway through our conversation, was the stained red MAGA cap tossed on a corner desk, which by then struck me as redundant. Tell me something I don’t already know. I claim no special skill here, no ‘sixth sense’ or rare talent for gender sleuthing. I have no doubt that they sized me up as quickly and accurately. I mean, seriously. Fashion work-​out tights gesturing to 1970s sweats, paired with an ironic rocker tank? It gets better, by which I mean worse. Longish red hair balayaged and tousled, as if to say I wake up like this, when it really screams, Fine, I pay for this! A distressed orange beanie, and—​wait for it—​ high-​top vintage Vans?! The confident professional ‘cool girl’ saunter I picked up long ago, which may not be aging well. OK, these details are my present to readers who’d like a laugh at my expense (you’re welcome). I hope it helps to create the image I’d guess the glass shop guys read instantly: Not one of us. And they would be right. Well, not anymore. Upon reflection, to say that we sized one another up gives us too much credit for impressions that are more reflex than thought. With remarkable precision and scores of mistakes, we sense gender not in some abstract operation but in highly specific strains, as it meets up with other energies, bodies, artifacts, sounds, movements, textures, and atmospheres on scene. We sniff it out. Exactly what, or how well, we can sense is shaped by our own past encounters. Some of us are more attuned to gender, without a doubt. Those accustomed to gender-​based marginalization tend to be more sensitized to its operation, for instance, while those trained in gender studies have access to a nuanced vocabulary. But all of us are gender detectives, semi-​or non-​conscious at the least. *** I would go so far as to say that gender comes upon us. Gender happens to and through us, sneaks up on us even, as much as we make it happen. For me, this is where some models of gender as social construction or performance break down. This is the first time I’ve mentioned a performance model, so let me back up and briefly explain for those less familiar. Many folks (myself included) have claimed that gender is basically an ongoing performance. It’s a practice, an activity, a verb—​not an identity, trait, or noun. One big advantage of such a model is that it transcends the dichotomy of biological and social evident in tiring debates of nature versus nurture, or in the once-​beloved distinction whose failure was mentioned in Chapter 1, between sex (hard biological fact) and gender (softer social fact). What a performance model points out, in contrast, is the relation of biological and social facts. We’re called to display gender with, and in light of, our bodies, for instance. Physical and social aspects of gender come to 38

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matter together, in real time. A performative model treats gender as an ongoing accomplishment that only exists as it is accomplished. Gender is one of those “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.”9 Gender is something we do, not have, and the doing is what makes it real.10 But it’s the ‘we do’ part that troubles me, especially versions that imply mostly conscious, choosing, autonomous, self-​contained individuals in the lead. I’m not so sure. This seems optimistic and, maybe, conceited. Weren’t we just noticing how all manner of stuff contributes to gender? People are not always coordinating these things. Sometimes they are, but stuff can go rogue (need I say more than ‘wardrobe malfunction’?) Things can beckon and move us, contrary to our intentions and without our blessing. On another humbling note, I said above that gender detection happens in a fast mode that bypasses awareness. Wait. Are we moving toward the claim that mundane practices of living can actually ‘do us’ as gendered people, without full knowledge or consent, and sometimes against our will? Yes, we are. A simple example might help. If an unknown man addresses me in public, a smile crosses my face. I may be in no mood for conversation, have an uneasy feeling about his intentions, fear ‘mansplaining’ or worse about to happen, and still, I smile. Well, ‘I’ don’t smile, exactly, because ‘I’ am not in charge in such moments. It is more accurate to say that a (particular kind of white, middle-​class, heterosexual …) woman’s smile comes over my face than it is to say that I am a woman who smiles. The latter interpretation credits the woman for a smile she didn’t quite make. I’d say the smile deserves credit for the woman it makes, like the jerk of a knee makes a functioning leg. After a lifetime of rehearsal, I cannot help that smile (yet). It fires in my nervous system and skips right by cognizance. Now it happens to me, and I am made a woman by that and countless similar reflexes that pass through and overcome me. As of now, I can’t not do it, but believe me, I’ll keep trying. Like this, gender’s repetitive flashes of feeling accrue in our bodies and induce physical responses. We develop impulses and comportments, pain or tightness in places, vulnerabilities and attractions to certain triggers. Even if there is some awareness (and that’s a big if), we are not in full possession of it. Gender flows through rituals that may be public or intimate; it travels on all sorts of stuff. It snaps us to attention and action as certain kinds of people. Grooves get laid down and deepen in the body. Regular contact with gender radiates biological effects, even as biology matters to (but does not determine) what sort of contact we have. That’s another concern I have with some performance models: the way they tone down an active material world, reducing bodies and other stuff to passive texts that come alive in social interaction. Models like this affirm the relation of social and physical realms but keep them in separate and unequal relation, such that the social still wins. 39

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This chapter laid the groundwork for a sociophysical model in which neither can win or lose, because they are two sides of one coin and, thus, always move together. Gender is a social relation felt as a physical imperative, a definitive force that exceeds conscious human decision and expression. Gender is communicable—​and I do mean transmissible—​passing among bodies of all kinds, through multiple modes of communication that operate with and without our awareness. Gender can even be infectious. We will wait to expound on that one, but … it may explain the trouble with masks.

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Of Masks and Men How to fight a virus by dropping your weapon At last we arrive at the second COVID-​19 gender storyline previewed in Chapter 1, the one about men and masks. Call it “mask-​ulinity,” if that rings a bell—​the heightened tendency among certain men to resist covering their faces in the face of a pandemic. Of all the virus mitigation tools, masks became the most fraught. More so in certain places. Especially at first, anti-​masking was concentrated in the West. Resistance to masks and other measures flared in many countries, for sure, but mask-​ulinity truly caught fire in places like the US and UK. The question of interest here is, how might a sociophysical model help us shed old habits and new light on gender as an influential force in the world? This chapter uses the case of mask-​ulinity to explore that question. Consider this our first exercise of the feeling ‘muscles’ we began to awaken in the latter part of Chapter 3. Now, it’s time to use and develop them. My hope is that, like stretching, working with mask-​ulinity will warm us up for what’s to come. *** Mask-​ulinity drew notice within weeks of the early spring 2020 lockdowns across much of the Western world, when face-​covering was reaching recommended status, with controversial mandates on the horizon. From the beginning, accounts of mask-​ulinity differed a bit from the narrative of gendered COVID-​19 leadership discussed earlier. For one thing, the mask-​ulinity narrative led with men as men, a group whose outlook on life is influenced by gender and, specifically, twisted by regular experiences of power. Some observers took care to specify the kind of men who were most mask-​averse.1 They noted, for instance, a link to conservative and libertarian politics. Many pointed to the populist strongmen of Chapter 2 as negative role models, aggressively shunning the 41

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mask guidance of their own administrations. Others noticed that white men were more likely to flout face coverings. The mask-​ulinity storyline thus showed some encouraging signs of the practices recommended in Chapter 3, especially: inquiring after men as gendered figures, asking how their perceptions are distorted by privilege, and rigorously qualifying which men we are talking about. To an extent. Rarely did you hear that these white conservative men were cis men who identified, often stridently, as heterosexual. Evidence of women defying masks was widely available at the time too, but these instances—​if mentioned at all—​featured only in brief asides on exceptions to the rule. As we will see later in the book, integrating these (mostly cis​and heterosexual, white, conservative …) women with mask-​ulinity could further erode the binary and stimulate deeper insight. My point is not to split hairs or sound virtuous, but to cultivate those new practices from Chapter 3, and to show how they could work even better in practice. In that same constructive spirit, I’d be remiss to sidestep the overriding tone of mask-​ulinity analysis, which was incredulous, if not condescending. Like, can you believe this is a thing, and how silly? Oh the irony, that men won’t mask up for fear of looking weak, even as they succumb to the virus more often. Um, maybe this is one reason why? Must we really spend energy making masks seem more masculine in order to convince men to wear them? Headlines from The Guardian, as the UK mandate was about to take effect, say it outright: “Does a man without a mask look tough? No, just vulnerable—​and lethal,” or “The data is in: Men are too fragile to wear COVID-​19 masks. Grow up, guys,” or “Mask discourse is the latest stupid episode …”2 Most analyses weren’t far behind in implication. Evident once again is the impulse with which this book began, to divide social and physical realities. What is silly about mask-​ulinity, we learn, is that it pretends the social (ideals of masculinity) can trump the biological (COVID-​19) and, in so doing, proves precisely the opposite. Of course the virus wins when social norms are stupid enough to ignore its threat. A global biosecurity report applied the same premise, minus the mockery, when it contrasted mask science (hard data) with the unfortunate perception (soft impression) that masks are unmanly, and that men are less susceptible to disease than women.3 Another commentator put it tersely, “For men like this, ego itself has become a figurative—​and they seem to believe, literal—​ shield.”4 The social ‘facing’ down the physical? How absurd. Or is it? Hear me out. *** On a Monday evening in July of 2020, a Twitter post declared, “Florida man at Fort Myers Costco in ‘Running the World Since 1776’ shirt flips out 42

Of Masks and Men

on elderly woman who asked him to wear a mask and man who defended her.” Recorded in late June, the accompanying video quickly went viral (and I urge you to watch it now).5 It featured an apparent white cis man wearing no mask and a red t-​shirt imprinted just as described. The man, later identified as Daniel Maples, can be seen approaching the camera in bursts, arms puffed out and hands clenching. “I feel threatened! Back off!” he yells. “Threaten me again. … Back the fuck up. Put your fucking phone down!” This in response to an elder asking him to mask up in courtesy to her cancer, and a bystander beginning to film when he declined. How could anyone do this? What could be so objectionable about masks to warrant such a belligerent, flagrantly antisocial refusal? ‘Why?’ was the burning question taken up by mask-​ulinity analysts, as similar incidents piled up, and preliminary studies validated the gender angle. The Florida incident was memorable, yes, but increasingly unremarkable. Swiftly, commentators converged on an answer: toxic masculinity. 6 Traditional, stereotypical, restrictive, and corrosive cultural norms of manliness place pressure on men to appear strong at all times and costs. Masks read ‘weak’ because they symbolize physical vulnerability, which is obviously … feminine? Oh right. Would you look at that binary go already! By which I sadly mean do its customary work, full steam ahead, rather than finally leave us alone. There they are again, the proverbial two in opposition, men made impregnable against the permeability of women and others. Is the binary even breaking a sweat on this one? Nope. Just playing the old standards, set to re-​run. Snoozing on the job, really. Luckily, additional wrinkles arose. Masks were also suspect, we learned, for their association with Asian cultures that are racialized, feminized, and vilified in the US. This could speak to why white men opt out, counting on a gender–​race–​nation dignity combo—​a pride so vital, it beats their own and others’ health. Why conservative white men? Because masks, we were told, were the latest face of populist backlash politics, the next site of conflict over everyman’s right to individual choice and liberty from government intervention and elite rule. Give me freedom or give me death, indeed. The overwhelming consensus was that toxic masculinity did it. This noxious ideology convinced (mostly white, conservative) men that they must be invincible warriors in the face of any external threat. And so, refusing to cover face is how they save face. Anti-​masking, most concluded, is an (ironic, pathetic) homage to manliness. You may still wonder, as I did, what is manly about a warrior dropping their weapons to make their bodies as vulnerable as possible? Turning the other cheek to a virus, as it were, hardly fits the prescription for invincibility no matter what. In fact, masks have a long warrior history, creatively integrated into armor across time and culture. Last time I checked the binary manual 43

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for ‘impenetrable men versus susceptible women,’ armor was still on the masculine side. So why don’t masks read ‘strong,’ and couldn’t a battle-​ready spin persuade the hesitant? While some observers weighed the prospect of virile face coverings, others said masks were doomed by a long history of health and safety measures drawing manly fire. In the US, for example, the ‘government overreach’ of mandatory seatbelts and motorcycle helmets comes to mind, as do complaints about the deadening feel of condoms.7 (Is it any surprise that an Anti-​Mask League formed in the US during the 1918 flu pandemic?8) It seems that the extreme individualism characteristic of American masculinity calls men to flout health and safety protocols, essentially killing them in the act of proving their invincibility. Once again, how absurd. Meanwhile, a cache of stories like the one from Florida dished up heaps of manifest stupidity. *** Here is what I can say about that Florida video. Toxic masculinity, or whatever you want to call it, snuck up on Daniel Maples in Costco. I am not saying it was new to him, or that he had never before performed by its script. We can’t know for sure, though the t-​shirt alone says otherwise. I am only claiming that toxic masculinity got the best of him, so to speak. He was not in possession of that performance. Gender came upon Daniel as he entered a cavernous warehouse. It passed through and overtook him as a defense under fire, retaliation for a request that he cover his face. Given the direction I’m about to take, I want to be perfectly clear first. Watching Daniel in that shirt, screaming and lunging at the person he swears is threatening him, is a familiar, nauseating, and sobering experience for many of us. Without question, it is a bodily exhibition of white masculinity that many people of color, LGBTQ+​folks, and white women know and dread well. Daniel parades a white male victimhood of the sort that communication professor Sarah Banet-​Weiser insightfully analyzes.9 His display is the epitome of what sociologist Michael Kimmel calls “aggrieved entitlement,” the anger some white American men project at the passing of an era that ensured their reign relative to others.10 Could there be a better poster child? “Running the world since 1776” and threatened by government encroachment on your God-​g iven right not to wear a mask around someone with cancer?! Please. Of note for fans of toxic masculinity as an explanation, Kimmel cautions against reducing such outrage to ideology. “The men I spoke with … did not share a political position, a worldview, an analysis. They shared sentiments.”11 What they felt in common was an indistinct yet pungent sense—​a sensation—​ of something increasingly amiss that must be stopped, if not avenged. Of 44

Of Masks and Men

getting ripped off and needing to lash back. Something in the vein of, I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore! Daniel recounted the incident in a later interview, where he insisted that his rant did not reflect “the real me” and begged viewers to “not take 15 seconds of my life and turn me into a demon.”12 On his sense of masks, this: “After a while I start to feel like I’m suffocating. I get claustrophobic and that’s an issue for me. … I prefer not wear the mask. It’s something that causes me a lot of distress.” Daniel made the trip as a favor for a friend: “I had no intentions of being there long. … I saw other shoppers not wearing masks. I saw the Costco employees not wearing masks. I keep my distance. I try to be polite if I’m not wearing a mask, and I understand people are sensitive.” Describing his rebuff of the elder, he explained, “I never yelled at an old lady. … I remember someone saying something to me about ‘I have cancer, I have cancer.’ I replied, ‘Well my father died of cancer.’ … I didn’t understand why she was yelling at me about that.” According to Daniel, what we witness on the video is unfiltered passion, an eruption of emotions that escalated when not one but several people approached him to mask up as he entered the store (“It was like the mob was gathering around me”). When asked, he could not explain why he came at the person recording the video if, indeed, he felt he was the one threatened. “In that moment I was scared. I’m not a fighter. I’m not a person that deals with this on a daily basis. … I don’t know how to manage this.” You don’t have to believe Daniel, or harbor one shred of sympathy for him, to absorb the sense of overwhelm, uncertainty, even vulnerability he seems to exude. Again, it is crucial to stress here that I am not asking you to trust, fathom, feel sorry for, or excuse Daniel, or the millions of men who may share his rage. I am not asking you to understand his position or try to empathize with his life experience, to cut him slack of any kind. Instead, I am asking you to appreciate the how of his feeling, not the what. Not the content, just the way he is moved. I am asking you to take one step toward empathy from the side, which—​as a reminder—​means understanding directed not toward another’s position or action but, rather, toward the body’s energetic susceptibility. Let’s learn something about Daniel’s anger that he may not know. Witness how Daniel feels, without affirming his perspective. Then ask yourself whether it’s so different from ‘my’ compulsory smile. In effect? Definitely. Like night and day, a spectacle of macho dominance versus a show of feminized deference, opposite relations to power from one view. But in their fast, non-​or semi-​conscious mode of happening? In the way they come upon us, and not exactly from us? Very much the same. Gender can overwhelm us all. *** 45

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If you have any doubt that Daniel’s encounter at Costco hit a bodily groove that had been etched before, take another look at that t-​shirt. Now why, you might ask, would I emphasize that clue? Isn’t clothing a deliberate choice? And if so, wouldn’t the shirt refute the claim that gender can be non-​or semi-​conscious? Not at all. This is a good opportunity to clarify that I am not advocating an either/​or approach. In any given moment, the force of gender may be off the radar of awareness, lurking on the periphery, partially conscious, close to cognizant, or a combination, some energies registering while others do not. Thanks to our bodily capacity for reflection and growth, levels of consciousness can change too. It might be helpful to think of gendered feeling in fluctuating gradations of awareness, a more-​and-​less rather than either/​or approach. When our bodies encounter gender, who (or what) is in charge is always an open question. Back to the t-​shirt, with this in mind. The shirt is interesting for the way it works with the anatomical communication, but also does slightly different work. Together, the shirt, puffing arms, clenching hands, forward lurches, and bellowing snarl convey, in essence, this body is gripped by the feeling that it’s under siege when it should be running the damn show. The t-​shirt, though, adds a few dimensions. One, it confirms the whiteness—​as well as the nationalistic and colonial quality—​of this manly grievance, in case there was doubt.13 It does so by partially translating sensation into word and image, affording a different mode of reading than other non-​verbal cues. Two, it signals at least some level of awareness, in that Daniel concurs with the feeling enough to wear the shirt: I am gripped … . Three, with its slightly worn appearance, it says, I keep getting possessed, or this has been going on for a minute. I have worn this feeling before, literally. One more thing. The shirt is a designed and durable object, relatively speaking, that can move from one place to the next and is commercially available. It thus spreads the feeling of grievance around as widely as it is purchased, worn, gifted, handed down, imitated, and shared as a meme. Whereas the first three dimensions of the shirt help communicate the feeling and its relation to a host, the fourth dimension helps make the feeling communicable. ‘My’ grievance will continue occurring elsewhere, through other bodies if not this one. In this way, the shirt is part of an economy of aggrieved entitlement. It circulates the grievance and, thereby, intensifies the anger, contributes to its infectious quality. Worth noting again is that gender ideology cannot begin to capture what’s happening here. The caption “Running the world since 1776,” next to an image of the continental US, is both entirely clear and unclear, an imprecise complaint that is unmistakably intoxicating and all the more powerful for its incoherence. 46

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All told, the shirt is a sociophysical confession. Even as the body surrenders to possession, the shirt admits that some cognition is involved and concedes the gender–​race–​nation specificity of the sensation. As Daniel wears it, the shirt links one scene of living to another, lending continuity and durability to the feeling. Finally, the shirt as wearable commodity scales up that durability, through public yet also intimate circulation. The t-​shirt is one small but significant thing that enables repeated physical contact with a defining gender energy—​the imperative of aggrieved entitlement that is constituting Daniel (and many others) as an individual actor. We can’t possibly do justice yet to all the other pieces, but we can conclude with one more. *** Masks became another object that circulated and escalated this definitive sense of gender. On the one hand just a swatch of material imbued with intent to slow viral transmission, masks wound up inadvertently increasing the transmission of aggrieved entitlement. At an anti-​masking rally in June of 2020, Arizona city councilman Guy Phillips flippantly appropriated George Floyd’s last words before being brutally murdered by police—​“I can’t breathe!”—​to describe how a mask felt.14 Moral outrage justly followed. Shameful at any time, the insinuation of equivalence was all the more horrifying during a summer when people were risking their lives to protest over four centuries of anti-​Black violence. Anti-​maskers, meanwhile, pushed for the individual freedom to spread COVID-​19. As contemptible as it is, the reference gestured toward what I suspect is a real sensation some white folks in the US experience when masks cover their face, especially conservative heterosexual cis men, but we cannot forget, many women of this persuasion too. Masks are unpleasant for most bodies not used to wearing them. They can be awkward socially and physically, hard to communicate through, sweaty, sticky, stinky, and restricting as you suck air while moving around. But it’s almost as if bodies conditioned by privilege—​or the sense that they should enjoy privilege, an important rider—​ actually feel more stifled than those compelled to be vulnerable, receptive, permeable, pliable, and so forth on a regular basis. In the faltering attempt to account for his body later, Daniel said as much. A visceral sense of suffocation may be more intense for those convinced that their entitlement is on the wane, getting stolen even, and others are to blame. Not just any others, but all those vulnerable, permeable Others on whose backs their impregnability was supposedly guaranteed. Running the world since 1776. Again it is crucial to stress that I am not encouraging empathy with the feeling itself or the ideological content on which it settles (masks =​an 47

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infringement on individual freedom). Instead, lateral empathy sheds light on how it happens—​as an irksome and insistent sensation first, awaiting or unsettled upon content. Not a lucid belief with which ‘my’ emotions align, but a compelling feeling sneaking in between the ribs, so to speak. Contagious. The feeling is real even though it’s not true, to paraphrase Kimmel’s repeated phrase in Angry White Men. It occurs in the sociophysical world and takes on a life of its own—​a communicable reality—​even if it is a poor barometer or misreading of actual relations of power. Of masks and men, then, a sociophysical approach might say this: Bodies that are hung up on strength defined as impermeability are likely to find masks especially uncomfortable, if not repulsive. I say bodies because the ego, as I am using it, is a physical compulsion. To live as if impervious to an external world, one must repeatedly steel themselves, which exerts anatomical effects. Thus Daniel’s puffing arms and clenching fists, although he’s “not a fighter.” To be clear, I am not saying the mask revolts the man because it symbolizes weakness, so he puts on a superficial and foolish show of strength. I’m suggesting that wearing a mask activates an unnerving sensation of permeability, even if part or all of him may want to mask up, or knows he ought to. The mask triggers a rising awareness of his own physical porosity, that his boundaries can be penetrated. As it covers his face, it uncovers his virility and, thus, becomes even more uncomfortable to wear. The feeling may be more than he can stand, especially if he’s already embattled and embittered, beset by gnawing, festering pangs of vulnerability when he’s supposed to feel potent. My claim is that masks confront this sensitive spot, press on the bruise, and get torn off and trampled in recoil. Refusing masks is like a sensory final straw, the ego’s last stand, a tantrum of self-​containment. More than willful, ignorant fidelity to masculine ideals, what may be at stake is a physical hitch. Perhaps toxic masculinity is a physical hitch, or at least, that is how it happens. *** When an American president recovering from COVID-​19 infamously ripped off his mask on a White House balcony, to the swelling strains of a soundtrack actually entitled “Epic Male Songs”15—​when he mercilessly mocked his political opponent for mask compliance, prompting the conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren to suggest the opponent “carry a purse with that mask”16—​when he deigned to cover his face and cast doubt on mask science over and over (and over) again, he was riffing off this sensation—​of being stifled, unjustly muzzled—​poking around and inflaming it, casting one lit torch after another into a wildfire. From a world stage. If populist strongmen failed the COVID-​19 test, and several of them certainly did (in more ways than one), this was as much about their 48

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unparalleled access to the means of circulation and their calculated transmission of aggrieved masculinity as it was their failure to take the virus seriously and coordinate mitigation. Many people blame Trump, and he surely deserves harsh judgment. At the time of this writing, he remains the chief instigator, though not the initiator, of aggrieved entitlement. He magnetizes a devoted audience of white men (and many women) because he tickles sensory portals already open. He goes right to the exposed place, just where it smarts, finds those stinging grooves worn from living gender in certain ways, and soothes and stokes them all at once. *** We come full circle to that pithy quote from earlier, “For men like this, ego itself has become a figurative—​and they seem to believe, literal—​shield.” Why did I ask you to pause and question with me the logical conclusion that such a belief is daft and reckless, since we know the biological (a virus) will trump the social (toxic ideology)? Because I don’t think the so-​called ego shield is either figurative (as in merely symbolic) or believed to be literal (a mindful conviction that I’ll be fine). I think masks threaten the ego in another way, as a not-​so-​conscious sensation of intolerable permeability that is every bit as physical and hard to shake as a virus. In fact, I think the kind of physical hitch we just described—​ triggered not only by face covering but by other COVID-​19 restrictions too—​is one fateful way that a virus learns to ‘speak gender.’ It is helpful here to recall the universal subject, that Western Man introduced in Chapter 3. In a nutshell, the gender binary bestows the prize of full humanity on certain men, by denying it to women and feminized as well as racialized others. With this gift comes a ‘bonus,’ namely, the right to self-​containment. But this is also a responsibility, an intensified pressure to live as a self-​contained individual, to maintain a physical ego barrier that sets you apart from all those permeable, pliable, vulnerable, weak, endlessly inferior Others. In her path-​breaking work on the transmission of feeling, Teresa Brennan describes the self-​contained individual as a “foundational fantasy” particularly vital to the Anglo-​American world.17 This fantasy does not belong to the world of make-​believe. Rather, we invest in it to the extent that it alters the physical constitution of our bodies. It is sociophysical. Mask mandates spoil the fantasy, doubly violating its dream of self-​governance. Not only is your body porous and vulnerable, we will force you to admit this and act accordingly. Brennan’s work anticipates that this would be most problematic for white men, historically the only bodies with unfettered access to the fantasy, indeed, the very ones it was intended to enrich. However, no one who lives 49

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in the (Anglo-​American) West or has been deeply touched by this fantasy is immune, she says. The self-​contained individual is a gendered imperative that can be felt by anybody in the vicinity; it’s a widespread sensory affliction. No surprise, then, that mask aversion is a notably Western response that is dominated by, but by no means limited to, white men in the US and UK. The remarkable thing about the physical hitch of a body clinging to its sovereignty is that it can be felt so intensely, it becomes worth dying for. In effect, the sensation of manly impermeability is life, and life is not worth living without it or, at least, death as a man is better. If that is not the definition of a definitive vitality—​gender as an imperative of living and dying—​I wouldn’t know what is. Lest we shake our heads at the absurdity of this feeling by which some men are made, let’s not forget it has been fortified for eons. Bodies marked male have long been conditioned to perpetrate and suffer violence in honorable sacrifice on behalf of countless causes. These are intergenerational grooves, and we primarily call them toxic when misdirected. As explanations go, toxic masculinity consistently underrates the intensities of gender. Mask mandates spark irrepressible outbursts of aggression across the country, because feeling like a man—​impermeable—​is worth dying for. Opposition and empathy from the front, the two common responses described at the outset of the book, are no match for this outrage. Sensation that acute is so far past ideology, no amount of critique or scorn is likely to faze it, and sympathetic understanding only validates it. Mask-​ulinity is more about energy than creed. It’s energy as creed. Toxic masculinity gives a name to the effects of that energy and asserts a cause: ideology behind the scenes. For all the focus on why, however, it doesn’t give us better purchase on the problem. I think that’s because it fails to ask how mask-​ulinity happens, how gender becomes imperative in the real time of encounter. For that, we need a sociophysical approach.

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Gender as a Matter of Life and Death New habits to bust the binary The goal of Part I has been to upgrade our capacity for gender analysis. All along, we’ve been asking after the realness of gender: In what sense does it exist? What makes it real? A review of the answer might help. For too long, our gender habits have been stuck in a world split in two by a tenacious binary of men and women, hard and soft. When human bodies present themselves to this world, they are met with pronouncements of girl or boy upon birth, usually without much dispute, but often with a great deal of fuss and fanfare. Gender proceeds from there as a social construction that responds to our given bodies and can certainly veer off script. It thus entails both innate biological components (once dubbed sex) and acquired cultural elements that are more variable and flexible (at one time gender versus sex). In this popular view, gendered persons are both natural-​born and human-​ made: The physical parts are mostly set, unless camouflaged or acted upon with chemical or surgical intervention, while the social parts are more flexible, culturally infused and performed by human actors. A little nature and a lot of nurture, we say—​why choose? Problem is, the biological and cultural drivers remain distinct. The issue is precisely that separation, the persistent division of physical and social. Today, both are allegedly given their due. I say, as long as they remain separate, we do justice to neither and pay a high price. Gender is inescapably sociophysical, social and physical mattering together. What we like to think of as discrete biological and cultural strands are actually co-​mingling, co-​creating, and co-​evolving from the beginning, in that inaugural act of birth assignment. Yes, the body is active in social relations. But it is not some determinative, set-​in-​stone force that serves up ‘hard’ limits to ‘soft’ social potentials. Biology listens to, and is deeply affected by, the social, because the social is always also physical. 51

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The substance of gender comes from bodily encounter and the physical imprints thereof. Being a woman, man, or any other kind of person is first and foremost a sensory social reality. That is to say, we become individuals—​ discrete persons of a particular kind—​through ongoing contact with the world. Our bodies are physically constituted by gendered sociality, whether we’re aware of it or not. Now here comes the heavy toll of carrying on as if this isn’t so. Absent this sociophysical awareness, we continue to take men and women as real in at least some given sense. As absolute persons that mostly come in two options, though exceptions can be granted. As individual men and women before gender, rather than the reverse (gender before men and women, as I have argued). As established individuals, the central agents or lead actors who propel the scene. As enclosed entities, bounded origin points for thinking, feeling, and acting. As long as we treat gender in this way—​as if it is affixed to and contained within human bodies—​we allow an inherent binary to thrive, even as we may complain of its constrictions. In case you are thinking—​so what, does it matter all that much?—​this is the point where I plead with you. Yes. Let’s put it this way. If the gender binary were a trifling issue, populist movements and legislators around the world wouldn’t be working so hard to shore it up. Their specific stake in doing so will become clear in Part III, as we delve into the relationship between populism and gender. For now, take their diehard commitment to the binary as reason enough to stay curious. The stakes are high in this fight. Maybe yours is a related variant of doubt: Is the gender binary really that bad? Again, yes. I urge you not to underestimate its force and consequence, the wreckage it has already wrought and the damage it continues to do while we look the other way. The binary exerts mortal consequences that exceed our current vocabulary of gendered power, such as patriarchy, male or masculine privilege, sexism, heterosexism and homophobia, cissexism, transphobia, discrimination against non-​ binary and non-​normative people, and so forth. Make no mistake; these inequities carry mortal consequences too, but something even more fundamental is at stake. Say gender is not your main concern, or you think we have bigger fish to feed. Then remember the gravity of the binary’s primary job. To keep activating a “foundational fantasy” of autonomous, self-​contained persons, epitomized by certain men at the expense of all the Others (most everyone else). To supply an endless stream of superior–​inferior oppositions that justify this state of affairs, shorthand for entire systems of value. Not only does this expunge the biodiversity of gender; it denies that all of our bodies are susceptible to an infinite range of formative forces, utterly interdependent with the fragile world through which we live. The gender binary is killing us, and I do mean that literally. 52

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This book suggests that no one wins through such erasure and denial. Certainly not those demoted to second-​class status, cast off to the margins, or obliterated altogether by the binary. But not even those most privileged by its terms, as our initial exercise with mask-​ulinity began to reveal. And certainly not the planet, which has been strained to the point of extinction by its ‘second sex’ standing next to civilization. Nature, forever expected to defer to culture. Culture, physically reconstituting (suffocating) nature with its dominance. Earth may be the greatest casualty of the gender binary yet. We must move beyond a naturalized binary; it’s a matter of survival, I will argue. But we cannot do so until we process the realness of gender in a different way, one that abandons anything given about it without surrendering its existence. To the question, then: What makes gender real? My answer is that gender happens, and keeps happening, as an imperative force of encounter, a definitive feeling. What we need is a better description of how we are moved by gender, or how gender moves, in order to witness and affect its operation in the world. This is the capacity Part I has been building. *** To some, my sociophysical approach may sound like another performance model wherein people appear to have gender only because they keep doing it.1 It follows that we could choose otherwise. Stop doing gender, or un-​do and re-​do it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right? Not an easy one, has been my answer. Doing gender differently is not a matter of adequate human resolve. When gender is a materially felt necessity, it’s more like resolve against matter. As we saw in the case of my smile reflex, resolve will lose a thousand times before it can win. The question before us, therefore, is what keeps gendered feeling in circulation? This is not a question of why it circulates, a quest for underlying cause. Deep ideological or structural reasons will not be our answer this time, nor are we in search of a puppeteer. I am asking instead, how does it circulate? Quite literally, what all is involved in spreading sensations of gender? How does gender move? Of necessity, this is a social and physical question. My sociophysical approach is surely indebted to gender performativity even as it departs from such models. As we move forward, it might help to recap those differences and the new mode of analytic practice proposed in Part I: • Recognize gender as a force in everyday encounter. Gender is nothing if not tangible. You can hone your ability to discern gender in finer grain by tuning in to the subtle textures of daily life. Take a recent scene you encountered, and try your hand at the sort of sensory analysis modeled in Chapter 3, where we revisited my glass shop scenario. Your 53

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•

•

•

•

•

task is to make ‘intuition’ concrete. Rigorously describe the physical details that make gender present and pertinent to a situation, or that cue your instantaneous read of it. How, more precisely, do you know what you know? Acknowledge gender as a repetitive, definitive energy—o ​ ne among many, but not just any. Gender is an authoritative vitality, an imperative that can be felt, and is often felt over and over. This physical repetition helps to make seemingly social things as they are. Over time, recurrence leaves physical traces. As I said earlier, grooves get laid down, and deepen in the body. We are neither determined by this history nor completely free to overhaul ourselves. Gender takes on material momentum in our lives. Consider how this might operate in yours: What are some of your ‘grooves,’ or what for you might be the equivalent of my automatic smile or Daniel’s explosive attack/​defense? Push men and women (as given persons) off the stage and into the wings, in order to better grasp the sociophysical flow of feeling that animates them as actors. The point is not to deny the existence of women and men or to disappear them as intentional individuals. Rather, it is to ask first how they are continually made as such through contact with the world. Human will is humbled here, but that doesn’t demote us to innocent dupes. It simply honors that we are porous, receptive bodies, formed through concrete scenes of living. Keep trying the thought experiment proposed in Chapter 3 (under the heading, “Gender before men and women”). Attune to less conscious flows of gender. Human bodies encounter gender in shifting degrees of awareness. We actively maneuver gender, and it comes upon us. We perform it; it can outperform, occupy, and possess us. Gender can be (all the more) impactful when barely registered, on the edge or falling off the cognizant register. We can learn to enhance awareness of bodily tics and other subtle material cues, but it takes work to discern and investigate. This work starts by making a habit out of gender attunement in daily life, and noticing subtle ways that gender can accumulate physically, through bodies, objects, environments, and so forth. Return to the first two bullet points, and keep practicing. Ask how gender gets done, resisting preoccupation with who does it. Follow instead the trail of things contributing to its occurrence. A t-​shirt or a mask, a scent or a song, a palpable atmosphere. Reverse the usual questions we ask about action. Ask, for instance, how the smile makes the woman, or the mask undoes the man. What does the shirt disclose about Daniel? Remember, who or what is exerting gender influence is an open question. Map the communicability of gender, through economies and technologies of gendered feeling. Gendered feeling is not fastened 54

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to or sealed within individuals, and human bodies are not its only hosts. Senses (as in meaningful sensations) of gender gain steam and value by circulating. They intensify and attract attachment, energize and magnetize bodies, the more they get passed around. As you follow the trail of stuff that helps this happen, start tracing connections among things and charting the networks or infrastructures that facilitate their movement, as this book will do. • Forecast trajectories and futures to which certain circulations of gendered feeling give rise. As you discern feeling in formation—​say, the spiraling anger of aggrieved entitlement—​project its current pathway toward the horizon. Ask what sort of world it may bring about. What relations appear to be chaining out or scaling up? But now I get ahead of myself; that’s for the last half of the book. Analytic practice like this goes further to bust the binary apart than my initial suggestions for breaking ‘bad’ habits in Chapter 3. Baby steps and big leaps, we need them both. Sociophysical analysis takes the wind out of the gender binary’s sails, so to speak. It does so by refusing the binary any given, fixed, intrinsic, or inevitable quality to which we must submit. It takes the binary by the shoulders, and marches it directly into the material stream of living, where we can witness how it happens—​how it keeps becoming real—​rather than perpetually succumb to its preordained reality. Taking a sociophysical approach to analysis stands to cultivate intervention from the side. The point is neither to criticize nor sympathize with my compulsory smile or Daniel’s insistence that “I feel threatened.” The point is to address gendered feeling from a lateral angle that begins by following its material progression. Following, that is, the communicability of feeling. Are you acquiring a renewed taste for gender yet? I hope so, because we all need a more complex palate for what lies ahead.

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PART II

The Feel of New Populisms

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This Is Populism Starting with the sense made Rarely is the global swell of anger recognized as a gendered feeling. Here and there, gender draws nods and honorable mentions. References to populist strongmen, for instance, or the follies of mask-​ulinity. For the most part, though, neither descriptions nor explanations lead with gender. Gender is a side show to the main stage, which—​if you haven’t heard—​features populism. Just as we acquire a new taste for gender, we discover that few care to join the feast. Today’s anger belongs to ordinary people, men and women, rising to reclaim their rightful place. A gender lens is too narrow and identity-​ specific—​too minor for such a sweeping movement. Gender is beside the point. People are pretty sure of this, so a case to reconsider climbs uphill. In Part II, we jump cut to populism because it is the main frame for processing aggrieved entitlement. We may as well start there. What better way to hone the sensory skills we just awakened than by sniffing out gender where it’s said to be irrelevant? Populism it is, then. That said, populism per se is not my concern, even as Part II will be trained on it. In case that sounds strange, let me clarify. What follows is no grand theory of populism. I don’t have much of a stance in the abstract. Nor am I a definitional purist, concerned with what ‘true’ populism is or should be. As the daughter of populist sympathizers, I learned to think of it provisionally. It all depends on where things are going. Perhaps that’s why I’m most interested in what is happening right now under the banner of populism. What uses are its sign and form serving, regardless of whether you think they’re poorly or properly applied? You already know I’m not convinced that populism is the best name for today’s grievance politics. That’s not to say it’s the wrong one, just not revealing enough. Please hear this loud and clear. Correspondence (is/​is not) and ideological evaluation (good/​bad content) are not the games I want to play here. I care less about what populism is or what it says, and more about how it feels and what it does. What sort of world does it long to bring about? I seek to make 59

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‘better sense’ of the current version. Meaning, I want a fuller appreciation of the feeling that fuels it. The task of Part II is to access the sensory signature, or feeling profile, of contemporary populism. What is this feeling, more precisely? Is it cause for concern and, if so, what kind? Who are ‘we’ to feel concern, and is concern another word for anti-​populism? Is it possible to formulate a concern in common, one that includes populist wellbeing? How might we do so without sliding toward paternalism, or the patronizing tenor of technocracy? Ultimately, I will make the case that contemporary populism gives safe shelter to a victimized antagonism hell-​bent on securing the status of certain people as the people, at any cost. But there is some ground to cover before we can get there. Part II leads the way, beginning with why the label populism found traction in the first place. *** Let’s start where we left off, with anti-​maskers. COVID-​19 compliance was politicized swiftly, the code well-​known. If you embraced the rules, you veered left and banked on the government experts. If you balked, you leaned right and identified with those who felt put-​upon and sick of it. Fits of anger over virus measures—​like Daniel’s mask meltdown—​went viral, polarizing communities of feeling around them. Some people took to the streets in protest, livid at what they saw as a violation of individual liberty, the epitome of government overreach. Others looked on in dismay, aghast at what they perceived to be small-​minded, self-​defeating displays. Welcome to contemporary populism and, not to be denied, anti-​populism. By now you are probably familiar, in some form or another, with the protests against lockdowns, masks, and the like. Angry citizens gathered to spew wrath and respiratory droplets over restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-​19. Over the course of the pandemic, these protests grew in size and scope. By most reports, they originated and remained most passionate in the West, but they also spread around the world with the pandemic. Going viral is all the rage, puns intended. Conspicuously, the protests against COVID-​19 measures shared a vague aesthetic across location. This was certainly true in North America and the UK, but elsewhere too. I bet you can picture it with me. Protesters usually dressed in patriotic hues swung or draped themselves in flags. They carried placards and shouted chants that echoed an eclectic mix of revolutionary, libertarian, and leftist (most notably, radical feminist) protest themes. Don’t tread on me. Freedom of choice. Or my favorite appropriation: My body, my choice. There’s intent to this irony—​the tools of the left counterculture of the late 1960s and 1970s now turned back on the left cultural establishment. As 60

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the National Review described the US version, “The American Right hits its hippie phase.”1 Later, we’ll return to this point. If you ever wondered why leaders on the right would stoke such suspicion of science and medicine, knowing full well the life-​and-​death consequences for their own supporters, here is your answer. The bigger you can make that monstrosity on the left—​the evil elite establishment that’s coming for your freedoms—​the better. I once found it an impressive feat to paint Big Government in cahoots with feminist and queer ‘snowflakes,’ but now I see that was child’s play. Even epidemiologists could become part of the cabal! Cut from the same condescending cloth and resolved to trample the little guy. So scientific and medical professionals became the next casualties of culture war. The same could be said—​sadly, in the literal sense—​of those who succumbed to the pandemic because they or their loved ones flouted restrictions. One thing is clear. COVID-​19 was the winner. On January 6, 2021, a scene eerily similar to the lockdown protests evolved at the US Capitol. Only this time, the Capitol went into lockdown of a different kind. The primary object of outrage was a ‘rigged’ presidential election, and the goal was to ‘stop the steal.’ Demonstrators rapidly became rioters and stormed the Capitol. They became insurrectionists. That day, the temperature dialed up drastically from COVID-​1 9 demonstrations, but the energetic connection was clear. Same aesthetic, different target. Few were surprised, I suspect, to learn that anti-​lockdown and anti-​masking groups were fertile recruiting ground for ‘stop the steal’ events, including those of January 6.2 Loyalty to the outgoing president was the obvious common denominator, but this didn’t start with him. *** As I watched the Capitol insurrection unfold on live TV, I couldn’t shake a surreal and fateful sense that the momentum of years was finally arriving. Plenty of analysts trace the political history leading to Trump.3 But I was struck by a different through line, a more intimate continuity. I flashed to the subtle ways my family gatherings began to change after Reagan. When Rush Limbaugh and his ilk seeped into our veins, and the rise of email let us circulate relentless threats to ‘our way of life.’ It wasn’t just what we talked about over family meals, but the concrete textures of it. Patriotically bedazzled t-​shirts and hating on Hollywood. Rogue capitalization and multiple exclamation points. The acidic quality of the currents between us. Our fierce brand of religious-​r ight patriotism was turning sour, giving way to an embittered taste. Less of the ‘sweet innocence’ of children waving tiny American flags outside abortion clinics (I was one of them). More like, tirades that college was spoon-​feeding me ‘revisionist history,’ and could you believe 61

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the latest atrocity from hideous Hillary! When my family became swept up in the Tea Party wave of the Obama years, I feared all was lost. Of course, they were similarly saddened by my left turn. The chasm would grow wider. Suffice it to say I was not surprised to learn, later in the evening on January 6, that close relatives of mine were in DC, intent to ‘stop the steal.’ I had seen their feed, before and since the election. Day in and day out, it showcased that aesthetic from the lockdown protests, at once specific to our family and shared by millions of people. Riled-​up white folks, pissed off at the heist of their country, plastered in patriot garb and ALL CAPS. In fact, the pics they posted looked just like the ones they’d shared from Tea Party rallies a decade ago, only now the flags that wrapped their bodies bore a surname in gold block letters. One of my relatives posted a tenderly written “patriot’s letter of gratitude” to Trump after he lost. I’ll be honest; the strength and specificity of her passion still takes my breath away. She found love in a hopeless place, or so it felt to me, and broke my heart. To be fair, she’s distressed by my climate distress. I know I break hers too. Loose, roving networks of fervent resentment like this come as no surprise to those who follow contemporary populism. Rising in the late 1990s and spiking in the past ten years, populism today is raging in both senses of the term—​fuming and rampant. Proponents stay primed to lash out at the latest grievance, nursing old wounds until the next signal arises, usually from a contentious public figure with whom they feel a close connection. A useful clarity can be achieved by distilling the new breed of populism to this: energized anger in search of another breach to rev up its defenses. Obviously there is way more to it, but Part II is entitled “The Feel of New Populisms” because this passion profile is the cornerstone. Whose feeling it is and where it’s headed are the next questions, but those must wait for Part III. *** When it came to grievance, COVID-​19 was a gift that keeps on giving—​ ever-​changing rules, imposed on private citizens without voice or consent, by experts and public agencies, over an extended period of time. The virus be damned by all (including those who call it a hoax), but its mitigation served up an endless buffet of breaches. Capped off by an ‘illegitimate’ presidential election, and you have the supreme banquet of populist resentment. The people are up in arms for sure. That doesn’t make it an uprising. Let me put it this way. How did pandemic mitigation, or yet another national election cycle, become targets of populist ire? In old-​timey terms, whence came the signals of injury? The answer is crucial to framing the task of Part II. 62

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By now it is beyond controversy that both the lockdown protests and Capitol riot were supported from the top. This fact cannot be chalked up to the idiosyncrasies of an aberrant, and now unseated (at least officially), executive. An extraordinary network of people, organizations, technologies, and funding aligned to elect him to office and facilitate these later revolts. What’s more, this web dripped with wealth, power, educational and professional privilege. Elite-​sponsored populism? Now there’s a contradiction in terms. Whereas populism is classically conceived as an uprising of the people, these days it’s more of a “downrising”—​an intentionally odd term I will use to capture the diffusion of unrest, erupting from the bottom, spurred by the top, and spun through the middle. I intend no strict hierarchy or directionality here. I’m just saying that a wide range of agents—​plenty without extraordinary influence, many who operate from within power, and a whole lot of folks in the muddy middle—​actively contribute to growing the people’s anger. Mainly, I mean to note the dispersed quality of populist agency, and to challenge the portrayal of today’s populism as a bottom-​up phenomenon. As we saw with mask-​ulinity, for example, elected politicians not only joined in the anti-​masking fray; they poured fuel on it. To be clear, these officials—​in the US, many governors and the president himself—​did not simply bend to rising populist will. They guided that will and provoked the protest. Many of them rose to power as anti-​government populists. From high office, they then cued supporters what to rebel against: government. That’s right, the one they were now ostensibly governing. Under such circumstances, it is not enough to ask what motivates ‘the base,’ as if rank-​and-​file voters are the sole or main drivers of populism. As if it’s all just the people’s will. Yet that is precisely what preoccupies most commentary: How will this and that sit with the so-​called base? A different line of questioning is in order. What is up with, and who is served by, anti-​government government? Given the extent of elite investment in this pattern, how is it populist at all? Failing to ask such questions while we fuss over supporters’ motivations, I think we serve hazy interests. Instead of interrogating the quieter investments as we should, we go after the main attraction, or distraction, toward which they point us: the will of ordinary people. In doing so, we pile too much onto them. We blame the despicable bits on the base—​double-​meaning intended—​and absolve those silent partners who would rather not reveal their stake. This becomes a vicious cycle. Blaming and shaming the base is a classic anti-​populist tactic, and it is self-​defeating. It only fuels the fire, by serving up proof of elite disdain and indifference. Focusing on the base justifies and intensifies their anger and lines the pockets of those who profit from it. This is what I mean by saying we serve hidden interests. 63

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What is going on with populism today, from top to bottom? Part II balances all the complex questions posed here, building a unique approach to contemporary populism as a trajectory of feeling. To start exploring populism in this way, we need a basic outline. The sketch to follow will be supple, not solid, because that is the hallmark of populism: flexibility.

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7

Crash Course Populism in brief Populism is a hotly contested term, starting with its very existence: Is populism even a thing? Some fixate on ‘real’ versus ‘fake’ versions: Is this populist or not? Others trade nominal for ordinal accounts: How populist is this, to what extent or degree? Still others wield the term as a polemic, pejorative, radical ideal, or badge of honor. I don’t care to get mired in these debates.1 A continuum of more and less works for me. In short form, populism is a flexible political form known chiefly by this pliability. As a named phenomenon, it has been around since the 1890s, coming up on 150 years. Depending on who you ask, the earliest manifestations arose in Russia, France, and the US. The moniker itself originated with the US People’s Party at the end of the 19th century. Since then, movements deemed populist have cropped up around the world. Their wild variation complicates any definition, all but blocking a unified theory. Latin America has been a distinctive hotbed, for instance, where populist politics and regimes flourished in ambivalent relationship with democratic impulses.2 Variations on populism are not only geopolitical. In any given country or region, populist movements can emerge on the left and right, or traverse and transcend that divide. They can swing wildly across ideological positions, over time or simultaneously. Those familiar with the US might think of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street as ideologically opposed populist movements that occurred around the same time. Ideological plasticity is one of the hallmarks of populism. Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, one of the leading public writers on populism today, describes it as a “thin” or “thin-​centered” ideology that mostly consists of a malleable notion of the people (hereafter The People) and their general will versus the elite and/​or the establishment (aka “the establishment elite,” “elite establishment,” etc.).3 To fill out those silhouettes with content, populism can roam far and wide. It may borrow and tweak a socialist concept of class 65

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yet not oppose capitalism. It can nuzzle up to nationalism, xenophobia, racial, ethnic, and religious supremacy yet never be quite reducible to these. Always, the particulars are tailored to the setting from which it emerges. Make no mistake, The People’s flexibility is the populist distinction. Populism invites divergent, adaptive spinoffs, and elasticity is the source of its power. Due to this eclectic disposition, characterizations of populism have always been difficult, generalizations next to impossible. On the one hand, populism is patent, a classic case of ‘you know it when you see it.’ On the other, its slithery quality frustrates attempts to pin it down. Stacks of scholarship on populism toil through this vexing condition. Another option is to settle on populism as a recognizably imprecise formation, which is what I will do. Rather than a feature to bemoan, imprecision is something to behold as its characteristic force. A virus analogy might help: Populism can be identified by tangible markers, even as it spawns mutations that keep things interesting. *** The tangible bits do help, though. For semi-​solid indicators, we can zoom in on five clues. You know you are in the neighborhood of populism when …

Clue 1: You hear a forceful language of popular sovereignty, The People versus the elite/​establishment These two categories anchor the quintessential populist vocabulary. They are what my communication colleagues call “empty” or “floating signifiers.”4 Whereas their content is remarkably pliable, however, their relationship is fixed. Whoever they are, The People are honorable, and the elite are horrible. The People are a “noble assemblage” of some kind, be it virtuous, authentic, magnificent, all of these and more. Usually, the term evokes an imagined, idealized community, some true “heartland” that got lost along the way.5 In stark contrast, the establishment/​elite are the self-​serving few who have hoodwinked the many into submission. These jerks trounce upon the general will by declaring they know best, or certainly better than The People, who cannot be trusted to rule themselves. Their arrogant disdain for the masses makes the establishment undemocratic and, thus, dubious—​a charge delivered with special sting in democratic contexts. In a word, the elite are The People’s foil, the villain to their hero. Populism is thus a majoritarian politics. It is the opposite of identity politics, most say, because populism claims to represent the interests of the whole rather than a part—​the general will, not the rights of a specific group. Hold on to that thought because it will become the focal point of Part III. For now, we carry on with a second sign you might be in populist territory … 66

Crash Course

Clue 2: You detect a relational vibe of antagonism, pure and simple Whereas the previous marker focused on the binary categories, this one picks up with, and capitalizes on, the relation between them: VERSUS in all caps. Populism summons The People to lock horns with the elite in a relentless stance of antagonism. In his widely acclaimed book The Populist Explosion, American journalist John Judis explains that populists tend to levy extreme demands.6 They may not expect these demands to be met, but they nonetheless double down, no compromise or alternative. Populism is not prone to calling for incremental reforms or seeking resolution between clashing interests. Gradual change and meeting in the middle are not in its wheelhouse. Instead, the point is to maintain an intense conflictual relationship until someone or something gives. We The People are the glorious underdog, battling a massive and insidious enemy. Yet we are the majority who bear the general will. Ours is thus a good and worthy fight, even if we are destined to lose. Historically, populist combat tends to fizzle or shift focus when demands get diluted or granted. In the absence of antagonism—​in victory, for instance, or when bargains are struck—​populism suffers an identity crisis and dissipates or mutates. All populisms lead with intense antagonism between The People and some corrupt establishment or wicked elite. But you might feel even more confident in your diagnosis if …

Clue 3: You see a direct and person-centered mode of organization and leadership Populism often arises around magnetic figures thought to epitomize The People in some way.7 Or if it doesn’t start that way, it gravitates in that direction. Leaders may be charismatic and mesmeric, contentious and polarizing. They may share with The People an origin, habit, experience, understanding, or other tie that makes them a fitting mouthpiece. No mere representative or spokesperson, this figure is perceived as a natural translator. A ventriloquist who channels The People’s every truth and wish and, in this respect, a hero. He (pronoun intended) is trusted to know and express the general will without dialogue or deliberation, because he ‘gets us.’ He personifies The People, an attachment that can grow so intimate, leader and follower become indistinguishable, and the movement bears his name. Key to this relationship is shirking intermediaries as superfluous, if not treacherous, filters that get in the way. We don’t need all that party bureaucracy. The media twists my words. I talk straight to and on the level with the people. Screw 67

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all the layers and go-​betweens; we don’t need their silly formalities. You know me, and you get me. Which leads right to a fourth signal you’re on populist ground …

Clue 4: You discern a style of performance that relishes “flaunting the low” Now I must underscore this, lest you recoil right away, or call an anti-​ populism foul already. Low here is not synonymous with the lower economic classes. Nor does it refer unilaterally to people who are disadvantaged or made ‘lowly’ by any manner of means. Instead, low refers to a cultural style that is cast off as inappropriate and unacceptable in the mainstream, disenfranchised from polite conversation and society. The elite establishment sets the ‘high’ standard, then wields it to reprimand The People for their vulgarity. Populism reclaims this allegedly crass, offensive style as an ID card, a medal of honor. In this way, low and high evoke a distinction made by renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-​ Strauss: between the “raw,” or culturally unrefined, and the “cooked,” or sifted and sophisticated.8 Populists often savor the flamboyant performance of the raw. Political scientist Pierre Ostiguy and colleagues explain how populism tends to revive and parade a culturally “unpresentable other.”9 There may be overlap between this aesthetic and certain class aspects or groups, but it is in no way neat, and other factors like region, education, race, and ethnicity will weigh just as heavily. “Flaunting the low” involves the public enactment of some kind of ‘commonness’ that is broadly eschewed. These days, it embraces political incorrectness and takes pride in getting ‘canceled.’ We’re shunned for saying what everyone’s thinking? Whatever happened to free speech?! The high, of course, is a foil to the low, an elite style seen as pretentious, inauthentic, image-​conscious, self-​righteous, and scolding. Cas Mudde borrows this colorful quote to capture the current populist image of the US high: “latte-​drinking, sushi-​eating, Volvo-​driving, New York Times-r​ eading, Hollywood-​loving” liberal elites.10 I admit that I giggled at this description because, well, guilty as charged, and because I know what it’s like to resent the smugness of people like me. Sometimes I look in the mirror, or at my peers on the left, and think get over yourselves already. The low is strong with me. Trump rallies were famous for the high-​slamming chants that lit up the crowd. “Lock her up!” “Wuhan flu!” One of his favorite, though less circulated, acts was to imitate ‘being presidential.’ He loved to mock this display of steady composure as fake, outdated, and boring. Crowds went wild when he’d do the presidential decorum bit, then dismiss it as nothing but elite airs. You know I could carry it off, but it’s pathetic; let’s get real with each other. Such presidential mimicry illustrates the overlap among clues. Flaunting the low can be a method of direct and personalistic leadership, for instance. 68

Crash Course

It also slides easily toward transgressing democratic norms. When relentlessly ridiculed as stale or staid, established political protocols become part of the high. As with Trump, breaching normal politics—​even catalyzing an insurrection—​can then be normalized as one more instance of flaunting the low. This is one reason some observers worry about the ‘undemocratic’ tendencies of populism. Just remember, populists point out that the elite have undemocratic appetites too (if you missed that, see the first clue again). As I will show, they both have a point. But there is one more major clue that you’re in populist company—​more specifically, that you’re hanging with The People who lean to the right …

Clue 5: You notice an undeserving third party—​ an Other with a capital O—​entering the antagonistic relationship While populism mainly features the protagonist People versus the enemy elite, sometimes there is a third group: unworthy and/​or illicit invaders or cheaters with whom the establishment is in unholy alliance. Hereafter, I abridge this third party as the Other, or Others. The elite are charged with favoring or prioritizing Them (with a capital T), with advocating the Other’s interests over The People’s, even ‘giving away the farm’ to Them. This is Othering as I described it in Chapter 3: creating an ‘outside’ that defines the ‘inside’—​in this case, The People—​and anchors their worthiness.11 Think here of populist opposition to government immigration policies and welfare programs thought to benefit certain racial, ethnic, and religious groups, ‘foreigners,’ and other populations cast as indolent, menacing, or otherwise unfit. As that suggests, racialization propels populist Othering and takes local twists and turns. However configured, the nefarious Other introduces a three-​dimensional antagonism. Now there’s a primary foe and a supporting foil (the Others), and The People can endlessly play on their collusion for proof of grievance. Populism in 3D can vary in quality and intensity, but it follows a predictable formula: The People are entitled; the Other is undeserving; and the establishment is robbing the former to boost the latter. Such claims—​the elite coddle the Other!—​now hail from the ideological right due to the cultural influence of civil rights, feminism, sexual justice, and other left movements since the late 1960s and 1970s.12 It is worth pausing here to mark a turnabout that is crucial to this book. For today’s right populisms, these social movements of the 1960s and 1970s morphed into what is now the left cultural establishment. Populisms on the right thus tend to cast themselves as the new counterculture, opposing elite demands for gender, sexual, and racial change. To do so, they appropriate 69

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the countercultural tools of these earlier movements. COVID-​19 lockdown protests exemplify this sensibility, as described in Chapter 6 (My body, my choice). Remember this for later. The threatening presence of Others, or 3D populism, has become a useful way to distinguish antagonisms from the left and right. In the past, left-​ leaning antagonisms also blamed Others. Today, however, they tend toward a vertical focus (no 3D), joining the bottom and middle—​together—​against the top. For example, the US Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 declared themselves “the 99%” banding together to challenge the wealthiest “1%.” Now compare that with the racial overtones of the right-​wing Tea Party’s push for smaller government and lower taxes around the same time. *** There you have it—​a crash course in conventional populism for those who could use an introduction or refresher. The bottom line is that, when one or more of these five vital signs are present, it’s a strong clue that populism may be afoot. Thinking along a continuum, we can say that the more markers in play, and the greater their intensity, the more likely we are dealing with populist politics. Remember, though, that populism is notoriously elastic and remarkably variable. Going forward, our task will be to hold these together: the healthy uncertainty for which a pliable phenomenon calls and the confidence gained from the five clues. This chapter is helpful training in that respect. Finally, we are ready to consider all the commotion over contemporary populism.

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8

New Populism Another 21st-​century pandemic A new wave of populism has been simmering in many spots since the 1990s. Only in the last decade or so did it circulate widely and escalate sharply. It is this strain, and especially the recent boom, that concerns this book. For easy reference, we can call this surge “New Populism,” with the caveat that ‘it’ is always plural. Technically, we should say New Populisms, since we are grappling with a thing that is multiple and multiplying. Like its predecessor, New Populism shows up in regional and ideological variety. Unlike its predecessor, it evolves and mushrooms rapidly. The catch is that we need the stability of a noun to speak of ‘it,’ when we are really talking about loosely linked activity, not a clearly bounded entity. Ironically, any hope of grasping this slick phenomenon begins by accepting that we can never do so. New Populism is not only plural; it’s a shape-​shifter too. So there are exceptions to every claim I’m about to make. Admitting this, and proceeding with humility, we move closer to a fair depiction. Remember, plasticity is the charm and utility of populism—​the start of understanding it, not a conceptual obstacle to overcome. Our task is to hold on to the diverse and changing nature of New Populisms even as we reference ‘it.’ I try my hand at this relaxed grip in this chapter, which answers a big question. How does New Populism exhibit the vital signs of populism and, also, bring something new to the table? *** The first half of the question is relatively easy, because many forms of New Populism emit all five clues introduced in Chapter 7. In what follows, I briefly illustrate this through a US lens, focusing on the right-​facing Trump brand that officially rose to power in 2016 and continues to exert profound influence.1 71

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As I illustrate the five features, you may find it helpful to walk through them in terms of the setting(s) most familiar to you. In fact, doing so is crucial, for in the populisms near you, the clues will likely manifest differently and apply more and less. Context-​sensitive reading like this is essential to our quest for a loose grip on a variable thing. Here goes. And for anyone familiar with US news, it practically goes without saying. The People versus the establishment/​elite (clue 1) is the political language of Trumpism, glaringly evident as well in its Tea Party ancestry, and in the glut of conservative talk radio and cable news shows that continue to churn out this binary frame by the hour. The noble yet victimized assemblage is the ‘average hard-​working Joe,’ a middle-​American citizen just trying to get by and live life freely. ‘Middle America’ is an idealized heartland made by and for ‘real’ Americans. Its turf seems to encompass red (right-​leaning) states as well as suburban, small-​town, and rural imaginaries. The reprehensible establishment elite is enormous and omnipresent, a vast behemoth of blue (leftist) evil. It starts with the centrist left governments epitomized by Obama and the Clintons, their fancy bleeding-​heart supporters, and the ‘deep state’ (that is, embedded secret actors) they left behind. It now comprises all the scientists and other experts, scholars and universities, public servants and professionals, and mainstream (‘lamestream’) media networks and talking heads who want to restrict your behavior, control your body, police your speech, indoctrinate your mind, and tell you how to live properly. Also included are large swaths of people who live on the coasts or in major cities. Usually these go unspecified, but New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC (‘the swamp’) are favorite punching bags. Without doubt, antagonism is the defining relationship (clue 2). Oppositional outrage blazes at one predatory enemy after another, all determined to destroy the ‘American way of life’—​from globalization to ‘gay wedding’ cakes, from ‘caravans’ of immigrants invading from the south to gender-​neutral bathrooms and toys, from gun control to critical race theory (more on the latter in Chapter 19). Stand your ground. Conflict resolution and compromise are mocked as feeble tools of ‘old-​school’ Republicans. Even ‘courtesies’ like due process and limited use of force draw ridicule as weak, outdated habits of restraint. That’s two markers down. Next up is organizing through direct, person-centered leadership (clue 3). I barely have to lift a finger on this one. How about those constant Trump rallies, or hate-​filled lovefests? How about leadership by tweet? The assertion of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts.’ The free press dubbed The People’s enemy. Abandoning any substantive party platform in favor of a loyalty litmus test. The term Trumpism itself, whereby the line between leader and follower is blurred to an extent that the party becomes synonymous 72

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with his name. The list goes on, but that’s enough to illustrate how the intermediaries are summarily disposed of. Check, check, and check. We already touched on examples of the marker most obvious in the US case: flaunting the low (clue 4). The constant airing of provocative, ‘politically incorrect’ sentiments, especially related to race and gender, is a Trump trademark. From Mexican “rapists” and the Muslim ban to “grab ‘em by the pussy” to “good people on both sides” to “Wuhan flu,” the gloves flew off and the flow of racist, sexist, nationalist, ableist, transphobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, and otherwise inexcusable and violent commentary (and policy) never ceased. Disdain for science, expertise, and process, disgust for the refined and overcooked, adoration for visceral manly strength, regressive speech and vocabulary patterns, and a general bearing of blustering pomposity—​these and more “raw” habits tickled fellow travelers who no longer had to hide in shame and emerged from the shadows in droves. And how can we forget, as further proof, the endless scorn from the left for all of these things, plus Trump’s hair, ill-​fitting suits, long ties, tiny hands, brittle ‘tough guy’ masculinity, and brassy (read: not classy) displays of wealth. Relishing the low can also be captured, and fueled, by the high’s retort, putting a new spin on Michelle Obama’s famous phrase, “When they go low, we go high.” More on this in Chapter 9. At last we arrive at the final marker, typical of populisms from the right: the undeserving third party (clue 5). Here too we can emphatically tick “yes.” Look no further than the inventory of enemies already accumulating. In her 2016 book Strangers in Their Own Land, prominent sociologist Arlie Hochschild memorably abbreviates the list: Black people, women, immigrants, refugees, and the oil-​soaked brown pelican (because even animal welfare comes before The People!). The labyrinth of Others in the US is immense, and we will certainly return to it later. But a third-​party presence is incontestable. In US populism today, the Others loom large and flash with blinding intensity. Now, how do populisms near you compare with my checklist? *** The second half of the question—​what’s new about New Populism?—​is more complicated. Overall, I would say that it exhibits the classic markers of populism, but in bringing them to the contemporary media environment, it also escalates them to an extent that foregrounds feeling over ideology and, thereby, substantially alters (some say disfigures) democratic practices. It also enjoys a much wider reach than earlier populisms, proportions fairly characterized as pandemic. It has risen to power around the globe, usually running on a platform of grievance that doubles as its mode of governance. Indeed, accelerating this feeling appears to be its primary agenda. 73

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That’s a dense overview, so let’s break it down into successive features that put the novelty in New Populism. You will notice that these features stress what it does and how it feels more than what it is or says. Remember, that’s my focus: what is happening in the name of populism, or where it is going. I thus define New Populism by its apparent path. Though I use ‘it’ as a stabilizing reference, I am actually tracing a trajectory. Again, New Populisms. To make this linguistic balancing act work—​essentially, juggling a noun that is a verb occurring before us—​we will let the question of its course be our guide. What sort of world is New Populism arising from and helping to realize? One answer we can give with confidence is that, in tandem with enabling partners, it is changing how democracy operates around the world. Here’s how, step by step …

New Populism rides on the coattails of democratization One of those enabling partners is democratization, by which I mean the dissemination of democratic ideals and systems worldwide in the latter half of the 20th century, specifically after World War II. It’s useful to distinguish between populist movements occurring pre-​and post-​democratization, because those occurring after this shift face a friendlier environment. The democratic lexicon on which they depend is broadly acclaimed, if not institutionalized, as a consensual good. Previous populisms also arose within democracies, including the US People’s Party that invented the moniker. Many did not, however, which muddled the lines among populism, demagoguery, authoritarianism, and fascism. In other words, earlier populisms borrowed democratic vocabulary and adapted it to diverse political contexts and ends. Some did so to bring about revolutions toward democratic systems, thereby assisting the process of democratization, and some, not so much. New Populism presumes democracy, leans heavily on its global legitimacy, and invokes its notion of popular sovereignty to authorize The People. As government famously of, by, and for the people, democracy provides fertile ground for populism, a uniquely nourishing host. Until it became the global aspirational mode of government, populism could not have readily circulated. New Populism thrives on democracy and bites back in its name, as we will see next.

It ramps up antagonism through a perpetual hunt for enemies of The People Most populisms in democratic contexts assert that democracy has strayed, and that they possess the course correction. Echoing them, New Populism 74

New Populism

claims to return rule to ordinary people, the authentic majority displaced by a crooked elite who despise regular folk. As if taking a page from this playbook, the 2016 Trump campaign tagged their opponent “Crooked Hillary” and jumped on her now-​infamous remark that many of his supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” because they embrace hateful ideologies. As his senior communications advisor exclaimed, she “ripped off her mask and revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans.”2 There you have it, a classic populist barb. Fast-​forward to the 2020 US presidential campaign, however, and witness how New Populism perpetually escalated this prototypical antagonism, at the speed of modern consumer culture. The opposition party (Democrats), ousted from executive and legislative power four years prior, somehow remains the establishment elite? Ah, this is because they have gone underground, we are told, where they exert unlawful influence through a ‘deep state.’ Even more sinister than suspected! If you thought their arrogance and corruption were bad, wait until you see how they’re coming for you now, intent to crush the very liberties at democracy’s core. They’re not simply letting their undemocratic slip show; they are anti-​democratic, out to destroy democracy. No longer are they a legitimate adversary, but a dangerous enemy of The People. Enemy of The People: A phrase thrown around quite casually by Trump himself. The opposition party =​enemy number one. The free press =​not only ‘fake news’ but now “enemy of the people,” and that’s a repeated quote.3 Anyone who didn’t make way for his lies risked getting slapped with the label. This included the state of Georgia’s top election official, a fellow Republican whose crime against democracy was not helping Trump overturn a legitimate election.4 You get the idea. In New Populism, The People are the perpetual victim, forever besieged by enemies. These foes are not the other side, the rival team, but enemies to democracy itself, who want nothing more than to steal your freedoms and take what is rightfully yours. They are thieves that hide underground or leap from the woodwork suddenly, so you best stay watchful, forever on guard. Simply put, in New Populism, antagonism is dialed ‘up to 11’ (for any This is Spinal Tap fans) and counting. The baseline democratic tolerance for difference disappears, replaced by demonization. Demons come from everywhere, wherever there is a whiff of resistance. Opposition of any kind becomes an evil, shape-​shifting nemesis beyond redemption. It must be rooted out constantly, pluralism be damned. When The People (again, notice: not the party) are continually wronged, anything they do in response, including storming the Capitol, reads defense, not offense. The People have been robbed of something to which they are entitled, and they are simply avenging the theft. The language of property has come into play. 75

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It claims to restore democracy by re-​possessing it Political theorist Nadia Urbinati explains that New Populism is distinguished by a specific distortion of democracy: a possessive twist that turns a partial rendition of The People into its sole rightful proprietors.5 What she means by distortion is that New Populism leans on democracy to cast We The People as sovereign, but then excises some people from The People, declaring ownership of the category. This is a big step beyond the typical majoritarian claim that the popular will is anti-​establishment, so elites must bend to it. It expunges anyone sympathetic to the establishment from the viable whole. Elites and their co-​conspirators are no minority; they are turncoats. They stole our rights, so The People must deny theirs. Government of, by, and for The People serves only the right people. The rest deserve to be ruled over and out. What traitorous act did the elite establishment commit to deserve this fate? Hint: It’s way worse than snobby contempt. They pilfered the country and bestowed the spoils to Others. That’s right, most New Populisms entail some version of the undeserving third party. Catering to Them is how democracy really went astray. For democratic survival, the country must therefore be given ‘back’ to the true but silenced and abandoned majority. It is, after all, their birthright. The idealized country or noble heartland becomes, in New Populism, the eternally wronged people whose entitlement continues to be violated. All those who would aid and abet or stand by and profit from this theft are the wrong people, not a valid part of the country at all. “Take our country back.” “Make America Great Again.” Now here comes the kicker. As New Populist antagonism continually intensifies, any outcome other than victory delivers proof that democracy is broken. If The Right People aren’t in power, democracy has failed. Pluralism goes by the wayside, and the “empty seat” of democratic power is filled by the coronation of only one true majority—​all in the name of preserving democracy.6 Grounds for “The Big Lie” are laid by this possessive twist.7 Elections that don’t yield populist power must have been ‘rigged,’ illegitimate in some way. The Right People are the only valid judge of ‘free and fair.’ This is where it becomes painfully clear that New Populism both works within and transforms representative democracy. “Stop the steal.”

It seeks and wins electoral victory New Populism turns to electoral politics as the primary theater for its renewal of imperiled democracy. Elections are the proving ground for The 76

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People’s rightful rule of the country for their own good.8 They are occasions to validate and celebrate The Right People’s right to government of, by, and for themselves. Losses are evidence that the heist continues, hence so must the war. New Populism thus runs on the rhythms of representational democracy, and this too is new. Populist movements did not make substantial inroads into democratic governments until recently. They began parties (or branches thereof) and ran candidates, but the parties did not persist and the candidates rarely won.9 This is not to say that populism had little impact on democracies, but that its force came by other means—​mainly, making radical demands and digging in. The effect was to energize festering resentments until the established order was so undermined, it could no longer sweep such issues under the rug. In this way, earlier democratic populisms found long-​ term victory even when they lost elections, nudging party politics in new directions and, sometimes, fundamentally re-​aligning them. In the last decade or so, the main means of populist influence became democratic electoral victory. Candidates are regularly elected at all levels, even rising to executive office and dominating national governments. Populism now occupies seats of power, roaming the halls of democratic administration around much of the world. In short, New Populism has jumped the divide from backlash movement to project of government.

It governs by anti-​government A pithy way to put this is populism meets neoliberalism. Upon election, New Populism does not settle in to govern for all the people. Rather than dial back the antagonism, it continues to dial it up. Pluralist compromise is not in its vocabulary, because you don’t make bargains with the devil. In office, it thus continues on a path to close the democratic seat of power to one true majority, The Real People. As a regular practice, it refuses the legitimacy of opponents, shuns concessions, and governs by polarization. Governing practice like this has been seen before, of course. What is novel here is that New Populism must take this approach as a matter of identity. Lest they become the new establishment, The People are victimized even in office, continuously seeking and nursing wounds inflicted by elite or Other enemies who must be ritually exposed and berated. If the grievance valve were shut off, the boiling anti-​establishment stew would lose its heat source. The coals of anger must stay burning. New Populism therefore takes on the daunting imperative of resisting what it has become: the government. In power, New Populism remains a backlash project, defined by defensive response to threats and injuries. A proactive or constructive agenda is superfluous. Content is mostly a means to an end, and the goal is to stay wounded. Or, defense is offense for New Populism. 77

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A glimpse of what I will call populist “downrising” emerges here, in the quest to carry off anti-​government government. To keep undermining the so-​called elite establishment from within power. Quite the feat, really.

It turns democratic representation into seamless identification with a besieged leader One of the ways New Populism accomplishes this feat is through the perpetually embattled leader, whose constant suffering of unsolicited and unjust attack resembles The People’s. Like them, he is always a victim who deserves better. Readily this moves beyond analogy, such that his wounds are The People’s wounds. He takes them for the team even when critique or resistance is directed at him personally. These, he assures The People, are your wounds, but I will gladly endure them like a martyr, for you. The line between the leader and The People grows thin, and the boundary can collapse altogether. He does not so much represent them as re-​present them, The People incarnate. Recall the personalistic approach of most populist leadership (clue 3 from Chapter 7). A magnetic figure claims direct access to The People, less mediated by institutions like party or media, toward which he cultivates distrust. Today’s democratic campaign politics take this populist hallmark to a whole new level, in step with celebrity culture. The New Populist leaders who galvanize The People are less like designated ambassadors, or even natural translators, and more like The People’s physical, performative embodiment. A messiah superstar of sorts who can feel their pain through an intuitive knowledge beyond reason (he ‘gets it’), and who bears it to lighten the load on them. To stoke this energetic connection, campaigning becomes a permanent rather than seasonal activity, an ongoing spectator sport. Frequent collective performance of the growing scroll of shared grievances—​replaying the classic hits and trying out new material—​ensures that his persona stays synonymous with The Right People, who are the wronged people. We The People becomes Me The People, which also happens to be the clever title of Urbinati’s book. The door swings open to demagoguery, but it was unlocked with infrastructural keys.

It thrives on audience democracy, or communicative capitalism Especially after that last feature, you may be wondering how mass usage of the internet factors in to New Populism. Very prominently. It is not a stretch to say that changes in communication and information technology form the major condition of possibility for the sharp escalation of New Populism in the past decade. 78

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New modes of technological interaction—​especially those following so-​ called Web 2.0, like user-​generated content and the rise of social media—​ have drastically altered not only campaign operations, but also how news gets produced and consumed, (dis-​)information shared, and social networks created. These radical changes hastened a global shift toward what many political theorists call “audience democracy,” a mode of political relations in which parties and party loyalty recede as the mainline of political organizing.10 Urbinati explains how, in audience democracy, citizens become one jumbled spectator public whose varying opinions act as a functional tribunal. The audience clusters into like-​minded communities, on a whim and far-​ flung as they please. Vertical political organization (party hierarchy) flattens. Horizontal organizing (across communities) shifts the focus from vetting to sharing ideas and information. Political communication theorist Jodi Dean captures similar developments somewhat differently, as “communicative capitalism,” in order to call attention to how market ideology has come to dominate political participation.11 Replicating and circulating—​in a word, communicability—​is now a kind of proof unto itself (shared or ‘liked’ how many times, ratings by how many people). Meanwhile, communication—​substantive engagement like dialogue or debate—​is more about performance of form than actual depth (let’s hear from both sides, or teach the controversy). Those exchanges that do manage to find depth are ultimately measured by communicability too (whether they attract attention, ‘go viral’). Building value by transmission is the primary concern, the value of ideas secondary. In this media-​and information-​saturated atmosphere, individuals grow accustomed to more than their own opinion. Everyone is an expert, which is to say, they have their own facts too. Regular citizens access a dizzying excess of competing (un)truths and sources with the click of a finger. Commonly held evidence gives way to fragmented optics and impressions. Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway famously called these “alternative facts.”12 Succinctly, brand begins to substitute for character; surface outstrips substance. How things feel to a general audience picks up more weight and becomes the main measure of how things are. And there is plenty to feel, because sensation spreads far and fast. Politics are less a battle for ideological persuasion, and more for physical resonance. Or as Stephen Colbert coined it, “truthiness.”13 The competition is over bodily attention and alignment. Audience democracy (or communicative capitalism, whatever concept best helps you access the ‘package’ of developments we’re talking about) is especially conducive to personalizing politics. Even candidates for executive office can woo the public directly, circumventing—​and discrediting—​ journalistic mediation. Trump’s long rant against ‘fake news’ and romance with Twitter were a case in point. When the platform broke up with him 79

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after the Capitol riot, his capacity for intimacy with The People—​at least on such a public scale—​was diminished. Which flags another key point about audience democracy: It generates pressure (from all sides, at the moment) for Big Tech to come off the sidelines and step up to its role, for example, in the regulation and flow of content as well as security vulnerabilities. As of yet, you don’t hear equally passionate calls regarding accountability for market-​izing politics, or for the ways technologies trigger bodily receptors in order to intensify and manipulate feeling, often by design. One thing seems clear, however: Tech’s time as a neutral (non-​)agent is over. No longer can it play innocent host to the culture wars. Now a target of those wars it helped to spread around the world, Tech has been exposed as a central player. What position it plays, and how it addresses New Populism going forward, remains an arc to watch. In sum, today’s media and communication milieu not only opens the door to demagoguery; it also opens new channels to manipulation and interference and enables the widespread circulation and amplification of feeling. Worldwide web indeed. The conditions for virality are ripe …

It moves around the world like a through contagion … and realized. Since New Populism hitches a ride on democracy, it comes as no surprise that democratization enhanced its availability. Only since the turn of the 21st century, however—​and especially in the decade following the Great Recession—​did it truly catch fire around the world, potential coming to fruition. At no other time has populism been so pervasive, and it continues to grow. Its nearly synchronous rise in place after place is stunning in part because the variants are fiercely local in character, even as they also bear notable resemblance to one another.14 Like a viral pandemic, then, New Populism is on the move, showing both identifiable markers and many mutations. Why now? That’s a complicated question, and one that will occupy Part III. For now, we can say that the sociotechnical changes abridged above as audience democracy supply the beginning of an answer. Without them, the spread could not have occurred so widely. Until recently, that is, there was no easy means of global transmission. Accordingly, many credit the internet as chief enabler. How is not a complete answer to why, however (a statement we’ll revisit). There can be a way without a will. The network itself does not explain a network society, hyper-​connectivity, meme warfare, the capacity of things to ‘go viral’ and so on. Return to the opening line of the paragraph above, “Like a viral pandemic …” In his 2012 book Virality, critical sociologist Tony Sampson cautions against phrasing like this.15 Analogies to medical contagion—​as in memetics, where information spreads akin to a virus—​are not helpful, he says. Nor 80

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are general claims of ‘too much’ connectivity. They depict technologies as social media—​or means of messaging (sharing and processing information, making meaning, and so forth)—​and then describe how they function through biological metaphors. Sampson urges us to drop the metaphor and, I would add, the separation of social and biological it maintains. Rather than ask how the social works like the biological, we need to consider the biological implications of interacting with allegedly ‘social’ media. How are bodies physically reconstituted by repetitive contact with network capitalism? It’s not the operations of the network alone that explain this. It’s the emerging network-​body relation that makes stuff networkable. The question for Sampson is, what ‘stuff’ are we talking about? What exactly spreads on a network? Is it content, mostly? We’ll return to the long answer later, but the short one is: No, it’s not so much messaging as feeling, or feeling through content. Through repetitive, point-​to-​point social encounters, our bodies are increasingly vulnerable to sensory suggestibility, even as they cling to the sensation of self-​governance activated by the Western fantasy of the self-​contained individual (discussed in Part I). Continually formed through this circuitry of feeling and response, ‘I’ am primed to desire, and desire to believe, in predictable ways, including the desire to believe these are my own thoughts. Boiled down, what we called audience democracy is the next phase of a “radical, imitative relationality,” a sociality marked by suggestibility.16 Following Sampson, I contend that New Populism is a pandemic of feeling, infectious in a more literal sense than viral analogies allow. Not a social infection that moves like a physical contagion, it actually moves through sociophysical contagion. Such movement, he suggests, is the next horizon of understanding.

It prioritizes feeling over ideology Earlier, we began to consider how audience democracy amplifies the primacy of feeling and personalizes politics. Now we are equipped to say more. People form direct, intimate relations with sociotechnical networks—​for example, actively participating and passively glancing multiple times daily, often compulsively, from personal devices carried or worn by the body. Feeling arrives and accumulates constantly at a deeply personal level, reversing the old feminist adage, “The personal is political.” Today, many say, the political is also personal. More than that, it is physical. Sampson uses the term “prepersonal,” by which he means that political feeling strikes the body ahead of, or beyond the grasp of, a conscious self, and helps to constitute identity.17 It burrows into our bodies at the edge of awareness or past it altogether, affecting how and who we become. Much like my smile and Daniel’s bravado. 81

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Populism is no stranger to passion. It has always been about feeling to some extent, arguably more so than other democratic forms, given its personalistic leadership and ventilation of bottled-​up antipathy. Nonetheless, older populisms typically espoused some coherent ideology and advanced specific ideas and demands. The feeling dimension may have been enhanced, in other words, but still operated in the service of a relatively clear agenda. For New Populism, feeling is the primary agenda. As already noted, the point is to stay wounded—​to keep people primed, in a state of agitation or hyper-​arousal, itching for another outlet or target at which to vent. Ideology and policy remain present but take a back seat. Content awaits assignment, as it were—​often retrospective, a smokescreen or an afterthought but, in any case, flexible with the movement of feeling. New Populism “gives organized passions a chance to rule for their own good.”18 Take a second look at that quote, lest we fly by too quickly. The point is that contemporary populism provides an organized outlet for feeling to call the shots for its own sake, that is, in the service of its continuance. So what passions, exactly, does New Populism organize, vent, and serve?

It spreads the feeling of aggrieved entitlement We first met aggrieved entitlement in the case of Daniel’s mask meltdown (in Chapter 4). There, I mentioned that Michael Kimmel uses the term to capture an anger felt by many white American men, which he attributes to the erosion of their automatic privilege over time.19 Around much of the world, the feeling profile of New Populism is precisely this: victimization and entitlement, hand in hand. Not just grievance politics, but a standing charge of robbery—​personal or home invasion. Boundaries trespassed, borders crossed, property stolen, privacy violated, rights denied, promises broken, birthright betrayed. Anger at the penetration of presumed impenetrability. Resentment in search of another breach to fortify its walls. This standing charge of theft brings further clarity to the possessive twist discussed earlier, whereby The Right People restore democracy by reclaiming its rightful ownership. The White Possessive, a 2015 book by Australian Indigenous studies professor Aileen Moreton-​Robinson, comes to mind for her powerful analysis of ‘the nation’ seized as white property.20 Cries to ‘take our country back’ take on racial as well as colonial specificity. Arlie Hochschild gestures toward this aspect of aggrieved entitlement in her best-​selling book Strangers. She argues for the importance of getting to the “deep story” of contemporary politics, a narrative that feels true and, therefore, motivates political commitments more intense than ideology. For many New Populist supporters, that deep story begins with standing in line patiently. Following the rules and waiting our turn. Doing all the right things, when cheaters begin to cut right in front of us. They aren’t just skipping ahead; they’re 82

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ushered to the front of the queue by the establishment. That’s right, the elites who set the rules now set those rules aside for the cheaters, and we are supposed to stand by and accept it?! Who are these undeserving Others? As previewed earlier, the ‘cheaters’ include people of color, Blacks, immigrants and refugees, women—​hell, even animals and the environment come before us. Adding insult to injury, we’re not allowed to voice or even FEEL this injustice! Politically incorrect, they say. Let’s get this straight: The elite betray us, then say we’re rude and wrong? Enough is enough. We will take this no more! Cultural unacceptability—​the perceived injustice of becoming an “unpresentable other”—​is integral to aggrieved entitlement.21 It’s a rallying cry, as when Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark became a popular t-​shirt that proclaimed, “Adorable Deplorables.” Aggrieved entitlement longs for, and continually re-​enacts, a time when what is now dubbed politically incorrect was perfectly respectable, even cause for pride. Populism scholars call such nostalgia “retrotopian.”22 New Populism calls it Make America Great Again, or a similar slogan near you. Often missed in descriptions of this angry yearning is the fun to be had in performing it. Embodying the “unpresentable other” feels like delicious resistance (“Wuhan flu!”). Flaunting the low meets “celebratory desecration of the ‘high’ ”23 (“Lock her up!”). Rallies are like rock concerts: How liberating to revel together in poor taste! These rhythmic transgressions of the proper are more than cathartic; they practically shimmer with “collective effervescence.”24 They operate, that is, around a “transgressive rage” not fully captured as anger. There’s joy, or enjoyment, there too—​a “combative pleasure principle” whereby staging the anger is gratifying, entertaining, and recreational.25 It’s also post-​able, share-​able, ‘like’-​able, spread-​able—​in a word, networkable. Across an endless stream of content, New Populism replays this sensory signature, and—​contradicting Kimmel—​denies that it is about masculinity. This is The People’s rage: Men and women just going about their business and trying to get their due yet coming under constant attack on their rightful place and for their justifiable feelings about that. What can a victim do but defend themselves, fight back by being themselves with intensifying vigor, lest the enemy encroach further. With each threat, The People’s anger flares more righteous. Like a pilot light awaiting a switch, it stays lit, ready to flash and fade over and over. The switch could be most anything, because the sensation is easily replicable, adaptable, and, thus, portable. Networkable. Though she studies a specific region in the southern US, Hochschild observes larger, global reverberations of this deeply felt story. On this note, she joins a growing chorus of recent commentators who point out that the global surge of New Populism leads with feeling, not ideology.26 Sensation more than content. Sensation before content, which follows feeling and works in its service. And the feeling it serves is aggrieved entitlement. 83

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*** Unlike the previous, this chapter is no crash course. But we have come a long way to clarify how New Populism both bears the classic marks of populism and introduces novel features. New Populism is not a case of new versus old, a dramatic break or parting of ways. I hope my emphasis on both continuity and novelty, observance and departure, came through. What is new about New Populism is best captured by what it is doing, which is bringing older tendencies into new contexts. In the process, it is altering the practice of democracy, bending it to the will of a possessive resentment. What sort of world is New Populism arising from, and helping to realize? So far, we have said that it: 1. rides on the coattails of democratization; 2. amplifies antagonism with a perpetual hunt for enemies of The People; 3. corrects democracy by taking possession—​make that repossession—​of it; 4. seeks and wins electoral victory; 5. governs by anti-​government; 6. turns democratic representation into seamless identification with a besieged leader; 7. thrives on audience democracy; 8. moves through global contagion; 9. prioritizes feeling over ideology; 10. spreads the feeling of aggrieved entitlement. Back to that tricky ‘it.’ Have we managed to grasp New Populism loosely enough that its slippery nature endures (think: New Populisms)? I hope so, because this relaxed grip remains crucial throughout the book. The examples offered from my part of the world are neither definitive nor adequate. To honor the shape-​shifting nature of New Populism, they must be tested and qualified against your surroundings and fluencies. Absent that comparison, the plasticity might fade, when it is precisely what makes aggrieved entitlement sticky in so many locales. Some say that New Populism is ‘exported’ and ‘imported’ from regions with outsized cultural influence. Others, that it circulates the globe through a kind of mutual imitation. I don’t care to stake claims of origin, when we know this much for sure: Aggrieved entitlement catches on—​is only catching—​because it adapts to concrete scenes and histories.

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Anger, Downrising An alternative to anti-​populism January 6, 2021. Now about that US Capitol riot. Did you see footage after the fact? Or perhaps you watched the live feed, if you were in a conducive time and media zone? At the very least, I bet you’ve seen plenty of images. Rioters smashing the window, clamoring to crawl through. Crashing through barricades and crawling up walls. Rushing an overwhelmed police force with weapons homespun and hi-​tech. Flagpoles, chemical sprays, zip ties, crowbars, Tasers, fire extinguishers, flagpoles, baseball bats, tomahawk axes, and more. Ambling inside while a few friendly officers stood by. Building a gallows and shouting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Desecrating the chambers. Scaling statues and standing on tables, rifling through papers and posing for photo-​ops. Feet casually splayed on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. A beaming man in a ski cap walks away with federal furniture. Costumes, ranging from QAnon shaman to soldier. And the flags: Trump flags (including a Rambo version), Gadsden flags, Confederate flags, Betsy Ross flags, Minutemen flags, Marine Corps flags, Jesus flags, an eclectic assortment of far-​r ight flags, and that is not the half of it.1 A bewildering array of signs. Among them, urine and smeared feces left behind. Do you remember what you thought of the rioters as you took this in? Something you may have muttered to a companion or—​like me—​shouted right at the TV? How did you feel? I remember shaking, intermittently tearing up, staring at the screen transfixed, and numbly moving through the house, unable to sit still. That afternoon, I was supposed to meet up with a religious right family member, but I knew who she voted for and couldn’t stomach it. She hadn’t yet heard of the riot when I called to cancel, and we never spoke of it since. What I felt, mostly, was a soupy mix of shame and disgust. Shame, I presume, because I know these people, at least some of them. They are my people, and sometimes the guilt of association and past lives floods me. Shame, amplified by the knowledge that these mostly white folks would be 85

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dead, or in grave danger, if they were Black Lives Matter protestors behaving half that badly. This was “flaunting the low” at a whole new depth. This was the base of the base, and painful to behold. Surely they’d hit rock bottom? As for my disgust, well, that speaks for itself, doesn’t it? This chapter proceeds as if it doesn’t. *** Whereas Chapter 8 took a close look at New Populism, this one reverses the gaze back on those of us observing. Who is doing the examining, and what do ‘we’ perceive? For some years now, the eyes of non-​populists have adjusted to see New Populist supporters in a certain way. I say eyes intentionally, because the seeing among us cannot help but look at them. Their images are plastered everywhere. In the US, for example, we have been awash in media images of Trump supporters since his nomination. Another sea of bodies clad in red everything, sprinkled with a few other hues (pink =​“Women for Trump”). Endless close-​ups of white ‘middle-​American’ men shouting, or is that chanting, drops of spittle flying from their open, rage-​filled mouths. Provocative slogans and symbols, weapons, t-​shirts, camo gear, and regalia of all kinds. While at a hair salon, I opened up one magazine proclaiming to explore the new face of populism and found a centerfold of pasty, plump, white, pre-​ teen boys from a small rural city, whose parents had driven them hundreds of miles to attend a rally. Decked out in Trump paraphernalia, they bore arms strapped to their shoulders and grinned with maniacal patriotism. Or that is what I was meant to see, shudder, and scoff at. Political porn for the elite? When I describe a disturbing populism rising from the right, as I did in Chapter 8—​when I feel repulsed by pictures of a seething mob banging on the Columbus, Ohio statehouse door with faces pressed against the glass2—​when I sputter disgust for the US Capitol rioters—​when I claim that all of this appears to be contorting democracy … am I not doing exactly what I said New Populism does: indicting another side as the wrong people, undemocratic or worse, an enemy to democracy? Aren’t I just another anti-​ populist? This is an important question that deserves real reflection. The main goal of this chapter is to begin engaging with New Populism critically, but without dumping on the base. Ordinary supporters are certainly accountable for their part, but we tend to overplay their role relative to many others. This takes us down the dead-​end of anti-​populism. I want to avoid this binary frame—​for or against—​with populism as much as I do with gender. Binaries like this just box us in, needlessly. To capture the dispersed agency of New Populist feeling—​that is, the many directions to and from which it flows simultaneously—​I propose that we 86

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address it as a populist “downrising.” Doing so would overturn the common assumption of populist uprising and, crucially, redirect attention to diverse forms of complicity—​from the top, bottom, middle, edges, right, center, and left all at once. It would help us specify the range of actors responsible for escalating aggrieved entitlement. It would help us realize how many of us have a role to play in what happens next. In that spirit, this chapter also considers how we participate in the dynamics of New Populism. The ‘we’ there is admittedly shaky. It refers to anyone who observes and evaluates populism from the outside, looking in. Most who would assume they fit this category, however, are not external to the phenomenon at all. In fact, judgment from a presumed outside is a form of participation, as I will show. But I realize that readers will vary widely in the degree to which this shoe fits, if at all. Spoiler alert. In this chapter, the so-​called establishment does not emerge an angel to a populist demon. Elites may vaunt the high while populists flaunt the low, but both have underbellies they’d rather not show. We can regard one through the other’s perspective to get a feel for the pretense of both, without false equivalency. Of necessity, I’ve made this a habit, and the habit has a way of making self-​ reflection (and self-​effacement) involuntary. My people by blood are New Populists. My people by choice are the so-​called elites, the establishment left, the scholars and university types, the Others. For better or worse, we are all the people. *** What is anti-​populism and, more to the point, what is wrong with it? If New Populism shows cause for concern, why not rail against it? Well before COVID-​19 struck, the ‘pandemic’ of New Populism stirred much anxiety. The scope and speed of its spread, with electoral victories on the rise, transformed a political form once belittled as regional and marginal into a hot topic. If New Populism was boiling over, so was angst about the spill. Most of the worry focused on the fallout for democracy. Consider the title of a recent book series, Populism and the Crisis of Democracy.3 Already you can hear the calamity narrative, echoed by a rash of commentary. This, like the magazine centerfold described earlier, is anti-​populism. In his 2020 book The People, No, Thomas Frank poses a good question: Why do we say so much about populism and virtually nothing about anti-​populism? In the US, at least, smug hostility has met every movement deemed populist, so why is there no history of anti-​populism and its excesses and failures? The asymmetry is far from innocent. Frank seeks to rectify it by composing such a history. He says that, predictably, populism is greeted with a “democracy scare,” a bout of panic in 87

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which the elite declare The People a threat to democracy, reciting a litany of sins. Among them, nostalgia, nationalism, anti-​globalism, authoritarianism, anti-​government, anti-​pluralism, and anti-​intellectualism. The charges can take many forms, from moral panic to scholarly neutrality. Some echo of these charges haunts Chapter 8, to be sure. Here’s a fairly subtle example from the recent Oxford Handbook of Populism: “[P]‌opulists who gain access to executive power positions are not inclined to deradicalize but instead try to push through the undemocratic reforms they promised. … Populism, it turns out, is not a minor or temporary threat that could easily be tamed by throwing the dog a bone.”4 This is not wrong; New Populist leaders do tend to step up the antagonism from office, as already discussed in Chapter 8. But … an undemocratic threat that can’t be tamed by throwing the dog a bone? This is what Frank is saying: A democracy scare is anti-​populism because it oozes disdain for the ‘low.’ Frank’s point is well-​taken and, I think, overblown. It is possible to raise questions about the health of democracy without hopping on an anti-​populist train. Urbinati, from whom we heard in Chapter 8, insists that the rise of xenophobic leaders is not, in fact, undemocratic at all. Democracy does not enter a downward spiral simply because it yields a majority distasteful to you. Explicitly rejecting any hint of panic, she nonetheless calls New Populism a “reasonable concern,” because it “disfigures” democracy in similar ways nearly everywhere it rises to power. Frank sidesteps such concern by differentiating New Populism from true populism, which—​for him—​follows the prototype of the US People’s Party. It leans left, features a producing class that is capitalism-​critical yet not quite socialist, and practices self-​education rather than flaunting the low. Many scholars of global populism caution against this very move—​pronouncing ‘real’ versus ‘fake’ populism based on correspondence with certain regional-​ ideological content—​for a reason. If particular places or persuasions have a corner on populism proper, then ‘it’ becomes too small to discern related waves elsewhere. Yet the concern today is just such a wave, a worldwide pattern more than any one case. Put simply, the “reasonable concern” is the whole pandemic-​of-​feeling part and what it may signal. This cannot be too swiftly reduced to elitist reactivity on replay. We can and must sort the meaningful differences between questions, concerns, calamitous inferences, and Armageddon forecasts. The closer you come to the latter—​and the more sanctimonious or less self-​reflective the analysis—​ the more likely you are exhaling anti-​populism and, thereby, oxygenating the fire you wish to extinguish. As with populism, acknowledging degrees of anti-​populism is useful. Admitting that New Populism gives me pause is a far cry from casting today’s populists as the wrong people. If I am honest, at least some of their resentment still flows through my veins. My concern, in fact, arises from 88

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intimacy with that resentment. There are things I know from feeling it at a deeply personal and physical level—​from watching it fly around family meals, energize living rooms, breed suspicion, activate political engagement, separate the men from the boys, and both from ‘the girls.’ I know I come at this from the inside. Might you also, and have you thought about how? Let’s not fan the flames further, any of us. Anti-​populism decries populism in an oblivious way that corroborates the need for it. This is what is wrong with anti-​populism: It ignores its own implication in the object of reproach, revving up the anger it critiques in the very act of critique. In this way, it is already inside the phenomenon, not judging from the outside, as it assumes. We can’t continue to shield one part of the people from the other, or to rescue democracy from either. Democracy includes all, though this is yet a dream. *** If a hit man is hired and he kills somebody, the hit man goes to jail. But not only does the hit man go to jail, but the person who hired them does. It was an attack carried out on Jan. 6 and a hit man sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that. US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, testifying to the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot5 Hundreds of people, and counting, have been arrested since the Capitol riot. They are, in Harry Dunn’s terms, all hit men. No arrests and next to zero accountability have yet been visited upon the agents who ‘hired’ them. The base is footing this bill. My position is similar to Dunn’s: The best way to avoid the pitfalls of anti-​populism is to address the full matrix of participation in New Populism. If we overlook the entire complex, and stay preoccupied with the shock troops, or hit men—​those who are caught up in the feeling and doing its dirty work—​we help the side investments to fly under the radar and pay off. The question is not whether something is pro-​or anti-​populist but, rather, how it contributes to the relations that stoke New Populism. The fact is that a range of agents—​from top to bottom, right to left, human to non-​human—​are energizing this pandemic of feeling in a range of ways. But we don’t yet have a way to recognize these diverse forms and degrees of complicity. Instead of a forced choice between pro-​or anti-​populism, I suggest we ask how New Populism is a downrising of passions. The counterintuitive term is intentional, meant to stimulate a new kind of thinking about agency and accountability, like this … Responsibility for aggrieved entitlement is dispersed in a way that no simple hierarchy (top-​down or bottom-​up) can capture, yet hierarchy (unevenly 89

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distributed power) is certainly involved. Actors with outsized power enable actors with midsized or compact influence. And the frenzied activity of the latter lets the former keep enabling, also shaping how they do so. Cause and effect are no longer possible to trace and, increasingly, beside the point. The point is the spiraling momentum. A tornado with advocates loud and silent on the right, anti-​populist ‘partners’ on the left, and complicit networks that confound and transcend the divide. Adjusting the lens from up to downrising brings the implication of elites, governments, media, commentators, influencers, donors, corporations, technologies—​people, organizations, and things of all persuasions—​into view. An entire field of stakeholders, not all of them human. Of course Trump and his ragtag team of associates lit the fuse on January 6, not just that day but in the preceding months of crying “rigged!” and years of cultivating distrust in ‘establishment’ democratic institutions and practices. Of course a league of wealthy and corporate right-​wing donors hired the hit men, not just those who funded efforts to “stop the steal” but also those who bankrolled the lockdown protests and a long string of ‘grassroots’ demonstrations before them. Of course Fox News is responsible for two plus decades of incensing fear and rage. Their latest elite-​feigning-​populist anchor Tucker Carlson is particularly blameworthy (but so are the others). CNN especially, but MSNBC too, are hardly off the hook, with their relentless pursuit of viral moral outrage. Of course Big Tech shirked its liability and looked the other way for profit. Or do I mean, deliberately coded algorithms to maximize viewing time with endless loops of content extreme, extremer, and extremist. Then there’s the people peddling conspiracy theories and monetizing misinformation, influencers daring to ask the question no one else will, minor celebrities and folks just making a living, looking to build their brand. A worried parent alerts her Facebook moms group to an elite pedophilia ring and, next, the dangers of critical race theory.6 Of course Brexit has ties to elite politics.7 Of course aggrieved entitlement drips from a million hands. We are barely scratching the surface. But when push comes to shove, we all throw up our guilty hands and say the basest of the base—​those supporters on the ground—​did it. *** There is no denying that the elite right is deeply implicated in New Populism, tickling its sensory signature whenever foot soldiers are wanted. When it comes to the distasteful jobs, however—​say, storming the Capitol—​the more privileged actors who publicly instigate and privately profit from these activities blame the bad apples on the fringe. Denying accountability, they toss the lit fuse into ordinary laps, painting The People ugly, unpresentable, in their place. This 90

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circus of the low is a constant theater of distraction from quieter destruction on a massive scale, like environmental degradation, or promoting racism to prevent class solidarity, both of which also harm the very foot soldiers we all consent to blame. Let there be no doubt: The heist on the right is real. But the left also contributes mightily, especially when they (we) play to type as dismissive elites. I want to linger on this point, not to imply equal responsibility by any means, but because enablers on the right are better known. Understandably, liberals might strain to see how they contribute to New Populism when they mean to oppose it. We can start by returning to Thomas Frank’s rebuke of the left for pouring anti-​populist fuel on the fire. While I agree with this, his thinly veiled gender subtext doesn’t work for me. He takes the left to task for fostering a “joyless politics of reprimand,”8 a “utopia of scolding in which court is always in session and the righteous constantly hand down the harshest of judgments on their economic and moral inferiors.”9 Today’s left regards the regular voter, he says, with a combination of suspicion and disgust. It dreams not of organizing humanity but of policing it. It is a geyser of moral rebuke, erupting against teenagers who have committed some act of cultural appropriation, against the hiring of an actor for an inappropriate role, against a public speech by someone with unpopular views, against the wrongful dumping of household trash, against inappropriate tree-​pruning techniques spotted in a nearby suburb. Its characteristic goal is not to get banks and monopolies under control, as populism typically does, but to set up a nonprofit, attract funding from banks and monopolies, and then … to scold the world for its sins.10 I include the extended quote to show how he achieves the trifling status of these offenses through domestic symbolism: teenagers in trouble, household maintenance, suburbs, and fussing over actors in fantasy lands. Do images of frustrated housewives and shrill matrons come to mind, or is that just me? For Frank and several other leftist critics, the left today is all about semantics and sentiments, those soft, fluffy virtues displayed in the ubiquitous yard signs of left-​leaning, comfortable-​class neighborhoods: In this house, we believe Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, love is love …. By now widely parodied by populist conservatives, these signs are Frank’s favorite example of how the left has abandoned the ‘hard’ concerns of class for the ‘soft’ concerns of identity politics. The constant scolding of regular people, this push to make them soft as ‘snowflakes,’ is a turn-​off to the working class, the rank-​and-​file voter. Insert throat-​clearing cough. Two things. One, class is clearly important, but the choice frame—​between identity politics or class—​is telling. What it 91

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whispers is that, when you say class, chances are you mean white working-​ class men (who are ‘turned off’ by unattractive schoolmarms handing them a lesson in polite identity politics?). Since economic hardship visits people across identity categories, and class struggle plays out in light of identity experiences, I’d prefer not to make it a choice. As one example, ‘feminists versus the working class’ memes (and we will return to them) run on the false pretense that feminists are all professionals while the working class is male. Not so. Real, or actually inclusive, class politics must integrate identity. One is not hard, the other soft. Both entail social and physical elements, and they’re intertwined. Two, I do think there is a rising habit on the left of purging impurity through virtue contests and scapegoating. The impulse to banish first and listen later (or never)—​that so-​called outrage culture whipped up on social media—​is a real thing. I don’t like it either, but we don’t need to repurpose the binary sexism (and heterosexism) of hard versus soft to get there. That’s the cheap and easy route. Let’s try another one instead. *** Personally, I prefer feminist philosopher Shannon Sullivan’s 2014 analysis of Good White People to help us think through anti-​populism on the left.11 She shows how middle-​class whites, liberals in particular, like to prove their racial innocence by dumping their prejudice onto lower-​class whites, who become a grotesque other. Essentially, ‘white trash’ take out the garbage of racism for all whites. The trash part is critical: ‘Crudely’ racist poor whites must be forcefully expelled because their uncomfortable proximity threatens to expose an ugly underside. ‘Good’ white people are fond of scapegoating ‘low’ racism. They (we) display their moral rightness by speaking ‘politely’ about race (as little and benignly as possible) in contrast with those revolting whites over there (insert repulsed face and pointed finger). Sullivan warns that white racial ‘goodness’ achieved through class Othering creates a political unconscious. Excluded from public discourse, the abject class stews in their ‘lowness,’ no legitimate vent or communication channel to be found. Meanwhile, good white progressives get to feel pure while doing nothing about white supremacy, pinning it all on the backs of regressive whites with the least economic and cultural power. In this way, the garbage of racism is buried, but never successfully hauled off, by class hierarchy. Ultimately, Sullivan wants ‘good’ white people to know this: When ‘white trash’ bite back, the underbelly they expose and the stench rising up is yours as well. In case the application to anti-​populism—​in or beyond the US—​remains hazy, let me spell it out. For many on the left, ‘the base’ of New Populism is the latest face of ‘white trash,’ an abject “basket of deplorables” due to their appalling views. No 92

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wonder Trump supporters lashed back at this phrase and proudly embellished it on t-​shirts. “Adorable Deplorables.” Unlike Sullivan’s analysis, however, these cultural outcasts cross class lines. They span the working, middle, and upper classes. Many certainly struggle with, or fear, economic decline, but as Hochschild points out in Strangers, they tend to sharply distance themselves from the poor and the public sector. I have no doubt that white liberal loathing of this multi-​class assembly foments New Populist feeling. I say this from a place both analytical and experiential. I cannot forget the agitated arousal I felt, and felt beating all around me, at the latest demonstration of liberal disdain. It is the surefire way to electrify aggrieved entitlement. With scorn and ridicule, we—​I say self-​consciously, inviting readers to do the same if the shoe fits—​help to spawn the “unpresentable other” and its furious desire to flaunt the low in our faces. Our payoff is to feel cleansed of filth—​like white supremacy, transphobia, and the long list of other things we accuse them of—​which remains on our hands nonetheless. To make ourselves virtuous, we turn New Populist supporters into the new ‘white trash.’ This form of anti-​populism succumbs to the same dirty trick New Populism plays on democracy. It treats the opposition as an illegitimate other, the ‘wrong’ people, enemy of The Good People. It plays the role of elite establishment to the hilt. “When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama famously says. I gather that she means take the high road, in which case I agree. I would simply clarify that enforcing a virtuous high against a deplorable low is not, in fact, the high road, though this seems to be the path many lefties prefer. The high road I have in mind is a harder path, one that refuses the temptation to antagonize and, instead, requires us to take responsibility for our own complicity. Or as I learned it in Sunday school, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”12 Resisting the urge to antagonize does not mean validating or embracing New Populism. It means doing your best not to seed a political unconscious such that it has no other way out but through the mire of aggrieved entitlement. We may tell ourselves that discarding this new ‘white trash’—​ excising them from The People, excluding them from democracy—​takes an important stand, but it putrefies the feeling we claim to stand against. Aggrieved entitlement will not be contained; it will fester and seep from any junk yard we consign it to. Instead of claiming virtue, white liberals in particular would do better to confront their own racism, homophobia, sexism, and so on. For these are the ties that bind13 us with the cross-​class ‘low’ we now outcast for the sake of our purity. A final caveat should go without saying, but just in case. In portraying the New Populist base as cultural outcasts—​cast off as the new ‘white trash’—​I 93

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do not mean to hint any parallel or equivalency whatsoever to the Othering of Black and Brown people in the US. Unequivocally, New Populism intensifies the Othering of people of color. Take civil disenfranchisement, for example. American voter suppression has redoubled in the same period that New Populism has risen to prominence, and New Populism depends on it for electoral victory. New Populism exacerbates the exclusion of Black and Brown voters, as seen in the alarming wave of election ‘reforms’ (racist voting restrictions) following the 2020 elections, justly hailed “Jim Crow 2.0.”14 The populist base overwhelmingly supports these rising restrictions. To suggest that they themselves face any form of comparable marginalization would be ludicrous. What I have described, instead, is the cultural (and moral) alienation of what has become the New Populist base, such that they are debased as the “unpresentable other.” Bad white people. “Trump masculinity reaches its high water mark,” Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse teased, not quite a week after the Capitol riot.15 Yes, I laughed out loud at clever lines like, “En masse, the photos show a conglomeration of weird beards, ammo and camo, and a very specific brand of looks-​like-​somebody-​got-​a-​Bass-​Pro-​gift-​card-​for-​Christmas raging White masculinity.” And yet. Scorn and mockery from the high goads the flaunting of the low. It’s anti-​populism on offense. In this sense, there is also truth to the reversal, “When we go high, they go low.” *** To absorb the Capitol riot from this place takes some doing, I know. I find myself wanting to gush all the reassuring caveats I gave when we re-​read Daniel’s anti-​masking outburst in Part I. That I am not excusing, absolving, rationalizing, contextualizing, or even humanizing the rioters. Nor do I mean to minimize their obvious culpability in any way. But you already know all this, and you probably know what I am about to ask, once again. Return to the scene of the crime—​the flagrant desecration I described at the outset of this chapter—​and witness how aggrieved entitlement happens. Not as ideology, but as a snarling physical meltdown, a thrilling tantrum of unbridled rage, a spree of destruction, a lashing out for the sheer hell of it, utter euphoria, a hostile takeover and a triumphant adventure to post online. Not driven by belief but by desire, or the desire to believe. If we can’t win, we’ll take our due by whatever means necessary. Running the world since 1776, with no plans to stop now. The good news, I repeat, is that I am not asking you to feel any empathy for the rioters or their deeds. I feel little for my relatives who were in DC that day to “stop the steal,” and I don’t intend to hear them out. As far as 94

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I’m concerned, the rioters were practically bathed in empathy and privilege when the vast majority of them escaped without consequence. They were treated with kid gloves. The bad news is what I am suggesting: that people are not quite in charge anymore, even as they remain accountable for their actions, or should. Feeling is in charge and coming from all directions, and our increasingly porous bodies are no match. The conclusion of this book will suggest how people might get back in charge of their feeling. For now, I am only asking you to come to terms with this condition: the communicability of feeling. This is precisely the point of rethinking New Populism as a downrising of sensation. If aggrieved entitlement passes through a million hands, we can’t possibly trace them all. And if that’s the case, it’s already out of our—​or anyone’s—​ hands in the way we like to think of it. We need to move beyond our habitual questions, like why do individuals feel like this, and how can we persuade them to believe otherwise? Instead, we need to return to that sociophysical approach developed in Part I and keep practicing the thought experiment from Chapter 3: Adjust our focus until individuals begin to flicker and fade, the borders around them become permeable, and the energy that brings them to life—​as insurrectionists, influencers, leaders, pundits, anxious parents, anti-​populists, and whoever else—​takes center stage. As we get better at this kind of analysis, the core question shifts. Not why do people feel like this, but how does aggrieved entitlement move—​through the body, from person to person, and around the world? If aggrieved entitlement is ‘running the world,’ or aspiring to, we might want to take it seriously. For in the Capitol riots, this feeling delivered a message loud, clear, and well past metaphor: It will literally shit in the halls of government to get its way. Now that should be a wake-​up call for all of us, the base included.

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The Problem with Anger Management Pufferfish and the paradox of impermeability Increasingly, aggrieved entitlement is running the world, and not just in the sense of anger run rampant. I mean something more official here too: that the feeling now occupies positional status, increasingly charged with governing the world and backed with all the resources entailed. It is here that I think a common interest—​dare I say, a universal investment in immobilizing New Populism—​arises. Before we can articulate this shared concern, some review is in order. Part II set out to explore contemporary populism and its signature feeling, which is the escalating sense of aggrieved entitlement. These things we’ve established thus far: • By the time COVID-​19 struck, another pandemic was well underway. The worldwide spread of New Populism preceded COVID-​19 by a good decade. • Its many global variants are bound not by shared ideology, but by a signature feeling profile, an escalating sensation of aggrieved entitlement. • Most analysts emphasize the repercussions of New Populism for democracy. Some of these accounts prompt democracy panic, a classic anti-​populist tactic that ironically proves the populist case in the act of decrying it. It does so by implying that democracy must be saved from ‘them,’ which is precisely what New Populists say of the elite—​for this reason! • We can avoid the vicious cycle to which anti-​populism contributes by examining the full field of complicity (including anti-​populism), rather than heaping disgrace on the base. Abridged, we can analyze New Populism as a downrising rather than an uprising. • Downrising better captures the highly dispersed agency of New Populist feeling, across the political spectrum and a complex web of actors and contributions. This kind of agency calls us to follow spiraling momentum, 96

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not map linear cause and effect. Participation can be direct and indirect, inadvertent or diversely intentional, immediate and accumulating over time, human and non-​human (as with weapons, t-​shirts and flags, or information and communication technologies). • Anti-​populism—​for example, rendering the base as ‘white trash’—​is also part of the downrising. If we let go of this attachment to feeling horrified by the base, we could start to ask more promising questions about the feeling that animates them. Like, how does aggrieved entitlement move, and (how) am I part of that? One thing’s for sure: It is on the move. This is my summary answer to the questions posed at the start of Part II, save one. The question we haven’t yet addressed is, how can we formulate a concern in common that cares for populist wellbeing without conceding its entitled grievances and without engaging in anti-​populist paternalism? This chapter tackles that question. Now we come back to the opening sentence of this chapter, about aggrieved entitlement running the world. Another thing we learned from Part II is that, in the past decade, New Populism successfully jumped the line from backlash movement to project of government—​except that project remains one of backlash, a peculiar mode of governance bent on undermining government. Anti-​g overnment government, or the fusion of populism and neoliberalism, faces a serious challenge: How do you govern by escalating resentment, that is, through livid defense instead of an offensive agenda? This is exactly what New Populism tries to do. As explained in Chapter 8, aggrieved entitlement must stay in a constant simmer to support The People’s downtrodden identity. Without victimization, New Populism in power becomes just like the elite, simply entitled—​the next, latest establishment. The People cannot rule unless they are under siege, in other words. This passion profile is their identity, and sustaining it is today’s populist agenda. To rule for the good of this feeling is to create and respond to eternal threats from elite establishment enemies. No matter how good that feels, or how much you like the rush, it is positively unsustainable. At the outset of Part II, I wondered what is up with, and who is served by, anti-​government government? The short answer is no one. This is our common stake in what happens next. *** Are you familiar with pufferfish? If not, I suggest pausing to look up a picture or read a vivid description. It will help to have their lively image on your mental screen for the rest of the book. Pufferfish are about to become our shorthand for the problem with New Populism. 97

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Pufferfish are really a family of fish united by a certain capacity. When threatened, they puff up. They take a bunch of water into their elastic bellies and expand into round spiky balls. Pointy, because their spiny skin turns into sharp barbs once they’ve blown up like balloons. It’s an impressive show of what biologists call “deimatic” display, a behavior whereby creatures susceptible to attack startle potential predators with a physical bluff that makes them appear larger and more intimidating than they are—​or, at least, not worth the trouble.1 Pufferfish are generally slow, which enhances their vulnerability. Yet they are also capable of sudden bursts of speed, evasive maneuvers that make up for what they lack in control and precision with surprise. Pufferfish thus have some self-​protective tricks up their … fin. What’s more, they are incredibly toxic, such that the predator who does manage to take them down may well go down with them. Oh, and also this: Pufferfish can be felled by their own defenses. While puffing up makes them fearsome in the face of threat, it also creates stress and strain that can kill them, or they can die by their own toxins. This marvelous fish is both metaphor and something more. Hold that thought. *** Anti-​government government is an accident waiting to happen. In 2020, it happened, when two pandemics collided: New Populism and COVID-​19. The impact of this collision favored COVID-​19, facilitating its spread and devastation. In one sense, COVID-​19 was just another, albeit spectacular, occasion for anti-​government outrage. But it was also profoundly different. It gave new cause for “reasonable concern” over what anti-​government government could do (or not do). Beyond the power of New Populism to alter democracy, we discovered its power to determine life and death. COVID-​19 gave us a preview of how devastating anti-​government government can be. You will remember, from Part I, those early headlines about populist strongmen and their mostly flailing pandemic leadership. They seemed to share a management style that featured long bouts of denial and finger-​pointing, long lags in taking the virus seriously once it could no longer be denied, muzzling and mocking experts, minimizing federal and global coordination, and leaving every locale to fend for themselves. Several of these strongmen used their executive bullhorn to politicize the pandemic as much as possible. They ‘super-​spread’ misinformation, suspicion of science and health experts, further denial, anger at emerging public health policies and changes, and furious resistance. They modeled how to break the rules, refusing to wear masks themselves and casting compliance as soft and weak. Facing COVID-​19 without a mask, armed with your own hard shell and individual autonomy—​this is manly, they assured us. 98

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Over and over, populations led by these men were cycled through this drama. He said what?! Outrage. Will he wear a mask this time? No. What about now? Still no. Finally, he hinted that people should mask up—​sign of maturity? Nope, he retracted it again. Wait, he tested positive?!?!? The ill-​disciplined public health behavior of these bad boys was followed breathlessly, a fascination that mirrored their narcissism. As the COVID-​19 pandemic unfolded, and the basic practices of flattening the curve became more routine, the pattern deepened into well-​worn grooves. In the US, for example, so-​called red or Republican-​tilted states—​ the ones more likely to subscribe to New Populism—​often suffered more, well after Trump left office. Thanks in large part to his negative modeling, virus mitigation was heavily politicized, and disregarding health guidance became a mark of freedom. At the time of this writing, for example, many of these states—​such as Texas, Florida, and Louisiana—​are struggling severely with the Delta variant, due largely to their low vaccination rates.2 Meanwhile, governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis triple down on freedom-​from-​mask politics, going so far as to withhold the salaries of school officials who violate his statewide ban on mask mandates.3 Another good example of how a virus becomes fluent in culture wars. Suffice it to say that COVID-​19 sounded a wake-​up call about New Populism that we hadn’t heard before, at least, not so loudly and decisively. This is not a democracy scare, but a leadership concern, a management problem. Understated, anti-​government government does not appear conducive to handling global crises. Opportunity springs from the ongoing wreckage. COVID-​19 gave us a chance to see how anti-​government government works, or doesn’t, when faced with a compound crisis. The aftermath suggests a need to redirect concern about New Populism toward more pragmatic questions. Namely, can government by anti-​government resentment navigate complex and pressing problems, like those involving global interdependence? This question may at first seem less epic than the fate of democratization but, actually, it is more existential. I know. Leave it to a scholar of organization to call the management question. Sure, it’s an occupational hazard, but in this case, it brings a benefit. Asking after effective coordination relieves the polarizing pressure of democracy debates and the endless scuffle over who can save democracy from whom. It turns to practical matters in which everyone has a stake, such as global public health. *** Understandably, some may feel uneasy about shifting focus from democracy to management. Doesn’t it simply slip a technocratic mask over the face of 99

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anti-​populism? Isn’t it another way to distrust the general will, by calling in the competent crew whenever The People don’t know their own good? How paternalistic. I assure you, I am not advocating the replacement of bad boys with trustworthy technocrats. I am not interested in a rerun of managerialism versus populism. Putting ‘sensible’ folks in charge only stokes the anger in a different way, by brushing it off and aside, where it will surely rankle for return. Mine is not a case for displacement, of ordinary by expert, or right by left. Nor is it a case for avoidance by sweeping aggrieved entitlement under the rug. This time, there can be no threatened ‘us’ rescued from ‘them.’ I am calling the management question in a different way that does not recycle the showdown between populism and technocracy. The question I am posing is one of “anger management,” though not in the usual sense of that phrase. Not how to manage anger, but how does anger manage? When the feeling of aggrieved entitlement is in charge, and the primary goal of government is to stoke it, what happens? I am asking how anger manages in both a process and an outcome sense. How does aggrieved entitlement go about governing and, also, how well? As I will use it going forward, anger management is an abbreviation for leadership by aggrieved entitlement—​the specific mode of governance driven by this feeling, and that works in the service of its continuance. Government of, by, and for The Right Wronged People. COVID-​19 served up a taste of what it looks like (not pretty) and how well it goes (badly). It takes no stretch from what we just experienced to acknowledge the shortcomings of anger management. It greatly exacerbated the staggering toll of the virus, and it could wreak more havoc going forward. COVID-​19 is hardly a culminating crisis. Whereas the pandemic has an end game, the same cannot be said for impending crises that lack the promise of a vaccine. Take climate change. Even if you don’t believe in it, or believe it’s exaggerated for political purposes, you still have a stake in whether it’s true. For if it is (it is), belief will soon be beside the point, and the truth of encounter will take over. In that moment, our common interest in stopping anger management would be glaringly clear: in a word, life. The COVID-​19 pandemic, daunting as it has been, may look in the rearview like the tip of a (melting) iceberg. Read as a foreshadowing, COVID-​19 opens a chance to heed its cautionary tale and, accordingly, change up the way we interpret and respond to New Populism. To clarify, I am not proposing a new scare that simply trades out the object of fear. I am suggesting that we start a new thread of “reasonable concern” about New Populism, one focused on anger management instead of democracy. Here’s the difference: This new thread is guided by pragmatic care instead of moral panic and certainty. It recognizes that matters like public and planetary health hang in the balance, and these are less political and even 100

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more serious than democracy’s fate. It knows there is no us versus them when everyone is implicated. *** How does anger manage? Like a pufferfish. Blow yourself up, all barbs, bluster, and bravado under threat. Act as if you’re impermeable, and that will make it so. Your would-​be predators will lose confidence, and you can poison them if not. But beware, for you can die from the stress and succumb to your own toxins. Not unlike toxic mask-​ulinity. One more time, recall Daniel’s physical hitch when asked to mask up, his body hit by a “suffocating” sensation (his word) of unnerving permeability (my read). In response to what is essentially a request to act like the porous body he is, his body instead swells up. Chest inflates, arms puff out, fists clench, and the whole body lurches forward in rhythmic aggression. A deimatic display if ever there were one, only the threat to which it responds is not external. Instead of defending himself against the virus, he fights the body’s permeable nature—​an autoimmune rather than immune reaction. The body insists on self-​containment by going undefended. Just like this, anti-​maskers chose a defense that actually heightened their risk; some became sick and died; and many spread the disease. Now, picture Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, or whoever—​for you—​best embodies the pufferfishery of populist strongmen. And I do mean embodies. Think toward their concrete physicality, the body’s inflated carriage, or the way their mouths move. The hard set of a jaw: deimatic display. This is the irony of anger management, which brings the pufferfish response to a whole new scale: Its go-​to defense is self-​defeating. By toxifying the surround, it poisons itself, or strains itself to death. It is weakened by its supposed strength, made vulnerable by its commitment to impenetrability. The paradox of impermeability is that the defense—​not the threat—​is what kills. As with an allergy, the defense response is the real threat. Pufferfish will serve as our analogy for anger management, sort of like a mental mascot. While the comparison is clearly more evocative than technical, one of the ways it breaks down suggests it is more than metaphor. For the most part, the deimatic behavior of pufferfish serves their continued existence as a species. Anger management, on the other hand, is a deimatic behavior that shows no such protective value for life. Like Daniel’s, it is a physical bluffing reflex that is badly out of alignment with the fundamental porosity of human bodies. The ‘enemy’ it fears is its own shadow—​permeability—​so it puffs up to prove an impenetrability that never was. Desperate for self-​containment, it misreads existential threats. Akin to an allergy, but closer to autoimmunity, because the threat comes from within the creature, who mistakes it as an external intruder. 101

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Unlike the swelling of pufferfish, then, human pufferfishery is a defense poorly adapted to the actual vulnerabilities of the human creature. It is the gasp of the self-​contained individual, that fantasy of impermeability (from Chapter 3) that Teresa Brennan links to Western Man. If this is a deimatic behavior, it’s a dysfunctional one, exemplified by mask-​ulinity and brought to scale by anger management. Anger management has already become a matter of life and death, as COVID-​19 confirmed. Indeed, the pandemic revealed that what’s at stake with New Populism in power is not merely what kind of world we wish to live in, but more existential: Who will live to see that world, and can it endure anger management? This is every bit as urgent as it sounds, but need not be apocalyptic. We can hold this sense of consequence as the gravity of our collaboration instead of running for the exits in panic. Good thing, since there are (as yet) no exits. To the extent that addressing anger management is a matter of mutual survival, everyone must be included on this new thread. Populists and non-​ populists alike, whoever is willing to drop their claims to be the right or wronged majority. Such claims do not apply, and are not welcome, here. Only our vital interdependence matters. When management by anger is increasing, destructive, and increasingly destructive, we all need rescue. But it will not be found by walking away or around, minimizing, authenticating, replacing, calling for patience, or swelling our chests to confront it. We cannot afford these tried-​and-​untrue tactics anymore. It’s time to walk right into the anger and see what it’s really about. If we have any hope of immobilizing it, we need to learn how it moves.

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PART III

Probable Cause

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Class and Culture, of Course Socioeconomics meet demographics When we talk about what moves something, we usually mean, why is it happening? What’s the stimulus or reason? Part III is all about cause—​and rethinking it. From Part II, we know that New Populisms were able to spread around the world thanks to the new sociotechnical relations associated with audience democracy. Abridged, Web 2.0 was one kind of catalyst. But access to a new means of transmission—​an available how, or medium—​isn’t a full answer to why. Not just why now, but why this now? What prompted New Populism, and why is the feeling of aggrieved entitlement so catching? Most scholars of populism think of cause in this way. Populism signals a fault in the current order, they say.1 It is a symptom, a sign of unsustainability. Something once taken for granted is losing legitimacy, and papering over the cracks will no longer do. The burning question is, what is that something? If populism reliably indicates troubled waters, what is causing New Populist waves? One answer is the overwhelming favorite: New Populism is an outgrowth of the Great Recession, that is, the growing socioeconomic divides that followed from neoliberal policies, led up to the late 2000s, and mushroomed after the global financial crisis. Joshua Roose, a scholar of politics and religion, tersely summarizes, “There is a general consensus that key causal factors of contemporary global populism include the 2009 sovereign debt crisis and associated policies emphasizing austerity … securitisation… and mass migration.”2 Put simply, frustration over class inequality, compounded by demographic shifts, is widely held to be the leading cause. I suspect most readers are familiar with some version of this answer, and we will review the most popular versions shortly. But there is a glaring omission already. Gender is consistently and conspicuously minimized by this account. If present at all, it appears as a curious preoccupation of New Populism—​an overplayed hit in the culture wars but, ultimately, a distracting tangent. 105

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Now that Part II has established what is populist about aggrieved entitlement, the time has come to sniff out what gender is doing here. Why does it hang around nearly every strain of New Populism, to the extent that it can fairly be called the one global constant? Why do The People care so much about the gender binary, if their movement is mainly about class, or class as it interacts with cultural politics? Part III will make the case that New Populism actually moves on, or is powered by, gender. I arrive at this conclusion by asking a different question of origin: Whose feeling is aggrieved entitlement, and to what does it aspire? It belongs to a certain kind of masculinity, which has long claimed to be in crisis and is now escalating that crisis—​making it everyone’s—​under a majoritarian mantle. New Populism, it turns out, is precisely what populism is not supposed to be—​a project of identity politics. It is a gender-​based movement that vents and soothes aggrieved masculinity by (re)claiming its generic status as The People. In other words, New Populism performs identity politics for the universal subject, or Western Man. It aims to secure once more that sacred right reserved for some men only: to be synonymous with the self-​contained individual. If at this point you remain skeptical, I understand and am not surprised. My argument counters habitual ways of analyzing both gender and populism, as I have already shown, respectively, in Parts I and II. We still have some distance to go before the case becomes clear and, with it, a novel way to address New Populism. The task of Part III is to propel us there by reworking cause. Come along for a spirited ride?

Why New Populism? Take 1: Economic inequality, only or mainly (doesn’t hold up) On a Sunday morning in the middle of May 2020, with CNN blaring in the background, I happened to hear Fareed Zakaria deliver his assessment of the lockdown protests emerging at the time: “Experts have jobs. They need to understand those who don’t.”3 Zakaria advised the professional classes to stop scoffing at the ignorant behavior of protestors and start empathizing with their legitimate class pain instead. Echoing the claims of New Populism, he explained that protestors were tired of experts calling the shots in their own favor. When it came to COVID-​19, the very health officials advising lockdowns held jobs amenable to this advice, whereas those facing unemployment could not afford the luxury of staying home or away from others. They faced greater risk of economic and physical exposure, and they were fed up with being told how to handle it. The protests were a continuation of populist uprising, he concluded, the next logical outburst of simmering anger over the neglect of ordinary working people. COVID-​19 escalated class inequality and, thus, class conflict. 106

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Hardly original to Zakaria, this analysis remains the dominant short answer to why New Populism is on the rise. It attributes cause to the growing frustrations of a working class motivated by economic displacement, or the threat and fear thereof. For those who consider widening economic inequality to be a pressing problem of our time—​and that includes me—​it may be difficult not to resonate intuitively with this account. Yet there is abundant reason to pause and question it. Not the least of which is that it overlooks populist downrising, exemplified in one way by the funding of early lockdown protests by oil and gas (among other corporate and wealthy interests),4 and in another way by the presence of relatively secure white professionals among the populist ranks.5 In fact, there is a striking mismatch between the profiles—​or I should say, complexion—​of most lockdown protestors and those suffering most acutely from class inequity. Contrary to Zakaria’s claim, COVID-​19 vividly demonstrated, and exacerbated, this poor alignment. In the US, people of color—​especially Black, Latinx, and Native populations—​paid a much heavier toll in the pandemic.6 They suffered a greater proportion of illness and loss of life due to factors linked with class, such as occupational risk, access to quality health care, fuller households, and other cumulative effects of racism on bodies and communities. Economically, women were hit especially hard, and women of color (cis and trans) suffered the greatest job loss and insecurity.7 Yet this is not who took to the streets en masse, or flooded town halls, complaining about experts and masks. Contrast this data with the lockdown protests, where mostly white demonstrators, across class lines, balked at public health rules for trampling individual freedom.8 The incongruity couldn’t be clearer. People of color were prone to far greater pandemic suffering, while comparatively privileged white people claimed that efforts to reduce pandemic suffering somehow caused their suffering. Some white folks’ appropriation of slave iconography to illustrate their alleged suffering brought the absurdity and offense to a whole new level.9 By and large, New Populist supporters simply do not line up with the most class-​vulnerable populations.10 Please underscore the by and large there, emphasis on speaking generally. I am saying that many enthusiasts are class-​stable and even privileged, even as I understand that many suffer from significant class vulnerability and its actual or perceived threat. In no way do I mean to minimize or distract from this very real pain and anxiety. Indeed, their struggle deserves notice alongside something else: that they nonetheless tend to distance themselves from—​and cast aspersions on—​the racialized poor, rejecting affiliation with this underclass in favor of identifying ‘up.’ More on that in a moment. If those most subject to class inequality are scarcely to be found in the ranks of New Populism—​and if those ranks exhibit a keen and broad distaste 107

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for the lower economic classes—​I think we can safely say that economic inequality is not a viable explanation of cause, at least not alone. What else is going on, then?

Why? Take 2: Class inequality includes cultural marginalization (also doesn’t cut it) Many analysts add that social class is tied up with economic disparity and especially important to New Populism. Part of class inequality, in other words, is social class inequity, the kind of disrespect and disenfranchisement described in Part II as the shunning of a ‘low’ style. This is the kind of cultural marginalization we are talking about here: an ‘ignorant’ and ‘improper’ manner that is associated with the countryside or backwoods (read: backwards), deemed unfit for public consumption, and erased from popular culture except for residual ‘bumpkin’ stereotypes that supply an acceptable butt of ridicule. It is precisely this sort of alienation that J.D. Vance—​Yale Law School graduate and venture capitalist turned New Populist US Senate candidate—​features in his best-​selling book-​cum-​ film Hillbilly Elegy.11 Whereas he puts the cultural exclusion of industrial Midwestern folk out ahead of economic factors, others say economic and cultural marginalization work together to drive New Populism around the world.12 Another spin on this ‘combination’ thesis circulates among internal critics of the left. I’m thinking here of people like the aforementioned Thomas Frank, political scientist Mark Lilla, and the late social theorist Mark Fisher, who accuse their liberal colleagues of switching out economic class for identity politics.13 They blame this trade for abandoning the needs of the working class while intensifying their cultural exclusion—​a double slam they say gave rise to New Populism and enabled its electoral success in the US. *** I have already shared with you why I flinch when economic class and identity politics are pitted against one another like this—​the former ‘hard,’ serious, and broadly applicable, the latter a ‘soft,’ trivial, and partial concern. I get nervous when I hear echoes of a ‘universal’ working class that is browbeaten by Others, who selfishly guard their ‘particular’ and ‘special’ needs. On the one hand, I agree that economic class took a back seat as the left took a neoliberal turn and made a certain kind of identity politics—​one that was too quiet about economic disparity and too preoccupied with moral purity—​their main class concern. I agree that this contributed to a certain 108

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kind of cultural marginalization, which is why I discussed at some length in Chapter 9 how the New Populist base is not-​so-​subtly cast as ‘white trash.’ On the other hand, this misstep on the left can be read as an overcorrection to a tired class politics that held white men as the core of the working class and, thus, prioritized economic struggles associated with them over those faced by Others. This worn-​out class politics needed to be shed. It promoted rampant racism, sexism, and heterosexism in labor union organizing, for example, and was simply not sustainable in the wake of civil rights and feminist movements.14 To romanticize this homogenous notion of class and summon its return is absurd. Overcorrection is no reason to dismiss identity as frivolous and divide it from class, which amounts to another overcorrection. Quite the opposite: It’s a reason to examine their relation more closely and finally formulate heterogeneous class struggle. It bears repeating. We sorely need a class politics that works from the intersection—​the meeting and not the separation—​of economics, culture, and identities like race, gender, and sexuality. We must stop using the hard–​soft binary to code class versus identity politics, economic struggle versus culture wars, in adversarial relation. This is a false and distracting oppositional choice that employs the gender binary to prevent class solidarity across identity differences, not unlike the troubling use of racial division to do the same. The hard–​soft split defies how class and identity are lived, which is always together. Why do I mention this now? Because we need to feel this flinch once more and ask whose cultural marginalization we are talking about, exactly? Since no class grouping is a uniform category, which working class is the cultural outcast here? *** Once that question is on the table, class inequality starts to fail as a one-​ note tribute, even when class is expanded to include cultural as well as economic marginalization. Appeals to a generic working class evoke classic images of an honorable group of ordinary, industrious people who can’t seem to catch a break. Zoom in for a closer look at them. Who do you see? Who is out front in the struggle? Who are these forgotten citizens, left behind and out of economic opportunity, disappeared from cultural representation, save as some yokel caricature. Are you imagining white men and ‘their’ families? Understandably, this picture tugs at the heart strings of more privileged white folks, well-​educated professionals like me who can be toppled from their high horse when forced to reckon with the heartland imaginaries—​ rural, small-​town, industrial, countryside, hill, agrarian or pastoral—​they 109

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trample with ritual disdain and little thought. With his big hit Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance cashed in on just this: the guilt of white comfortable classes for making other white folks into ‘trash.’ It’s an easy way to snap the ‘high’ out of their condescension and into humility and empathy for the ‘low,’ but it is misleading. Class inequality unfolds through a range of interwoven means, financial, cultural, educational, regional, and more. The second version of “class inequality as cause” acknowledges this and loads class up with lots of factors, creating a more complex socioeconomic analysis. Good move, until one major factor goes missing: identity, particularly of the gender, sexual, and race variety. When class stands alone like this, stripped of identity and appearing to have none, identity is still present but silent, operating more furtively. A working class that claims to be generic—​that can afford to minimize or sacrifice social identities—​implicitly favors straight white masculinity. Like it or not, a homogenous conception of socioeconomic inequality does not encompass the reality of class vulnerability and struggle. The point is that class no longer works as a blunt instrument, if it ever did. When we try to use it that way, the universal subject discussed in Part I is afoot. Applied here, straight white masculinity is assumed as the generic human of the working class. If New Populist proponents are disproportionately white heterosexual cis men (they are)15—​and if class inequality skews Black, Brown, and feminine-​identified (as we have shown in COVID-​19’s economic disparities16), though it is certainly white and masculine as well—​a socioeconomic explanation of New Populism that tries to pass as identity neutral does not pass the smell test. We need a finer-​ grained, multidimensional analysis of cause.

Why? Take 3(D): Class inequality meets racial and religious resentment (comes closer, but ...) There are such accounts, but they paint a less glowing picture of the downtrodden group in question. Arlie Hochschild’s celebrated book Strangers stands out as an exemplar here. While she foregrounds class—​in the more expansive socioeconomic sense just discussed—​she also disrupts a homogenous image of the working class by exposing a presumed hierarchy of social identities that are more economically deserving than others. Recall from Part II the “deep story” of aggrieved entitlement she narrates: awaiting your turn in queue while cheaters not only cut in front of you, the officials help them do it, then turn around and chide you for not understanding! Enter the three-​dimensional (3D) antagonism of populisms to the right. The People versus the establishment elite and the undeserving Others they unjustly advance. 110

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On closer inspection, the noble yet forgotten regular folk of New Populism are mostly white-​identified people who attribute their declining status to twin enemies. First are the ‘cheaters,’ those unworthy Others tainted by racial and/​or religious difference as cultural outsiders. This group may include Black and Brown citizens, indigenous peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and so forth. Against the foil of their ‘foreign’ bodies, The People appear as true or authentic inhabitants, entitled to a larger share yet wronged by an unholy alliance between the Others and the elite establishment who welcomed their intrusion and underwrote their promotion. A second enemy, who brazenly gave away The People’s birthright. In this account of cause, socioeconomic inequality becomes comparative, read through changing demographics—​of neighborhoods and voters, opportunity and success. Class standing is relative and depends on how the Others appear to be doing. White (more and less) Christian folks who are financially stable, even well off, come to feel downwardly mobile, nursing a sense of socioeconomic decline. When your entitled perch is rattled, the climb of Others seems like a setback, and then you get shamed for saying so. You start to feel a certain squeeze, a gnawing status anxiety that can’t be vocalized politely. My own birth family fits this description, our growing class apprehension less about financial loss and more about ‘our way of life’ and its declining value, fueled by racial and religious resentments we mostly whispered or spoke in code. Which is how I know this feeling, like the back of my hand and by heart. Obviously, a spotlight on race and religion applies better to regions with a notion of whiteness, where dynamics of white supremacy not only have traction but are enmeshed with religion, as in Christian nationalism. Logics of white supremacy vary, and there are other logics of dominance too, which is why I keep insisting on New Populism as a plural thing to be read with regional care. If and how racism, nationalism, xenophobia, claims to ‘first’ occupancy—​or any Other foils to The People—​become manifest in New Populisms is an empirical question. Now, once identities like race and religion are aired as part of the mix, the so-​called culture wars raging hotter than ever begin to make more sense. *** Thirty years ago, sociologist James Davison Hunter popularized the term “culture wars” with his thusly named book about a dramatic realignment of US politics.17 Hunter saw a trend toward polarization between an increasingly liberal secular society and an increasingly conservative religious right. The polarization was budding, he said, through an endless series of debates over values, lifestyles, and social identities, especially gender, sexuality, and race. 111

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One hot button after another escalated the fracas: abortion and reproductive rights, gun rights and gay rights—​first religion, now critical race theory, in schools. The culture wars erupted as a backlash to the mainstream incorporation of social movements on the left, especially feminism, civil rights, and sexual liberty. Pour Fox News and Web 2.0 into the cauldron, and light the match. As contemporary descendants of these earlier movements—​like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and queer and trans activism—​work their way into establishment vernacular, the blaze bursts into a raging inferno beyond control. In recent years, the prominence and intensity of the culture wars has exploded, to the extent that they regularly stand in for—​and are even regarded as a kind of—​class struggle. Indeed, this now appears to be the strategy of the US Republican party, to grow their working class base not by serving their economic interests but by fighting their culture wars.18 Cultural theorist Simon Schleusener describes this state of affairs as an “overcoding” of class, wherein class is “overwritten” by culture and identity and presented primarily in their terms.19 He offers the example of one among many ‘feminists versus the working class’ memes circulating online since the infamous Gamergate controversy of 2014 (to which we will later return).20 The meme in question depicts two young white women with long blond hair walking by, and looking down on, a white man in workman’s attire, knelt next to a wheelbarrow full of dirt and prostrate over a—​wait for it—​manhole. Near the women’s mouths, in all caps, reads the caption, “STOP OPPRESSING ME,” while a small “sorry” appears next to the mouth of the man, who cannot bring himself to make eye contact. Little decoding is needed here. Gender ‘oppression’ is paltry (non-​ existent?) and laughable next to class inequality. Feminism is antagonistic to the working class, which is synonymous with white men. And establishment views of patriarchy and gender privilege are reversed. Don’t miss this in particular: White men are the most oppressed, and feminists are the perpetrators. Such memes underscore my earlier caution regarding the universal subject of class, who certainly appears to be angling for a comeback. They also demonstrate what Schleusener calls the “culturalization” of class, where the compensation promised to the working class is not material but, rather, “cultural-​symbolic recognition.”21 Instead of economic opportunity, how about another chance to flaunt the low? Under these circumstances—​when the concept of class is stretched, strained, and inextricably trapped in the culture wars—​we might want to rethink its capacity to explain New Populism. Or at the very least, take a closer look at how class is enlisted by New Populism. What work is it doing, 112

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on center stage and behind the scenes? Instead of asking these questions, even the most complex accounts of cause continue to lead with class, thereby taking New Populists at their word.

Time for another take? Class-​forward analysis breaks down Resoundingly, socioeconomic changes surrounding the Great Recession are regarded as the main probable cause of New Populism. Why New Populism now? Class inequality. We reviewed three popular takes on this answer, which progressively grow in complexity: (1) economic, (2) socioeconomic, and (3) socioeconomic meets demographic. In the first take, economic insecurity alone explains populist uprising. In the second, it combines with cultural forms of alienation, creating multidimensional experiences of socioeconomic decline. In the third, these experiences become relative, pinned to the changing fate of Others. Economic and cultural resentment is amplified by, and channeled toward, racialized scapegoats and the traitor elites who handed them the keys to the kingdom. Fighting these enemies through culture war becomes the center ring for class struggle. The first version does not hold water; the second hides its identity cards; whereas the third reveals at least some of them. In the process, however, the third raises critical questions. In what sense is New Populism about class, when by “class,” it mostly means culture and identity? What is the point of retaining the label? Or what other, less obvious work is class doing here? Rather than investigate such questions, all three versions accept class as the principal factor and appropriate cover term for what is at issue. We can call this mode of analysis class-​forward, in that it leads with socioeconomic unrest. The illegitimate order New Populism seeks to break down, it says, is a kind of class disparity. If that were the case, I’d be more optimistic about anger management (our shorthand for management by anger, that New Populist mode of governing by stirring outrage). As it is, the only thing breaking down is class-​forward analysis. For one thing, it is flatly out of sync with the profile of New Populist supporters. It flies in the face of the sizeable contingent that are removed, sometimes far, from the working class. As we have already seen in the US, for example, plenty of New Populist sympathizers are business owners, college-​educated, financially stable or upwardly mobile, even elite.22 Nevertheless, they feel under siege against forces that threaten ‘our way of life.’ I come from a white, middle-​class, fairly college-​educated, mostly white-​ collar, suburban, evangelical Christian family that asserts this claim. For many people like us, class is indeed the depository of this feeling, but not 113

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its source. Class may feel like the origin, but in most cases, that is because culture and identity are substituting for class. In which case, to Schleusener’s “overcoding” point, why still call it class? Again, I must stress that I know economic class is involved and important, and I will prioritize it. What I am saying is that the leading explanation misreads how class is involved. Socioeconomic concerns do not come first for New Populism, whatever it may say. Rather, New Populism is hijacking class for other purposes, and class-​ forward analysis aids and abets that heist. When we lead with class as cause, we take New Populism’s self-​portrait at face value and validate it. In this way, even its most ardent critics come to operate on its terms. Ironic as it may sound, the only way to prioritize class is not to lead with it and, instead, to disentangle class from the grip of New Populism by going after its other purposes first. But what are they? If class is not the driver, what is—​race and religion? Certainly, they are critical. Racial and religious resentments are packed with context, however. Born of dense classifications and histories that are regionally specific, this kind of antipathy can be hard to translate from one place to another. It doesn’t travel as well as a binary code. And yet, gender lies discarded as an improbable cause.

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Aggrieved Masculinity as Animation Ask how, not why, feeling moves There is another way to consider what moves something. Not why does it move, but how. An analogy might help us think about cause differently. Have you ever laid awake at night and perseverated over something? Not just one thing but many, like an unbroken stream of worries? People who struggle with generalized anxiety (like me) may recognize at once what I mean. There comes a point when you realize the worry is not exactly about anything. It’s projected onto things, as if a thing is the cause—​a reason to worry. When really, the anxiety is an energetic arousal in search of an outlet, frantic for a way to vent, and the thing is providing that—​an excuse to worry. A narrative, or a cover story. It’s a different way to think about the relationship between content and feeling. Does content drive anxiety, or does anxiety rove for justifying content? It’s another explanation of cause. In Part II, we observed that the latter—​feeling on the prowl for content—​ best describes New Populist anger. Aggrieved entitlement is the primary agenda, and the point is hyper-​arousal—​to stay injured, agitated, on the verge of provocation and itching for the next target. Content awaits assignment, I said. Anger before content, not the reverse. Political economist Will Davies calls this trigger-​happy rage “fast anger.”1 Compared to “slow anger,” which builds over time as a considered and cumulative response, fast anger flashes as a physical reflex consumed by the immediate present. It is ‘hot-​blooded’ or volatile, “automatic, pre-​conscious … somatic, reactive and performative,” he says, prone to spiraling toward violence. This is the sort of anger by which anger management governs, lighting that short fuse of outrage again and again. The question is, where does all this excitability come from? If New Populism consists mainly of a sensory signature, we need an account of cause that starts with feeling rather than explaining it by content. How is 115

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the sense of aggrieved entitlement activated, intensified, and distributed—​in a word, energized? New Populists call it a class feeling, and Chapter 11 suggests we are primed to believe this even when the evidence points elsewhere. To pick up the sensory trail, we must turn down the volume on what they say. Put aside cries of ‘class!’ and ponder how so many become enthralled with New Populism. We have to ask, in other words, how does New Populism move? When you put the question that way, you start to realize it’s a gender feeling. *** We are about to round the corner from content to movement. This is the same request I made earlier, first with Daniel and his mask outburst, and then again with the Capitol rioters: Notice how they feel more than what they feel—​how rage comes upon them, not what they say it’s about. Now, we will do this on a larger scale. Instead of responding to New Populist content—​arguing or empathizing with its claims, issues, ideologies, and the like—​we will refocus our attention on how bodies come to feel, share, and act on resonance with aggrieved entitlement. Instead of taking up a position, we will track how feeling moves. If a motto would help, try this one: Less listening to what New Populism says, more tracing how it spreads. Or if you prefer a more curious format, ask: • How are people moved (stirred or affected) toward New Populism? • How does New Populism move (transfer or spread) among so many people and hop from one scene to the next? • How does the character of New Populism move (change or adapt) as it travels? These are questions of animation, which is another way to approach the matter of cause. Usually we think of cause as linear—​a point of origin, a stimulus that sets off reactions. Why is this happening =​for what reason? Reframed through animation, cause becomes charge or energy source. Momentum rather than linearity. What stores of fuel, or accumulating repositories of intensity, bring vibrancy to a phenomenon? How is this happening =​ on what electricity? Class-​forward analysis follows the usual logic of cause, asking what stimulates the anger, or why it happens. Stuff of some kind causes the anger. But if the reverse is true, and anger moves people to content, we need to get to its fuel source or energy reserves. Where does the eternal fountain of fury come from, and what keeps it in circulation? We need to ask how aggrieved entitlement happens. 116

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Because this shift in focus is so important, yet goes against Western habits of thought, let me say it a few more ways. New Populism is energized by a feeling that has grown increasingly infectious as it moves through cultural and technological infrastructures. At this point, New Populism is a highly infectious feeling in search of an outlet. Or rather, New Populism has become the outlet for a highly infectious feeling that prefers the name of The People to its own. This possessive framing, while not perfect, is a useful portal for Western-​made minds. A pithy way to ask after animation is, whose feeling is this? I don’t mean “whose” literally, as if certain individuals are bounded containers in which the emotion resides. Aggrieved entitlement is a contagious current of feeling that rips through bodies, not a self-​contained personal emotion. So I intend “whose” figuratively. On whose behalf—​or for the sake of what sympathetic figure—​does the feeling circulate? The answer will inform a second question, which is where is this feeling headed, or what world does it long for? Feel free to reread this passage until it sinks in. I know it’s hard to turn from content to movement, but the shift is that important. *** When we ask how New Populism moves, the binary code that makes it mobile comes on to the horizon. Gender expedites New Populism. Strangely, the only factor that cuts across most variants is the one most minimized. Nearly everywhere it appears, New Populism is dominated by men and masculinities. The specific contours—​which men, what kind of masculinity—​vary widely by region. Constant across these differences, however, is a sense of manliness endangered. In different places, New Populism takes on aesthetics, atmospheres, and vitalities adapted to regional varieties of imperiled masculinity. What exactly am I saying? Given how crucial the claim is to this book, let’s start breaking it down straight away. • New Populism implicitly stars some kind of manhood, once secure in its rightful place, which is now threatened, under siege, in decline, teetering when it should be flexing, indomitable. • Almost certainly, the manliness in question favors heterosexual cis men. Other defining dimensions beyond that—​his particular race, religion, class, origins, level of education, physicality, manner, and so on—​necessarily take shape in terms of contextual dynamics. • Whatever the regional twist, this is a manhood that deserves to be dominant. His plight is therefore not only unjust, but also a reliable marker of societal decay. If he is wronged, something has gone wrong. Things are out of order, for everyone. 117

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• Dominant does not mean top of the food chain, however. More like, he should be king among ‘normal,’ ‘regular,’ ‘ordinary,’ ‘down-​to-​earth,’ or ‘salt-​of-​the-​earth’ [insert your regional adjectives here] guys. Not the richest, smartest, or most influential of men, but potent, honorable, and comfortable relative to other men, and easily ahead of all the Others. (This is what I mean by dominant masculinities as we proceed.) • This endangered manly species, with a thousand local variants, is the animating figure of New Populism. Meaning, the movement’s core sympathies revolve around him and bear his sensory imprint. Demonstrations on his behalf come to look, sound, taste, smell, feel for and like him. New Populist activity carries his energetic signature in ways that may include, but always exceed, its explicit agenda, or content. It is moved by him. If he eats meat, the buffet stocks it. If he totes a gun, the platform will cleave to that right. • Bodies resembling his, or aspiring to, populate the majority of the New Populist base and embody his spirit in passionate celebration. But they are rarely if ever alone. • Plenty of Others partake enthusiastically too, moved by varied investments in the restoration of his virility. That is, they inhabit and promote his energy through some relation to him. They borrow his swagger as their own, often with gratitude and on his behalf. We will continue to expand on these points going forward, but that’s enough to get us going. New Populism runs on endangered masculinity. The feeling of aggrieved entitlement is victimized manhood for the masses. It makes an identity-​ specific passion majoritarian, that is, opens it to everyone. So we can all feel its seductive swell, taste its unjustly waning privilege, and want more, long to make it last longer. Aggrieved entitlement is endangered masculinity as populism. In this light, populism is more like the penname—​or better, the beard—​of aggrieved masculinity, a seething sense of rightful virility wrongly denied. So how about we drop the euphemistic alias and start calling it by its actual rather than assumed name? This pervasive pattern—​N ew Populism animated by aggrieved masculinity—​is rarely publicly marked as such, even when flagrantly obvious. When noticed, it is generally as a local rather than global dynamic, a sub rather than main plot, or sometimes just a curious detail. An eccentric, extremist, or one-​off spectacle, which is to say, not much of a pattern at all. Let’s put it this way: If and however the phenomenon is observed, its significance remains grossly underrated. Endangered masculinity as the common thread across New Populisms lies hidden in plain sight.

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Is it that we really do not perceive the charged presence of gender, or that we do not want to? Or is it detected, but somehow disregarded as incidental, peripheral, certainly not a major factor or viable account of cause? All of these. There are so many ways that the centrality of gender to New Populism is denied and deferred, we need a separate chapter just to contend with them.

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Perish the Thought of Gender The lengths we go to hide ‘The People’ in plain sight To make the case for gender as any kind of cause, we have first to unravel the case against it. The negative case rests in a set of denials and deflections repeated so often, they are received as obvious points and rarely met with challenge. These defenses show up all over public and private conversation as well as scholarly discourse. They lie on the tip of our tongues, and they amount to collective denial of what is right in front of us. The goal of this chapter is to dismantle them. In Part I, I sought to disarm gender, to defuse it as a political weapon so we could begin to appreciate how it operates politically at a deeper level, through sociophysical sensation. Here, I seek to carry that purpose through, further exposing the political operation of gender by disarming our reflexes to deny it. These defenses too are sociophysical—​habits of argument that condition the senses to absorb and process New Populism in certain ways and not others. Our work here is not simply to refute the arguments, but to recondition the senses accordingly. We can build capacity to spot these habits as they arise, bring them into awareness, and activate different responses. Practice, as in rehearsing new reflexes, is how we will dismantle our defenses against the relevance of gender. Let’s try a more embodied, playful spin that might help to shake these habits loose. Think of this chapter as a game show, where the challenge is something like, Top Seven Reasons You Know New Populism is Not about Gender. As you read on, start each section by chanting the phrase, “It can’t be gender because …”

“… women do it too” Defense: If women take part in New Populism, it can’t be about masculinity.

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Refutation: Of course women partake. Their presence does not negate masculinity but, rather, helps to clarify what kind.    

It is uncontroversial to observe that men and masculinity have been the dominant force of populist movements, then and now. Scholars of populism acknowledge this at all levels, from top leadership to supporters on the ground. New Populism is no exception. For starters, just roll through the profiles of those global populist strongmen discussed earlier. New Populism overwhelmingly appeals to men in the voting booth as well.1 But wait, you might reply. Even if New Populism leans toward men, and masculinity is part of its appeal, aren’t there plenty of women involved from top to bottom? Well, I don’t know that I’d say plenty at the top. More have surfaced in Europe than elsewhere, but the fact that we can list them on two hands with room to spare suggests they are a small minority.2 What’s more, the way these women are trotted out as examples—​in a spirit of surprise, wonder, or as if they’ve committed some extra betrayal—​suggests we already know they are an exception to the rule, even as we oddly use them to disprove it. To be sure, there are more women supporters than leaders, and their ranks have grown, although they too remain a minority.3 Nonetheless, you will hear this question again and again, so we may as well address it head-​on: If women do it too, how can it be about masculinity? My cheeky first retort would be: Have you met heterosexuality? (Damn! As I wrote that, a woman’s reparative smile crept over my face again.) Let me explain, minus the sass. The gender norms of heterosexual family relations serve up countless incentives for women to shore up masculinity—​to rouse, soothe, tame, brandish, and crawl into bed with it. Women do things in the service of manliness all the time, because many of us perceive stakes in its success, for example, as mothers, wives, daughters, and financial partners or dependents. What’s more, women of all sorts are perfectly capable of feeling and action aligned with masculinity, for which they can receive handsome reward (and merciless punishment).4 In her best-​selling book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson poignantly dispels this dynamic as a go-​to defense. “One does not have to be in the dominant caste to do its bidding. In fact, the most potent instrument of the caste system is a sentinel at every rung, whose identity forswears any accusation of discrimination and helps keep the caste system humming.”5 Of course pink signs declaring “Women for Trump” became a staple at every rally. Of course a group called Women for America First arranged the permit for the Stop the Steal rally that led to the Capitol riot.6 What a perfect supporting role! A whole cast of characters is on the job—​Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (formerly National Front) party in France, Frauke Petry and Alice Weidel of the Alternative for Germany party, Beata 121

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Szudlo of the Law and Justice party in Poland, Pia Kjaersgaard of the Danish People’s party, Siv Jensen of the Norwegian Progress party, Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy party (come right out with it then!), and more recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert in the US.7 These are but a fraction of New Populism’s army of (white heterosexual cis) women sentinels. Believe me, I understand the impulse behind this common defense. It is tempting to refute the relevance of masculinity with the mere presence of women, and it would certainly make things cleaner. But that impulse relies on the gender binary we have challenged all along, the stubborn yet erroneous assumption of two neatly divided categories of people who ought to behave as such. As we established back in Part I, they don’t. In this case, the binary blocks the crucial insight that masculinity is available to everyone. It is not equally accessible, and its benefits and consequences are not evenly distributed. But the fact of women’s participation should never throw us off its scent. On the contrary, we should expect women to actively contribute, and use the details of their complicity as a helpful analytic device, like a guidebook. If women are invested through familial and domestic relations, for instance—​as spouses, mothers, daughters, and care-​givers—​heterosexuality is vital to the masculinity in question. If mostly white women participate, and they’re playing up a kind of racial bonding with ‘their’ men, we are talking about white masculinity. And so on. Women’s involvement is no reason to refute the role of masculinity. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Women’s particular investments confirm masculinity and help us sniff out the specific strains entailed. Let’s follow the scent instead of holding our noses. Now say it with me: “It can’t be gender because …”

“… patriarchy is a given” Defense: Masculinity has long dominated politics, so there is nothing special about its prominence in New Populism, even if it is more pronounced. Refutation: The overrepresentation of masculinity is always worth investigation, as is the characterization of masculinity in crisis.    

Back to the uncontroversial point that New Populism, like most populisms, is dominated by men and masculinity. Many observers acknowledge this reality but say it is expected and epiphenomenal, neither surprising nor pertinent. After all, men and masculinity have long dominated most public arenas, certainly politics and, especially, populist politics. A pattern that is not 122

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unique to New Populism is not likely to explain it, even if this movement is more masculinized than others. It is safe to assume the pattern is superfluous. Two responses come to mind. First, if history is any guide, intensifications of masculinity are no minor blips. Urgencies of manhood have animated all manner of consequential historical events.8 For example, there is a quite colorful chronicle of “masculinity crises,” periods of frenzy over some kind of manhood that is said to be in danger and need of reinforcement in order to save civilization. As Chapter 15 will elaborate, such ‘crises’ undeniably possess explanatory power. The second response is, for me, a long time coming. I’ve always found it strange to dismiss masculinity as an explanatory factor in one scene because a similar pattern holds across other scenes. I study masculinity in the professions, where there is a clear corollary. When I point out the preponderance of men and masculinity among airline pilots, the first response is usually, Yeah, but that’s true of most professions. If it’s not unique here, it’s probably a peripheral factor. To which I say: Actually, if it’s not unique here, that’s a good sign it’s even more central. In fact, it may signal that masculinity is tied up with our estimation of all occupations, and that one of the most reliable ways to become a ‘profession’ with valuable ‘technical expertise’ is to be associated with certain kinds of masculinity.9 Following that logic, the observation that masculinity dominates (populist) politics deserves the reverse response to the one we usually give it. Rather than deem it a trivial factor because it’s ubiquitous, we should ask if and how it might help to explain pretty much every case. Like, how is it happening here; what about there; and what can we learn from comparing its varied operations in different contexts? That something is common doesn’t make it commonplace. An earlier point from Part I resurfaces here. Rarely do we consider the overrepresentation of men and masculinity as a problematic condition—​something that needs to be explained, much less that might explain something.10 There may be no better example than in the defense we are talking about: Masculine dominance is tangential here (New Populism), because it is also over there (earlier populisms and most politics) and everywhere (the public sphere). This defense takes patriarchy as a given background. Like a big-​picture fact that exceeds the focal case and, thus, is mysteriously irrelevant to it. A hangover from a bygone era, a sexist remnant that should fade in due time, yet somehow never does. It’s almost as if we shrug, that’s patriarchy for you, then proceed to the real analysis. But let’s be real. Patriarchy is no mere residue; it’s still here because we’re still doing it. It didn’t just happen back then, leaving us to drown in its wake. The ‘aftermath’ of patriarchy is precisely that it’s still happening. So the concrete details of how patriarchy continues to be achieved (or fails)—​here, there, and everywhere—​are infinitely more interesting than the mere assertion of, and tacit resignation to, a taken-​for-​g ranted state of affairs or some elusive structural megalith. Imagine lamenting there goes capitalism! or racism, for that matter, rather than calling on class and racialization as potent analytic tools for understanding 123

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how economic injustice and white supremacy come together in politics. Like it or not, patriarchy is knotted right up in there with them. Patriarchy is not its own cause. Pronouncements of it, however regretful, do not explain why men and masculinity dominate anything. Patriarchy is simply a placeholder for the effects of concrete gendering practices we have yet to describe in detail. I think it’s time we start specifying them, and New Populism is as good an occasion as any. Actually, it’s better, because it’s clamoring for our attention.

“… the hyper-​masculinity bit is only on the fringe” Defense: Gender extremists may be attracted to New Populism, but they remain on the periphery. Refutation: The ‘fringe’ is no fluke. At the heart of New Populism is a return to gender normativity and, specifically, the naturalized gender binary. This nucleus is derived from pro-masculinist extremism, not simply compatible with it. The periphery has become the core.    

This defense takes both a popular and scholarly form. We’ll start with the popular version, which depicts all the pro-masculinist groups enticed to New Populism—​and there are many—​as extremist outliers to the movement. We’re talking here about communities that espouse various anti-​feminist and misogynist ideologies and seek to restore patriarchal models of manhood. In the US, for example, the Proud Boys are best known, thanks to the infamous summons Trump issued during a nationally televised presidential debate (“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by”), then walked back later as if he’d never heard of them.11 The Proud Boys are just the tip of an iceberg, however, which will come into fuller view in Part IV. It is striking—​and disturbing—​how often these ‘fringe’ groups are discussed without mentioning gender.12 Usually, they are referred to as far-​right extremists and/​or white nationalists and supremacists, and clearly, these aspects are important. But the omission of gender—​as if these don’t all go together—​is remarkable, because masculinity is every bit as pivotal (in some cases, more so) to the self-​characterization, membership, ideology, aesthetic, and/​or activities of these groups. When we miss gender, we miss the linchpin that binds these varied groups. Chapter 17 will demonstrate the importance of this point. Yet even when recognized as such, flagrantly masculinist groups are cast as marginal to New Populism. If they are part of the base, as they evidently were in the January 6 US Capitol riots, they must be its extreme edge.13 124

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This core–​fringe division becomes hard to maintain once you admit the evidence that gender gives a through line to New Populism. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just tune in to the common refrain that binds its many variants. Across the world, in diverse settings, gender features prominently on the grievance hit list.14 The specific complaints can differ and sometimes conflict, true to the multiplicity of New Populism.15 One common form they take is anti-​genderism, which belittles left-​leaning discourse about gender identity in a number of ways, for example, as newfangled, needlessly complicated, politically motivated, patently false, or morally destructive. Anti-​genderism depicts feminism, queer theory, and the like as elite forms of dubious ‘expertise’ that have invaded and corrupted the mainstream establishment. It flips the gaze of gender studies, staring down academic efforts to denaturalize and politicize gender norms, and finding them guilty of the very charges they levy against society. Anti-​genderism holds that gender theorists and activists are the ones who peddle gender ideology, or “genderism.” Gender Studies is the real swindler, passing off as education and enlightenment what are really threats to human nature and culture. The resulting polarization of gender—​such that any effort to discuss it from a pro-​feminist stance can be dismissed as another swipe from the politically correct elite—​is exactly why I moved to defuse gender in Part I. New Populist anti-​genderism has been enormously successful. It has prompted even me—​a feminist scholar from the left—​to roll my eyes at what can feel like gender virtue contests. Anti-​genderism is a close relative of anti-​feminism, which specifically targets women’s movements for wreaking all manner of cultural and economic havoc. Again, it is worth noting that most New Populisms align feminism with the establishment elite, and many go so far as to cast feminists as enemies of The People. Recall the ‘manhole’ meme from Chapter 11, which brushed feminism as the purview of privileged white women (a critique appropriated from feminists of color), in contrast with a working class embodied by downtrodden white men.16 With regular portraits like this, New Populism leaks its gendered interests. In contrast with anti-​feminism—​yet sometimes, at the very same time—​ New Populism is known to invoke feminism as justification for discrimination against undeserving Others. Many variants promote ethnofeminism and femonationalism, for example, which treat gender liberation as a pillar of civilization that undergirds racial, ethnic, and religious supremacy. ‘They’ threaten to undermine the hard-​won freedoms of ‘our’ women, which prove our superior civilization. It’s tempting to belabor the contradictions here, but many others have drawn them out well. Suffice it to say that a racist and sexist colonial trope is perpetrated in the name of feminism: the vulnerable white woman in need of rescue from the menace of shadowy, primitive men. 125

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Equally puzzling are parallel conservative strands of gay and lesbian rights. Homonationalism, for instance, defends nativism and xenophobia by accusing racialized and/​or religious Others, such as Muslim immigrants, of regressive intent to retract the civil(ized) rights of ‘our’ gay brothers and sisters. Again, the ironies abound. In yet another about face, some New Populist strains use feminism to authorize suspicion of LGBTQ+​identities, as with claims that cis women’s rights are threatened by trans rights. Of course, ‘cis women’ is the vocabulary of genderism, in this view, because women only come in two kinds (which really means one), real or fake. Real women are given by nature, and fake women threaten their rights and safety. Witness the frenzy over gendered bathrooms in the US, the furor over trans people (especially trans women) in sport, and the tidal wave of legislation proposed and passed to monitor and ensure children’s gender-​ normative development.17 Unmistakably, these are New Populist ‘achievements.’ There may be no more compact example of how New Populism wields feminism as a weapon against Others than Marjorie Taylor Green, a US Republican congresswoman whose successful 2020 campaign said basically this: Support gender equality by electing the first woman to hold this seat … so she can fight for our Anglo-​Saxon values as well as the gender nature intended. *** If you’re searching for the common thread I promised across these haphazard and conflicted positions, here it is: the return of gender convention. A hallmark of New Populism is that it is hell-​bent on reclaiming gender normativity, or ‘normal’ (read: natural, commonsense) gender arrangements to which society ‘should’ default. The details can vary widely across settings because normativity is defined by however The People, as articulated in a given place, ‘naturally’ understand gender. New Populism flaunts the gender ‘low,’ whatever that may include in particular locales and cultures. Whether it’s preserving the bathrooms God intended in the US, abolishing gender studies programs in Brazil and Hungary, creating ‘LGBT free zones’ and ‘family charters’ in Poland, charging feminist anti-​violence groups with degrading the family in Turkey, the rise of virulent anti-​feminism in South Korea, upholding feminism for ‘natural-​born’ or white women only here, queer rights reserved for ‘first occupants,’ or denied altogether, over there—​the point is for “raw,” rather than “cooked,” renditions of gender to regain status as the established norm.18 I’d almost be disappointed if New Populism did not yield such lively variations on gender, given its celebrated flexibility. But don’t let these variants fool you, for they are bound by a shared interest. The quest to reinstate the gender binary as the basic, innate, and intuitive order from which The People proceed is the through line. Put bluntly, 126

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anti-​genderism is a transnational movement, which also goes by the name of New Populism. New Populism attracts pro-masculinist extremists because it adopts much of their credo at its core. I mean that in the most literal way. This affiliation is no accident. It is far tighter than most folks seem to grasp and goes well beyond shared fondness for the naturalized gender binary. Many New Populist issues and talking points—​some plainly related to gender and sexuality, some not—​ originate with masculinist communities, or first find traction and energy there. Part IV will demonstrate this beyond a doubt, so a hint will do for now. You may not remember (why would you?) the source of the ‘manhole’ meme described in Chapter 11 and mentioned again a moment ago. As a refresher, it came from the Gamergate storm of 2014, when anti-​feminist gamers launched an online assault on women and feminists in the gaming industry.19 Tossed around the ‘halls’ (filament) of the web, the opposition of gender identity versus class took on charge and momentum. More on this phenomenon in Chapter 17. For now, we can say this much with confidence. Gender extremism is not an aberration for New Populism. Nor is it a fringe element pulled toward a magnetic core. This is not a case of moth drawn to flame. New Populism is a heat source made by the moth. “Not sure about all that, but I guess it can wait for Part IV. Meanwhile, you know why else the cause of New Populism can’t be gender? Because …”

“…populism doesn’t permit it” Defense: Populism is majoritarian, the opposite of identity politics. It is antithetical to gender-based movements. Refutation: The analytical distinction between populism and identity politics is not empirically sound, because New Populism is about gender, often at the level of content, and consistently at the level of movement.    

This is the academic version of the popular ‘fringe’ defense, and I flagged it way back in Chapter 7 when we were first defining populism (see clue 1). Scholars of populism often dismiss the role of gender on formal grounds—​based, that is, on an incongruity of form.20 Populism is a majoritarian movement on behalf of a whole, The People and their general will, whereas gender-​focused movements claim to represent a slice of people and their specific interests. In short, goes the defense, populism is the converse of identity politics. It may say things about gender, but it cannot serve the interests of a particular gender identity. Can’t it, though? You don’t have to dig deeper than we just did to perceive that New Populism really does. Expressly so, as our jog through 127

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anti-​genderism reveals. As sociologist Niels Spierings puts it, gender is “trivotal” to New Populism—​pivotal in that it is preoccupied with gender, yet this focus is downplayed as trivial, a self-​evident baseline, natural law, or common sense by which The People abide.21 The People are forced by elite establishment genderism to restate the obvious fact of the gender binary. Now who does that binary benefit most (as shown in Chapter 3)? So tell me again why gender politics are at odds with populism’s majoritarian politics? Are we saying that The People includes women—​ theoretically, any gender—​so it can’t center masculine interests? We already dealt with that one (see the first defense, ‘women do it too’). Are we saying that populism rejects identity politics in favor of The People, or that The People don’t play identity politics? Or is it that whatever springs from the general will, including gender normativity, cannot be a partial interest? Any of these would be a serious oversight, as we are soon to grasp. Let’s just say, for the moment, that the touted contrast between populism/​ general and identity politics/​particular might be analytically useful, but it does not hold up well against the empirical evidence today. Arguably, the overt gender and sexuality agenda of New Populism is a significant escalation, if not departure, from earlier populisms, which were male-​dominated, man-​centric, and roused by heterosexual virility, but not to this extent. Frankly, either New Populism is not actually populism, or populism can indeed be about gender. Let’s not forget, too, that New Populism need not spout gender content in order to be ‘about’ masculinity. We already established in Part I that plenty of things which neither claim nor appear at first glance to involve gender are riddled with—​even defined by—​gendered sensation. My smile, or Daniel’s mask meltdown. New Populism could be moved by gender in the absence of evident gender content. Recall an incident from Part I, when Trump took to the White House balcony upon returning from the hospital, set his jaw, and tore off his mask. Few bothered to investigate the blaring soundtrack (called “Epic Male Songs”22), but they also didn’t need to … because the music, along with other physical cues, hit the senses just like its hopeful title predicted. No serious observer could review the performance and deny masculinity was pivotal to the point. The point was made through masculinity. Follow me, and you will be endangered no more. Likewise, the masculine aesthetics and energies propelling the US Capitol riots cannot be erased, no matter how much we compare the relative presence of misogynistic men’s groups and angry women.23 If we’re paying attention, New Populism doesn’t make us work hard to discern the vitality of imperiled masculinity. It practically begs us to notice, even when it doesn’t say so outright. It revels in masculinity under siege and lashing back, wants all The People to catch that sensation and swell right along with it. And just in case we miss it, New Populism does say it outright, featuring extensive gender content that makes the matter about as clear as it could 128

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be. The binary’s favored place in New Populist culture wars speaks volumes about the feeling that animates them. Yet somehow, despite this bountiful masculinity substance, gender remains tangential to New Populist analysis for all but a handful of commentators. Only recently have even gender scholars begun to develop a case for cause, with particular emphasis on European New Populisms.24 Otherwise, gender goes scarcely noted or mentioned as an aside, occasionally obvious but with no real bearing. Again, beside the point. “Well, there you go. See? It can’t be gender because …”

“…feminists say so too” Defense: Many if not most gender scholars uphold the contrast between populism and identity politics, conceding that they are incompatible. Refutation: Yes, this is mostly true until lately, and the pattern exemplifies the ‘bad’ habits identified in Part I . But it doesn’t negate my previous point, that the contrast fails the reality of New Populism.

To a stunning extent until recently, scholars who address gender in populism—​ even several feminist scholars—​have accepted the formal incompatibility of populist and gender politics.25 In one breath, they acknowledge that men historically dominate populism and remain its primary actors and audience, and that masculinity typifies populist leadership. In the next breath, they concede that gender is peripheral, because the populist form prohibits identity politics. Hence, they ask such questions as, what is the relationship between the patently separate phenomena of gender and populism? How do women and ‘women’s issues’ fare in populism? The answer is predictably inconclusive: It varies by region, but generally does not seem so promising for women. This defense is partly right, then. Gender scholars have echoed the classic contrast of fractional versus majoritarian politics, calling gender issue-​and identity-​specific against the ideological elasticity of populism. I find this curious. Technically speaking, women are a majority in some populations. This would be true if only cis women were counted, all the more so if trans women and femmes were included. On numbers alone, they could theoretically declare themselves the true yet repressed people—​an “unpresentable other” unfairly subject to the rule of an elite minority, and ready to reclaim their right to self-​governance. The numbers bit may be less interesting, but it hurls us toward a realization that women have done basically this. Feminist movements around the world 129

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have effectively muddied the waters between populism and identity politics by pitting ordinary women as a subordinated majority against a masculine establishment. They have wielded populist tropes to upend orders that render womanly bodies shamefully unfit for public consumption (think: the ‘unpresentability’ of menstruation and breastfeeding), and that require women to submit en masse to the rule of elite men over their own bodies and the health of their children and communities, in matters of law, property, family, employment, and so forth. They have pushed for ordinary women to develop and trust their own knowledge, against masculine expertise. Come to think of it, a great deal of feminist activism fits the positive vision of populism put forth by folks like Thomas Frank.26 And yet, while he sees some movements for racial justice (where men of color are front and center) as populist in character, the prospect of feminist populism—​the best of it geared toward gender, race, sexuality, class, citizenship, and community justice all at once (majoritarian at its finest?)—​seems not to merit consideration. Omissions of this sort help to preserve the opposition between gender and populist politics. As I have already shown, though, the contrast breaks down in real life. Such omissions are understandable, and gender scholars commit them too. We all fall prey to the bad habits of gender analysis discussed in Chapter 3. At our best, we still slip up and align gender with women and ‘their’ concerns, hesitate to regard the overrepresentation of masculinity as fundamental, and miss how feminist organizing has also entailed populist politics. We trip over the gender binary as we strain to get beyond it (I know I do). But let me ask you this. If populism is not about so-​called women’s concerns, whose is it about? I’ll hazard a guess: people unburdened by gender? (Insert knowing cough.) One key lesson from Part I is that everyone is invested in gender in some way, whether they admit it or not. In this light alone, gender is well within the bounds of majoritarian politics. And New Populism comes right out with it. The People want to restore the gender binary. The human fallibility of gender scholars does not erase the practical fact that gender politics are simply not antithetical to populism. “But if we allow that it can be gender …”

“…an important division is lost” Defense: The analytical distinction between populist and identity politics remains relevant, if only as one of degree. Refutation: Actually, the division does more harm than good, because it denies the utility of populism for identity politics that seek to hide partiality under majoritarian cover.    

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Maybe the contrast is one of degree. Gender movements trend toward explicit identity politics, advocating on behalf of a part subordinated by its partial status, which may not be a numerical minority but is in some way minoritized. Populism tends to work in the other direction, advocating on behalf of a subordinated whole, asserting a unified, generic majority across specific social identities. Fair enough; I agree. But (you knew that was coming) … There is still something strange about even this relaxed contrast. As we have already seen, authenticating The People necessarily entails identity positioning of some sort—​r iffs on class, race, religion, region, or some such in relation to citizenship.27 Why exclude gender from that list? For no good reason. I mean, couldn’t a populist movement advance specific identity interests even as it claims not to—​that is, even as it declares generic majority status? Isn’t the populist form exceptionally well-​suited to serving the interests of a part by claiming to be the whole? The universal, not particular, People. Regular folk, like the little guy or the average Joe. And there it is. If you think such expressions are just relics of male generics that no longer carry gender, try substituting gal or Jane as inclusive of the whole. As political scientist Joseph Lowndes recently argued, The People have always been constituted through some gender and race partiality masquerading as universal.28 New Populism just takes it to another level. Exciting new research begins to appreciate the significance of this fact.29 Unfortunately, though, holding on to even a loose contrast between populism and identity politics prevents this budding awareness from growing. So I suggest we let it go. Before this point can blossom in the next chapter, one final defense requires attention. “Perish the thought of gender because …”

“…that would diminish us all” Defense: Class is a hard and potent concern, gender soft and insubstantial. Refutation: This feeling is brought to us by the very gender binary that New Populism seeks to reinstate. Let’s stop pitting class against gender and delve into their relation instead.    

Underlying the routine defenses in this chapter is the subtext that has haunted us all along, and especially here in Part III—​the sure assertion that class concerns are more important than gender, or the uneasy, insistent feeling that surely it must be so. One more time, we’ll chain out the associations. Class =​material, universal, serious, substantial, hard (manly). Gender =​immaterial, partial, 131

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frivolous, narrow, soft (a feminized concern or ‘women’s issue’). Class-​based analysis =​economic, technical, rigorous, vigorous, respectable. Gender-​based analysis =​social, intuitive, simplistic, dare I say limp, worthy of eye rolls. Or as the Gamergate ‘manhole’ meme abbreviates it, gender is the fake (small) oppression of women; class is the real (big) oppression of men.30 People on all sides of the political spectrum can feel this, and I have felt it too. To admit that New Populism is animated by gender risks embarrassing the whole enterprise, populism and analysis of it, and anti-​populism too. This needs to be said out loud. Perhaps most of us—​even many gender and feminist scholars like me—​feel nervous about ‘reducing’ New Populism by redirecting focus toward gender. Class feels more virile, which is to say more valuable. We have covered this ground now, multiple times. You know what is wrong with the contrast, no matter how right it feels. There will be nothing universal about class until we finally tease it apart from masculinity. Until we refuse the gender binary that makes class more potent than other concerns, there can be no liberating class politics for all the people. For New Populism, class politics are identity politics, so we must examine the class-​identity relation more carefully. Underline that. Neither a blight upon democracy nor a cure for its ills, New Populism gives cover to a dis-​ease of dominant manhood that has gone viral in The People’s name—​a pandemic of aggrieved masculinity in which we all have an existential stake. The gameshow category needs fine-​tuning. Instead of Top Seven Reasons You Know New Populism is Not about Gender, how about this? Top Seven Ways We Serve the Intentions of Aggrieved Masculinity by Making New Populism about Class for the Sake of Our Own Sexist Dignity. Or, Top Seven Ways We Join New Populism in Clinging to the Gender Binary. Both options are a mouthful, but more to the point. *** I wish you could see me right now, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, because this chapter took it out of me. Writing it was a good reminder that this book is not the product of a disembodied brain. It pours forth from years spent breathing, ingesting, growing, squirming, and struggling with evangelical New Populism. Decades lost in the living textures of it, absorbing it not as a universal human, but as a girl charmed and possessed by the white masculine ‘low.’ Equally, it is born of the professorial establishment, both the critical, feminist tool belt and the ‘high’ white masculinity it handed me, from which I greatly benefit, and with which I continue to wrestle. In this way, low and high are the same: Neither wants to hear that gender (still) matters. More than we wish it did, or give it credit.

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Identity Politics for the Universal Human Lead with gender to crack the code Class-​forward accounts of cause succumb to the gender intentions of New Populism, no matter how gender-​progressive the analyst may be. Here’s a remarkable case in point.

Strangers’ danger: ‘class’ sympathy, misplaced Arlie Hochschild is a renowned sociologist of gender who, for decades, has given us powerful insight into emotion, work, and family. In her impressive foray into politics, the award-​winning Strangers, she drops numerous observations about gender. The most telling is that women are among the cheaters who sneak into line before their turn. There’s our first clue that women are not the protagonists in this “deep story.” If they are, then how are they cutting in front of … themselves? Sure, women are pitted against each other all the time, but something is off here. Apparently, women are pissed off about moving ahead in the queue, infuriated at the feminists who enabled their advance? The only way that makes sense is if they’re angry on behalf of someone who, thanks to feminism, can no longer move ahead due to gender, namely a man. It turns out that behind every angry woman is an angrier man, as Hochschild seems well aware. Several times, she acknowledges that the deep story envelops “white men and their wives,” and that most women who relate to the deep story do so through men in their lives.1 She even traces the deep story directly to the “fires of history” ignited by movements for gender, race, and sexuality justice, which many white men experienced cumulatively as attacks on them.2 She recognizes that “Trump was the identity politics candidate for white men.”3 Undoubtedly, Hochschild gets that the good guy here is a guy indeed. 133

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And still, she does not put aggrieved masculinity squarely at the heart of a story that is spilling it. Instead, she relegates gender to qualifiers and asides, barely mentioning masculinity. She puts class forward. She validates the class complaint and mostly keeps a lid on the gendered odor it covers up. She asks us to scale the “empathy wall” to meet it. If someone as attuned to gender as Arlie Hochschild—​an indisputable expert on the subject—​can back away from gendered cause like this, essentially calling for sympathy with aggrieved masculinity, I can certainly see how the rest of us do it. All I am asking is that we do it no more. In effect, I am saying that New Populism is the air-​freshener of aggrieved masculinity. The populist form sweetens the stench and makes it ‘passable’ in both senses, acceptable and communicable. I swear this is about class, it proclaims, preserving a noble way of life for The People, not protecting men’s endangered entitlements. Does that pass the smell test? I don’t think so. Let’s go back to the angry man at the back of that queue. Remind me why he can’t use gender to move ahead? Oh that’s right, he doesn’t ‘have’ gender, because he didn’t want to be weighed down by it. He’s the universal subject! And so he wants to stay.

Aggrieved masculinity finds a beard in New Populism As I write this, another gem zips across my feed. US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene—​a white cis woman “sentinel” for New Populism (to borrow Wilkerson’s apt term)—​just hung a sign outside her office that reads, with original emphasis, “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. ‘Trust the Science’.”4 If you wonder why New Populism is so taken with the gender binary, remember the primary perk it delivers: the ability of certain men to be the generic human protagonist, and for concerns associated with them to seem broadly applicable—​normal, standard, untainted by identity, relevant to everyone. They are not men as men. They are The People and their general will. It is no coincidence that New Populism asserts the gender binary as the essential, natural order from which common sense proceeds (as established in Chapter 13). This precious unmarked status is precisely what is at stake, the sanctity of the self-​contained human and the claim of certain men to own this enviable position. New Populism both banks on and bids to preserve Western Man, the universal subject. At its energetic core is the effort to save this extraordinary privilege from forces like feminism that expose it as a sham. Populism delivers the ideal tools whereby this interest can be advanced quietly—​and in a dignified cloak, no less. Under the banner of populism, manly grievance can reassert itself as identity neutral. The People’s grievance. Populism lets dominant men and masculinity play the wounded 134

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universal subject, which is their identity politics. A political form whose power derives from its majoritarian flexibility—​whose vital force is defined against identity politics—​is the perfect accomplice for this crime. Populism is uniquely equipped to carry off the agenda of those who are unmarked and wish to stay that way. With populism by (on) your side, you can perpetrate identity politics in The People’s name, then use them to deny this could be so. That is why, in Chapter 13, I urged us to drop the common analytical distinction between majoritarian and identity politics. Because it obscures how populism provides a majoritarian game piece with which to play identity politics. In a recent review of US populisms, Joseph Lowndes contends that The People have always been premised on anti-​Blackness.5 The travails of white male “producers” are made virtuous by contrast with a steady stream of “parasitic” racial figures, starting with Black slaves, then Chinese laborers, Mexican immigrants, “welfare queens,” and so on. To be legible, New Populisms draw on these “prior framings of people-​hood” and, thus, “bear the traces of race, gender, class, etc.”6 “For most of US history,” he concludes, “whiteness and masculinity defined the contours of the political imaginary” of populism.7 With the rise of feminism and sexual justice movements, however, gender and sexuality became more central factors. Feminism in particular was blamed for government intrusions into family life and domestic patterns in the name of equality. Since the late 1960s, “The representative figure of populism was an aggrieved white man displaced from his centrality in politics, the workplace, and the home.”8 To witness New Populism as an escalation of this pattern, we must reject the claim that populism is antithetical to identity politics. “Lived categories such as race, gender, and sexuality must be examined not merely as political variables,” Lowndes concludes, “but as fundamental features in the production of populist identities.”9 The pressing gender question is not the one usually asked: How does populism affect women or so-​called women’s issues? Rather, the question is, how are The People constituted through race, gender, and sexuality, among other identities? If we do not, as Lowndes puts it, “widen the horizons of what constitutes the political, and therefore what constitutes notions of the people” in this way, New Populism will pull off the wounded Western Man act and get away with it—​in the good name of class—​again.10 *** While Lowndes describes distinctively American racial dynamics, the overall pattern he discerns is not limited to the US. That pattern? Dominant masculinities take possession of the honorable ordinary class, such that The 135

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People become their pseudonym. Remember, by “dominant masculinities,” I mean those forms of manhood entitled to everyman grievance, the specifics of which vary by cultural location. Chapter 12 laid the ground for this claim: The People of New Populism =​endangered masculinity in disguise, or manly grievance incognito. Every time we dismiss gender as cause, we miss this crucial sleight of hand. Neglecting gender, class-​forward accounts of New Populism not only miss the mark; they (unwittingly) collude with aggrieved masculinity. They take at face value, on its own terms, the claim to be populist—​to actually express the general will of regular people rather than specific identity interests. To catch how this sleight of hand moves around the world, we have to stop leading with class. As we discovered at the end of Chapter 13, this means that we must let go of the gender binary too. For the very reason New Populism seeks to shore it up, we must leave it behind. The binary is getting in our way and clouding our senses, chiefly by confirming our sense that class is manly. For once and for all, we must let go of hard versus soft. It is only by releasing our own lingering grip on the gender binary that we can begin to discern New Populism for what it is: dominant masculinity flexing in the name of The People and screwing us all in the process. This is why, in Chapters 2 and 3, we lingered on the bad habits that acclimate us to the gender binary and prime us to fall for men as universal subjects. It’s why Part I asked you to acquire a taste for gender as sensation instead. For if you dive headfirst—​no, full-​body first—​into the feeling of aggrieved entitlement, you will surely discern it. The only way you can relegate gender to the sidelines of New Populism is to ignore all the sensory evidence and fall back on old habits like these: Assume men and women are two given categories of people, then make gender synonymous with women and femininity, and leave men and masculinity unscathed as universal humans. This is the world New Populists want ‘back,’ and class-​forward analysis gives them cover to pursue it. Yet aggrieved masculinity will continue to desecrate the halls of government, as it already has. It will destroy anything to save the universal subject. Can we learn to halt and redirect our own binary reflexes? If for no other reason, we must do so to witness New Populist cunning and our own complicity in hiding it.

Why gender first? To reveal the transnational sleight of hand … To borrow a cultural analogy, accounts of cause that ignore gender fumble along the elephant’s parts and neglect the sentient creature. Aggrieved masculinity is the voltage that animates New Populism. It is the only constant dynamic across global New Populisms because it is the sensational linchpin. 136

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I am saying something more specific and technical here than it may at first seem, so let me back up and clarify. First, there is no question that the aggrieved entitlement of New Populism entails hierarchies like racial and ethnic supremacy or religious nationalism every bit as much as patriarchy. It would be ridiculous to suggest that gender oppression is somehow the most or more important concern. In no way. A hierarchy of oppressions is not what I’m after. Why foreground victimized masculinity, then? Because the feeling of endangered manhood literally travels, adjusts to, and catches on better across disparate cultures, histories, and geopolitical scenes. Aggrieved masculinity is a highly mobile and infectious passion that readily spreads along sociotechnical networks. It is uniquely equipped to go viral on a transnational scale, because it runs on a binary code that is easy to translate. Compared with the complex regional specificity of racial, religious, and other identity categorizations, the simplicity of the gender binary is readily taken on board and adapted, ‘stackable’—​so to speak—​with all kinds of localized identity dynamics. Of course, gender relations are as intricate and localized as any other identity. To complicate matters, all these dynamics are knotted up together in deeply contextualized ways that are hard enough to tease apart from a cultural “inside” and impossible to fully process from without. What I am saying is that the binary code of gender conveniently flattens all this variety, compressing it into an accessible, two-​dimensional relation that travels well. Concisely, MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED is the transnational binary code by which the pandemic of New Populist feeling makes its way around the world. This is why New Populism cares so much about the gender binary: The binary moves it, in every sense of the term. Aggrieved masculinity is how New Populism finds global purchase and punch. It is not simply one element; it is the energetic circuitry. This is what I mean by calling gender the cause of New Populism, its animating force. *** A fundamental reframe is in order. We need gender-​first rather than class-​ forward analysis. If you wonder why I skipped the obvious parallel term, “gender-​forward,” there is a reason. Class-​forward accounts maintain that class is the most important angle, or at least the best cover term. As already explained, I claim none of this for gender, and far from it. I propose leading with gender for two strategic reasons only: (1) to catch how class gets hijacked by a certain kind of masculinity; and (2) to reveal the binary code that takes aggrieved entitlement global, smoothing its transmission. “Gender first” is not gender only or mainly, nor 137

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does gender remain in the lead. It starts with gender but never ends there and doesn’t linger for long. Use, then refuse the gender binary could be our motto here. Use it to expose the populist alias giving cover to endangered manhood. Then refuse the claim that this is a generic manhood in which all men are included. Put a face and flesh on his skeleton. Color in all the particularities that bring him to life, and name the Others who threaten him. These are equally pressing details; they are simply less communicable—​as in, networkable—​because they are less comprehensible across cultural scenes. In sum, gender comes first to expose the partiality of New Populism, and then we keep right on exposing it by asking which men, what kind of masculinities, are under siege. Use the binary against itself, to unravel it. Notice with care, then, how I am claiming that gender comes first. Not that it should replace class, race, religion, or anything else as the main inequity of concern. Rather, it is hugely revealing to begin with gender, so you can expose the disappearing act that makes The People’s aggrieved entitlement so captivating and contagious. Gender-​first analysis catches and counters the New Populist sleight of hand, then follows with a requisite slide toward specificity. It doesn’t dwell for too long just on gender because masculinity never works alone. Wherever it animates populist anger, we must be relentlessly precise about the sort of men and masculinity seeking reinstatement.

… in all its regional specificity As a reminder from Part I, masculinities evolve in context, through concrete practices of living. Notions and habits of manhood develop differently in different places; they take root in locales. Thus, gender-​first analysis requires regional specificity. This is another way to affirm what scholars refer to as an intersectional approach.11 Gender first is never gender by itself. As we have said from the beginning, gender is entangled with all kinds of relations like race, sexuality, class, religion, and much more. The goal is not to choose a primary factor but to hold them all together, because that is how they operate, in tandem. Region is a factor like these, distinct for attending to the where of identity, its embeddedness in some place or cultural scene. The reason I stress regional specificity is pragmatic. It’s a handy way to hold onto both the intersections and movement of identity—​that is, the transnational circulation of aggrieved masculinity and its translation into regional New Populisms, plural. Of course, manhood is plural within region too. Multiple masculinities co-​exist in any place and time. Friction as well as alliance can arise among varieties of manhood, but they tend to relate through hierarchy. Those nearer to (but not at) the top are the ones most likely to claim crisis. Gender-​first 138

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analysis tracks their momentum as a pressing force of history we can’t keep ignoring. Modeling this is the task of Chapter 15. The regional specificity of manly grievance is why I keep saying “dominant masculinity,” then tripping over myself to allow for its diverse forms around the world (dominant masculinities), most of which—​I freely admit—​I don’t know. I think we can safely say that most of them are cisgender and heteronormative, but those terms hail from my own cultural context, so they may break down in others. Maybe you’ve also noticed that I want to specify white and Christian, since these are crucial in my region. But mine is only one corner with an outsized cultural presence. It is not possible, much less responsible, to project from one area. Only certain Americans would be so arrogant (I can hear some readers rightly object).

Keep ‘Karen’ honest: decentering the US case while combing it for clues Here enters another elephant, and let’s not fumble along its parts or mince words. Clearly my senses are best attuned to a North American and, specifically, US register. No matter how much I have researched elsewhere, this is where I am steeped, sociophysically speaking. It is absolutely essential to decenter my location if we are to grasp New Populism in a way that honors its regional mutations and variants. This is why I keep asking how it goes where you are. I mean to cultivate contextual sensitivity, mine as much as yours. By insisting on the regional specificity, and resulting limitations, of my own analysis, I’m trying to buck a bad habit, which is to argue from the US case as if it’s generalizable instead of the partial, situated example it is. The imperative of doing so is not only empirical; it’s ethical. It goes beyond a desire to paint an accurate or fair picture of global New Populisms. ‘My people’—​which, this time, means those of us in the West and global North, especially those of us who inherited a colonial and/​or imperial gaze—​have a noxious ethnocentric tendency to project ourselves onto other worlds of which we are ignorant. Inevitably, I too harbor this tendency, which white women are known to carry out with their own toxic twist, well-​captured by the ‘Karen’ meme.12 As Karen is my given name, I figure it’s best to surface this matter for inspection rather than pretend it’s not there. Decentering my location thus means several things at once: my geographical location and the global power it wields, my white colonial settler’s gaze, my ethnocentrism, and my inevitable racism and sexism, among them. To admit the obvious, I don’t know enough of other worlds to be certain. I’m reasonably confident I’m on to something here, but I can’t pretend to be sure of its contours. 139

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This book is a genuine question, not a dogmatic declaration. After all that has been said so far, can you detect aggrieved masculinity in your midst? If so, how so? Please complicate my rendition of New Populism by perceiving it where you are. Try on a gender-​first frame, and help make it better. It is in this spirit—​confident yet aware of my limitations and inviting you to check me—​that I proceed. I wrote this book, after all, to open a conversation while it can still matter, rather than wait around for some impossible perfection. With considerable humility and caution, I suggest we hone our collective skill at naming masculinity where it prefers to go unnamed, when it desires to be both invisible and powerfully felt. To address New Populism, we need gender-​first analysis. The next chapter gives it a try.

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Not Another Masculinity Crisis Hijacking class, from Fight Club (1999) to Joker (2019) Once we gain clarity on how New Populism moves—​or whose anger propels it around the world—​we are compelled to reconsider the leading answer to why it came about. This was the question of “probable cause” that opened Part III: What led to New Populism? What is its motivating history? The reigning answer puts class forward: Neoliberal economics, cultural ostracism, and the changing demographics of opportunity brought us here, and the socioeconomic displacement of the (white) working class is what needs attention. Part III has shown this answer to be misleading, in need of serious qualification. As long as class inequality is in the clutch of manly grievance, we are in no position to address it well. What first needs attention is that catchy feeling of endangered manhood, the sense that men of a certain sort are the oppressed class. For this, we need to answer with gender first. This chapter demonstrates what gender-​first analysis can look like. It narrates ‘how we got here’ differently, through a ‘crisis’ of masculinity that essentially stole class to serve its own interests. As that hints, I do not abandon the tale told by class-​forward accounts, but I do include what they omit—​the storied past of manly grievance that is integral to the current picture. Class-​forward histories of New Populism must be read with a big asterisk, and gender-​first analysis supplies it. Aggrieved masculinity has a history of its own or, I should say, many histories. The claim that some deserving manhood is imperiled has been asserted over and again, across place and time, to great effect. Predictably, these claims of crisis invoke class in ways that endorse its manliness. Class gets tethered to a certain kind of masculinity, to which people then default at the very mention of class. Like this, class is hijacked

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in the service of manly entitlement. Put simply, aggrieved masculinity has a long and varied history of usurping class. In this light, New Populism is not so new after all, and class-​forward accounts are content to repeat this pattern. To interrupt it, we must keep the crucial elements of that history together—​gender without losing class, both without losing race and other vital factors. We need intersectional accounts of how class and masculinity get tied up together. Remember (from Chapter 14) that gender-​first analysis holds these elements together through regional specificity. It leads with gender to behold New Populism as a transnational heist of class powered by the binary. It then turns at once to identify the particular variants of endangered manhood flattened by that binary. As soon as we detect aggrieved masculinity, the very next question is which men it prefers. What kind of masculinity wants restoration to its rightful place? Starting with gender thus sharpens our analysis of class by pushing us down a path toward specificity. All along, I have reassured hesitant readers that gender-​first analysis does not leave class behind. Now we are beginning to see that the reverse is true: Class-​forward analysis does leave gender (and other factors) behind and suffers for it. What follows is a regionally specific analysis of class seized in the possession of white masculine entitlement. As before, mine is a US-​focused tale, but because the cultural artifacts that anchor it exceed US borders, many readers may recognize their contours. Still, notwithstanding its oversized cultural influence, regionally specific. By the end it will be clear that, when it comes to American class inequality, there is only one thing to say to aggrieved masculinity. Stop the steal.

The healing wounds of Fight Club: men entitled to class politics Twenty years ago, I began to study the history of masculinity ‘crises’ with my colleague Lisa Flores.1 We came together in curiosity about a kind of film that blossomed in the 1990s—​g raphic portrayals of white professional men in crisis. In case this doesn’t ring a bell, think Falling Down (1993), Glengarry, Glen Ross (1992), Disclosure (1994), Wolf (1994), In the Company of Men (1997), Office Space (1999), American Beauty (1999), Fight Club (1999), The Big Kahuna (2000), Boiler Room (2000), and Old School (2003), to name just a few. Films like this echo sentiments from anti-​feminist men’s movements. For those less familiar with that history, a quick run-​down will do.2 Gender-​ based social movements for men arose in the 1970s, mainly in response to feminism, but also other movements for racial and sexual justice that challenged masculinity, especially the white and straight kind long idolized 142

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as the quintessential American man. Beyond critique, they made direct asks of men who fit this bill—​for self-​reflection and humility; for willingness to part with, or tactically utilize, their privilege; for alliance in bringing about equity. The response splintered into pro-​and anti-​feminist camps. Pro-​feminist groups, like the National Organization for Men against Sexism (NOMAS), shouldered what they took to be men’s work toward gender equity. Tasks like fighting sexual and gender-​based violence; grappling with their own sexism, racism, and homophobia; and coming to terms with what would soon be called toxic masculinity. Other groups similarly explored manhood, though not always in sympathy with feminism. The mythopoetic men’s movement, inspired by the late Robert Bly’s Iron John, tended to male wounds inflicted by industrial capitalism and related forces.3 The idea was to reclaim a sense of brotherly connection through communion with nature and spirit. Then there were the anti-​feminist, pro-masculinist groups, who doubled down on traditional masculinity and declared it a natural order under fire by feminism. Whereas NOMAS and the mythopoets disagreed but dialogued, anti-​feminists struck an oppositional pose. They laid the groundwork for an identity politics for straight white men, who they said now suffered more discrimination than women. Men’s and father’s rights groups became spaces of affiliation and advocacy for men reeling from the loss of a man’s world and longing to retrieve it. Most of my family gravitates toward this anti-​feminist view, and I was raised to do the same. The recent history of aggrieved masculinity in the US begins here, with men’s movements of the pro-masculinist variety. By the early 2000s, though, this material felt stale to teach. Readily, students grasped the relevance of women’s movements a century old, but men’s movements felt archaic to them. This, despite a renewed surge of activity. Militias were thriving, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had put Timothy McVeigh squarely in the public eye. Anti-​government action like this was generally dubbed domestic terrorism or white nationalism, so the close connection to men’s rights went mostly unnoticed. Young men in my classes rolled their eyes at extremists and chuckled at the mythopoets. These dudes were either crazy or crusty, they said. Mention Fight Club, however, and they snapped to attention—​and still do. A conformist who awakens from the coma of corporate life to release his bad-​ass self through mutual pummeling among men? Now we’re talking. Fight Club became my gateway to relatability, and what I learned is that these largely white and (upper) middle-​class men feared their future careers would deaden their souls. Corporate jobs are antithetical to feeling like a man, which is to say alive. So much for the virility of Wall Street (1987).4 Was this some sort of budding class consciousness? 143

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Around this time, ample gender scholarship hailed the unfolding turn of the 21st century as another manly watershed. Much of this research talked of tough guys, hard bodies, whiteness, and the alienated working class, with little mention of white/​collar (white and professional) manhood.5 Digging around, Lisa and I found a similar crisis among white professional men proclaimed at the turn of the 20th century. Historian Anthony Rotundo documents a shift in dominant masculinity during the 1900s, from a manhood rooted in communal obligation to one forged through capitalist achievement.6 Two elements of this shift stirred particular anxiety: Did office work repress manly vigor, and did white women’s intrusion on the public sphere emasculate men?7 By the late 19th century, the answer to both was yes; capitalist manhood faced a dire crisis of overcivilization. The diagnosis was “neurasthenia,” a nervous disorder credited to excessive mental labor. The period between 1880 and 1910 saw an outbreak of male cases. At high risk “were middle-​and upper-​ class businessmen and professionals whose highly evolved bodies had been physically weakened by advances in civilization.”8 Enter ‘working’ class politics (as in, stemming from conditions of work) for class privileged men. Bookending the 20th century, then, are claims of masculinity in crisis that hand class politics to entitled men, or said another way, entitle well-​off men to class politics. By the turn of the 21st century, their nervous illness had become more of a social malaise. But the main thing that changed was the goal of treatment. Neurasthenics were generally treated with doses of the ‘primitive’—​ contact with nature, animal skins, ‘savage’ virility (hear the blatant colonial overtones), anything to restore male passions. Our films featured parallel treatments: white corporate men restoring potency through encounter with the ‘primal’ bodies of working-​class and racialized men. The big difference was the purpose of such encounter. The present crisis showed little interest in healing. The point, if there was one, seemed to be honing one’s capacity for injury—​to feel pain over and over, rise to and relish it. Fight Club epitomizes this. Hit me again and watch me shudder with orgasmic delight. “Healing wounds,” Lisa and I called them—​wounds that ‘heal’ not by recovering, but in the continual act of sustaining and surviving them.9 Nursing them, really. Fresh and festering grievances that make us stronger, turn our whimpers into the bellowing roar of a deserving yet oppressed class. Endlessly under siege and on defense—​a new mode of impermeability. Class grievance for white/​collar men. Back then, we found this curious. Maybe it could round the corner from self-​absorbed complaint to capitalist resistance? Clearly not. Cut to the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, because that’s where it went instead, right and farther right.10 Those healing wounds of the early 2000s now rose from the suburbs and spewed from the White House. Manly 144

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grievance tugged on all kinds of people I knew and loved, who converged on a sense that the feminized left, epitomized by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, choked the little guy’s speech and opportunity. How did it take this turn? How did a crisis of masculinity go mainstream?

Try populism! It removes those tough gender stains In Angry White Men, Michael Kimmel documents the intensification of outrage among many American men during the first decade of the 21st century.11 Useful for our purposes is how he links white masculinity to early signs of New Populism. A chapter on “manufacturing rage” delves into the role of “outrage media,” a term borrowed from sociologist Sarah Sobieraj and political scientist Jeffrey Berry to capture a network of talk-​radio and cable news shows, blogs, and such that capitalized on a gnawing sense of unease.12 Starting in the late 1980s and gaining serious steam by the early 2000s, this network began to tap into white men’s grief over their changing relationship to the American dream. This grief could have gone in many directions, but outrage media directed emotional traffic toward anger, which cashed out in political capital, among other ways. These “conductors” and “choirmasters,” epitomized by the late Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, offered “a prescription for political Viagra.”13 Kimmel draws a direct line from here to the Tea Party. Based on his empirical research with the latter, he concludes that “the theme of their agitation, the motivation for their mobilization, is a desire to restore or retrieve a sense of manhood to which they feel entitled.”14 Overwhelmingly populated by men, the Tea Party became a primary political outlet for their freshly activated rage, and the presence of women supplied plausible deniability. The Tea Party dished up content on which to train manly resentment as well as infrastructure to move it along, from pubs and living rooms to public office and legislation. Funneled through the Tea Party, white manly grievance shed its blatantly gendered skin, morphing into a majoritarian, populist politics, available to the masses and fit for prime time. In essence, the Tea Party was a form of gender-​laundering that helped pave the way for aggrieved entitlement to win the 2016 presidential election. Yet even now, Kimmel’s words ring true, that “few observers notice the gender of these vitriolic legions. … It’s not ‘Americans’ who are angry; it’s American men. And it’s not all American men—​it’s white American men.”15 As he explains, It is through a decidedly gendered and sexualized rhetoric of masculinity that this contradiction between loving America and hating its government, loving capitalism and hating its corporate iterations, is resolved. Racism, nativism, anti-​Semitism, antifeminism—​these 145

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discourses of hate provide an explanation for the feelings of entitlement thwarted, fixing the blame squarely on ‘others’ whom the state must now serve at the expense of white men. The unifying theme is gender.16 If you find this hard to believe, or intangible, take a quick look online at a 2016 book by ClashRadio.com host Doug Giles, entitled Pussification: The Effeminization of the American Male, whose table of contents reads like a New Populist brochure.17 [His other titles include If Masculinity is “Toxic” Call Jesus Radioactive—​a sure crowd-​pleaser where I come from.18 But I digress.] A somewhat muddled class argument haunts Angry White Men. On the one hand, Kimmel says aggrieved entitlement responds to economic decline and the shrinking opportunity gap between white men and Others. On the other, he admits it is “an anger that knows no class,”19 bonding white men across “enormous class differences”:20 The white working class and the white middle class have rarely been so close emotionally as they are today; together they have drifted away from unions, from big government, from the Democratic Party, into the further reaches of the right wing. Together they listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. And together they watched Brad Pitt initiate Ed Norton into “Fight Club,” searching for something—​anything—​that would feel authentic, that would feel real. Middle and working-​class white men—​ well, they just are beginning to actually understand each other.21 This is precisely where Fight Club comes in, I’d say—​as a cultural touchstone for turning white men into an oppressed class across class. The film puts white/​ collar men at the heart of this new ‘working’ class politics, the protagonists of a masculinity crisis that spans occupational and financial differences.22 *** Curiously, Angry White Men describes the end of white men’s entitlement as a done deal: Make no mistake: the future of America is more inclusive, more diverse, and more egalitarian. The choice for these men is not whether they can stem the tide; they cannot. … Their choice is whether they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future or walk openly and honorably into it.23 Come again? In an updated preface to the 2017 version, Kimmel dials back this sunny forecast but clings to its arc of inevitable progress, reducing Trumpism to “a valedictory lap around the field.”24 146

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This is where I must part ways. I see no evidence that New Populism is the last gasp of a dying breed. As Part IV will show, the global circuits of transmission have never fired so furiously, nor have the stakes been higher. Manly grievance isn’t waning; it’s raising the roof. If anything, that is the crisis at hand. *** Allegory can help, so let’s put it this way: The two-​decade arc from Fight Club (1999) to Joker (2019) does not bend toward justice. Quite the contrary, it shows aggrieved masculinity as a booming industry.

Joker pulls no punches, and gender-​first analysis takes the gloves off Since the early 2000s, the streak of films (and other cultural texts) about dominant masculinity, wounded and lashing back, continue unabated. Long ago they skipped the bounds of fantasy, as Angry White Men painfully records. I close this gender-​first analysis on one of them, not because I think a single artifact says much of anything, but because the sore spots this one triggered are so telling. Everything about Joker—​from the feeling that evidently spurred it, to the plotline and execution, to the feverish reception, to its bevy of Oscar nominations—​represents the movement of New Populism. I don’t just mean represent, as in symbolize or portray. I mean re-​present, as in do it all over again. Joker and events surrounding it are the New Populist downrising to a tee. Billed as a standalone film—​adjacent to yet independent from the Batman comic series—​Joker tells an alternative origin story behind the infamous “Joker” villain. Meet Arthur Fleck, son of Penny, who once worked for Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce Wayne the eventual Batman. Introductions out of the way, let’s cut to the chase.

It’s a masculinity crisis, and you know who’s to blame From the film’s first moments, we see Arthur in dire straits. Harassed and battered by men, scolded and rejected by women. Living with his mother and beholden to social services. Tenuously employed in the clown gig economy. Arthur is a nonentity—​abandoned, invisible, and reviled. He can’t do anything right, and his attempts are creepy. He moves around like a punching bag, slumped. He sounds like a vulnerable boy with a soft, high-​pitched voice. He’s emasculated to emaciation; the camera lingers on his gaunt spine and scrawny sinews. Worse, he has a mental condition that causes him to laugh ‘inappropriately.’ Arthur’s haunting laugh is played to the hilt throughout the film and delivers its most unnerving sensation. It’s a painful, ominous cross of amusement, 147

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agitation, despair, and barely bottled-​up rage—​disconcertingly off, to put it mildly. Impossibly, this guy aspires to be a stand-​up comedian. Arthur is smack in the middle of a masculinity crisis, his manhood so badly damaged that his life is in peril. In case you miss this, the film blurts it out. An early scene shows Arthur fantasizing that living with his mother is an honorable sacrifice, not a man-​child punchline. The imagined audience, once laughing at him, applauds respectfully. Later fantasies include winning the affection of an unlikely love interest, who no longer recoils from him. You get the idea. Failed manhood is measured by how far you fall behind, and women and Others are used liberally to make the point. At work, he and a little person are the butt of other clowns’ jokes.25 Only men of color beat him up in the streets, and a clown colleague calls them “savages” and “animals” who just want to “take everything from you.” For a film untiringly trained on a despondent white man, people of color feature prominently, and conspicuously so. Black women occupy nearly every female role except mother. A Black social service worker implies that he is beneath her. How did Arthur, a boy who was “put here to spread joy and laughter,” end up at the back of the line, just as in Hochschild’s Strangers?

The People of Gotham City I’ve neglected to introduce the second most important character, Gotham City itself. Dark days have descended even by Gotham standards. A garbage strike puts the stench of antagonism between haves and have-​nots out in the open for all to smell. Class disparity and antipathy runs wild. Every interaction is made squalid, with the help of unchecked graffiti and flickering lights, hints of budget cuts and failing systems. The film is vaguely set in the 1980s, an allusion to the start of neoliberal economics maybe, or a nod to a grittier New York City. In any case, The People live in misery and desperation while the elite—​ Thomas Wayne, their personification—​live smugly apart. Class condescension hits a crest when Wayne declares publicly that “there’s something wrong with those people,” but “I am here to help them. I’m going to lift them out of poverty, make their lives better. That is why I’m running [for mayor].” “They may not realize it, but I’m their only hope.” There goes the ‘high’ again, claiming to know what The People need better than they do. While Arthur longs for many things—​a kind word, romance, any show of warmth—​what he wants most in the world is to make people laugh. Of all the beatings he takes, the one that smarts the most is being told, repeatedly (even by his own mother), that he isn’t funny. He ducks into comedy clubs, where we overhear faceless schmucks doing sexist bits, yet Arthur’s eerily childlike act can’t catch a chuckle to save his life. Undeserving alphas get all the attention, while worthier betas get none. 148

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But Arthur will have the last laugh, as an improbable scenario unfolds. He becomes a class hero, the icon of The People’s stand against the elite. How, you ask? Good question, because Arthur is apolitical, wrapped up in himself: “I don’t believe in anything.” Dejected on the subway, in clown regalia, Arthur finds himself in a car with three drunken white men in business suits—​more alpha types!—​ harassing a woman who shoots him a desperate glance. No hero to the rescue, Arthur is instead overcome by his laughter condition, which distracts the alpha men, redirecting them toward him. With a mocking rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” they beat him to a pulp. I don’t mean to ruin the suspense, but … he snaps and shoots all three. Suddenly he is reborn with swagger, a deeper voice, puffed chest, new girlfriend, dancing feet, and endless cigarettes. Enter the class hero with zero class consciousness. “Kill the rich: A new movement?” asks one headline. In a televised interview, Thomas Wayne equates the clown killer with The People of Gotham: “Those of us who made something of our lives will always look at those who haven’t as nothing but clowns.” So The People hit the streets in clown masks, hailing Arthur as inspiration. *** Hold up for a second. The People are “nothing but clowns,” so they protest in clown masks. Are you kidding me?! Could there be a more apt metaphor for flaunting the low? But it gets better … or worse. At one point, an apparently Black man in white clown face angrily decries elite denigration of the ‘low.’ “Fuck Thomas Wayne!” he yells. “That’s what this whole thing is about, the whole system!” Alongside him, protestors wage class warfare under Arthur’s clown facade, the mask of white masculinity wronged and dangerous. Only Arthur’s too caught up in his own wounds—​ and image on TV—​to care about their fight. Honestly, there may be no better allegory for this book. Like so …

Nihilistic confessions of the narcissistic pufferfish To become the movement’s protagonist, all Arthur had to do was puff up in self-​defense, like Daniel in Chapter 4 and pufferfish (they’re back!) in Chapter 10. Unleash his rage and avenge personal grievances. Focus, that is, entirely on his own injuries amid a world crumbling from class inequity. Arthur engorges with the pleasure of what he started, like he can’t believe his fortune. The movement is about him, he thinks, and he tunes into politics only as they reflect on his growing fame. Finally, he tells his disinterested social worker, people are starting to grant me the attention I deserve. 149

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Chronicling his grievances and nursing his wounds, he goes on a rampage. A negligent mother caused your mental illness? Snuff her out. That guy says things you don’t want to hear? Choke him. These blokes think they can make fun of you? Slay them point-​blank. The ‘joke’ he finally lands, on live TV no less: “You know what you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fucking deserve!” Much has been made of how the film treats mental illness, but this feature is more utilitarian than anything else. The card he carries (literally) to notify people of his diagnosed condition serves mostly to certify that this upside-​down world is enough to drive a man insane, and whatever he does to set it right is not exactly his fault. Arthur’s illness steps up the sympathy. Unsurprisingly, blame for his condition lands in the lap of a woman, his mother, who failed to protect young Arthur from the domestic violence she too suffered. If you have any remaining doubt that Joker professes (confesses?) aggrieved masculinity as class hero, listen no further than the climactic moment when Arthur is about to pull the trigger on his biggest revenge yet: “You think men like Thomas Wayne, men at ease, ever think what it’s like to be a guy like me? To be anybody but themselves? They don’t. They think we’ll all just sit there and take it like good little boys. That we won’t werewolf and go wild.” Well said, Arthur. Men at ease nicely captures New Populism’s slippery relation between class oppression and manly grievance. Certain men should be at ease, so when they feel dis-​ease, that’s class oppression. And upon that utterance, Joker escalates the consensual, communal violence of Fight Club into a lone, nihilistic killing spree.

Arthur is a hired hit man The object of Arthur’s final payback is a famous comedian who he had long admired, but who publicly ridiculed a viral video of his disastrous stand-​up routine. In a rambling manifesto prior to killing this character, Arthur adds the elite regulation of humor to his list of grievances: “Comedy is subjective, isn’t that what they say? All of you, the system that knows so much, you decide what’s right and wrong, the same way you decide what’s funny or not.” Now, about that—​the revered status of comedy in the film. I promised you there would be more than plot to pore over, and here it comes. Joker was written, produced, and directed by Todd Phillips, whose directorial credits include Old School (I love this movie; I cannot lie) and The Hangover (2009, 2011, 2013) trilogy. In case you’re not familiar, these popular comedies feature cadres of mostly white men who take a detour on the road to responsible manhood and devolve into outrageous frat-​boy hijinks. A Vanity Fair feature on Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Arthur Fleck, explains what moved Phillips to conceive Joker: 150

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Phillips had found it increasingly difficult, he says, to make comedies in the new “woke” Hollywood, and his brand of irreverent bro humor has lost favor. “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he says. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—​I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies—​I think that what comedies in general all have in common—​is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but fuck comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.” The result is a drama that doubles as a critique of Hollywood: an alienated white guy whose failure to be funny drives him into a vengeful rage.26 I’m not sure that excerpt needs much debriefing, so I’ll keep it brief. Joker enacts the aggrieved masculinity of New Populism on two levels. The film not only features its performance; the very making of the film performed it. Angst about a strain of masculinist humor getting ‘canceled’ is vented through a film that depicts the utter destruction of anyone who commits this crime. People say straight white guys aren’t so funny anymore? I’ll show them. The ‘victim’ gets the last laugh, that’s for sure. As Arthur exacts his revenge, so does Todd. His scathing indictment of ‘woke’ Hollywood draws 11 Oscar nominations, more than any other 2020 film, including three for Phillips: Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. So much for ‘wokeness,’ unless waking up snuggled in the lap of manly grievance counts.27 Methinks Arthur isn’t the only one inhabiting the entitled universe of aggrieved masculinity. Because here’s the thing: Arthur Fleck could never be Annie Fleck, and not for the obvious reason that the Joker is ‘supposed to be’ a man. Rather, because the mythical Annie Fleck would never think she deserves to be funny. Decades of research on humor, combined with the excruciating experience of countless women comedy-​makers, would engrain in her the opposite lesson: that men, not women, are entitled to be funny.28 Annie wouldn’t dream of casting her failed stand-​up career as a birthright denied, which is precisely how Arthur (or do I mean Phillips?) casts his. I was put here to spread joy and laughter, but the Others took it away from me. Thinly veiled in Phillips’ remarks is both the complaint that women (in the form of #MeToo) have stripped men of their right to be funny and the well-​worn dig that women can neither make nor take a joke, as evidenced by their taking offense. Joker is a two-​hour grievance of his own. 151

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I’m sorry, I can’t resist: Aggrieved masculinity can be somewhat of a drama queen.

The critics are in on it too Joker drew copious commentary before it was even released, and debate raged for months afterward. From this throng of reviews—​from pans of incoherence to decrees of brilliance—​emerged two broad views of what the movie was about. You guessed it: One said gender, the other populism. An explosion of critique framed Joker as yet another film about toxic masculinity.29 Some read it as a clear gesture toward “incels,” or involuntary celibates, a growing online anti-​feminist community of so-​called beta males with whom several mass shooters have identified.30 Others saw it as a screed about, or for, angry white men broadly.31 Commentators in this vein argued over whether the movie sympathized with, incited, criticized, or simply portrayed white men’s increasingly violent anger. Is the film itself dangerous, or a spotlight on a social ill? Beyond the Vanity Fair piece, few if any commentaries explored how the film itself was born of, and gave vent to, the victimized white masculinity it depicts. A second stream homed in on the populist angle.32 For these critics, Joker is about class suffering in the wake of neoliberal economics. The film’s constant play on the double-​sidedness of laughter (tears) and smiles (frowns) captures how late capitalism pacifies people with superficial bursts of happiness and positivity, such that crying and frowning—​simply feeling the pain—​amounts to resistance. Hence the Joker’s mental affliction, twisted laugh, obsessive manipulation of his face, and why he defaced a sign to read, “Don’t forget to smile.” Both streams make good points on their own. But for any hope of addressing New Populism, we must learn to narrate how manly grievance and class operate together so we can pry them apart.33 Critics who put class forward and neglect gender, or who address them separately, pour fuel on the downrising. At minimum, they let aggrieved masculinity get off wearing a populist mask. Ultimately, that is my answer to the question of how to understand New Populism’s motivating history. You have to start with gender to stop the steal.

Unsustainable supremacies: the bloated pufferfish endangers us all This chapter began to chart the recent history whereby class was (re)possessed by white American masculinity in such a way that even well-​off white men can now occupy the heart (read: feeling) of an oppressed class. Mine is a regionally specific history, broadly brushed at that—​far from perfect, but a start. It demonstrates what gender-​first analysis brings into view, lines of 152

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momentum left out of current conversations about class and populism yet absolutely essential to (improving) them. Opening our eyes to these gender trajectories, we can re-​read where New Populism might be going and what sort of response is called for. One clear takeaway from this chapter, for example, is that the main forms of manhood crumbling into crisis are those convinced they belong toward the top—​in the US, anyway. Though this may at first seem counterintuitive, it also makes sense. Any identity staked on so much superiority is unstable, requiring endless reassurance. Admittedly, ‘so much superiority’ is not a technical term, so let me be more precise. I’m referring to three kinds of supremacy that have re-​appeared through the book, so let’s pull them together here. First is an expectation to come ahead of Others—​but not quite first—​in queue. By definition, aggrieved masculinities are not the crest among men, or they’d only have themselves to blame. They depend on injustice from above as much as cheating from below. Affiliating with working-​class men is one effective way to achieve this distance from the upper tier. In Fight Club, the white/​collar leads give up consumerism to live in squalor and organize with blue collar men. In Joker, Arthur becomes the working man’s hero. Such class association brings an aura of browbeaten authenticity, regardless of whether that shoe fits. Another good way to distance from privilege is to paint the top—​ corporate overlords in Fight Club, the class elite (embodied by Thomas Wayne) in Joker—​as a feminizing force, such that white men appear emasculated by feminism, late capitalism, absent fathers and overbearing mothers alike.34 It is only through clever twists like these that Others of all classes—​Arthur’s beleaguered Black woman social worker, for instance—​ are credibly cast as oppressors of white men. It’s the ‘manhole’ meme all over again. A second layer of superiority involves identification with the universal subject—​the generic person at the center of history, the likely protagonist whose plotlines are the stories of humanity, in contrast with the sectarian interests of Others. It is this supremacy that leads entitled men to experience requests to acknowledge their own partial identity as ‘reverse discrimination.’ To be ‘reduced’ to men as men is to be like women, irretrievably gendered. In Kimmel’s blunt terms, “Equality sucks if you’ve grown so accustomed to inequality that it feels normal.”35 A third form of supremacy is most pertinent to the West and places heavily influenced by its cultural flows. This is the pursuit of self-​containment, that foundational fantasy of potent impermeability made by contrast with the penetrability of women and Others.36 If you are entitled to be impervious—​ if you are supposed to be the invulnerable line of defense—​and you are wounded, threatened, shaken, susceptible, under siege? Well, then, no one 153

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is safe. Civilization itself is at risk. Fight Club, Joker, and the like positively strut this lavish conceit. *** The grandiose narcissism fostered by these three supremacies is profound. This is how aggrieved masculinity can credibly assert itself as everyone’s problem, ‘The People’s’ grievance and crisis. This is how it relentlessly claims the center of attention without batting an eye. To refuse this claim, it helps to remember that it’s based on an acute, though not absolute, superiority reserved for only some men. This is why the modifier dominant masculinities is so crucial. Masculinities subject to multiple forms of oppression—​class, racial, and sexual, for example—​are more accustomed to not occupying center stage or skipping to the head of the line. They may still feel entitlement on gender grounds, but the regular experience of imposed inferiority renders them less prickly about every wound and slight. They have less positional security to maintain, fewer guarantees. Put in these terms, we can begin to appreciate how hard it is to uphold dominant masculinity. I’m not being facetious or sympathetic here; I’m simply saying it’s a lot of work. Think of all that must stay in place to hold this precarious order together. Dominant masculinity depends, for example, on the complicity of those it subordinates. Miraculously, this is within reach to some extent. As we’ve already explained, some women, gender-​sexual non-​conformists, and disenfranchised men can always find their stake in it. Dominant masculinity also depends on the continuing cultural resonance of its narratives, which requires not only a steady stream of manly grievance tales, but also their repetitive circulation and traction, such that they suck up all the air(time). If the 2020 Oscars are any measure, this too remains within reach, even in the wake of Hollywood’s #MeToo moment.37 Support like this is far from guaranteed, though, and constant challenge should be expected. Plus, more than a vast army of Others and cultural narratives have to play along to sustain the third form of supremacy, the fantasy of the self-​ contained individual. Even the physical world must comply. COVID-​19 may be its most recent refusal, but more resistance is hot on the trail, like climate change. This is one heavy ego lift, to put it mildly. And it is unrelenting. Thus there is always a threat. The possibility of getting exposed, asked to share, or failed by one reality or another. The probability that any entreaty to ease up on automatic privilege, share in vulnerability or, frankly, share the stage at all will feel like displacement and betrayal, as if coming into contract violation. Anger is likely to follow and boil into rage. So too will insistence on playing by the old rules, which—​to aggrieved masculinity—​feel like the natural, proper order of things. 154

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*** Where am I headed with this? Research on masculinity ‘crises’ depicts dominant masculinity as stable for a time, chafing at some trigger, and finding appeasement.38 Rinse and repeat. In short, crises arise from periodic grievance. I don’t think that’s right anymore. Under pressure from mounting challenges, dominant masculinity is grievance—​not just waiting to happen but happening all the time in heightening intensity. The more it digs in to dominance, the more vulnerable it becomes. Pufferfishery (introduced in Chapter 10) exacerbates this problem yet is the only way to vent and soothe while also denying permeability. So dominant masculinity inflates all the time. Swelling in fear of its own shadow, it grows ever more toxic. From Brad Pitt and Edward Norton’s fisticuffs to the one-​ man horror show that is Arthur Fleck. From the Tea Party to Donald Trump to the Big Lie to … whatever’s next. Aggrieved masculinity accelerates. Never mind what it says when that’s what it does. What we began to understand about anger management (New Populist government by anger) in Chapter 10 is sharpened by a gender-​first account of cause. We pay too high a price for aggrieved masculinity to succeed in its current ‘class’ project. If it runs the world for much longer, it will run it right into the ground. That is the current trajectory of New Populism, for which it makes no excuse or apology. I don’t see any way around it: The human pufferfish must go extinct for the sake of survival. This dysfunctional reflex is increasingly deadly; and if it doesn’t perish soon, the planet will. Reckoning with our fundamental permeability is long overdue and not optional. We will come face to face with it, one way or another. We are already. Part IV explores how we might do so more proactively. I propose an approach that reframes aggrieved masculinity as a public health concern rather than a threat to democracy—​a sociophysical contagion that endangers everyone by manifesting the myth of impermeability. I realize that, earlier, I discouraged apocalyptic readings of New Populism. My pledge to back away from panic remains steadfast. In darker moments, however, I do think aggrieved masculinity is something of a crisis, just not in the way it claims to be. In the US, anyway, the current masculinity ‘crisis’ has raged for roughly 50 years, the duration of my lifetime. Rather than waning as some predicted, or periodically ebbing and flowing, it continues to hit new crescendos as New Populism expands. Surprise may barely register anymore, but concern certainly should. Dominant masculinity is not just in perpetual hazard; it is a perpetual hazard to the world. Aggrieved masculinity spares no one, not even its favored heirs.

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Virality and Virility

16

Culture Wars Can Kill Aggrieved masculinity is a public health problem The end of aggrieved masculinity is neither near nor certain. If these are its last legs, that’s one hell of a stand. Part IV takes up with the fact that manly grievance is on the move, intensifying rather than dissipating. Increasingly, aggrieved masculinity runs the world because it runs around the world, increasing. We have worked to establish two things: one, that anger management—​or government by pufferfish—​is a maladapted reflex that is bad for the world and, two, that a sense of MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED is what sends it around the world. Now it’s time to consider more carefully how a feeling once said to be destined for extinction continues to multiply exponentially, and to ask what else we might do about it. These are the tasks of Part IV, and they are not small. Easy answers will not be found here, but an alternative pathway will. Empathy from the side, lateral empathy, is how I referred to this route from the start. Lateral, in that it goes past The People’s presenting story to the animating force, the propelling feeling that moves them to content. Empathy, as it recognizes our common stake in addressing this spreading dis-​ease and knows that we can’t simply banish those who feel it. Anti-​populism saves no one. Nor does vanquishing this or that pufferfish or expelling those who carry entitled grievance. More than any particular host, it is the feeling of manhood under siege—​the growing agitation itself—​that needs our attention. What kind of attention, and how to wrestle with it, are the questions of Part IV. I will propose a new course of action but stop short of declaring what forms it should take. Others will be more qualified to fill in those blanks, and I say that from a populist sensibility, which makes room for all kinds of knowledge and skill. I don’t pretend to know exactly what we need or who (and what) can best bring it to bear. What I am equipped to offer is a

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doorway. Enter here if you can help slow the spread of aggrieved masculinity and wish to collaborate in doing so. As we proceed, remember that I do not seek to replace existing approaches through direct confrontation or empathy from the front. All hands on deck are needed, I figure. My claim is that a crucial hand has been missing, and that we cannot come to grips with manly grievance until we clasp that hand too. The ‘hand’ I’m referring to is a capacity to better understand the transmission of feeling, or how aggrieved masculinity moves. Recall the mantra from earlier: Less listening to what it says, more tracking how it spreads. To this point, we have cultivated a new line of inquiry and explanation. Now we will think toward action and formulate a missing intervention paradigm, one focused on movement. Let’s step toward it by analogy. Did you think we should cross our fingers and wait for COVID-​19 to dwindle on its own time and terms? Then why would we do so for aggrieved masculinity? *** Understandably, COVID-​19 has many folks thinking in viral terms and slapping a pandemic label on all kinds of social ills. You too may be sick of these parallels, most of which work by analogy. Like a viral contagion. Part IV will develop a pandemic frame that exceeds superficial comparison, but it might help to start there. A pandemic may run its course, but that doesn’t mean you surrender to its will. You figure out how to flatten the curve. Why argue with its need for mobility? Once you know it’s a virus—​imbued with intent and unreceptive to persuasion, placation, or shame—​calling it greedy is a waste of time. A virus doesn’t win by debate, but by claiming more bodies and bending over backwards (mutating, technically) to do so. The nature of the beast is what it does. So you focus on depriving it of susceptible hosts. So be it with aggrieved masculinity, which—​for all its blaring content—​ communicates primarily through communicability. Grappling with a pandemic of feeling, I will argue, means dealing with an actually infectious energy. Said more formally, aggrieved masculinity is a sociophysical contagion that elevates everyone’s risk by doubling down on the deadly myth of impermeability. Typically, it’s the people who spout this feeling that draw the eye and the ire. Lateral empathy begins by bracketing their noise, which distracts from the heart of the matter: Manly grievance is a viral passion to which more and more bodies are succumbing. There is a twisted irony here, which is that the imperative of impermeability passes through permeable bodies. If the language of affliction unnerves you, let me stress again what I hope has been clear from our first encounter with Daniel but nonetheless bears 160

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repeating. I do not mean to cast ‘hosts’ as victims or to validate their grievances. Think: vessels, not victims. As Chapter 15 concludes, the victimization claimed by aggrieved masculinity is based on unjust and unsustainable supremacies. It is thus “real but not true,” which is to say, certainly felt but flatly counterfactual.1 Quite the opposite of validation, my claim is that the sense of threat felt by hosts is all too real, as in physically tangible and transmissible. It is spreading with ease, and this catching quality merits attention. Movement is the frontline of today’s culture wars, and aggrieved masculinity is winning. This chapter catalogues the damage done by its hosts and suggests we stop treating this wreckage as the work of individual perpetrators alone. This is the theme of Part IV: The circuits of aggrieved masculinity need interruption, somehow and soon. *** Thirty years have passed since the notion of culture wars took hold in US political parlance. These days, the man who popularized the term worries that the war part is ever more literal; at stake in these fights is the soul of the country and democracy itself.2 Similar worries about New Populist culture war plague much of the world, as we have already seen.3 Concerns like this—​for the health of public conversations and political systems—​understate the gravity of culture wars today. What is at stake goes far beyond national identity or democracy to public and planetary health, as we began to see in Chapter 10. To treat aggrieved masculinity as an actual (not merely metaphorical) pandemic of feeling, we must begin by admitting that its cultural warfare is a public health problem. This chapter makes that case. There are plenty of objectionable positions and players in the culture wars, and we may endlessly dispute which are most contemptible, destructive to the social fabric, or annoying. You already know that complicity comes from all angles; that’s what the earlier concept of downrising is for. But we cannot entertain false equivalencies here. What sets the cultural warfare of manly grievance apart is that it puts lives at risk. I don’t simply mean that it destroys promising futures. I mean that it kills people, literally, and is perfectly content to smother the earth as well. A public health frame is made just for this. It marks the existence of communal harm and takes practical action to reduce it, guided by maximum care and minimal judgment. Applied here, such a frame would declare that it doesn’t matter whether you empathize or disagree with victimized manhood. Your arguments and sympathies are no match; or rather, they are a match to its flame. The fact is, aggrieved masculinity poses a major public health hazard, and that is what requires our focused attention. This is lateral empathy at work. 161

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Admitting that aggrieved masculinity is a public health problem goes a long way toward relinquishing the gender binary by which culture wars appear ‘soft’ against ‘hard’ class struggle. This chapter caps off our work all along to reject reality as hard or soft. Any doubt that culture wars are consequential will evaporate by the end. Whereas the book until now has emphasized the Wronged in its title, Part IV is addressed to the Dangerous. *** Aggrieved masculinity poses evident and imminent danger to physical and mental wellbeing. This makes it a health problem. To call it a public health problem means something more, that it elevates risk for the population as a whole. Some bodies are more vulnerable, but none are immune. Aggrieved masculinity makes all of us more exposed, subjecting the general public to harm; and it does so through its fervent and aggressive contributions to the culture wars. Mask-​ulinity gives an obvious recent example, but there is sadly much more to say. Some readers may already know that norms of masculinity raise physical risk. Just ask an insurance agent or occupational health and safety official, because their calculations of risk explicitly factor this in. Here, I try to parse the subtle difference between aggrieved masculinity and other kinds that increase risk. This is tricky, and neat distinctions will elude us. Most records don’t track sympathy with endangered manhood, but we will find reliable ways to infer it. Before we begin, please take note of these qualifiers, which anticipate common objections I’d like to clear out of our way: 1. Not all men. I intend no essentializing or blanket statements about men, male-​identified behavior, or masculinity in general. I am not saying that all men or all masculinities pose a public health hazard. Nor am I saying that all who feel manly grievance are prone to violence. Plenty of people won’t harm a flea while they rage. You know by now that I care about the caveats, so let’s not waste time with derailing tactics like ‘not all men are like that’ (NAMALT, for short).4 Correct, and right back to the point: Too many are. 2. Not only men. Nor do I claim that only men engage in the behaviors discussed. The preponderance of perpetrators identify with a certain type of men and masculinity, and this disproportion deserves notice. We have already covered how Others, including women, come to partake in manly grievance. We should expect such exceptions and use them to specify the masculinity in question, as suggested in Chapter 13. 3. Not only manly grievance. Another spin on the first two qualifiers is that I do not limit any of the dangers identified in this chapter to the 162

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purview of aggrieved masculinity. People who do not feel manly grievance may commit these crimes. My claim is that aggrieved masculinity is responsible for a greater share of them and, thus, causes more harm. 4. Other gender identities raise risk and harm too, but … Many gender norms heighten risk and cause damage. Cultural prescriptions for femininity subject many a woman to physical and mental distress. Cis-​ and heteronormativity spike the risk of suicide among LGBTQ+​teens. However, aggrieved masculinity is uniquely dangerous in three ways. It is not (only) self-​directed but, rather, broadly externalized—​cast outward, and often with a wide net. The hazards are more intense, regularly dire and even life-​threatening. And at this point, they are a significant source of chronic risk to the general public. 5. ‘Madmen’ (pun intended) are not lone, deviant individuals. They really aren’t. I’ve made it clear that aggrieved masculinity is a circulating gender imperative that many people feel. So I do not claim that it originates from, or is contained within, those who do its dirty deeds. Again, the ‘host’ concept is critical here because it identifies perpetrators as vessels, not victims. They carry out, or actualize, the intent of manly grievance. For these acts they are accountable. But they are not the original author or source of the feeling that moves them. Repetitive and sustained contact with aggrieved masculinity is what motivates the acts I’m about to discuss. People who commit them should be prosecuted, but they should not be reduced to ‘bad apples,’ ‘sick’ individuals, or isolated actors. They are not self-​contained, as we like to think. The problem is larger than them. 6. This is not only an American problem. As before, my case is made on US data, and the picture elsewhere will be different (guns will play less of a role, for starters). We need regionally specific accounts of both the character and consequence of aggrieved masculinity. Mine is only one such account, and others are underway.5 If you are tempted to deflect or dismiss what follows on these or similar grounds, I urge you to return to these qualifiers and try again. Speed readers, that includes you (wink). *** All we need is enough evidence to substantiate the public health claim, and we can gather it in a few swift steps. First, I consider threats to Others with a capital O, then show how those threats have become generalized and chronic. Next, I review strong evidence that aggrieved masculinity threatens the very men it claims to serve. The feeling of manhood endangered is a very real danger to men, it turns out. Finally, recent data suggest that the threat has reached new scale with the rise of anger management. 163

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Harm to Others: supremacy crimes Sometimes it helps to start close to home. I had planned to begin with big-​picture data, when I heard the news that another shooting spree was underway where I live in Denver, Colorado. As the details unfolded, it became clear that these horrific murders on 27 December 2021 were yet another instance of what I mean to describe here. The shooter was a 47-​year-​old white man who clearly targeted most of the victims. The plot of a book he self-​published eerily resembled the murders, down to names and locations. Five beloved, irreplaceable humans died.6 We can and must bear witness to their tragic loss, a ritual that has become all too familiar across the US. We should also bear witness to something else, a prevalent theme among such shootings that is all too rarely called out. According to local journalist Kyle Clark, between 2018 and 2020, the Denver shooter published a “three-​ book series of what could be described as alpha male sci fi … celebrating brutal violence against the characters’ perceived enemies and graphic sexual assaults.” “His writings are full of alt-​right misogyny,” Clark observes.7 And so should we. Naming aggrieved masculinity as a common killer ought to be part of the grieving ritual. Colorado has seen its share of mass and school shootings. The Columbine High School shooting of 20 April 1999, in which 13 people died, is perhaps the most infamous, but there have been several since: • On 20 July 2012, a gunman who, by some reports, later said he was the Joker8 (!) killed 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora movie theatre. • On 27 November 2015, a gunman killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. • On 7 May 2019, two student gunmen at the STEM School Highlands Ranch shot and killed a student and injured others. • On 22 March 2021, a gunman killed 10 people at a Boulder grocery store. This is not an exhaustive list. Since 1993, in Colorado alone, 52 beloved, irreplaceable humans have died and 125 more have been injured in mass shootings.9 Colorado residents reel from the accrued trauma, but we are not alone. Communities all over the US experience the pain. Here’s a small specimen of the fuller scope of terror: • 16 April 2007, Virginia Tech shooting, 32 killed. • 14 December 2012, Newton, CT Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, 28 killed. • 17 June 2015, Charleston, SC church shooting, nine killed. • 12 June 2016, Orlando, FL nightclub shooting, 49 killed. 164

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• 1 October 2017, Las Vegas concert shooting, 60 killed. • 14 February 2018, Parkland, FL Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, 17 killed. • 3 August 2019, El Paso Wal Mart shooting, 23 killed. • 4 August 2019, Dayton, OH bar shooting, nine killed. • 18 March 2021, Atlanta(-​area), GA spa shootings, six killed. • 26 May 2021, San Jose, CA, Valley Transportation Authority shootings, nine killed. All the events mentioned here, and over 95 per cent of mass shootings, are perpetrated by men.10 What does this say, if anything? Investigators, commentators, and onlookers alike pour over the “senseless” tragedies, sifting through the riddles of these men’s lives for a motive, which often remains unclear. Anymore, I don’t find it fruitful to puzzle over individual motives, though law enforcement must for the sake of some justice. Because in every one of these cases, and countless more, there is clear evidence of manly grievance. That is the sense we need to pick up on. What sort of evidence, you ask? Festering anger and/​or prior violence toward women (they know or just broadly); resentments and/​or insecurities around masculinity (resulting from gender-​sexual taunting or perceived heterosexual rejection, for example); homophobia and/​or hostility toward LGBTQ+​people; anti-​Semitic, white supremacist, and/​or other racist associations; religious supremacy and hate; a keen sense of entitlement wronged or promise betrayed (as in, specific grievances nursed), often coupled with an indictment of and/​or alienation from society; fantasies of righting these wrongs through violence (‘showing them’ who’s boss); obsession with prior mass shootings and/​or elevating ‘successful’ shooters as manly heroes—​one or more of these and related others. Counting only the short list of specific incidents described above, 286 beloved, irreplaceable humans died. Hundreds were wounded and thousands more affected. Multiple generations of children have now been trained how to respond, as if school shootings are bound to happen, like severe weather. And we’ve all grown jumpy, glancing over our shoulders, what’s that popping sound, and who would’ve thought it could happen here … is what every community says when it does. The risk is generalized by now, endemic to public life. To grasp the public health risk, we must recognize the signature: Aggrieved masculinity was here. In the 27 December Denver shooting, for example, it appears that nearly every one of the above factors was in play.11 This has not been widely reported; most articles simply say the shooter held some “extremist” views. In other cases, like the Charleston shooting at a Black church, reports are 165

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crystal clear: white supremacy! Yes, and the shooter specified “he wanted to kill black people because he believed they rape white women daily.”12 Sometimes, when multiple factors like racism and sexism are in play, as in the case of the Atlanta-​area spa shootings, we quibble over which was the real motive, yet dividing and prioritizing factors is a dead end.13 Aggrieved masculinity holds them together. To discern this feeling in operation—​ wreaking its havoc on the world—​we must too. Prominent US feminist Gloria Steinem memorably encapsulated violence motivated by manly grievance as “supremacy crimes.”14 Writing on the heels of the 1999 Columbine shooting, she noted how rarely we address the evident pattern of perpetrators—​white, heterosexual, middle-​ class (“non-​poor”) boys and men with an axe to grind. If Others were committing such crimes, their racial, sexual, gender, and class profile would be the first things we’d notice. And yet, falling once again for the universal subject trick, we strain to make sense of such patterns when it comes to angry white men. Since Steinem wrote, the pattern has obviously intensified. To some extent, we now notice—​the ‘white man’ part, anyway. Even a cursory search for commentary reveals that Steinem, Kimmel, and Bates are not alone in marking how often white men’s entitled rage leads toward violent and deadly deeds.15 But ‘white men’ doesn’t quite get it. As Steinem suggests, most perpetrators appear to be heterosexually identified middle-​class (or not poor) cis men. Although they are usually white, this is not always so.16 Remember, they don’t need to be white to feel aggrieved masculinity. Just as we said of women in Chapter 13, men made subordinate in any number of ways can get invested in manly grievance and perceive its payoff. The Virginia Tech and Orlando club shootings, both by men of color, showed the earmarks of precisely this.17 Aggrieved masculinity is the pattern. More often white than not, it comes in many bodies. If we say its name every time it lashes out, we will begin to discern an organized public threat. That’s right, organized. We must stop seeing perpetrators as individuals first, isolated cases of madmen. They tell us not to treat them separately—​when they praise their predecessors and rhapsodize prior acts of violence—​and, still, we don’t listen. Many offenders openly follow in the footsteps of ‘heroes’ and ‘martyrs’ to ‘the cause,’ declaring themselves soldiers in an army, part of a movement. Granted, this is not conventional organizing, an entity formalized in name or structure. But without a doubt, it’s coordinated action, born of a different kind of ‘gathering,’ energetically aligned. Chapter 17 will shed light on the nature of this “networked misogyny,” but the task here is simply to behold the tie that binds apparent individuals. Being a ‘lone’ gunman is a group membership card.18 166

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Madmen. Some readers will object to the term, even my literal use of it here (men who are angry), pointing to the real mental health issues involved in many cases. Some will also jump to the need for gun legislation. I don’t contest either point, and they are entirely compatible with my claim. Mental illness can heighten the body’s susceptibility to “viral feeling” (the rest of Part IV develops this concept), but it is not the only portal by which aggrieved masculinity enters. Guns exacerbate the damage it can do, but they are not its only outlet. Awful as they are, mass shootings are the iceberg’s tip of the actual risk, harm, and death aggrieved masculinity can and does cause. Add to the mix countless rapes, sexual assaults, and incidents of intimate violence, plus an array of other hate crimes motivated by manly grievance. Crimes like these tend to target members of specific gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious groups. The danger to Others extends beyond such illegal activities and apparent extremes. It can be institutionally authorized, even rewarded, as in many cases of police violence against people of color perceived as a threat. Or when programmers who identify with the sort of ‘nerd’ masculinity that feels oppressed by women and heterosexually potent men code such resentments into video games or contribute to algorithmic injustice.19 Were we to explore all the possible angles, a massive spectrum of aggrieved masculine violence would surface, from illegal to normalized and even applauded behavior. All of these could fairly be called crimes of manly grievance. *** Sometimes it helps to start close to home, I said earlier. If you do not live in a gun culture, start where you are and ask what crimes around you may be animated by a sense of manhood wronged. The preceding paragraphs give some indication, but things may well look different in your vicinity. Acknowledging that variation is critical, as we’ve said all along. That Others are in the crosshairs of such violence can create a false impression—​especially for those not in these groups—​that the risk is directed and contained. It isn’t. Taken together, these groups comprise the majority of the population in many locations. On their own they are the general public. And the threat is not confined to them after all, as evident when mass shooters exact revenge for perceived gender, racial, and sexual injuries indiscriminately. There are other, more subtle ways that the risk is not contained, including plenty we don’t even know about. In August of 2020, on a Southwest Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Orlando in the midst of a pandemic, Captain Michael Haak disrobed, opened his laptop, began to watch porn and engage in “lewd acts” in full view of the woman co-​pilot, who was left 167

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to fly the plane in the face of this aggression. Eventually, he lost his job and pled to indecent exposure.20 You may think such behavior pales in comparison to the crimes we just reviewed. Maybe you think it bears little to no relation. Actually, it is just more normalized and, therefore, trivialized, and in that way perfectly illustrates both the point and its startling scope. As Mr. Haak reasserted his manly right to the cockpit over his woman colleague, 200 or so random bystanders whose fate was in their hands bore the risk right along with her. In the act of targeting Others, aggrieved masculinity sprays the threat far and wide. No rare circumstance, it happens all the time.

Generalized harm: collateral damage and the climate That supremacy crimes inflict ‘collateral damage’ is clear. There is no reasonable assurance of safety, regardless of whether you are in a targeted group. Crimes of manly grievance are not someone else’s problem; we share them. Another problem we share is climate change. The link between environmental damage and masculinity has been established for some time. Beyond controversy, men are more likely than women to defy so-​called green behavior and policy—​from recycling to reducing one’s carbon footprint to rethinking the oil, gas, mining, and animal killing industries.21 Many men associate such efforts with femininity and, worse, effeminization. Remember, though, this chapter aims for specificity to aggrieved masculinity. Research lends a hand here too, directly linking climate denial and resistance to ‘going green’ with masculinity and New Populist politics. In 2014, climate and culture researchers Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman substantiated this link in the Swedish context.22 After five more years of research, the second author elaborated in a 2019 interview that: the connection has to do with a sense of group identity under threat. … Besieged, as they see it, both by developing gender equality … and now climate activism’s challenge to their way of life, male reactionaries motivated by right-​wing nationalism, anti-​feminism, and climate denialism increasingly overlap, the three reactions feeding off of one another. The article goes on to quote Hultman explaining elsewhere that: There is a package of values and behaviors connected to a form of masculinity that I call “industrial breadwinner masculinity.” They see the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products 168

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out of them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all types of waste.23 The quotes are vital; the first cuts to the core of the matter, while the second returns our attention to the ‘second-​sexing’ of the earth from Part I. There, we discussed how the gender binary elevates civilization over primitive Others and culture over nature, the former aligned with white men, the latter feminized and available to the former to rule over and use as he sees fit. In this light, climate science is unsurprisingly cast as ‘soft’ (think: “tree-​hugger”) and scolding, “oppositional to assumed entitlements of masculine primacy.”24 Take note that we will see this repeatedly in Part IV—​defense of the wounded Western Man, under unjust attack for his triumph in creating the modern world by harnessing nature. Emerging global research resounds with these findings.25 Noting an apparent worldwide reverberation of the threatened masculinity theme, one study (in Norway) observes how climate denialism outside the US is uncannily similar to that within it.26 Striking resemblances like this will take on more significance in Chapter 17. Political scientist Cara Daggett coined the term “petro-​masculinity” to capture how the transition from fossil fuels to climate-​friendly energy is felt as a menace to (white) male privilege.27 One defense entails living a “climate-​damaging lifestyle,” for example, by eating more meat and driving oversized cars.28 Both individual climate deniers and New Populist regimes cling to fossil fuels as a manly right, proof of virility. In short, belittling climate change has become a political strategy to keep the self-​contained Western Man intact. No surprise, then, that women climate activists, like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez, are favorite New Populist nemeses.29 At this point, you may be itching for a tangible example. Try “rolling coal,” the idiom for souping up the engines of—​and even removing the emissions controls from—​diesel vehicles so that they belch black smoke at whomever you wish. One favorite target: drivers of eco-​friendly cars (hence the bumper sticker, “Prius Repellant”). The New York Times offers this open-​ended analysis: “Depending on whom you ask, rolling coal is a juvenile prank, a health hazard, a stand against rampant environmentalism, a brazen show of American freedom.”30 If you ask me, none of those get it right. What’s blowing out that tail pipe is the black smoke of aggrieved masculinity. Sure, it’s your call to regard this as an adolescent prank, a principled stand against excessive virtue contests, or a fight for basic freedoms. These are among the typical ways we like to play down manly grievance. I’ve shaken my head and chuckled too many times to count. All I’m saying is, calling it a public health hazard gets closer to the case. 169

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I can’t help but think of a dear man in my family, and how he once threatened to buy up all the incandescent light bulbs he could get his hands on. That way, he could proudly burn them in the front window in the coming era when he predicted only ‘sissy’ (environmentally approved) bulbs would be allowed. He was right, sort of; that day is dawning. I laughed at the time, gauging him half-​serious and hoping he’d hear the absurdity. Next time I visit, I’ll have to check out the lamps. It’s significant—​but, on its own, insufficient—​to observe that these public health threats are more often perpetrated by white male New Populist sympathizers. We should take their outsized presence here as indicative of aggrieved masculinity, a contagious feeling that is ripping through bodies and intensifying crimes against humanity, creatures of all kinds, and the planet alike. We must learn to hold individual perpetrators responsible and grasp their common feeling signature. As Part IV will elaborate, doing so need not yield to depictions of perpetrators as hapless victims, nor to circular claims that ‘toxic ideology did it.’ Thus far, it may seem that aggrieved masculinity serves itself at the cost of everyone else’s safety; thus, the case for a public health problem is strong. The climate illustration begins to unravel even this. Aggrieved masculinity is self-​interested for sure, but just as surely, it doesn’t serve the self ’s interests. On the contrary, it harms the very men it claims to benefit. Any wind left in its lying sails is about to collapse.

Death by pufferfish: self-​defense that kills Men can seriously hurt themselves in the act of proving their impermeability, as mask-​ulinity demonstrated. But it didn’t take COVID-​19 to tell us this. In his 2019 book Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan Metzl offers striking statistical evidence that aggrieved masculinity is a major cause of physical disease and death for those who take it on board.31 A trained physician and professor of sociology and psychiatry, Metzl poses an old question with a new twist: Why do people vote against their apparent interests? Specifically, why do white folks who stand to gain from government programs cling to an anti-​government stance? Other well-​known works in this tradition stress class interests, such as Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land and Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas?32 Metzl’s book is distinct for its spotlight on biological interests. Masculinity per se is not his angle; he concentrates on the health impacts of white racial resentment for white folks. However, the book heavily emphasizes white victimhood among men and/​or about endangered manhood. Dying of Whiteness sets out to show how toxic ideology is a physical poison too. White victimization works to the biological detriment of many white people, or dogma begets disease. In Metzl’s terms, voting in “defense of 170

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whiteness”33 threatens white health at the population level, manifesting Booker T. Washington’s insight that “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”34 White backlash politics gave certain white populations the sensation of winning, particularly by upending the gains of minorities and liberals; yet the victories came at a steep cost … white America’s investment in maintaining an imagined place atop a racial hierarchy … ironically harms the aggregate well-​being of US whites as a demographic group, thereby making whiteness itself a negative health indicator.35 Although Metzl acknowledges the preponderance of men in his data, like Hochschild he pushes gender to the background of analysis. One exception is a chapter where he traces how guns became an antidote for the masculinity ‘crisis’ I described in Chapter 15.36 A terrible irony follows. The more guns circulate as a palliative manly object, the more they are an instrument of death for the very men they soothe. The barrel has spun around, such that being a white man is now a decisive suicide risk factor: White men die by their own guns two and a half times more often than do their nearest demographic, and exponentially more often than they do at the hands of dogs, bears, ladders, carjackers, intruders, terrorists, or other predators combined. … Privilege itself becomes a liability. White men become the biggest threat to … themselves. Danger emerges from who they are and from what they wish to be.37 This is the pufferfish tragedy. Your self-​defense reflex becomes the threat that kills you. For the most part, however, Metzl backs away from gender, even when his focus groups are conducted exclusively with men and echo the “deep story” Hochschild heard. As in her book Strangers, most of the women featured in Metzl’s project seem to speak through heterosexual familial relations. In the end, I doubt either author would disagree that manly grievance is indispensable to the class and racial resentment they describe. They all go hand in glove, with plenty of other partners, as you know by now. Dying of Whiteness helps to shatter the hard–​soft binary by which the culture wars are typically made trivial. The mortal cost of aggrieved masculinity for even those it claims to profit are undeniable. With population-​level data, Metzl closes an already strong case that manly grievance is a public health problem, and we all have a biological stake in stopping it. 171

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Pufferfish at scale: anger management aggravates the hazard There is one more way that Dying of Whiteness aids the present case. The project is explicitly couched in the rise of New Populism in the US—​ specifically, in the turn from backlash politics to backlash governance, or anti-​ government government. In other words, it documents the public health consequences of anger management. This mode of governing—​essentially, stoking anger at government—​led to tearing down all kinds of health and safety infrastructures without rebuilding anything in their place. In each of the three cases he explores (Missouri-​ guns, Tennessee-​health care, and Kansas-​education), Metzl demonstrates statistically that anger management demonstrably worsens public health risks. The upshot is that New Populist antagonism toward Others is physically unhealthy for everyone, including those who host it. Do not miss the painful layers of pufferfishery. In the case of guns, for instance, the second amendment serves up a cultural flashpoint for white men animated by aggrieved masculinity. They’re coming for my right to impermeability by arms. So they vote to send anger management to office. As promised, anger management shores up their manly right to self-​defense by slashing gun regulation. Such policy, or lack thereof, ends up disproportionately killing the very white men who empowered anger management and remain steadfastly devoted to it. Ready, that is, to die for impermeability. In this way, Metzl makes the finer distinction I aimed for, between the health effects of manly grievance and that of other risky masculinities. His research enhances confidence in the claim that aggrieved masculinity, in particular, is a public health problem. Even more, it demonstrates that anger management worsens the danger by translating it into public policy, where it is “weaponized onto the body of the nation”38—​and well beyond, as when Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord. COVID-​19 let us witness this process in high speed, as populist strongmen picked up the bullhorn of high office and blew mask-​ulinity—​and the virus—​around the world. A truth we began to discern in Chapter 10 is further specified here: Anger management is happy to make mortal trade-​offs to defend aggrieved masculinity. It prefers to sink the ship rather than rise all tides. Anger management clings to the universal, self-​contained human at any cost, and at the expense of all our permeable bodies. We cannot stand by and shake our heads, as if ‘boys will be boys’ but grow up someday. *** This chapter provides only a partial inventory of risk, enough to make the point that aggrieved masculinity is a public health problem that has become 172

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normalized and chronic, ‘baked in’ to society. The full scale of devastation, already done and yet to come, goes understated here. Perhaps those who found the title of this or earlier chapters hyperbolic can now appreciate that they are modest appraisals. Gender is a matter of life and death, for a general audience. Culture war can dish up fresh furies all day. What should really infuriate us is the death sentence dealt to us all by aggrieved masculinity’s cultural combat. It is vital that we begin to reframe in this way, addressing the circulation of feeling as a problem bigger than the individual men who ride its wave to violence. Of course they are guilty, and we should continue to bring them to justice. But they are neither exceptional extremists nor lone actors. Scapegoating these hosts may give fleeting comfort, but it will not stop the ranks of rage from growing. We should speak of lone madmen no more, when aggrieved masculinity run wild is the culprit. Wonder how the feeling got free rein? Read on.

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Dear Manosphere The transnational movement of manly grievance Angry White Men forecast the twilight of aggrieved entitlement in 2013. By the 2017 edition, Kimmel admitted that we might be in for a longer wait, but sundown would eventually come. Don’t worry, in other words. The end game hasn’t changed. Hasn’t it? Aggrieved masculinity has only intensified since then. This chapter examines how it is multiplying ever more furiously when it was supposed to fizzle out. The short answer is something called the “manosphere,” but the longer version is worth our while. You may recall (from Chapter 15) that Angry White Men recounts the “outrage media” ecology of the late 20th century through which aggrieved masculinity took off.1 In that era of media deregulation and convergence, the explosion of talk radio and cable news understandably commands most of Kimmel’s attention. He says little about how this ecology drastically transformed in the 2000s, with the rise of user-​generated content and socially curated forums like 4chan and Reddit. Missing this is how Kimmel miscalculated the trajectory of aggrieved masculinity. You may also remember (from Chapter 7) that students of New Populism stress precisely what Kimmel does not—​the role of the internet and, specifically, participatory platforms in hastening audience democracy and the worldwide populist surge. So, you might think they’d notice that manly anger mushroomed globally on these platforms, right alongside the rise of New Populisms. Few do, however.2 Most seem to prefer offline to online cultural politics, the real world over the virtual. The Great Recession: a more potent explanation than inane internet scuffles. Ah there it is, serious economics versus frivolous identity politics all over again. You know where this is going, hard versus soft. Ignoring or downplaying the online culture wars is how most analysts of populism land on class-​forward accounts and neglect the gender energy

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source of New Populism. Chapter 11 reviewed these explanations and refuted them in turn. Here’s a quick review. Why New Populism? • Take 1: Economic inequality (not really) • Take 2: Class inequality includes cultural marginalization (not quite) • Take 3: Class inequality meets racial and religious resentment (closer, but not yet) It’s time for a new take, but please hear this caution before we get into it. This chapter does not argue that the internet itself, certain online events, and/​or the changing media landscape launched New Populism—​that is, caused it in some linear sense. When I say that the manosphere intensified aggrieved masculinity, this is what I mean: During the period from the late 2000s to the present, a new sociotechnical circuit of sensation became activated and charged. This network–​body relation heightens physical susceptibility to the feeling of manly grievance and transmits that feeling around the world. Cause in the transfer of energy sense. Or as Chapter 12 condenses it, not why =​for what reason, but how =​on what electricity?

Why New Populism? Take 4: A decade of online culture war galvanized aggrieved masculinity Kill All Normies is a colorfully entitled book written by digital culture scholar Angela Nagle.3 It was published in 2017, the same year as Angry White Men’s second edition. Nagle charts the transformation of outrage media that Kimmel overlooks. In so doing, she finds that the online culture wars of the previous decade dramatically amplified aggrieved masculinity, bestowing it the stunning degree of political influence it enjoys today. Nagle’s own politics have come under fire, for example, her critiques of internet feminisms and the left, her stance on immigration, and her willingness to appear with Tucker Carlson of Fox News (more on him shortly). My interest here is not to get mired in such controversy but, rather, to consider the upshot of her important and accessible research on anti-​ feminist online movements, which brought to the public a finding supported by a wealth of scholarship. Namely, Nagle utterly shreds the idea that online cultural combat is a silly side skirmish for fanatics. On the contrary, the vitriolic battles of the decade preceding her book—​between a purifying identity politics on the left and a seething, violent backlash from the right—​foreshadowed today’s polarization. Gaining steam in the late 2000s, these culture wars occurred off the grid of mainstream awareness but stayed neither online nor on the margins. By the

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early 2010s, they were reshaping offline politics. By 2015, they had upended mainstream politics, forming “the political sensibilities of a generation” and shaping “culture and ideas in a profound way from tiny obscure subcultural beginnings to mainstream public and political life in recent years.”4 Those who know little of these battles are nonetheless influenced; we all deal with their enduring legacy. Kill All Normies sits at odds with class-​forward accounts of New Populism, like a missing puzzle piece that jars the whole picture when put into place. Nagle tracks the same timeline—​the decade following the Great Recession—​ but a different arc of development: changes in sociotechnical relations, instead of the socioeconomic and demographic shifts marked in Chapter 11. What we learn is that the new participatory platforms were preoccupied with gender, sexuality, feminism, and racism, usually in combination. Acrimony over political correctness and free speech spewed around these themes, tellingly, with little to no regard for economic inequality. This period saw the rise of a major new online constituent that became known as the “manosphere,” which Nagle muses “would undoubtedly have been written up as a ‘digital revolution’ if it had different cultural politics.”5 What disqualified it? Well, as she puts it, “even the most militantly anti-​feminist forms of pre-​internet men’s rights activism now seem supremely reasonable and mild compared with the anti-​feminism” of the manosphere, which “took on a more right-​wing character” and realized “the most negative feminist caricatures of men’s rights activists—​rage-​filled, hateful and chauvinistic.”6 Typically, the manosphere refers to the internet phase of the promasculinist movements and outrage media we learned about in Chapter 15, whose roots reach back to the 1970s. ‘It’ is a symbiotic mesh of websites, blogs, online forums, memes, videos, books, focal points, talking points, and the like that trade in misogyny, the rightful supremacy of men, anti-​ feminism, and other threats to manly entitlement. Yet again, we are not exactly speaking of a coherent entity. More like, “networked misogyny”: The manosphere acts as a whole through “many sites, subcultures and identifications.”7 It is best described, therefore, as pods or clusters of activity—​loosely affiliated communities who make it their business to constantly share threats to manly entitlement. To be sure, chat rooms for disgruntled men came along with the internet. That the worldwide web has long been guarded as a masculinist space comes as no surprise to those familiar with computing and internet history. So why was this phenomenon not named as a ‘thing,’ the manosphere, until the 2010s? Because a tipping point followed so-​called Web 2.0.8 Close observers began to recognize that the fight for manly rights was escalating sharply, becoming a movement like never before. A transnational movement, at that. As I use the term, the manosphere is no longer limited to the internet or online activity, though it certainly whips into a frenzy and travels farthest 176

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and fastest there. In fact, as we are about to see, the manosphere obliterates the distinction between on-​and offline. It is a relation that moves freely among fiber and filament, workplace and living (or bed) room, pub and voting booth. It radiates from pulpits and passes through prayer chains while tearing across social media and booming from the mouths of mainstream politicians and cable pundits. Networks and bodies of all kinds get caught up in this network–​body relation. The frenetic activity that is the manosphere boomed since 2010 and continues to. Just like New Populisms. That they coincide is hardly a coincidence.

Enter the manosphere (and call it by that name) Even if you’ve never heard of the manosphere, you are already well acquainted with it. These ‘hidden familiarities’ are a good place to begin, and we will keep discovering them throughout this chapter and Part IV. Let’s start with this one. The manosphere overlaps so much with the far right, it makes little sense to speak of them separately. Yet that is what we do all the time. By the 2016 US presidential election, the term “alt-​right” (alternative right), instead of manosphere, became the default name for the far-​r ight movement that rejects mainstream media in favor of a parallel online mediaverse opposed to progressive identity politics. As mainstream politicians cozy up to this alternate universe, the “alt” is dropping out of use. What hasn’t changed is the preference to call it “far right”—or “white nationalist,” “white supremacist”— anything but “manosphere.” Don’t be fooled by this unfortunate habit, for these are practically one and the same. That the manosphere and far right are two sides of one coin gets buried when we take self-​interested self-​descriptions at face value. “Alt-​r ight,” for example, was a self-​proclaimed label that effectively sanitized anti-​feminist, anti-​Semitic, anti-​Muslim, white supremacist Christian nationalism. Though it barely takes a second look to behold the one in the other, mainstream media routinely fail to mention the far right’s gender agenda. Make no mistake: Sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are vital to the far right, just as racial, ethnic, and religious hatred are endemic to the manosphere. Staggering misogyny and racism—​in tandem—​are their shared interest. Their differences are more a matter of emphasis, which foot they wish to put forward. In Men Who Hate Women, feminist author Laura Bates makes this point with a telling example. In the summer of 2017, a young white man deliberately plowed his car into a crowd of protestors opposing the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, NC. He killed Heather Heyer, a white woman whose mother later observed that “it had to be a white girl for people to pay 177

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attention” to the racial injustice her daughter protested.9 For the man who killed Heather, however, white women were at issue in another way, for abandoning their reproductive role in maintaining racial hierarchy. He had been chanting “white sharia now,” a notion that began as white supremacist satire but found gravity in the far right manosphere.10 The idea is that white men could copy their perception of Islamic legal practice and harness white women as “baby factories” against their will.11 You may think that such harebrained thinking—​essentially, a nakedly white supremacist version of The Handmaid’s Tale—​is confined to the corners of the internet. If it crops up in real life, surely it’s rare and limited to extreme events like the Charlottesville rally. You would be wrong. As I write this, the Washington Post published a report on how the wildly popular prime-​time Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, “became the voice of white grievance.”12 One short paragraph contains the aside, “Carlson also complained about feminists.” As if this aversion is a diversion unrelated to his racist tirades. It’s not just related; it’s integral. Carlson took to warning his viewers of an imminent “great replacement,” whereby demographic shifts will overhaul the voting populace.13 A staple of the manosphere, so-​called replacement theory also holds that women contribute to society through sex and reproduction, and that women of color hyper-​excel in these roles, whereas white women slack by sleeping with men of color and daring to bear their children, or by refusing their primary role as mothers in selfish pursuit of careers. Put another way, white sharia now. For those who are skeptical that aggrieved masculinity is pivotal to Carlson’s promotion of white anxiety—​or who could simply use a chuckle amid the alarming absurdity—​check out the online trailer for his Tucker Carlson Originals ‘docuseries’ (season two) on “the end of men.” Can testicular tanning heal the nation’s tumbling sperm count, he wonders? What else might save the vanishing race of “strong men” from the weak and fleshy soft men destroying the country? Granted, the trailer’s own pulsating homoerotic imagery makes it hard to take these questions seriously. But we must learn to take seriously the fact that questions like this are increasingly entertained on platforms with wide reach and influence. Misogyny and racism are interwoven, essential to one another. They suckle together at the bosom of the dark web (the metaphor seems apt?), but they surely do not stay there. The extreme has gone mainstream, and the manosphere is its incubator. Or how about this. Aggrieved masculinity has its own furnace (supercharger, if you like), and the manosphere is it. The manosphere is a ‘super-​spreader’ of aggrieved masculinity. Calling the manosphere by that name is crucial to a gender-​first analysis that beholds the animating misogyny in all its racial, sexual, religious, and other specificity. When we only use “far right” or similar labels, manly 178

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grievance disappears. The masculinity of religious and ethno-​nationalism is erased, as are the limited forms of manhood ostensibly entitled to such supremacy. This is not to say that all participants in the manosphere spew anti-​Muslim bile, despise LGBTQ+​people, or feel sympathy with white supremacy. Surely not, and plenty of cis men and boys actively seek, stumble in, or fall prey to the manosphere in search of solutions to real aches and inequities. It is to say, however, that the further they go and the more they succumb, they will encounter these forms of hate, because the manosphere is awash in them. Manosphere is the best term we have for capturing how far-​right communities operate as an interconnected whole, a transnational movement adhered by the glue of the gender binary. Let’s use it. Though we do not yet speak of the manosphere much, we are more aware than we know. Tucker Carlson is not the only one ensuring this is so.

Gifts of Gamergate (keep giving): the watershed of 2014 Although the manosphere was surging by the 2010s, many of us first learned of it in 2014, thanks to media coverage of Gamergate—​an online harassment campaign targeting women and feminists in the gaming industry. Gamergate was when and how the manosphere really jumped the divide between on-​ and offline. In Gamergate, the manosphere found a whole new force. The initial furor erupted when an ex-​boyfriend of a game designer posted a screed that falsely accused her of exchanging sex for a positive review. This “patient zero” was followed by countless other targets, most of whom suffered severe personal attacks and sexist insults, as well as innumerable rape and death threats.14 Many were “doxxed,” which means that their private information was publicly released. A significant number were forced to deflate or vacate their online presence and flee their homes. The enraged army of Gamergate did all this. They seethed for over a year, eventually turning the campaign toward adjacent industries like science fiction. You can find the play-​by-​play elsewhere, so I’ll cut to the chase here. Gamergate consolidated and energized the manosphere, spawning and honing its now endemic features. It was Gamergate that magnetized an eclectic mix of online figures against a common enemy: feminist “social justice warriors” and, really, any women or LGBTQ+​people who dared to breach arenas that rightfully belong to ‘real’ men. Gamergate assembled, in Nagle’s memorable words, “a strange vanguard of teenage gamers, pseudonymous swastika-​posting anime lovers, ironic South Park conservatives, anti-​feminist pranksters, nerdish harassers and meme-​making trolls.”15 These unlikely allies shared little but “dark humor and love of transgression for its own sake.”16 What spree brought 179

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them together? Not just the chance to spew virulent misogyny, but to do so in clever, sardonic, rebellious, and otherwise ‘edgy’ ways. It was this countercultural style—​feeling non-​conformist, like renegades—​ that led to the effective mobilization of young men not inclined to political engagement. Gamergate tapped into their yearning for riot and mayhem, primed by playing violent video games, listening to anarchical music, and other boyish pastimes. It channeled these appetites toward resisting the left’s culture war victories—​excuse me, the left cultural ‘establishment.’ The mounting purity of progressive identity politics became the tyrannical order to overthrow. Political correctness, perceived as the moralistic regulation of free speech, was the rallying cry. These were next-​gen manly ‘activists,’ not the grumpy old men of the first wave. They were young rebels, born of Fight Club and inhabiting Tyler Durden’s virility online (the film remains omnipresent in the manosphere, endlessly quoted as a reference point). They raged against the machine, often more for the thrill of it, Nagle points out, than for any real conviction. This countercultural style, attitude, vibe, aesthetic—​call it what you will—​is the hook for young men in particular, and the manosphere knows it. Appealing to this non-​conformist impulse is how boys are enticed to swallow the “red pill,” a ubiquitous manosphere reference to a beloved scene from The Matrix (1999), where the main character must choose between taking a blue pill that affirms his current reality and a red pill that upends it, lifting the veil on his brainwashed and docile condition.17 In manosphere lingo, “blue pill” is shorthand for the tyranny of progressive identity politics, whereas the red pill reveals the real oppression it hides: that men are victims of “gynocracy,” and white men suffer the most. The manosphere hosts all manner of pedagogical material designed to reach the young and uninitiated, such as “The Red Pill Primer for Boys,” soft-​sell tactics abridged as the “slow red pill,” even an alt-​r ight “style guide.”18 The latter playbook advises content producers to keep it “light” and playful by leading with ironic humor and “hijacking” relatable memes and GIFs from popular culture. That way, the body warms up to radical content. Start gently, by dangling a sense of superiority. You too can be in the know, smarter and better than all those “normies” who do as they’re told. Channeling boyish appetites like this, Gamergate was the first time that the masculinist far right—​simmering since the 1970s—​fought back with such public vigor and violence. It has continued to do so ever since. Since 2014, the manosphere has escalated unapologetically, shattering any residual shards of distinction between on-​and offline. Blowing past all boundaries presumed to contain it. Marching right into the public eye and onto the stage of mainstream politics. Taking the White House in 2016 and, on 6 January 2021, breaking and entering the US Capitol. 180

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The worth of this countercultural feeling cannot be overrated. Far beyond recruitment value, it activates the powerful pardon of self-​defense. We’re not the aggressors; we’re under attack by social justice warriors and identity politics police. Gamergate billed itself as a resistance and protest movement, hell-​bent on defending the integrity of gaming culture, ethics, and quality from feminist and feminized invasion. Simon Strick, a scholar of American and gender studies who studies online extremism, describes the resulting “feelings of structure” that reverberate across the manosphere: a sense of continual edging against institutions, norms, and invisible regimes that most people passively accept.19 Those pathetic normies and “basic bitches” surrender to the ruling establishment. Take note of what is happening here. The thrill of being a radical non-​ conformist becomes a warrant—​a license and a comfort, assurance you’re not the bad guy. The perpetrator–​victim relation is reversed. Hostility gets made over as self-​preservation, a freedom fight. “It is precisely the transgressive sensibility that is used to excuse and rationalize the utter dehumanization of women and ethnic minorities in the alt-​r ight online sphere now,” Nagle says.20 In essence, Gamergate cast the sexist, racist troll as a countercultural hero who stands up for the little guy. His quest? Nothing short of saving democratic civilization from tyranny and destruction. You read that right. Through Gamergate, the manosphere began to coalesce around a populist sensibility and harvest its potential. Prior to 2014, Nagle explains, the manosphere was densely packed with subcultural elitism and rivalry. Gamergate helped it settle into preoccupation with white heterosexual masculinity, thwarted and threatened. One more time: Gamergate trained the manosphere’s attentive energy on endangered Western Man, the fallen universal subject. If you doubt the academic analysis, take it from Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-​Nazi website Daily Stormer, who offers this advice for spreading far-​r ight sentiments: What resonates the most, in my experience, is issues surrounding the displacement and disenfranchisement of the white male which has taken place as a result of feminism. That is a gateway to all of this, much more than the race issue. So anti-​feminism, anti-​homosexuality, and the preservation of male identity and the man’s role in society should always be a core focus of the brand.21 Oh right, “the brand.” Of course the manosphere runs on communicative capitalism too—​audience democracy at its finest, or at its logical ‘extreme.’ But wait, did he just say that aggrieved masculinity is the animating force? He sure did, as a plain matter of fact. Yet our denial persists, as in Chapter 13: “It can’t be gender because …” 181

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This shift toward a common cause and enemy—​save endangered men from women and feminism—​reconfigured the manosphere, electrifying an assorted alliance into a globally oppressed class of ordinary men. All that Gamergate trolling intensified the feeling that we are the makers of culture and civilization, the protagonists of history, the private citizen, the ordinary person. We are The People. And the ungrateful, hypocritical, feminizing and emasculated establishment wants us to apologize for it?! They are the oppressor, and we are the victim, no more! More on how that feeling was intensified in a moment. First, a quick detour to where else you’ve encountered it. These hidden familiarities abound.

Made in the manosphere: lockdown protests, for one The manosphere’s countercultural passion is faintly recognizable. Where have we met it lately? How about those COVID-​1 9 lockdown protests with which we opened Part II and introduced New Populism. Remember their peculiar, repetitive aesthetic across so many locations? Bodies draped in flags. The transgressive, non-​conformist vibe that reversed the liberation cries of the 1960s and 1970s back on the left cultural establishment they’d become. The ironically appropriated feminist freedom slogans: My body, my choice! What did the National Review call it again? Oh yeah, the right’s “hippie phase.”22 Nagle confirms that this populist trolling style was hatched in the wings of the far-​right manosphere and perfected by sanitized-​but-​still-​ controversial mainstream advocates she calls “Gramscians of the alt-​light” (a crumb of humor for any critical theory nerds out there).23 These “alt-​ light” provocateurs became celebrities of a sort, like political commentators Milo Yiannopolous and Mike Cernovich. Forget the Tea Party and its tri-​ cornered patriot hats. Manosphere translators like this made the Tea Party’s ‘revolutionary’ populism look pathetically impotent. The manosphere gave populism one hell of an invigorating makeover—​a kick of “political Viagra,” as Kimmel once said of Rush Limbaugh.24 It should be no mystery that lockdown protests look alike around the world. We have the global manosphere to thank for refining and spreading this innovation—​an ironic, countercultural, freedom-​fighting aesthetic for flaunting the ‘low.’ More than that, there is evidence that manosphere-​ affiliated groups contribute mightily to stimulating and organizing these events worldwide.25 This is not to say that lockdown protests can be reduced to a far-​r ight occurrence (certainly not), or that protesters are necessarily sympathetic with the manosphere (likely not). Even so, they are closely connected.

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Check out how Joshua Roose—​a scholar who studies populism with specific regard to gender, religion, and extremism—​is quoted to play down the link between lockdown protests and the manosphere: What immediately distinguishes these sorts of protest groups from the far right is that they’re highly multicultural and they’re made up not just of angry men at a patriot rally but also women … the people and areas being represented are the areas that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. There’s also issues here with the cultures and communities often have a deep-​seated distrust of government, often for good reason.26 This quote makes three common—​and, I think, mistaken—​gestures. The first is using the label “far right” when Roose clearly knows it is thoroughly gendered (“angry men”).27 The quote then throws up two objections we’ve heard before. One is that women and Others are protesting too. We have already debunked this ‘proof ’ (see the first defense in Chapter 13), so I’ll leave it at that. The other objection is that many protestors have valid (implied: socioeconomic, not extremist) reasons to be there. Of course they do. But how does that negate the fact that the manosphere works overtime to magnify and channel their feeling—​that is, to hijack class for its own ends? The crowd need not swing far right to confirm the manosphere’s hand at work. Even if every last protestor denounced affiliation or had never heard of the manosphere, the link would still be present. Increasingly, however, these protests are announcing the affiliation, yet even then, we do not seem to recognize it. As I put the finishing touches on this book, the Ottawa ‘Freedom Convoy,’ which began in opposition to vaccine mandates for truckers, is morphing into a movement around the world. A related display flared up just last night in my Denver, CO neighborhood. Some protestors now openly push the red pill, citing darlings of the manosphere as their inspiration. Meanwhile, reporters struggle to characterize this ‘bizarre’ blend of conspiracy theory, patriotism, and obsession with The Matrix.28 Here’s a suggestion: Try “aggrieved masculinity.” Intentionally or not, lockdown protestors are riding a wave of energy made in the manosphere. The manosphere is already in our midst, even when we know nothing about it. *** This is the nature of downrising, and why I went to some lengths to explain it (in Chapter 9). An ‘agency’ like the manosphere drips with intention that exceeds anyone’s intentions. The point is not to make it into a coherent actor (it isn’t) with uniform motives (they aren’t). Nor to prove it caused some specific effect (like, it instigated this or that lockdown protest—​not exactly). 183

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Linear cause and effect is increasingly impossible to trace, and that is not the kind of agency captured by downrising. Downrising is a concept made for the contemporary media ecology—​call it audience democracy, communicative capitalism, or whatever you will. The point is not to lift the curtain and reveal chin-​stroking wizards behind the action. What is the point, then? This: A sociotechnical hive of activity—​which links a whole lot of devices, bodies, places, and relational networks around the world, and buzzes with a swarm of aims and interests (some synchronized but plenty competing)—​can become a major contributing force that: • • • •

arouses, circulates, amplifies, and commodifies sensation; disseminates passion across diverse and distant settings; attaches feeling to local circumstances and lived experience; and directs all this sociophysical traffic toward predictable political objects and outlets.

Said simply, the manosphere exerts significant influence on the amount, quality, momentum, and trajectory of feeling in the world. And feeling hitched to a binary code—​MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED—​is made to whirr through a hive like this. Those familiar with the game of pinball might appreciate one more metaphor for the manosphere’s role vis-​à-​vis New Populism. Picture that zone on a pinball machine where the ball starts flipping around beyond the player’s reach. Pulling the lever and banging the buttons (linear cause and effect, how we usually think of agency) no longer matters, because the ball—​and thus the player—​belong to the flashing, chiming field (what we might call distributed agency, because a whole mess of actions and responses are yielding effects beyond anyone’s control). There, the ball pings from point to point, sets off lights and sound, and gathers energy that begs for release. In a blur of movement, it takes on a life of its own and racks up points at high speed. It produces value. Through relentless kinetic motion around a fragmented field, the manosphere generates incalculable value for New Populism. Now we’re ready for a closer look at how that works.

New Populisms arise and prosper from the manosphere’s transnational economy of attention and amplification Back to Gamergate, with a crucial caveat. Please do not read me to say that Gamergate caused aggrieved masculinity in the linear sense, that this extended event was some original source or birthplace.29 We have already

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noted that the recent history of manly grievance goes back (at least) to the 1970s, so I would never claim that ‘it all started here.’ Instead, I am saying that Gamergate marked a significant consolidation and escalation of manly grievance, and I am asking how that intensification occurred, creating enormous energetic capacity for New Populism. The answer follows. Gamergate weaponized the leaderless, anonymous online ‘rebel’ culture in which many internet analysts had long put their hopes. In addition to high tolerance for risk, anonymity breeds perpetual escalation by removing all accountability. Virtual bravado like this is a toxic brew—​ the promise of a glory rush mixed with an ever-​climbing bar and no ceiling for achieving it. Add mutual goading, and you have a bottomless fountain of energy. Who needs centralized coordination? One-​upmanship will do the trick. Motivation is intrinsic, a gripping video game come to real life, where the virtual is the actual. The communal rage throttle revs constantly, and fresh targets scroll by all the time. The skills you need to compete are the spiraling tactics of trolling, from shitposting to doxxing to swatting. (If you have to look up those terms, you won’t be the only one.) Communication scholar Sine Nørholm Just makes the case that Gamergate generated value through “affective intensification,” which basically means escalating the energy of a passion through constant replay.30 Endless repetition and riffing, in point-​to-​point encounters, keeps a feeling on the move in every sense of the phrase—​drawing clicks and drawing out viewing time, traveling and adapting from place to place, building up in volume, and agitating bodies around the world, priming them for more. The manosphere expands its share of the attention economy by replicating and fine-​tuning aggrieved masculinity, such that it can occupy ever more feeling territory. As disparate nodes on the network (think: amalgamations of locations, bodies, exchanges) become charged and amplify the sensory signal, feeling flows back and forth, growing all the while. An array of constituents profit—​so-​called manly ‘gurus,’ influencers, sponsors, even whole industries like gaming and bodybuilding. Countless investors monetize away. Simon Strick is one of few to point out that New Populisms are the manosphere’s greatest beneficiary, especially if we consider how it operates on a transnational scale.31 The manosphere cultivates and validates fellow feeling (emphasis on the fellow) across vastly different places and circumstances by constantly performing diversity and conflict. Subcultures and infighting persist, but don’t mistake this for disorder destined to implode. Staging these divisions is precisely how the manosphere fosters shared feeling around the globe, Strick says. All the variants and traction worldwide stand in as proof that manly right is wronged indeed.

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For more on the manosphere’s ‘diversity,’ it is worth consulting Laura Bates’ detailed introduction in Men Who Hate Women. The finer distinctions she draws there—​among incels, pick-​up artists, separatists, and men’s rights activists, for example—​can be further splintered into hundreds of variations and groupings spanning the world and many languages. These communities can appear to be entirely separate, barely related, or diametrically opposed to one another. A good example is the Proud Boys, who came under scrutiny when Trump invoked them at a nationally televised presidential debate.32 All the more so after their role in Stop the Steal events, including the capitol insurrection on January 6. Proud Boys describe themselves as “Western chauvinists” who “refuse to apologize for creating the modern world” and fight political correctness and white guilt. At the same time, they distance themselves from far-​r ight white supremacy, for example, loudly appointing an Afro-​Cuban American man as their chairman. Such apparent incongruity is a typical manosphere attention play. We shouldn’t take such self-​descriptions at their word or assume that the distinctions they draw go down to the bone. For not only does the virtual combat draw attention, spike circulation, and improve ratings, it enacts the very manhood of which it speaks. The manosphere is strengthened by all this rowdy squabbling. Hot-​button issues bring it close to home and raise the personal stakes. Ideologies and jargon give stuff to wrangle over and add an air of scientific virility. But the point is the hostility, not the content. Actually, the point is sharing the hostility, in the most virile form of intimacy available: brawling. As in Fight Club. This is how the manosphere acts as a whole: by appearing as diverse pockets of grassroots activity cropping up organically all over the world. A transnational movement indeed. Thus Strick defines the manosphere as an “amorphous network that shifts and redefines itself to enter new relations and connections, using its own fractures and disagreements to generate public appeal.”33 To say that the manosphere acts as a whole simply means that these clusters of activity share a trajectory. The motives of particular participants don’t matter. To seize on an infamous Trump quote, “Some of them, I assume, are good people.” It’s vital to underscore that my concern is not what they think they are doing. For regardless of individual intent, the direction of manosphere activity is painfully clear and up to no good. In the end, the manosphere’s priceless gift to New Populism is this: eternal staging of MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED the world over. Strick explains how New Populism makes out like a bandit from these endless global performances. Through perpetual recital, the manosphere whips up a “pervasive state of embattlement that is palpable in the quotidian, the everyday, 186

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the intensely private.”34 It churns out “plausible, ‘feelable’ scenarios” that “multiply the amount of pressure points” to which the feeling can attach.35 This “diversity of backgrounds, politics, and performances only amplifies the plausibility” of fellow feeling.36 Across all this variety, Strick is adamant: “gender and sexuality are the primary sources powering the production.”37 For a tongue twister, we might say that the manosphere transmits, translates, and transmutes aggrieved masculinity, transnationally. It delivers what official representatives of New Populism cannot: “convincing, granular, and intimate affective performances of a white masculinity ‘under siege’.”38 Thereby, it makes possible that famous shape-​shifting dexterity by which New Populisms are “constantly recalibrating communication, self-​presentation, and agitation.”39 The ever-​changing content “is almost beside the point.”40 *** I agree with Strick that content is almost beside the point. For as it circulates shared feeling, the manosphere generates a whole lot of radical content for New Populism too. We can use this content like a trail of breadcrumbs, to help us name the manosphere’s presence and follow its influence. We picked up this trail earlier with Tucker Carlson, and we will sadly see it (and him) again in Chapter 19. We tracked it down once more through the COVID-​19 lockdown protests. Trump himself retweeted countless gems from the manosphere, alleging ignorance as to their source. Likewise, key figures on his team—​such as Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Kellyanne Conway—​drew on the manosphere as an inspirational think tank or policy trove, a no-​cost creative department or research and development division, a virtual storehouse of ‘alternative facts.’41 This is true for most New Populist governments. The manosphere supplies ready scripts for the cultural warfare and public policy of anger management around the world.42 It does so mostly for free, an excellent value to say the least. Chapter 19 will demonstrate in detail how the manosphere’s combined feeling and content generation readily flow offline and into the mainstream, flooding the air waves and streets, packing school board meetings and saturating everyday life. But if you need something more than the examples so far to tide you over, I’ve got you. For a quick and vivid image of the seamless connection between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds, try this. Search for “Josh Hawley Jan 6 fist pump.” Then relish the image of an impeccably suited junior US senator from Missouri—​educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, born to white professionals and accustomed to elite circles—​raising his triumphant 187

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fist to The People, that is, the pro-​Trump crowd gathering outside the US Capitol, on his way inside to challenge the election certification process. Equipped with that graphic image, read the speech he delivered nine months later at the National Conservatism conference in Florida, in which he gravely warned of “the Left’s attempt to give us a world beyond men.” Start by absorbing these snippets, but don’t miss the full text:43 What I want to call out tonight is this fact: that the deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men. The Left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues—​things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness—​as a danger to society … Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling. And that’s not just a crisis for men. It’s a crisis for the republic. Because the problem with the Left’s assault on the masculine virtues is that those self-​same qualities, the very ones the Left now vilify as dangerous and toxic, have long been regarded as vital to self-​government. Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty … Let me start by pressing home this point. The Left’s attack on America leads directly to an attack on manhood. …The Left is telling America and its men, you’re evil. You’re terrible. You must apologize and submit to your government masters to be reformed. I suggest we offer a different theme, one that goes like this … American men are and can be an unrivaled force for good in the world—​if we can strengthen them, if we can empower them, if we can unleash them to be who they are made to be. [Ahem]. So … the manosphere is also Western Man’s speechwriter? When we get to Chapter 19, be sure to look for the exact themes of Hawley’s address to reappear. If this is not yet clear, it will become so then: Whatever his lofty degrees, Josh is not exactly the source of his own ideas. Prolific and profitable as it is, such voluntary content creation is not the manosphere’s best work, which is to ferment a transnational fellow feeling so potent, it animates local action. That is the prime value of the manosphere for New Populism, and it is inestimable. The content sure is a nice bonus, though. *** How did aggrieved masculinity magnify when it was forecast to fade away? In one word, the manosphere, though of course it’s more complicated than 188

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that. Internet platforms hasten and widen communal exposure to manly grievance, yes. But as we said earlier, the technological network itself—​an available means—​only goes so far to explain why something catches on. What we still need to grasp is the network–​body relation that makes certain feelings networkable. This chapter began that work by positioning the manosphere as the mainline of New Populism, the network–​body relation by which aggrieved masculinity goes global. Elaborated, the manosphere is a sociotechnical circuit of bodily feeling and response that activates the “radical, imitative relationality” of manly grievance.44 This is different than saying that the manosphere pushes ideology or even aesthetics through a global network. I am not simply claiming that content—​like the idea that manhood endangered is the new counterculture, or a manly vibe of radical transgression—​is transmitted through the internet. My claim is that these ideas and vibes pass through sociotechnical circuits at a bodily level, by addressing the senses first. The next two chapters develop this difference. Radiating through the manosphere, the binary code—​MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED—​finds global traction. Just as regional specificity is vital, so is asking what connects the dots. What puts aggrieved masculinity into circulation for constant, direct, and personal engagement around the world? The manosphere delivers this eventful connectivity. Class is an afterthought pressed into manly service, as in the Gamergate ‘manhole’ meme. New Populism is indebted to the manosphere for its global downrising. This is what I meant when I said (back in Chapter 13) that pro-masculinist extremism isn’t drawn to the populist flame; it lights the fire. Yet seldom do New Populists acknowledge the manosphere; nor do pundits give credit where due. Sigh. As usual, leave it to a white woman to write the ‘thank you’ note. *** Dear Manosphere, On behalf of New Populism everywhere, please receive this letter of gratitude, long overdue. A running total of the services you continue to render is the least we can tabulate: • mobilize and politicize a global band of unlikely brothers, primed for culture war and voting alike; • inject infusions of young blood; • dole out the red pill as if it’s class consciousness;

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• • • • • • • •

• •

grab and grow attention for endangered manhood; convert offense into defense, making aggression appear transgressive; formulate and capitalize on the populist turn; manage to both democratize aggrieved entitlement (open it to The People) and reserve it for an elite few (dominant masculinity)—​quite the feat! innovate a signature style of flaunting the low, an ironic, countercultural aesthetic cleverly reversed on the left who launched it years ago—​brilliant! refine corresponding tactics (trolling and the like) that work in offline politics too, chiefly by disrupting ‘establishment’ norms and calling it revolutionary; assist with organizing this new ‘freedom revolution’; create an endless stream of content—​combustible issues, radical ideologies, provocative vocabularies, outrageous conspiracy theories, confounding disinformation, high shock-​value memes and videos, grandiose political speeches, and so on; incubate and test content for resonance and sticking power, thereby strategizing cultural warfare and guiding policy; above all, intensify and spread the feeling of victimized virility, making it vivid and livid in everyday experience around the world.

All of this and more, gifts yet to be discovered or delivered, you have performed at low-​to no-​cost. Your generosity would be extraordinary if it weren’t so self-​serving. Never mind, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and we can’t put a price tag on that. Or can we? One cost is that the life you breathe into manly grievance turns out to be a death warrant—​for the men you claim to save, the rest of us, and the world itself. This is an expense we may (not) have anticipated and about which, it seems, we couldn’t care less. Forever in your debt, Anger Management

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Metaphor Matters: Poison or Pandemic? From toxic to viral masculinity There may be only one thing on which feminism agrees with the manosphere: a metaphor. Gender can get toxic. For the manosphere, the blue pill of feminism is the poison and the red pill, a liberating antidote. For feminism, the manosphere is toxic masculinity at its most poisonous. Swallowing that red pill is lethal indeed. “Toxic masculinity” is the go-​to term for destructive forms of manhood, epitomized by the manosphere. We first met the concept back in Chapter 4, when commentators used it to explain mask-​ulinity. Toxic masculinity refers to conventional ideologies of manhood that pressure men to do whatever it takes to stay ‘strong,’ not ‘weak.’ Mask-​ulinity was a textbook demonstration of its public health costs, and Chapter 16 showed this to be the tip of an iceberg. So aggrieved masculinity is a public health problem. Isn’t this exactly what the concept of toxic masculinity is for—​to help us name and grapple with forms of manliness that do real harm? Yes, is my answer, but it doesn’t hold up well to the nature and magnitude of the present challenge. In light of what we learned in the last chapter, this one circles back to a key detail: What kind of public health problem is aggrieved masculinity? Is toxicity a fitting metaphor, control of a hazardous substance the right parallel for response? We know that metaphors are consequential devices to live by, so the question is worth considering.1 This chapter answers no; a poison control frame cannot tackle the transnational movement of manly grievance today. Toxicity is poorly suited to a pandemic of feeling because it concentrates on the noxious substance—​ in this case, ideological content—​rather than how it gets passed around. A frame of viral mitigation better captures the current problem and retunes

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focus accordingly: from stopping individual ingestion to slowing communal transmission, from abstinence to harm reduction. In developing this frame, something else becomes clear. “Viral masculinity” is more than a metaphor.

Don’t fault the drug for the addiction: what causes individual ingestion? Toxic masculinity is a powerful tool for exposing harmful gender ideology. I want to be clear that I am not piling on to the usual critiques, which dub the concept ‘anti-​male’ or ‘anti-​masculinity’, a broadside to all men or manhood. These are frankly ill-​founded. The point was never that all men are suspect, but that some forms of manliness inflict damage on both those who ingest them and those who bear the brunt of their toxic effects. The term openly acknowledges that while men are more prone to ingestion, they are not the only ones who swallow the poison—​hence, toxic masculinity rather than men. It’s neither a characterization of all men nor a reference to problematic men only (remember: women do it too). To call certain strains of masculinity ‘toxic’ is to grant the presence of strains that are not, and to promote these benign or even constructive types as healthier for everyone. Fair enough. For me, the limitations of the concept kick in when we start wielding it as cause, the reason why certain men do certain things. We witnessed this habit in mask-​ulinity commentary, which echoed false consciousness. Something akin to ideology made them do it. Even Kimmel—​who insists that aggrieved entitlement is a feeling, and avoids the term toxic because it doesn’t resonate well with men—​ends up blaming bad ideology for white men’s anger. In a 2019 essay in The Atlantic, criminology professor Michael Salter raises this very issue: that the term gets tossed around in ways that mistake effect for cause.2 Toxic masculinity identifies harmful ideas about manhood, but the ensuing fight against those ideas is oddly circular and forgets to ask what gives them force in the world. Are we saying that noxious ideology compels itself? Toxic masculinity doesn’t explain what induces people to take the poison; it just describes the aftermath. Meanwhile, ‘toxic’ behavior is experienced by those doing it as necessary, a compulsory answer to some felt threat. Instead of fixating on ruinous ideology, we ought to specify the conditions conducive to ingesting it. This is a good point—​essentially, that we should stop faulting the drug for addiction to it. Similarly, Gloria Steinem deploys an addiction analogy in her classic essay on “supremacy crimes,” which implores us to examine why certain young white men get “hooked” on entitlement to such an extent that they violently avenge perceived threats to it.3 192

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Today, many programs to prevent and heal extremist masculinities take up this question. I’m thinking here of efforts like Life After Hate in the US and EXIT in Europe, which work to identify and address the concrete circumstances that draw men toward toxic masculinity.4 Instead of blaming the drug, these programs tackle the problems that make people more likely to take it. Programs like this are vital, and my interest is not to criticize them. Understanding how toxic masculinity takes hold is important, no doubt about it. Most efforts to do so stress individual intake, or what affects a person’s choice to swallow the red pill. My concern is that taking the pill may not be as much of an individual choice as we like to think, in which case ingestion may not be the right image.

Not a drug after all: communal transmission as cause Now I need to stave off my own naive nod to false consciousness. Something to the tune of, they’re defenseless, brainwashed dupes of subliminal messaging. This is not my position, but I see how it could sound that way. For the umpteenth time, I ask for your patience. Could it be that more men are moved by the red pill because it is moving around, in a different way than before? Far, fast, furious, and mostly under the radar, for at least the past decade and counting. I’m not talking about an invisible army of pill pushers who shove toxic ideas at vulnerable boys through network cable. Instead, I’m speaking once again of an agency more distributed—​a networkable feeling fostered by people and organizations with all kinds of motives and, also, by material filament, media devices, and social platforms with all sorts of connective capabilities. Hardware and software (there’s the divide again—​let’s refuse it!) fusing to share ideas, images, sounds, and other data made to mesmerize the human body, which encounters all this in ways conscious selves cannot fully know or possess, despite their confidence that they are in charge. Expanding my earlier claim, aggrieved masculinity passes through a million hands, and not all of them are human or aware of it. This is what we learned in the last chapter that we may not know yet: Whatever the manosphere says, the red pill isn’t a pill at all. One doesn’t exactly take it in hand, look it over, put it to the mouth, and swallow deliberately. Nor does a dealer sell it door to door, or even knock at the front entrance. That’s why the manosphere teems with advice on the subtle art of seduction, the “slow red pill.” Start gently; keep it light and relatable; pull them in gradually. Because the red pill comes at you best through the side doors, where the monitors are dozing and the guard is down. It finds a portal cracked open and sneaks in unawares. It prowls the neighborhood, ravaging one after another. The red pill is more like a virus. And its hosts are vessels, not victims. 193

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When we focus on individual intake, we miss the most prevalent condition conducive to ingesting toxic masculinity today, which is its accelerating, subterranean circulation. At this point, the widespreading nature of the feeling is the biggest risk of contracting it. The pressing problem, then, is communal transmission more than individual ingestion. The toxic masculinity challenge of our time is viral masculinity—​less the ideological content than the movement of feeling toward (and through) content. To paraphrase our earlier motto, turn down the volume on what aggrieved masculinity says in order to prioritize how it spreads. We can get better purchase on harmful masculinity by focusing intervention on the manner by which it propagates. These days, how it happens is one big key to why. To me, the most urgent problem flagged by the concept of toxic masculinity is when a harmful variant becomes the dominant strain. Focused on the poison, toxicity is not well-​equipped to inform how that happens. How does a variant like aggrieved masculinity become the main strain on offer? By going viral, as the manosphere demonstrates. Manly grievance is communicable.

Why not contamination? The catch with toxic spill Does it have to be viral, you might ask? Perhaps we could stick with poison and riff off ‘toxic spill,’ like so: Sometimes the guardrails fail, and substances defy containment. If exposure explodes, the toxin is all but impossible to avoid, and bodies take it on board without knowledge or consent. Individual ingestion may not be the right parallel, but what about environmental contamination? Reframing toxicity like this—​absorption of pollution—​ultimately breaks down too. For one thing, it presumes that the ‘poison’ is a substance with a known chemical composition, whereas the contents of manly grievance are highly variable. Aggrieved masculinity adapts and mutates as it circulates, in order to keep moving and claiming bodies. More like a virus than a stable compound, it was never a controllable substance in the first place. Toxic spill also tends to evoke linear cause and effect, a discoverable origin point and a liable agent who spilled. Following a different logic, that of downrising, we have worked against this grain. We’ve established that will and investment are varied and dispersed through a web of practices with many participants. Why look for boogeymen or puppeteers when aggrieved masculinity drips from too many hands to count? Here too is a strong resemblance to virus transmission. Neither virus nor host, nor any one factor in the surround, causes infection alone. Cause lies in the practices that bring about their meeting. So you reduce transmission that

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way, by tweaking practices of physical density and social proximity, or going unmasked indoors. Most important for our purposes, toxic spill suggests a boundary failure. Borders that should have contained the poison sprung a leak. Toxic spill implies impermeability as a possibility, a preferred state if not the working order. Contamination is an error or exception, not the norm. Even when we expand individual ingestion to environmental absorption, then, the hope of impermeability persists. A toxicity frame harbors the fantasy of a self-​contained individual, or boundaries that keep contaminants at bay like they’re supposed to. This is a hope that must be surrendered for any hope of effective response. Toxic masculinity in this way subscribes—​at least in ‘lite’ form—​to the impermeability it critiques as a manly ideal. Unintentionally, the metaphor clings to the very illusion that aggrieved masculinity longs to reinstate. When we treat harmful manhood as someone taking poison, or unwittingly absorbing it due to a failure of control, we are taking a sip of the poison ourselves. What I’m saying is, latent in the concept of toxic masculinity is a pufferfish dream, and I think we need to wake up. That we all imbibe unknowingly can tell us something. No one exactly takes the drug of aggrieved masculinity, even when they claim to do so willfully. We all have traces of that ‘drug’ on board—​those of us hanging on to the myth of self-​containment, anyway. Yes, I’m afraid it has to be viral for us to leave impermeability behind. We must put the pufferfish to rest, though few of us conditioned by the West are yet prepared to let him go. To some extent, we all carry his viral load.

Viral masculinity: Individual and environment as one, becoming together Viral masculinity captures the communicable quality of harmful masculinities today. Today meaning, amid the contemporary sociotechnical relations we’ve abridged as audience democracy and communicative capitalism. In step with these relations, and in line with our sociophysical re-​conception of gender in Part I, viral masculinity redirects focus from ideology to feeling. It’s not that ideology no longer matters, but that the larger, urgent challenge is one of movement. We made the shift from content to movement back in Chapter 12, where we first turned from why (for what reason) to how (on what energy) New Populism happens, then encapsulated this turn in the handy mantra, less of what aggrieved masculinity says, more about how it spreads. There, we identified three central questions of movement, which we can now parse further:

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1. Activation: How are people moved (stirred or affected) toward New Populism/​aggrieved masculinity? 2. Circulation: How does New Populism/​aggrieved masculinity move (transfer or spread) among so many people and hop from one scene to the next? 3. Transformation: How does the character of New Populism/​aggrieved masculinity move (change or adapt) as it travels? Translated into viral terms: infection, transmission, and mutation. With this vocabulary, I don’t mean to be kitchsy or glib, nor do I wish to drain dry that tiresome pandemic parallel. These terms are crucial to grasping, respectively, (1) the ‘side-​entry’ of the red pill, or the way it grips the body beyond full awareness; (2) the wide, transnational sharing of this feeling, which has become catching in a very real sense; and (3) the way this feeling adapts across diverse locales, burrowing into lived experience. As that suggests, I do not claim that aggrieved masculinity is a biomedical virus, but I do claim its physical reality, which involves the actual passing of social feeling through bodily, technological, and other material means (such as t-​shirts and guns in the US). Viral masculinity is sociophysical, which means: more than metaphor. To say this does not deny individual agency, or the personal capacity for choice. Rather, it admits that we like to exaggerate our degree of awareness and relative power. I do not claim that aggrieved masculinity makes addicts of people, or that individuals are simply fooled by it, like passive by-​products of their environment. Instead, I suggest a conception of individual and environment that refuses their separation. Individual as vessel, not victim, once again. We began to build this model back in Part I and come full circle to it now. I must stress that aggrieved masculinity cannot be countered effectively without a model like this. We will not come to terms with manly grievance while we operate on its terms, taking for granted the existence of bounded persons who ‘have’ their own, independent feelings. As psychiatry and neuroscience professor Bruce Wexler remarks in his book Brain and Culture, “The relationship between the individual and the environment is so extensive that it almost overstates the distinction between the two to speak of a relation at all.”5 Likewise, Teresa Brennan finds that there is no secure distinction between individual and environment. Human bodies are not energetically self-​contained. The fantasy of emotional containment, she says, is “the last outpost” of the Western subject’s belief in its cultural superiority.6 Back when we distinguished New Populism from its predecessors (in Chapter 8), I offered this characteristic: “It moves around the world like a through contagion.” There, we heard from Tony Sampson that it is feeling, 196

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more than messaging, which spreads on a network. Or rather, feeling is the thing that should concern us more than content. Why? Due to the kind of feeling we are talking about, which is not entirely above board. Networkable feelings like aggrieved masculinity certainly hitch a ride on content and move through messaging. Crucially, however, they also operate through less-​or non-​conscious bodily “priming.” Sampson illustrates this through the ‘war on terror,’ which fueled fear as a warrant for endless security measures. One way to understand this use of fear is “through the conventional lenses of a communication theory concentrated on language, ideology, and myth making.” Another way is to ask how messaging like this participates “in contemporary exercises of biopower. That is to say, fear mongering is not simply encoded into messages and conveyed through meaningful media channels.”7 Persuasion occurs in other physical registers too. You can think of this as bodily messaging beyond the symbolic (stated, implied, codified) message. As an example, recall our discussion (in Chapter 15) of the crisis narrative rehashed across films like Fight Club, Joker, and the virtual reservoir of similar cultural texts. There, we focused on the storylines as well as the sheer volume of available representations of endangered manhood. That’s symbolic messaging. Now compare it with our discussion (in Chapter 17) of how Gamergate amplified the countercultural passion of men and boys—not so much through plotline or meaning but, rather, through escalating physical replay, or what Norholm Just called “affective intensification.” Shitposting over and over. Feeling the feeling rush through the body again and again. That’s bodily messaging, beyond what representations alone can do. Spiraling repetition expands our physical receptiveness to victimized virility. The feeling finds root in less-​conscious habit and non-​conscious reflex, making it more likely to land in the future. This is what I meant by priming earlier: the “readying of moods to prepare the way for contagion,”9 or laying the bodily foundation for a “radical, imitative relationality.”10 Virality is endemic to the contemporary communication environment in a more literal sense than the current appetite for analogy (like a contagion) allows. Distilled, a major communication challenge of our time is communicability, and the manosphere is a case in point. Taking seriously the virality (rather than toxicity) of aggrieved masculinity reshuffles our priorities. Harm reduction is more important than winning the argument. Reducing the transmission of feeling is more urgent than ideological persuasion. Promising shifts like this lie beyond reach as long as we deny such transmission occurs. Toxic masculinity prolongs the denial. For the invaluable work this concept has done and continues to do, it deserves praise. We also need to understand viral masculinity, as metaphor and something more. 197

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*** Part IV opened a search for the missing paradigm of movement, and we are beginning to find it. This chapter explored how our best metaphor to date for busting the myth of impermeability—​toxic masculinity—​still clings to it. Viral masculinity can help us let go. The public health problem of aggrieved masculinity is not one of poison control but, rather, a feeling pandemic. Working from the manosphere as prototype, viral masculinity accepts that ‘individuals’ and ‘environments’ are in a constant process of becoming together, in relations that are increasingly viral. What appear to be self-​contained persons are permeable bodies that encounter the world through sociotechnically enhanced pulses of feeling. The cultural warfare of New Populism—​namely, identity politics for the universal subject—​already fights on this level. Over the attention of porous bodies, that is, and banking on the inattention of conscious selves. Current conceptions of identity politics need retooling, stat.

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Identity Politics 2.0 Senses of self and the critical race theory (CRT) scare In the summer of 2021, I opened my local paper (a print copy, even) to find a featured column on “the disturbing consequences of critical race theory.” “College students learn Critical Race Theory’s roots; K-​12 students get the theory’s poison fruits.”1 Krista Kafer, the author, was born in Colorado, where she now writes on educational themes for The Denver Post. A local voice in a local opinion section, at a glance. This chapter will conclusively show that there is little of the local here, save a vague initiative or two and some quotes suggesting their threat to the dominant community. Something about “white families in this city giving up something” and “reallocating resources to our black and brown schools.” The other local twist takes the shape of worried parents in the area. “Teacher and mom Amanda Towry … who is earning her Ph.D.,” for example, “resents the insinuation that as a Hispanic woman she is oppressed.” Ah yes, that warrant again: Others say so too—​this time, a woman of color (double tick!) and well-​educated to boot (bonus!). Towry is not alone, of course: Understandably, parents at Front Range schools are alarmed … Rachel Kopfle told me that her son’s class was given a “privilege checklist” so they could reckon with the unearned perks of their identity. … The impression her son took away is that all white people are racist; all men are sexist; racism is everywhere; slurs against white people are acceptable, and it is OK to stereotype whites. Now there is a student who can summarize the takeaways! Or perhaps Kopfle latched on to these sound bites when she heard—​on Fox News, Facebook, or wherever else—​that critical race theory (CRT) ought to alarm her. Or could it be that Kafer projected these talking points? Plausible, since

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the barest search reveals she spent nine years in DC as an education policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, a well-​known think tank on the right. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because one thing we can say for sure. None of them, not even Kafer, is the author of this story or the feeling it spreads. ‘People’ are worried, but it’s not exactly their concern. They do share it, though—​as in, pass it around and feel it in common. CRT is a spreadable menace; you can just sense it. How did it become so?

Coming soon to a school near you: CRT threatens our nation’s children This next latest threat to our way of life—​emphasis on the possessive—​was hatched the year before, in the summer of 2020. Amid the pandemic, and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both events set the scene. That summer, Black Lives Matter protests flourished all over the US, and people around the world rose up against anti-​Blackness and for racial justice. Those who hadn’t yet made it a priority suddenly sought racial awakening. Titles like Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility sold out fast.2 Organizations got in on the action, racing to prove their ‘cred’ through antiracist public statements and internal trainings. Given the pandemic, such trainings mostly entailed remote workshops and webinars, which made their content easier to share—​as screen shots, chat logs, and digital docs. Accordingly, New Populists notched up complaints about ‘woke’ corporations and their ‘cancel’ culture war against The People.3 George Floyd’s murder became a watershed that moved “the line of scrimmage,” said law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, and backlash was inevitable.4 Enter Christopher Rufo, a white man in his mid-​30s who graduated from Georgetown, made a few documentary films, cycled as a “fellow” through several conservative think tanks, and ran unsuccessfully for the Seattle City Council in 2018.5 Rufo says someone alerted him to the city’s new antiracist trainings, so he filed a public records request for the curriculum. In July 2020, he published his first piece on “cult programming in Seattle” in City Journal, the online magazine of the conservative Manhattan Institute.6 The article caught fire, Rufo set up a tip line, and content from similar trainings poured in. From the start, Rufo suspected he’d struck gold, but with this feverish response, he knew for sure he’d tapped a vein. He then posted an article that led with this: “Critical race theory—​the academic discourse centered on the concepts of ‘whiteness’, ‘white fragility’, and ‘white privilege’—​is spreading rapidly through the federal government.”7 The menace had a name now, and ‘it’ was growing quickly. 200

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On September 1, 2020—​not quite two months after his initial article—​ Rufo appeared for the first time on Tucker Carlson Tonight to sound a national alarm bell. Viewers learned that CRT “has pervaded every institution in the federal government,” “infiltrating” the criminal justice system and scientific establishment. CRT amounts to “cult indoctrination” that is now, “in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy.” This radical ideology is being “weaponized against the American people” and “core traditional American values.” “Obviously,” it puts “the white straight male … at the top of this pyramid of evil.” Even Sandia National Laboratories “sent their white male executives on a three-​day re-​education camp” to “force them to write letters of apology to women and people of color.” Another diversity trainer, this one at the Treasury Department, “was, essentially, denouncing the country” and paid millions in taxpayer dollars to do so. CRT poses an “existential threat to the United States.” There’s no end to the “danger and destruction it can wreak,” and our military is its next prey. Then came the closer: The President and the White House—​it’s within their authority and power to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory trainings from the federal government. And I call on the President to immediately issue this executive order and stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology at its root.8 Rufo got his wish. The very next day, Trump’s chief of staff called him. He rushed to DC, where he helped to craft the administration’s new policy on CRT. On September 4—​just three days after Tucker’s show—​the Office of Management Budget issued a memo (M-​20-​34) that directed all federal agencies to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. On September 22, Trump signed an executive order (13950) prohibiting any such effort in the US military as well. A willing army quickly assembled to help Rufo turn CRT into a ravenous monster. This canny beast goes by benign pseudonyms like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ ‘inclusion,’ and ‘intersectionality.’ It wears sheep’s clothing so you can’t see its fangs. Any semblance of racial ‘overreach’—​meaning, any nod toward systemic racism—​could be tucked under its frightening fold. CRT is the root of all this poison fruit, as Kafer warned readers of The Denver Post a year later. 201

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*** CRT lurks everywhere, haven’t you heard, but especially in K-​12 education. In December 2020, Rufo posted an exposé on CRT in Seattle public schools. In January and February, he published eight more articles on CRT’s school invasion, not only in the progressive west but in the ‘heartland’ too.9 These are just his City Journal writings, mind you. He also made live appearances, recorded podcasts—​worked the media circuit hard. And he was not alone. Similar activity seemed to crop up everywhere as the sensation took hold. CRT takes aim at children, threatening their safety and wellbeing. When it was ‘discovered’ that CRT had hit schools and was coming for your kids, things really took off. Mentions of CRT on Fox News exploded, from 21 in January 2021 to 901 in June, just five months later.10 Parents crowded school board meetings, and ‘grassroots’ organizations sprung up. On his popular talk-​radio program, conservative commentator Glenn Beck funneled worried citizens to groups like Foundation against Intolerance and Racism, Parents Defending Education, Undoctrinate.org, and WhatAreTheyLearning.com.11 At the time of this writing, related legislation and curricular bans are being proposed and passed across the US.12 Also discovered were the deep pockets of this ostensibly grassroots movement. OpenSecrets.org traced how The Concord Fund, “a conservative dark money group better known as The Judicial Crisis Network,” poured “well over $1 million” into an ad campaign against K-​12 racial justice education, under the registered alias “Free to Learn Action.”13 This is hardly an isolated case. An NBC report found more than 165 groups boosting anti-​ CRT ‘activism,’ many of these nonprofits that fund school board candidates and parents suing school districts.14 The CRT scare is a populist downrising if ever there were one. It’s really about race, right? Yes, and it’s also about masculinity. Let’s practice again how to narrate them together.

Made in the manosphere: CRT is a manly grievance We mustn’t give Rufo too much credit. He is but one in a chorus and owes his solo to manly grievance divas like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump, and other media personalities who belted out his tune. Talking heads on the left too, like Joy Reid of MSNBC, who finally engaged with him after he taunted them into debate. The resulting testy exchanges featured little debate but fireworks aplenty, further spiking his circulation. Then there are the political strategists, like former top Trump heavyweight Steve Bannon, who in June 2021 proclaimed that CRT is “the Tea Party to the 10th power!”15 These are just a few human singers in a furious chorale. 202

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Another strategist humming in tune is Russel Vought, the Office of Management and Budget Director who issued that first anti-​CRT White House memo. Following his time in the Trump administration, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, whose foremost concern is—​you guessed it—​ fighting CRT in schools. In June 2021, the Center released a detailed “toolkit” for local community “combat” and “model language” for school board action.16 The toolkit informs readers that CRT attacks “straight white people (especially men)” in an effort to “destroy all of the things” that stem from their “privilege,” including “institutions, culture, ideas, etc.” 17 CRT advocates “are trying to socially replace you”18 by targeting the next generation in ways sure to “harm the intellectual and psychological development of children in our schools. Because our children are our society’s future, this will have a devastating impact on our nation as well.”19 In fact, proponents of CRT seek to “overthrow our society and replace it with their ideology.”20 That’s a lot of ours. And replace, twice. I’ll say it again in case you missed it. Kids and the country itself are at risk because straight white men have been displaced. Reverberating throughout the toolkit are the cries of endangered Western man, the universal subject displaced. The very heterosexual white manhood that brought you the nation and civilization itself is now being punished and supplanted (hear the echoes of ‘replacement theory,’ discussed in Chapter 17). The only way to counteract this crime is to reverse the Others’ victimization right back on them, countercultural style: “This is not like boxing—​this is like social jiu-​jitsu where you use their own tactics against them to expose them.”21 OK, we get it. Aggrieved masculinity coming through loud and clear. Or perhaps not yet? In case you don’t detect manly grievance, consider the “model language” for school board action. “Sex,” “sexism,” and “patriarchy” appear all over it, with almost every mention of “race” and “racism.” Critical race theory, it seems, is also about gender—​oh excuse me, I meant “sex.” Because gender is a natural binary, you know, and that is somehow crucial to CRT. The guide concludes with this gem, if there were any doubt left: Section 7. Usage of Sex or other Classifications Mentioned in this Enactment The usage of sex or other related classifications mentioned in this enactment shall not be construed as an endorsement of deviations from biological sex. These classifications are intended to prevent, and shall have the effect of preventing, anyone from using any manner of fluidity or impermanence regarding sex to circumvent the purpose and objective of this enactment.22 Care for more, just to be sure? No problem, because we’re just warming up. In a policy brief, the Center rails against the dangers of “cultural Marxism,” 203

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the intellectual movement it says underlies CRT.23 Now here is the hand of the manosphere beyond dispute. Cultural Marxism, in brief, is an anti-​Semitic conspiracy theory that has long roamed the far right manosphere. It holds that, when Marxism failed to deliver the liberation of the working class (in the form of Soviet communism, for instance), it turned its anti-​capitalist sites on subverting Western culture instead. Intellectuals associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, many of whom were Jewish, pushed this new ‘cultural’ Marxism through the Western academy, goes the theory.24 Higher education then furtively undermined conservative Christian values, producing the student counterculture of the 1960s, which morphed into the identity politics of the left establishment—​all of which reaches its next fearsome level in CRT. In her ‘local’ Denver Post column, Kafer trots out this philosophical lineage. For anyone familiar with the social theory she references (like me), the account is utterly incoherent, revealing the author’s slim grasp of the material, which is beside the point in any case. The point is simply to signal a nefarious plot concocted in the radical halls of academia. For this, Kafer handily recycles the very talking points released by the Center weeks before. There’s more. Among the more sanitized and visible foes of ‘cultural Marxism’ is Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor who seems fond of bespoke suits. He became an intellectual darling of the manosphere after a series of YouTube videos, in which he opposed legislation that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity and expression, calling it another instance of progressive encroachment on speech. Never mind that he is basically a “Gramscian of the alt-​light,” to borrow Angela Nagle’s clever phrase.25 By 2018, columnist David Brooks mused from the pages of the New York Times that Peterson may be “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.”26 Alrighty then. For anyone bothering to tune in, Rufo regularly ties CRT to cultural Marxism. In an interview with The New Yorker, for example, he explains that he traced key citations backward until he stumbled on the fact that prominent Black philosopher and activist Angela Davis was the PhD student of Herbert Marcuse, among the leading figures of the Frankfurt School. This was the clue that somehow clinched the cultural Marxist lineage of CRT. “He felt as if he had begun with a branch and discovered the root.”27 Writer and filmmaker Charles Mudede puts a better spin on Rufo’s sleuthing. “The Angela Davis/​Herbert Marcuse connection is pure Peterson.”28 Indeed it is. Rufo’s twitter account displays sympathy with Peterson six months before he ignited the CRT scare.29 A bit of algorithmic data may also be telling. When I cleared my browser and watched the clip of Rufo’s September 1, 2020 appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, what did YouTube queue up next but a Jordan Peterson interview? You can’t make this stuff up. 204

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Nor can Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator we met back in Chapter 17. The one in a tightly tailored navy suit and red tie who famously fist-​ pumped the crowd of Trump supporters at the US Capitol on January 6. The one who—​just over a year after Rufo first appeared on Tucker Carlson in 2020—​delivered that somber speech about the assault on American manhood. The one who had ‘help’ with that speech, or so I said in that chapter. I asked you to remember Hawley’s speech because it hits every note documented here: CRT, cultural Marxism, Marcuse—​all of it. If you haven’t read the full text yet, I urge you to do so in light of this chapter.30 The trail of breadcrumbs is unmistakable. The manosphere is the playbook. The CRT scare is straight out of the manosphere, and that is how it became a spreadable menace: You can just sense it.

Sense bites and sleepwalkers: CRT is viral masculinity at work For all the intellectual posturing, Rufo is well aware that his fight against CRT is a branding campaign and says so openly, all the time. Take his own tweet on March 15, 2021 (1:14pm): “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—​into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” True enough, “critical race theory” is an academic label used by scholars who examine structural racism, especially in the context of law. However, as Kimberlé Crenshaw and other leading CRT scholars have plainly said, the label has nothing to do with most everything now tagged by it,31 and the charges of some conspiratorial ancestral line are beyond bogus. Rufo freely admits that his main quest is not to debate or debunk the theory, but to sour its “brand.” So what does this mean, exactly? The goal is to create and spread an automatic response to CRT. Something akin to a cringe—​an instantaneous aversion that bypasses thought on the way to action. Like the jerk of a knee. Or ‘my’ womanly smile and ‘Daniel’s’ pufferfishery. The aspiration of any branding campaign is a reaction that comes upon you, involuntarily. One you cannot quite help—​an imperative, or defining urgency. You may take ownership of this compelling feeling (I believe this), but you should not take credit. That is to say, you are not its author, even when it comes directly from your body and affects your identity (I am this). I get that it seems like your own response; your body delivered it, after all. Doesn’t that make it authentically yours? Not exactly, but branding campaigns want you to think so. Boiled down, branding is how communicative capitalism works. 205

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This is the main difference between brand and identity.32 The former works through less conscious impression, a sense of something, whereas the latter is produced through more conscious reflection. Different degrees of awareness, with particular regard to feeling. Brand stays closer to sensation; it is hard to put into words by design. Identity involves more processed feeling, the translation of sensation into identifications you can articulate. The point of branding is to win by feeling rather than reflection, or to win ‘debate’ at the sensory level. To enter around the edges of cognizance, so that people encounter the feeling as my own conviction. The point of branding is to lure ‘hearts and minds’ through the less-​guarded body. Arrest attention through inattention. The concept of viral masculinity is seriously sharpened here. Aggrieved masculinity is built to blossom as an infectious sensation—​a reflex, first and foremost. It is supposed to churn the gut, burn the esophagus, and jack up the pulse. It works best when clenched in the jaw, drowned in pints, typed in ALL CAPS, chanted at rallies, shouted at the school board, worn on t-​shirts or by ripping off a mask, carried on flags or with guns. Not intended for explanation or debate, manly grievance is meant to be shared, passed around like a commodity in common—​on Facebook and Instagram, at the pub and on the golf course, in internet enclaves that ‘get me,’ through memes and scorching outbursts, indignant acts of violence big and small that send permission slips through the ether. To this point, I have called aggrieved masculinity an “animating force,” more current of energy than reason, idea, or identity. The CRT scare reveals something else. Aggrieved masculinity is a brand. Or that is how viral masculinity works, through an identity politics of branding. *** We know (from Chapter 14) that New Populism plays identity politics by denying it does so and playing the universal human instead. One might think this is innovation enough. But the holy grail of New Populist identity politics is the creation and diffusion of senses of self.33 By this, I mean bodily reflexes that fill in for identity, or that fill in identity—​supply direction and momentum—​without the full knowledge or consent of the self. A fearful wince at CRT. This is cultural warfare of another kind, fully adapted to audience democracy and communicative capitalism. Let’s call it identity politics 2.0, and admit that progressive identity politics as yet are no match for this upgrade. It’s like the left plays on a different field—​in older arenas like ideology, policy platforms, and lofty emotions like unity and empathy—​and wonders where the opposing team went. Under the radar is the answer. Identity politics 2.0 propagates sensations that activate bodies. The CRT scare shows that it works. 206

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The scare also shows how it works. ‘CRT’ is what I call a sense bite—​ feeling shorthand engineered to elicit repetitive and replicable reflexes that keep it moving and gathering energy. Go back to the pinball metaphor whereby we explained how the manosphere operates as an energy factory. A sense bite is the pinball itself, a moving object that triggers the body to flick the flipper when it passes by. Players become primed to flick through repetition, ready to strike at the ripe moment. I shouldn’t say ‘players’ because it’s not their fully aware selves who flick. It’s more like a part—​their finger-​brains, let’s say. When to strike is embodied knowledge, expressed through reflex more than decision. Flick enough at the right times, and the ball starts setting off bells and whistles, gaining steam through constant motion. As with CRT. Like ‘cancel culture,’ ‘political correctness,’ ‘Big Government’ or Tech, and the ‘war on Christmas’ before these, CRT is so much more than a sound bite, just as memes are more than visual candy, and a bite of anything exceeds taste. Sense bites are objects densely packed with feeling. They carry triggering sensations from point to point and back again, strengthening the reflex through repetition. I am using object expansively here. It could be the label itself, or a GIF of Rufo stretching his enunciation of CRITICAL. RACE. THEORY. on Tucker Carlson’s show. The Gamergate ‘manhole’ meme is another example, or you can envision a clip of Joker’s Arthur Fleck bouncing around the manosphere, accumulating comments, edits, and sneers of resentment as it travels from point to point. A sense bite could take infinite forms. Object is just meant to capture its sociophysical character. Sense bite is also a useful reminder that we are dealing with a mode of communication which is not reducible to its symbolic function. Sense bites are, above all, communicable; hence, they cannot be countered through ideological critique alone. They work not only through alert minds and emotions, but also off the grid of awareness—​or on an adjacent grid, which is the technical and bodily circuitry through which social relations are felt. Sense bites are a viral form more literal than metaphor. Without going full biomedical, we can say that they act as the ‘virus’ of aggrieved masculinity. They are agents of transmission, that material stuff by which cultural contagion can occur. They trigger the bodily response that makes ‘infection’ possible. Here, I take infection to mean a response repeated so many times it becomes automatic, embedded in habit and primed to occur on cue. Sense bites undergo real ‘mutation’ too. They travel further and reach more hosts (players?) by altering, not merely duplicating. The way CRT went from infiltrating the federal government to invading schools and targeting our children. Suddenly, even “mainstream suburban moms” who “aren’t Trump voters” were agitated, Steve Bannon rejoiced.34 Indeed, white heterosexual women are regular targets of manly grievance branding campaigns just like 207

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this. Many have been radicalized into New Populist conspiracy theories, for example, through #savethechildren, which hitched a ride on concern about child sex trafficking.35 What is now known as “Pastel QAnon” enhanced their activation by appropriating familiar feminine marketing aesthetics to sell the pitch.36 This too is viral masculinity at work. In the end, all this alarm over CRT (and Rufo’s fame) will be another flash in the pan, replaced by fresh sense bites and fresher-​faced influencers. The point is just to keep the pinballs coming. What sensory bits of manly grievance fly around and find traction where you are, I wonder? *** I know it can be uncomfortable to rework identity in this way. Western-​ habituated people prefer to speak of identity as a core, stable essence that one can actively, reflectively construct over time. In this view, identity politics are group affiliations that work by appeal to the ‘higher’ registers of communication and cognition—​say, speech, debate, protest, and creative expression. Self-​composure, we can call this =​people compose themselves. Individuals are self-​governing authors, masters of their own identity. To come to grips with identity politics 2.0, we desperately need another model. Living in viral relation means that our “susceptible porousness to the inventions of others, received mostly unawares, becomes an escalating point of vulnerability.”37 Under these conditions, identity is more like “a hypnotic state” in which the person is neither fully aware nor oblivious but partially awake—​in and out of consciousness, dozing off. Western-​made bodies brace against this state, entranced by the daydream of self-​containment. The irony is that this very sense of self-​possession, whereby we deny our basic porosity, is born of bodily receptivity too. Western selves are more like sleepwalkers than they care to admit. They are guided by senses, as in bodily encounters and reflexes, of self. The CRT scare toys with identity in precisely this way. This chapter demonstrated in greater detail how viral masculinity plays identity politics. Dirty is the answer. Beyond the radar and below the belt. At the level of particle rather than whole, sneaking into side entrances rather than knocking at the front door. By branding. Viral masculinity serves up senses of self, such that identity happens to bodies as much as it is made by people. Senses of self =​sleepwalkers feasting on sense bites while dreaming of self-​containment. The good news is they can awaken.

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We the Sleepwalkers Critical feeling as virus mitigation A marvelous beast is the pufferfish Bloating and barbs make a buffer which Protects it from harm Yet kills it with charm And I don’t know why we should suffer this. The irony should be lost on no one by this point: Aggrieved masculinity—​ that definitive feeling of entitlement to impermeability—​spreads through porous bodies. What would it look like to approach the culture wars this way, as if virus mitigation were the charge? That’s an honest question. If I’m being real, I’m not sure how to answer it. So I took to verse while I pondered, inspired by recent laughter with a friend over an old American ode to the pelican.1 I suppose my amateur limerick is as good a place as any to begin our conclusion. Consider it a call to arms for a new kind of cultural warfare.

Parting with the pufferfish (is no easy task) This book began by slowing down the usual read of New Populism as a socioeconomic symptom. We took our time with the spirit of the symptom, rather than take it at its word. By staying curious about what it does more than says, we discovered that the symptom is about something else. New Populisms share a signature move, and their global rise to power as anger management (government by—​not of—​anger) brings that move to a whole new scale of consequence. Were this a dance, it would be called ‘the pufferfish.’ At any threat to your strength, blow up. Literally inflate the

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body: Puff up the mouth, voice, chest, limbs, and gait, whatever defense is on offer. Arm yourself in barbs (no masks, please) and release deadly venom. To prove your strength, perform “deimatic” display (biology’s term for puffing, bluffing behavior) that makes everyone, including yourself, more vulnerable. ‘Doing the pufferfish’ tells a different story about populism, one that points to gender instead of class as a starting place. Leading with gender, we are better equipped to identify the feeling of endangered manhood that animates the symptom, the manosphere that propels it around the world, and the regional variants by which it claims ever more hosts. New Populism looks quite different in this light—​less like a genuine socioeconomic uprising and more like a gender-​laundering service, a political front for manly grievance. Through New Populism, aggrieved masculinity hijacks class inequality for its own bidding. To what end? Or what does the pufferfish want, beyond the escalation of anger? To avenge wrong done to manly right. To restore his rightful place at the head of the line. To retrieve the gender binary, so he alone can reign as universal subject, put the Others in their place, and rest assured of self-​containment. But this breed of pufferfish will never rest assured. No appeasement satisfies his appetite for supremacy, and his ‘crisis’ only grows as reality keeps getting in his way. On this he couldn’t be clearer: He will get his way or die trying, and he doesn’t care who goes down with him. He will overturn the play pen if compelled to share the toys. Critic Ellen Jones offers this blunt summary in her recent review of yet another film about wounded manhood, “Ultimately, in this world—​as in ours—​an insult to male pride can be used to justify any manner of slaughter and suffering.”2 In this way, the deimatic dance of New Populism is poorly adapted and deeply dysfunctional. The self-​defense of this pufferfish endangers rather than protects life, including his own. That’s because he misreads his own nature and, thus, real threats to it. He’s spooked by the shadow of bodily porosity, when it is actually his response to that shadow—​swelling to prove his counterfactual impermeability—​that is swiftly killing us all and the planet. An autoimmune response. Back in the introduction, I asked (a) what aggrieved masculinity is grieving, and (b) whether we might be able to address that without caving in to its grievances. The short answers are (a) the dying myth of self-​containment and (b) yes, I think so. We must address our fundamental permeability. The world—​from COVID-​ 19 to climate change to identity politics 2.0—​increasingly insists on it. *** Please notice what I am not saying: that some hard, physical world compels a change in the soft, social world, which has no choice but to accommodate. 210

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Nor am I saying that COVID-​19 (or climate change, for that matter) is the real pandemic, which trumps a metaphorical pandemic of feeling and calls us to rein in our social stupidities. Instead, my claim is that all of these are real pandemics that carry life and death consequences. Our essential permeability is physical and social. Communicability occurs in both registers because they work as one. Biomedical and environmental pandemics operate through sociality, just as pandemics of passion move through physicality. We may set them apart, but they become together. So do class struggle and culture wars. These things materialize in relation, making the world that unfolds before our eyes (and through our other sensory portals). One is not hard against a soft other, made trivial and subordinate by contrast. One is not cause; the other effect, because there is no ‘one and the other.’ Cause and effect lie in the living practices that ensure the inseparability of social and physical. Future trajectories arise from their ongoing mingling. If there is any hope to bend these arcs for the better, it lies in letting go of the gender binary and its unyielding hard–​soft hierarchy. The pufferfish risks his life and ours to keep it alive. Decisively, we must say no. And stop dancing to his tune ourselves. What I mean is that most of us have little cause for piety (I certainly have none). When it comes to surrendering self-​containment, the universal subject clearly has the most to lose and the furthest to fall. But anyone who dips a toe (or submerges, like me) in Western thinking likely clings in some form to the hard–​soft binary. As when we mock mask-​ulinity for ignoring how the physical obviously trumps the social (see Chapter 4). When we prioritize class over gender analysis because it seems, well, more muscular (see Chapter 11 and Chapter 13’s seventh and final ‘defense’). When we prefer a toxic frame to a viral one, because individuals are distinct from their environments and mostly govern their own choices and feelings (see Chapter 18), right? Those of us who live already deflated by the hard-​soft gender binary may never swell with pufferfish bravado, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to his charms. Who among us is finished with the fantasy of impermeability? And yet, we must be. Sociophysical: We have more options when we appreciate how social and physical become as one. Only this time, ‘we’ means all The People. We the Sleepwalkers.

Lateral empathy: cultural warfare through critical feeling In talking with folks as I wrote this book, I heard a common response. Don’t you think the world needs an infusion of critical thinking, so people have the tools to 211

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process what’s coming at them? Good question, and a great deal of education is founded on this faith that we can think our way toward better living. Armed with the right weapons of well-​rounded reflection, surely we can fight those seductive sentiments that impair reasoned judgment. Close readers can probably anticipate my response. Thinking is one half of another pair—​thinking versus feeling, we like to say. The former belongs to the higher order of the mind, compared with the latter’s lowly register. Thinking is more trustworthy, somehow liberated from the body through which it occurs. Susceptible to the whims of the flesh, feeling is more suspicious. And just like that, we are right back where we started. Thinking =​hard and masculinized, feeling =​soft and feminized. A Western bedrock if ever there were one: the conviction that thinking, like armor, can rescue Adam from Eve, culture from nature, our better angels from the sirens of invasive feeling. Now tell me how critical thinking alone can solve this, entrenched as it is in the gender binary and its unrelenting mirage of impermeability? Critical thinking is vital, and we need to cultivate, and promptly integrate, a corresponding practice of critical feeling.3 Critical thinking assumes a world where ideology is the main currency and emotion is its supportive sidekick. If we have established one thing, it is that we do not inhabit such a world. Feeling is at the forefront of circulation, and ideology has become its beard. A dear friend and mentor of mine memorably says that we “think under the influence.”4 We feel that way too. To better process sense bites, We the Sleepwalkers must learn how to address our permeable bodies. *** Critical feeling is the practice(s) of awakening portals of communicability long denied by Western self-​containment. Concisely, it means paying close attention to the neglected sensory ‘side doors’—​guided not by a quest to seal them off, but by the hope of bringing their lively and consequential activity into greater awareness. It begins by acknowledging that passions will arrive at bodily portals, so why not become more alert to what’s passing through? Post some sentries at the gates to start monitoring. Like a bouncer at a club, these guards can develop proficiency at screening for entry. They perform vetting services and acquire filtering capabilities. As with a good mask or condom, wearing one is never 100 per cent effective, but it can substantially reduce the risk. Critical feeling thus tackles a problem that Brennan explains this way. Thanks to the foundational fantasy of self-​containment, Western bodies have grown uniquely inept at registering any communication that takes place beyond the ‘front door’—​that is, beyond the realm of representation (language, symbol, ideology, data, conversation, information, interpretation, 212

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meaning, and so on). Other languages of the flesh are denied as such and cast off as ‘lower’ functions. For example, we regard olfactory and nervous communication as biologically determined processes, not as sign systems in their own right, which also entail active interpretation. Whereas representation is held to be primarily social, these other bodily modes of communication are treated as merely physical. We lose all sense of connection between the front and peripheral entrances, believing instead that the self-​ governing mind can overcome the body’s wayward impulses. The short version: As communication (at the ‘front door’) is severed from communicability (through the ‘side doors’), bodies are lulled—​trained, really—​into sensory illiteracy.5 We need to retrain them. Convinced of their impermeability, Western bodies are therefore most susceptible to the viral relations of audience democracy and communicative capitalism. We the Sleepwalkers. Critical feeling works to cultivate the sensory literacy we lack. If you struggle to imagine what developing this literacy might look like, start with the sort of inquiry entailed in critical thinking, which slows the rush to judgment by asking good questions. How do I know this? Where does my support come from, and what makes these sources (un)reliable? What evidence challenges my view, and why do I resist that data? What can be learned from taking other sides on the issue? Who is most affected by my perspective and how? How might the partialities of my own circumstance lead me to think this way? What other information do I need to know better? Likewise, critical feeling suspends the jump to certainty that this is my feeling that can’t be helped and must be acted upon. It presses pause on the inevitability and urgency, turns over the feeling and inspects its qualities. How did I come to feel this? When and where, through whom or what, did I first make contact with it? How did it grow so intense as to seem irrefutable? What physical sensations are associated? What triggers these—​or, what’s happening in the split second before I feel this—​and what makes those sources (un)reliable? Who is invested in or served by me feeling this? Who do I share the feeling with; what does it lead us to desire and do; and how does that affect others? What specific conditions of my life might make me more susceptible to this feeling? How do people in other circumstances feel differently, and what can I learn from that? What do I need to learn about my body’s other communication systems to feel better? Critical feeling goes beyond campaigns against mis-​or disinformation.6 Though important, such campaigns defend only the ‘front door.’ They work in the realm of representation, trying to minimize the mind’s contact with misleading ideas by battling the spread of erroneous messages. They do not address the rest of the body, or how it succumbs to a felt certainty about 213

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mistaken ideas. This is what US humorist Stephen Colbert captured with the term truthiness, how falsehoods come to feel like urgent ‘facts’ in the network-​body relations of the “post-​truth” era.7 Mis-​and disinformation campaigns miss this crucial nuance. Fighting bad information is like guarding the front entrance while leaving the back door and side gates wide open. Critical feeling takes up that battle. Put differently, critical feeling rests on a ‘full-​bodied’ conception of communication that owns up to communicability. It detects connections between the front door and all the other access points. It gets that human reception is a sociophysical process, so it builds more comprehensive security systems. It attends to all those portals by which the body becomes in relation to the world. The bottom line is that critical thinking alone is insufficient because awakening is not owned by the mind. For all its protest to the contrary, the Western mind is invariably one part of the body, which needs humbling and retooling to collaborate with the other parts instead of trying to master them. Critical feeling rejects the gendered binary of mind over body without in any way disparaging the mind. The goal is not to reverse the hierarchy, such that body now subjugates mind (not: critical feeling instead of thinking), but to abandon their separation altogether. Brain with body, or awareness distributed within and across porous bodies. Critical thinking and feeling, combined. This is the next generation of cultural warfare, and I think it could alter the current course of New Populism. *** As I conceive of it, critical feeling is a populist endeavor, far more richly so than New Populism. For critical feeling to work, it must be of, by, and for The People, inclusively. It either serves the whole, anyone who wants to survive anger management together, or it veers off course and begins to fail. Unlike aggrieved entitlement, it cannot commandeer the general will in the service of narrow interests. Which also means, it cannot be handed off to the experts. No emergency calls can be made to a technocratic elite who will save us from ourselves. Nor can the ‘high’ lift the veil of the ‘low.’ Don’t let some cultural establishment tell us how to feel critically, lest ‘emotional correctness’ be the next rallying cry. We the Sleepwalkers is a soberingly populist summons, because it admits that there is no outside agency standing by to come to the rescue. The People must figure out how to awaken from within the dream of self-​containment. This is about as far from anti-​populism as you could get. Don’t get me wrong. Critical feeling can certainly be informed by scientific, intellectual, technical, clinical, political, ethical, and other forms of know-​how. To flourish, it will have to be. Yet ‘disciplined’ branches of 214

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expertise are not the only pertinent forms of knowledge, and even their most seasoned practitioners are subject to sleepwalking too. Experts and expertise as we have known them, formal and ‘elite,’ are only as good as the ordinary (‘lay’) practices of critical feeling they can help to cultivate. Meanwhile, experts and expertise as we know them must expand beyond the ‘elite,’ incorporating the widest possible array of wisdoms and aspiring to convene them on a level playing field. *** Critical feeling is not akin to virus mitigation; it’s a form of mitigation adapted to a ‘sensational’ contagion. It includes any practice that helps The People help themselves to navigate and survive a pandemic of feeling that passes through permeable bodies. Critical feeling enacts empathy from the side by adopting a public health—​and more specifically, pandemic—​frame to address how viral masculinity moves from person to person and place to place through peripheral (less or non-​conscious) bodily entrances. Rather than take the symptom at its word or on its terms, as empathy from the front might do, lateral empathy contends with the motivating dis-​ease, which is aggrieved masculinity run riot. This pandemic frame goes well past metaphor. Critical feeling ‘flattens the curve,’ or reduces harm, through multiple and diffuse practices, which operate on many planes at once, and which assemble all kinds of human and non-​human players without trying to over-​centralize coordination and control. The point is to develop and disperse counter-​tactics that take on a life of their own. Think: the feeling equivalent of testing, contract tracing, masking, social and physical distancing, quarantining, anti-​viral therapies, vaccines, and so on. The goal is to bring as many hands on deck as possible, replicating and innovating those practices where needed. Defined like this, critical feeling is the perfect match for New Populist downrising. I have used the concept of downrising to characterize how the surge of aggrieved masculinity arises from distributed agency, such that linear cause and effect cannot be traced. No clean wizards and masterminds versus puppets and fools. Plenty of villains, profiteers, and beneficiaries, as well as droves who end up exploited. A million ‘hands,’ human and otherwise—​ some much larger than others, some more explicitly or terribly intended, some more deeply or directly invested, some who unwittingly pour fuel on the fire and others along for the ride—​all pulling their available lever. A ‘buzzing hive’ model of agency and cause. Critical feeling is a form of intervention sensitized to this model. It invites a wide array of participants, with any capacity to cultivate practices that awaken the ‘side doors,’ to start pulling the levers within their reach. Like so… 215

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-​-​ Help wanted -​-​ Job: Interrupt the circuits of aggrieved masculinity Qualifications: Anyone and anything that can ‘flesh out’ critical feeling as cultural warfare. All hands on deck welcome! Consider how you might contribute to … • Knowledge of how the senses operate and move feeling among bodies, especially in the context of contemporary media and sociotechnical relations; knowledge of network–​body contagion. • Educational resources that make this knowledge widely accessible and facilitate its translation into new habits of living. • Regionally specific accounts of endangered manhood and the heist of class. • A truly intersectional politics of class, attuned to the planet, race, indigeneity, citizenship, gender, sexuality, dis/​ability, religion, and whatever else belongs in the mix. • Ways to advance this shared struggle on multiple fronts at once—​activism, policy, candidates, coalition-​building, institutional efforts, representation, and feeling, including branding and sense-​bite warfare. • Manosphere savvy, from formal research and tracking to informal expertise. • Media practices that call out aggrieved masculinity and investigate (rather than propagate) identity politics 2.0. • Technical regulation and development, such as curtailing algorithms that push extreme content to extend viewing time and enhance profits (as YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and others currently do); attention to tech governance and culture, which also affects these dynamics.8 • Therapies that care for those at-​risk and help to heal those afflicted. • Experience in building capacity and/​or funding for any and all such efforts. • Additions to this list [insert your creative contribution here]. Compensation: The pufferfish goes extinct before you do

*** By some, this book will be read as further evidence of an attack on men and manliness, the ongoing assault on Western Man. I suppose there is some truth to that, but not like it sounds. I am taking a firm stance against an unholy trinity: the universal subject, Western Man, and the self-​contained individual. These are three dimensions of the same apparition, a vision of masculinity that empowers select men by disempowering, even disappearing, all the Others. What I have tried to demonstrate is that this fantasy is lethal for all of us, men included—​whether we take it on enthusiastically, unawares, or not at 216

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all. For our common survival, we must relinquish this fantasy and resist those furtive feelings that keep it alive and well. Straight, white, Christian and all other men are welcome in this fight. Mine is not a critique or rejection of so-​called manly virtues, those human values like courage, strength, assertiveness, and independence. It is a fight against that pufferfishery which denies our simultaneous interdependence, our relationality, vulnerability, and permeability. In that sense, this book is a far cry from an attack on men and manliness. In fact, it charts a novel way to save ‘man,’ both in the particular and “mankind” in the old generic. That path? For humankind to finally let go of the manly generic—​that deadly dream of Impermeable Man—​once and for all, at the level of feeling too. Critical feeling is a placeholder for the missing paradigm of movement. Enter here if you can help slow the spread of aggrieved masculinity. In this respect, the manosphere is right. The People don’t need a leader or central HQ to make big waves as long as they’re intrinsically incentivized. We the Sleepwalkers can get this hive buzzing. What more motivation do we need? How about this: The certainty of a sunrise depends on it.

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Notes Introduction 1

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These are ‘happenings’ or events of polarization. For more on the political concept, see J. McCoy, T. Rahman, and M. Somer (2018) “Polarization and the global crisis of democracy: Common patterns, dynamics, and pernicious consequences for democratic polities,” American Behavioral Scientist, Volume 62, Number 1, pages 16–​42, as well as S. Iyengar, Y. Lelkes, M. Levendusky, N. Malhotra, and S.J. Westwood (2019) “The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States,” Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 22, pages 129–​146. MAGA is short for “Make America Great Again,” the slogan for Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign. The abbreviation has come to be used colloquially as a marker for people and things associated with Trump’s orbit. The rise of populism is commonly addressed as a threat to democracy across scholarly and public conversation. The 2019 three-​volume series entitled Populism and the Crisis of Democracy (London and New York: Routledge) provides one of countless examples in academic discourse. Public intellectuals like Yascha Mounk help to translate the crisis narrative into popular discourse. For just one illustration, see his 4 March 2018 Guardian article, “How populist uprisings could bring down liberal democracy.” This theme—​populism versus democracy—​is repeated endlessly these days, as a quick search for ‘populism’ and ‘democracy’ confirms. Throw in ‘threat,’ ‘challenge,’ ‘crisis,’ or similar terms, and the yield will be even greater. Thomas Frank refers to the pattern described in note 3 as a “democracy scare,” a common anti-​populist tactic. See T. Frank (2020) The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-​populism, New York: Metropolitan Books. A.R. Hochschild (2016) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, New York: The New Press; J.D. Vance (2016) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, New York: HarperCollins. This observation was made from the early days of the pandemic and continues to be updated with further nuance. For examples, see D. Leonhardt and L. Leatherby (2 June 2020) “Where the virus is growing most: Countries with ‘illiberal’ populist leaders,” New York Times; G. Yamey and C. Wenham (1 July 2020) “The U.S. and U.K. were the two best prepared nations to tackle a pandemic: What went wrong?” Time; F. Ghitis (30 March 2021) “Which world leader has the worst pandemic record? The competition is fierce,” Washington Post; and I. Tharoor (3 May 2021) “Right-​wing populists failed during the pandemic. But they weren’t the only ones,” Washington Post.

Chapter 1 1

V. Badham (16 July 2020) “Mask-​wearing resistance looks like comedy—​but the stakes are tragically high,” The Guardian. 218

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See R. Solnit (17 April 2020) “Coronavirus does discriminate, because that’s what humans do,” The Guardian. F. Jabr (2 December 2020) “The social life of forests,” New York Times Magazine. See Introduction note 3. For a synopsis of “genderism,” see J. Butler (23 October 2021) “Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?” The Guardian. For a range of sources, see C. Ainsworth (22 October 2018) “Sex refined: The idea of 2 sexes is overly simplistic,” Scientific American; A. Fausto-​Sterling (2020) Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, 2nd edition, New York: Basic Books, as well as the same author (2012) “The dynamic development of gender variability,” Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 59, Number 3, pages 398–​421; D. Joel, Z. Berman, I. Tavor, N. Wexler, O. Gaber, Y. Stein et al (2015) “Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences –​PNAS, Volume 112, Number 50, pages 15468–​15473; and S.D. Sun (13 June 2019) “Stop using phony science to justify transphobia,” Scientific American. For an example, see E.J. Emanuel (2 November 2021) “An unsolved mystery: Why do more men die from COVID-​19?” New York Times. See A.H. Gupta (9 May 2020, updated 18 June 2021) “Why some women call this recession a shecession,” New York Times. For a fuller overview of the differential impact on women, see the United Nations policy brief on “The impact of COVID-​19 on women,” issued early in the pandemic (9 April 2020) and updated since, unwomen.org. Numerous research reports are also readily available online. Early examples from the time of writing include J. Frey (23 April 2020) “On the frontlines at work and at home: The disproportionate economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic on women of color,” a report prepared for the Center for American Progress, americanprogress.org; J. Moreau (12 May 2020) “LGBTQ people face higher unemployment amid coronavirus pandemic, survey finds,” nbcnews.com; and G. Velasco and M. Langness (23 June 2020) “COVID-​ 19 action that centers Black LGBTQ people can address housing inequities,” a report prepared for the Urban Institute’s “Urban Wire” blog. Chapter 11 returns to the race and gender profiles of class vulnerability, and Chapter 16 delves into the (public) health implications of (aggrieved) masculinity.

Chapter 2 1

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See the October 2019 Global Health Security (GHS) Index report, available online at ghsindex.com This claim is based on consulting open access data available online at the time of writing—​ from “Our World in Data,” the flagship output of the Oxford Martin Programme for Global Development, as well as the “Oxford COVID-​19 Government Response Tracker” (OxCGRT), a project of the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. Updates can be found at ourworldindata.org/​coronavirus and covidtracker.bsg.ox.ac.uk Early claims of broad cultural differences like this led to more nuanced accounts that factored in different historical experiences and institutional responses. For an example, see D. Thompson (6 May 2020) “What’s behind South Korea’s COVID-​19 exceptionalism?” The Atlantic. See D. Leonhardt and L. Leatherby (2 June 2020) “Where the virus is growing most: Countries with ‘illiberal’ populist leaders,” New York Times. See A.H. Gupta’s 22 October 2020 interview with author Anand Giridharadas, “How an aversion to masks stems from ‘toxic masculinity’,” in the New York Times. The exchange

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toward the end exemplifies this pattern: starting with the apparent difference of female leaders, then introducing cultural caveats. For an intriguing and historically sensitized discussion of the recurring ‘discovery’ of so-​ called feminine leadership, see M.B. Calás and L. Smircich (March–​April 1993) “Dangerous liaisons: The ‘feminine-​in-​management’ meets ‘globalization’,” Business Horizons, pages 71–​81. See b. hooks (2015) Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, New York: Routledge; C.R. Snorton (2017) Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; and M. Lugones (2016) “The coloniality of gender,” in W. Harcourt (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pages 13–​33. See Chapter 1 note 6.

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For a humorous introduction to the concept, see A. Petri (3 February 2022) “The only way to know we aren’t picking a justice for the wrong reason is to choose a White man,” Washington Post. For examples of the serious scholarship undergirding such parody, see S. Hekman (1991) “Reconstituting the subject: Feminism, modernism, and postmodernism,” Hypatia, Volume 6, Number 2, pages 44–​63; J. Butler (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge; and N. Fraser (1990) “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy,” Social Text, Number 25/​26, pages 56–​80. For more background on the conception and critique of “Western Man” in Black feminist and queer studies, see A.G. Weheliye (2014) Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sara Ahmed’s extended discussion of the figure of the ‘stranger’ is helpful here. See her 2000 book Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-​Coloniality (London and New York: Routledge). Judith Butler’s extensive work—​for example, their 1993 book Bodies That Matter (London and New York: Routledge) and 2009’s Frames of War (London: Verso)—​also informs the notion of “constitutive exclusion” developed in the next paragraph. When something is ‘second-​sexed,’ it becomes the inferior feminized Other by which its superior masculine opposite is known. See S. De Beauvoir (1953) The Second Sex, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. T. Brennan (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. K. Barad (2012) “Nature’s queer performativity,” Kvinder, Køn & Forskning (Women, Gender & Research), Volume 1–​2, pages 25–​53. If you wonder why I use the term “obligatory,” see a classic essay by Adrienne Rich, entitled “Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence,” in Signs, Summer 1980, Volume 5, Number 4, pages 631–​660. See psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s work in this regard, as in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). My nerd comrades will hear echoes of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and countless others who have written about gender and sexuality as discursive formations, materially performed. The oft-​cited quote here is taken from page 54 of Foucault’s 1972 Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books). For prominent early renditions of gender performativity, see J. Butler’s “Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory” in Theatre Journal (December 1988, Volume 40, Number 4, pages 519–​531), which grew 220

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into their 1990 academic smash Gender Trouble (New York and London: Routledge). Since then, there has been a virtual explosion of writing on gender and performance, resulting in an array of dramaturgical perspectives too vast to chronicle here. Well before this came Iris Marion Young’s well-​known essay, entitled “Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility, and spatiality,” published in Human Studies in 1980 (Volume 3, Number 2, pages 137–​156). These works are touchstones in gender performance studies and profoundly influenced my own thinking. Retracing a well-​worn trail of citations, however, has a way of sidelining already marginalized ideas and voices, such as those of feminist and queer theorists of color. Gender theory that neglects race, for example, or traces its lineage through mostly white scholars, tends to assume whiteness as its norm (see also Chapter 2 note 7) and neglect relevant research on racialization and anti-​Blackness. For more on this problem and a powerful demonstration of redressing it, see Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus. A different (and less radical, as in thoroughly critical) approach to decentering whiteness can be found in Nadine Ehlers’ 2012 book Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), which mostly accepts the conceptual instruments of gender performativity and retunes them to analyze race. Throughout the book, I will try to model how to notice and rework exclusive renditions of gender (though I will not always succeed). I do so with folks like me in mind, who may have learned about gender in such a way that white heterosexual cis women’s concerns occupy the center of feminist discourse, thereby perpetuating Others’ oppression. This cannot continue, and those eager to shake associated habits yet not sure how to start may find some guidance here. Be advised that there is as much to learn from my mistakes as my successes. While I’ve developed modest proficiency in holding together gender, race, sexuality, class, and (to a lesser extent) religion, for example, I do not hold them equally well, and other relevant differences (like dis/ability) fade into the background. That we continue to learn is key. That our future depends on it is the point of this book. Yet another popular performance model is that of sociologist Candace West and colleagues—​like Don Zimmerman, with whom she wrote the widely circulated article “Doing gender” (Gender & Society, June 1987, Volume 1, Number 2, pages 125–​151) and Sarah Fenstermaker, with whom she published Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change in 2002 (New York: Routledge). The “doing gender” model became especially influential in the social sciences, whereas performativity in Butler’s vein found greater traction in the humanities. My own field, organizational communication studies, sits at the meeting of humanistic and social scientific approaches, so I had the benefit of learning from both.

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For example, see O. Khazan (29 October 2020) “Why many white men love Trump’s coronavirus response,” The Atlantic; S. Faludi (29 October 2020) “Trump’s thoroughly modern masculinity,” New York Times; and A. North (12 May 2020) “What Trump’s refusal to wear a mask says about masculinity in America,” Vox. Guardian articles with these headlines, in the order presented, were written by S. Moore on 13 July 2020, P. Elan on 3 July 2020, and J. Golby on 15 July 2020. I. Zagury-​Orly (2020) “Unmasking reasons for face mask resistance,” Global Biosecurity, Volume 1, Number 4, jglobalbiosecurity.com. 221

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This quote comes from the second piece identified in note 2: P. Elan (3 July 2020) “The data is in: Men are too fragile to wear COVID-​19 masks. Grow up, guys,” The Guardian. Watching the video helps to bring not only the ensuing discussion but also much of the book to life. At the time of writing, it can be readily accessed in several ways, such as searching for the tweet that begins this paragraph. You can also find an embedded link in this online article: J. Allen (13 July 2020) “Man in viral Florida Costco video defends himself after outburst during face mask argument,” Palm Beach Post. See, for example, A.H. Gupta’s 22 October 2020 interview with author Anand Giridharadas, “How an aversion to masks stems from ‘toxic masculinity’,” in the New York Times. See also M. Pauly (8 October 2020) “The war on masks is a cover-​up for toxic masculinity,” Mother Jones; A. Mahdawi (16 May 2020) “Men are less likely to wear masks—​another sign that toxic masculinity kills,” The Guardian; and M. Hyde (14 July 2020) “Johnson has seen the light on ‘face coverings’. Just not on toxic mask-​ulinity,” The Guardian. See P. Glick (30 April 2020) “Masks and emasculation: Why some men refuse to take safety precautions,” Scientific American; E. Willingham (29 June 2020) “The condoms of the face: Why some men refuse to wear masks,” Scientific American; and D. Victor (10 October 2020) “Coronavirus safety runs into a stubborn barrier: Masculinity,” New York Times. See B. May (6 May 2020) “When mask-​wearing rules in the 1918 pandemic faced resistance,” history.com. S. Banet-​Weiser (2021) “ ‘Ruined’ lives: Mediated white male victimhood,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 24, Number 1, pages 60–​80. See also her 2018 book Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Her case for the co-​constitution of today’s ‘fashionable’ brands of feminism and misogyny converges in interesting ways with Angela Nagle’s 2017 analysis of the online culture wars in Kill All Normies, discussed at length in Chapter 17. M. Kimmel (2017) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, New York: Bold Type Books. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page xi. The quotes in this and the next paragraph are drawn from Allen, “Man in viral Florida Costco video defends himself.” The t-​shirt combines a familiar American exceptionalism, or US imperialism, with what Aileen Moreton-​Robinson calls The White Possessive of nation in her 2015 book by that name (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Activist Kenn Orphan offers a pithy breakdown of this in his 17 July 2020 post on counterpunch.org, entitled “Running the world, since 1776.” M. Flynn (25 June 2020) “To protest face masks, Arizona city councilman uses George Floyd’s words, ‘I can’t breathe’,” Washington Post. See Pauly, “The war on masks,” as well as M. Hesse (6 October 2020) “No, Trump did not piledrive the virus into submission with his superior strength,” Washington Post. S. Langlois (6 October 2020), “Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren tells Joe Biden that he ‘might as well carry a purse with that mask’,” marketwatch.com. T. Brennan (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 5 1

For a reminder of the performance model, see Chapter 3 notes 9 and 10. My sociophysical approach learns from gender performativity but is also inspired by works that attend more thoroughly to physical and affective registers, such as S. Sullivan’s 2015 The Physiology 222

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of Sexist and Racist Oppression (Oxford: Oxford University Press) and S. Ahmed’s 2015 Queer Phenomenology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).

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K.D. Williamson (23 July 2021) “The American Right hits its hippie phase,” National Review. M. Hvistendahl (15 January 2021) “Capitol mob has roots in anti-​lockdown protests,” The Intercept. On 9 November 2016, for instance, the New York Times suggested “6 books to help understand Trump’s win,” including G. Packer’s 2013 The Unwinding (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), A.R. Hochschild’s 2016 Strangers in Their Own Land (The New Press), J.D. Vance’s 2016 Hillbilly Elegy (HarperCollins), T. Frank’s 2016 Listen, Liberal (Metropolitan Books), J.B. Judis’ 2016 The Populist Explosion (Columbia Global Reports), and N. Isenberg’s 2016 White Trash (Viking Books).

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But if you do wish to dabble in these scholarly debates, you might start with C.R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, and P. Ostiguy (eds) (2017) Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. This volume provided much of the grounding for this and the next chapter. Given the focus of this book, I found K. Kampwirth’s 2010 edited volume, Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press) an especially useful source on this point. For example, see C. Mudde (2004) “The populist zeitgeist,” Government and Opposition, Volume 39, Number 4, pages 541–​563. See the “floating signifier” entry in I. Buchanan’s 2010 A Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). For more on The People as “noble assemblage,” see M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, originally published in 1995 (New York: Basic Books). For more on the “heartland” concept, see P. Taggart’s 2000 book Populism (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press). J.B. Judis (2016) The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports. This book was featured on the New York Times list of “6 books to help understand Trump’s win,” mentioned in Chapter 6 note 3. See K. Weyland (2001) “Clarifying a contested concept: ‘Populism’ in the study of Latin American politics,” Comparative Politics, Volume 34, Number 1, pages 1–​22. C. Lévi-​Strauss (1983 edition, but originally written in 1964, first English translation 1969) The Raw and the Cooked, Mythologiques Volume 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. P. Ostiguy (2017) “Populism: A socio-​cultural approach,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 73–​97. Or for a brief, accessible rendition, see B. Moffitt and P. Ostiguy (20 October 2016) “Of course Donald Trump goes low. That’s the populists’ winning style,” Washington Post. Originally, this was S.P. Nicholson and G.M. Segura’s characterization from a 2012 article in Public Behavior (“Who’s the party of the people? Economic populism and the U.S. public’s beliefs about political parties”), as quoted on page 33 of C. Mudde (2017) “Populism: An ideational approach,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 27–​47. 223

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For more on how Othering has proven central to US populism, see J. Lowndes (2017) “Populism in the United States,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 232–​247. I return to this theme and source in some detail in Chapter 14. See Judis, The Populist Explosion. Lowndes (“Populism in the United States”) makes a similar point but, unlike Judis, underscores that racial, gender, and sexual Others have always been constitutive of The People.

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As an aside, Occupy was a contemporaneous populism from the left that did not exhibit all five markers of populism—​just clues 1 and 2, mainly. It is worth noting that Occupy mutated into a progressive agenda that politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren continued to advance. As it turned progressive, however, this agenda lost much of its populist edge in the US in precisely the ways Judis predicts (see discussion of clue 2 in Chapter 7). Jason Miller, quoted in K. Reilly (10 September 2016) “Read Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ remarks about Donald Trump supporters,” Time. See, for example, M.M. Grynbaum (17 February 2017) “Trump calls the news media the ‘enemy of the American people’,” New York Times; E. Stewart (29 October 2018) “Trump calls media the ‘true Enemy of the People’ the same day a bomb is sent to CNN,” Vox; S. Sugars (30 January 2019) “From fake news to enemy of the people: An anatomy of Trump’s tweets,” Committee to Protect Journalists, cpj.org); and B. Samuels (5 April 2019) “Trump ramps up rhetoric on media, calls press ‘the enemy of the people’,” The Hill. G. Graziosi (27 November 2020) “Trump calls the Georgia Secretary of State an ‘enemy of the people’,” The Independent. N. Urbinati (2019) Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. S. Rummens (2017) “Populism as a threat to liberal democracy,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 554–​570. Since the 2020 US Presidential election, “The Big Lie” is commonly used to describe the efforts of Trump and his allies to discredit and overturn the results. Urbinati, Me the People. J.B. Judis (2016) The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports. See Urbinati, Me the People, as well as B. Manin (1997) The Principles of Representative Government, New York: Cambridge University Press. Or for a brief, accessible introduction, try K.R. Collins (8 February 2021) “From party democracy to audience democracy: The role of mass media in modern demagogy,” medium.com/​the-​vienna-​circle. For an early and relatively brief rendition, see J. Dean (2005) “Communicative capitalism: Circulation and the foreclosure of politics,” Cultural Politics, Volume 1, Number 1, pages 51–​74. For an extended version, consult J. Dean (2009) Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. She used this phrase during a 22 January 2017 interview on Meet the Press (NBC) to characterize the White House Press Secretary’s false statement one day prior about the attendance numbers at Trump’s inauguration. Stephen Colbert coined this term on the 17 October 2005 pilot episode of his political satire show, The Colbert Report. Truthiness refers to the increasing reliance not on facts but on what feels true or resonates in the gut. Think of it as slang for the “post-​truth” era.

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It was also designated Word of the Year in 2005 and 2006, respectively, by the American Dialect Society and Merriam-​Webster. Urbinati, Me the People. T.D. Sampson (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. See page 72 of T. Sampson (2016) “Various joyful encounters with the dystopias of affective capitalism,” ephemera, Volume 16, Number 4, pages 51–​74. Sampson, Virality, page 165. Urbinati, Me the People, page 22. M. Kimmel (2017) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, New York: Bold Type Books. A. Moreton-​Robinson (2015) The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. See P. Ostiguy (2017) “Populism: A socio-​cultural approach,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 73–​97. S. Schleusener (2020) “ ‘You’re fired!’ Retrotopian desire and right-​wing class politics,” in G. Dietze and J. Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond, Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing, pages 185–​206. See Ostiguy, “Populism,” page 76. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, citing E. Durkheim, page 225. Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired!’ ” also informs this phenomenon. See the discussion of “transgression,” beginning on page 240 of Lowndes, “Populism in the United States.” The quotation here is Lowndes quoting Ostiguy on page 240, and the added emphasis on “pleasure” is mine. For a sampling of different takes on this claim, see W. Davies (2019) Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World, London: Vintage Books; T. Szanto and J. Slaby (2020) “Political emotions,” in T. Szanto and H. Landweer (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion, New York: Routledge, pages 478-​494; and M. Gebhardt (2021) “The populist moment: Affective orders, protest, and politics of belonging,” Distinktion, Volume 22, Number 2, pages 129–​151.

Chapter 9 1

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3 4

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6 7

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A. Quito and A. Shendruk (7 January 2021) “Decoding the flags and banners seen at the Capitol Hill insurrection,” Quartz. Apparently, I’m not the only one to feel this way. See M. Judkis (17 April 2020) “That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too,” Washington Post. See Introduction note 3. See page 565 of S. Rummens (2017) “Populism as a threat to liberal democracy,” in C.R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, and P. Ostiguy (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 554–​570. C. Marcos (27 July 2021) “Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn on Jan. 6 mob: ‘A hit man sent them’,” The Hill. More on this final sentence in Chapter 19. C. Parsons (13 December 2018), “Brexit rooted more in elite politics than mass resentment,” The Conversation. T. Frank (2020) The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-​populism, New York: Metropolitan Books, page 246. Frank, The People, No, page 229.

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12 13

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Frank, The People, No, page 229. S. Sullivan (2014) Good White People: The Problem with Middle-​Class White Anti-​racism, Albany: SUNY Press. Matthew 7:5, New American Standard Bible. Patricia Hill Collins’ 1998 article by that name, “The tie that binds: Race, gender, and US violence” (Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 21, Number 5, pages 917–​938), provides one useful starting point. She demonstrates that violence faced by African American women in the US cannot be limited to acts of physical or verbal aggression perpetrated by racist individuals. Systemic forms of violence against Black women bring benefits to many white folks, including those who disavow sexist, racist violence. Through these overt and covert gains, they are thoroughly involved whether they know or admit it. They are therefore responsible to learn how to use their privilege against it. In Sullivan’s terms, they cannot wash their hands of racist, sexist violence by redirecting blame toward ‘bad’ white people. For some history and additional context on this term, see G. Brockell (2 July 2021) “Some call voting restrictions held up by Supreme Court ‘Jim Crow 2.0.’ Here’s the ugly history behind that phrase” in the Washington Post and C. Blow (14 July 2021) “Welcome to Jim Crow 2.0” in the New York Times. Michelle Alexander’s work is also crucial to understanding contemporary usage of the term. See her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press) as well as an updated analysis in the New York Times on 8 November 2018, “The newest Jim Crow.” M. Hesse (12 January 2021) “Trumpist masculinity reaches its high water mark,” Washington Post. The italics in the quote are her original emphasis.

Chapter 10 1

2

3

K.D.L. Umbers, J. Lehtonen, and J. Mappes (2015) “Deimatic displays,” Current Biology, Volume 25, Number 2, pages R58–​R59, cell.com. The situation continues to evolve as I write. About three months after I typed this paragraph, Omicron made its appearance. Then on 17 December 2021, D. Leonhardt of the New York Times warned that “Omicron threatens red America,” whereas by 25 January 2022, P. Bump of the Washington Post delivered a somewhat different assessment of the relative partisanship of the Delta and Omicron variants (see “The deadliness of the pandemic’s deadliest waves”). Stay tuned, I suppose. V. Romo (9 August 2021) “Florida’s governor says school leaders’ salary may be withheld if they require masks,” NPR.

Chapter 11 1

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J.B. Judis (2016) The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports. J.M. Roose (2021) The New Demagogues: Religion, Masculinity and the Populist Epoch, New York: Routledge, page 4. See also E. Passari (2020) “The Great Recession and the rise of populism,” Intereconomics, Volume 55, Number 1, pages 17–​21 and M. DeWitte (11 January 2019) “How the Great Recession influenced today’s populist movements,” gsb.stanford.edu. His opening comments from the show are also published as a Washington Post editorial. See F. Zakaria (14 May 2020) “Experts have jobs. They need to understand those who don’t.”

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See K.P. Vogel, J. Rutenberg, and L. Lerer (21 April 2020) “The quiet hand of conservative groups in the lockdown protests,” New York Times; and E. Holden (21 May 2020) “US critics of stay-​at-​home orders tied to fossil fuel funding,” The Guardian. For example, see N. Carnes and N. Lupu, first on 8 April 2016 at MSNBC.com (“Why Trump’s appeal is wider than you might think”) and again on 5 June 2017 in the Washington Post (“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class”). There are mounds of available data supporting this and the next note. Definitively, people of color in the US suffered significantly greater harm from the COVID-​19 crisis, which compounded already existing inequities. The following sampler of sources indicates some key findings but barely scratches the surface of the extensive and enduring impact: “Coronavirus equity considerations,” a thorough and multi-​dimensional compilation of emerging findings issued by the NAACP in April 2020 and available on naacp.org/​resources; B.L. Hardy and T.D. Logan (August 2020) “Racial economic inequality amid the COVID-​19 crisis,” essay 2020–​17 of The Hamilton Project, available at brookings.edu; V. Abedi, O. Olulana, V. Avula, D. Chaudhary, A. Khan, S. Shahjouei, J. Li, and R. Zand (2021) “Racial, economic, and health inequality and COVID-​19 infection in the United States,” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Volume 8, pages 732–​742; A.J. Yellow Horse, T.-​C. Yang, and K.R. Huyser (published online 19 January 2021) “Structural inequalities established the architecture for COVID-​19 pandemic among Native Americans in Arizona: A geographically weighted regression perspective,” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities; C. Spolar (7 December 2021) “Data analysts proved what Black Pittsburgh knew about COVID’s racial disparities,” NPR; and the CDC’s own COVID-​19 report (updated 25 January 2022) on “Health equity considerations and racial and ethnic minority groups,” cdc.gov. Again, overwhelming evidence supports this conclusion. See Chapter 1 note 8 for just a sampling of common findings—​truly, the tip of the iceberg. For example, see M.N. Hoskin (25 April 2020) “The whiteness of anti-​lockdown protests,” Vox; and S. Raghavan (9 May 2020) “The inherent white privilege of anti-​lockdown protests in America,” Statecraft. C. Da Costa (22 May 2020) “White anti-​quarantine protestors have cruelly co-​opted an enslaved Black woman from the 18th century,” Daily Beast. For starters, see note 5. Then consider all the comfortable and even elite New Populist contributors discussed in Chapter 9 on “downrising.” In Strangers, Arlie Hochschild repeatedly acknowledges that the shared sense of loss and anger she identifies is not a lower-class feeling. She describes how today’s politics on the right pit the working and middle classes against the poor (for instance, see hints on pages 114–​115 and the pointed articulation on pages 148–​151). She also underscores how disaffected working and middle classes tend to identify ‘up’ rather than down (see pages 221–​222), setting the stage for a broad cross-​class identification—​across the lower-​middle, middle, and even upper classes, that is—​with Trump, who “promised to make men ‘great again’ too, both fist-​pounding, gun-​toting guy-​guys and high-​flying entrepreneurs” (page 229). The emphasis on men there is mine; more on that at the beginning of Chapter 14 (and associated notes 1–​3). The point here is that we are surrounded by evidence of this cross-​class affinity against a racialized poor, yet it doesn’t seem to stick. Some public imaginary continues to align New Populist supporters with the white lower and working classes. My reconception of New Populism as a downrising of aggrieved entitlement (in Chapter 9) is meant to challenge this fiction. The middle, professional, and elite classes are right in there too, well-​represented and deeply invested. 227

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16 17 18

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For more on Vance’s evolution, see T. Nichols (14 July 2021) “The moral collapse of J.D. Vance,” The Atlantic. This is but one of many forays into his contradictory (at best) character. See N. Gidron and P.A. Hall (4 January 2021) “Populism erupts when people feel disconnected and disrespected,” The Conversation. T. Frank (2016) Listen, Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? New York: Metropolitan Books; M. Lilla (18 November 2016) “The end of identity liberalism,” New York Times; M. Fisher (24 November 2013) “Exiting the vampire castle,” on opendemocracy.net. A vast literature documents and analyzes this, but a useful introduction can be found in ­chapter 8 (on “Race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation”) of M.D. Yates (2009) Why Unions Matter, 2nd edition (New York: Monthly Review Press). In the US, for example, 62 percent of white men voted for Trump in 2016, according to a report by the Pew Research Center (9 August 2018) “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters,” pewresearch.org. Data on voters’ sexual identification and cis/​trans ​status is not available. However, it remains safe to say that non-​heterosexual and trans men New Populists in the US, as a rule, are neither vocal nor visible, with the rare exception of figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-​proclaimed (and then retracted) gay man and New Populist provocateur who was routinely marked as an oddity in this respect by fans and detractors alike. At times, he served himself up as ‘proof ’ that New Populist politics are for everyone, a move akin to the ‘women do it too’ defense to come in Chapter 13. See notes 6 and 7. J.D. Hunter (1991) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York: Basic Books. A host of related analyses appeared in 2021, on the heels of Republican politicians rebuking ‘woke’ capitalism—​among them, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who published a 28 April 2021 op-​ed directed at CEOs in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Your woke money is no good here.” For an example of analyses of this solidifying strategy, see E. Lutz (4 March 2021) “Republicans are trying to rebrand themselves as working class heroes,” Vanity Fair. S. Schleusener (2020) “ ‘You’re fired!’ Retrotopian desire and right-​wing class politics,” in G. Dietze and J. Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond, Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing, pages 185–​206. Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired!’,” page 200. Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired!’,” page 192. Again, see note 10.

Chapter 12 1

W. Davies (2020) “Anger fast and slow: Mediations of justice and violence in the age of populism,” Global Discourse, Volume 10, Number 2, pages 169–​185. The quote in this paragraph comes from page 169.

Chapter 13 1

Regarding the US case, you can visit, for example, the New York Times (3 November 2020) “National exit polls: How different groups voted,” conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool (https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​inte​ract​ive/​2020/​11/​03/​ us/​electi​ons/​exit-​polls-​presid​ent.html). The gendered demographics there show that 53 percent of men voted for Donald Trump (as opposed to 42 percent of women) and 45 percent of men voted for Joe Biden (as opposed to 57 percent of women). In his 30 March 2022 article in the New York Times (“What we know about the women who 228

Notes

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3

4

vote for Republicans and the men who do not”), T. B. Edsall compiles a more complex assessment of related data, which supports the point I develop here. Namely, gendered voting patterns signal a more nuanced “gender gap” than the one usually mentioned. At issue is not so much how ‘men versus women’ vote but, rather, how these patterns suggest differential affinity for strains of ‘strong’ masculinity, which women can certainly feel as well. For discussion of New Populist gender composition in Europe, see B. Sauer (2020) “Authoritarian right-​wing populism as masculinist identity politics: The role of affects,” in G. Dietze and J. Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond, Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing, pages 23–​39. For a quick introduction, see Deutsche Welle (30 August 2018), “Female faces of Europe’s right-​wing populists,” dw.com. For an extended discussion of the role of women as well as gender and family policies in populist parties and platforms around Europe, see Triumph of the Women? The Female Face of the Populist and Far Right in Europe, a 2018 report prepared for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Forum Politik und Gesellschaft, edited by Elisa Gutsche and available online, fes.de. As evident in the next note, Triumph of the Women? is an ongoing series. See Triumph of the Women? from note 2. At dc.fes.de, you can also find a 2021 companion brief on the extent to which New Populism resonates with women in the US: Triumph of the Women? The Female Face of Right-​wing Populism and Extremism, Case Study, United States of America, by Cynthia Miller-​Idriss. For more on (white heterosexual cis) women’s varied investments in New Populism, see the Triumph of the Women? series from notes 2 and 3, as well as G. Dietze (2020) “Why are women attracted to right-​wing populism? Sexual exceptionalism, emancipation fatigue, and new maternalism,” in Dietze and Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender, pages 147–​166. Opendemocracy.net also offers an overview and useful resources compiled by S.A. Sofos (27 January 2020), “Charting the waters: Populism as a gendered phenomenon,” opendemocracy.net/​en/​rethinking-​populism/​charting-​waters-​populism-​gendered-​ phenomenon. Scroll down this “walking tour” to “Women join the populist advance” and see associated citations. Sauer (“Authoritarian right-​wing populism”) sums it up well on page 30 of their chapter: [M]‌asculinist identity politics can also attract women: those who are exhausted by the double burden of neoliberal emancipation and who long for a ‘male hero or savior’, or those who find new forms of agency in masculinity gender constellations. Moreover, the masculinist setting also includes subordinated women who are afraid of losing ‘secure’ gender relations in their daily lives.

5

6

7 8

9

10

I. Wilkerson (2020) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, New York: Random House, page 244. C. Silverman, J. Lytvynenko, and P. Dixit (26 January 2021) “How ‘The Women for America First’ bus tour led to the capitol coup attempt,” Buzzfeed. See notes 2 and 3. For example, see R.W. Connell (1993) “The big picture: Masculinities in recent world history,” Theory and Society, Volume 22, Number 5, pages 597–​623. Other excellent illustrations can be found in E.A. Rotundo’s 1993 American Manhood (New York: Basic Books) and G. Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), both of which will appear again in Chapter 15. K.L. Ashcraft (2013) “The glass slipper: ‘Incorporating’ occupational identity in management studies,” Academy of Management Review, Volume 38, Number 1, pages 6–​31. See the discussion around “habit 3” in Chapter 3. 229

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16 17

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See K. Ronayne and M. Kunzelman (30 September 2020) “Trump to far-​right extremists: ‘Stand back and stand by’,” AP News; D. Walsh (30 September 2020) “Trump on defensive over white supremacist comments in debate,” NPR. For a striking example on the heels of the 6 January US Capitol insurrection, see C. Clarke (22 January 2021) “A new era of far-​r ight violence,” New York Times. No mention of gender to be found there, or in the article titles cited in note 11. Laura Bates discusses this problem, and the need for journalistic practices that swiftly redress it, at length in her 2021 book Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All, Naperville: Sourcebooks. See M. Farivar (16 January 2021) “Researchers: More than a dozen extremist groups took part in capitol riots,” Voice of America. Again, as in note 12, observe how gender is not mentioned as a key component of extremism, even when groups include it in their name and self-​description, as in “militiamen” and “Proud Boys,” the latter explicitly identifying as “Western male chauvinists.” Still, no gender in the analysis. In contrast, see M.L. Krook (13 January 2021) “Misogyny in the Capitol: Among the insurrectionists, a lot of angry men who don’t like women,” The Conversation. See J. Butler (23 October 2021) “Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?” The Guardian. To support and elaborate my characterization in this section, see Dietze and Roth (eds) Right-​wing Populism and Gender; and A. Graff and E. Korolczuk, (2022) Anti-​gender Politics in the Populist Moment, New York: Routledge. Same meme from Chapter 11 note 20. See Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired! ’,” page 200. See J.S. Gersen (25 January 2016) “Who’s afraid of gender-​neutral bathrooms?” The New Yorker; A. Kelley (7 April 2021) “New NC bill would require schools to tell parents if children ‘exhibit gender nonconformity’,” The Hill; M. Lavietes (7 January 2022) “At least 7 states propose anti-​trans bills in first week of 2022,” nbcnews.com; and J. Yurcaba (31 January 2022) “Trump promises to ban transgender women from sports if re-​elected,” nbcnews.com. See J. Prisco (18 October 2018) “Hungary bans gender studies in universities: ‘It’s not a science’,” Global Citizen; F. Barasuol (no date) “Academic feminists beware: Bolsonaro is out to crush Brazil’s ‘gender ideology’,” The Loop (science blog of the European Consortium for Political Research at theloop.ecpr.eu); G. Reid (24 February 2021) “Poland breaches EU obligations over LGBT, women’s rights,” Human Rights Watch; R. Michaelson and D. Barış Narlı (14 April 2022) “Turkish women’s group targeted as Erdoğan fans flames of ‘culture war’,” The Guardian; C. Sang-​Hun (1 January 2022) “The new political cry in South Korea: ‘Out with man-​haters’,” New York Times. For the source of the “raw” and “cooked” distinction, see C. Lévi-​Strauss (1983 edition, but originally written in 1964, first English translation 1969) The Raw and the Cooked, Mythologiques Volume 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Same meme from Chapter 11 note 20. Schleusener adds an interesting aside about this meme in footnote 24 on page 200 (see Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired! ’,”) where he notes that James Damore—​the former Google engineer who gained notoriety in 2017 for his memo against gender diversity initiatives in tech—​was among those who circulated it. C. Mudde and C.R. Kaltwasser directly articulate and examine this position in their 2015 article, “Vox populi or Vox masculini? Populism and gender in Northern Europe and South America,” which appeared in Patterns of Prejudice (Volume 49, Number 1–​2, pages 16–​36). K. Kampwirth’s 2010 edited volume, Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press), also exemplifies this stance, as does S. Abi-​Hassan (2017) “Populism and gender,” in C.R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, 230

Notes

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22 23

24

25

P. Ochoa Espejo, and P. Ostiguy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 426–​444. The latter (by Abi-​Hassan) is the only chapter in the nearly 700-​page Handbook that engages substantively with gender, an observation affirmed by the volume’s index. In this sole chapter, gender is treated as a separate and peripheral matter. Abi-​Hassan claims on page 428 that gender is “an almost unnecessary or even irrelevant category for the construction of ‘the people’ and the ‘other’. … As an issue-​based phenomenon, gender politics is contrary to the more flexible open-​ended nature of populist politics.” Bringing this note full circle, she cites K. Weyland’s “Foreword” to the 2010 Kampwirth volume in support of this claim. Page 42 of N. Spierings (2020) “Why gender and sexuality are both trivial and pivotal in populist radical right politics,” in Dietze and Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender, pages 41–​58. See Chapter 4 note 15. Compare Krook, “Misogyny in the Capitol,” with J. Thomas (22 January 2021) “Capitol mob wasn’t just angry men –​there were angry women as well,” published in The Conversation a week later. Of course there were also angry women. I refer you back to my discussion of the first defense addressed in this chapter, “…women do it too.” Sources already cited illustrate this, such as Dietze and Roth’s Right-​wing Populism and Gender; Graff and Korolczuk’s Anti-​gender Politics in the Populist Moment; and the Triumph of the Women series from notes 2 and 3. In the late 2010s, scholarly activity around gender and populism sharply surged. Dedicated symposia began to crop up all over the place, resulting in such special issues as “Politics and gender in Eastern Europe” in Politics & Gender (2019, Volume 15, Issue 2); “Political masculinities and populism,” in NORMA (2020, Volume 15, Issue 1); “Gender and the far right,” in Politics, Religion & Ideology (2020, Volume 21, Issue 4); “(Anti) gender studies and populist movements in Europe,” an open forum in the European Journal of Women’s Studies (2020, Volume 27, Issue 3); “Populism and feminist politics,” in International Political Science Review (2021, Volume 42, Issue 5); and “De-​democratisation and opposition to gender equality politics in Europe,” in Social Politics (2021, Volume 28, Issue 3). This is far from a comprehensive list, with more on the horizon, like “Gender and illiberalism in post-​Communist Europe,” anticipated for publication in a late 2022 issue (Volume 10, Issue 4) of Politics and Governance. Beyond these collections, a wealth of individual articles, online resources (like the “walking tour” by S.A. Sofos mentioned in note 4), and books are also beginning to zero in on the close relation of gender to populism, such as J.M. Roose (2021) The New Demagogues: Religion, Masculinity and the Populist Epoch (New York: Routledge) and The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities, a 2021 collection edited by O. Hakola, J. Salminen, J. Turpeinen, and O. Winberg (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). As many of the titles hint, these works heavily, though not exclusively, emphasize European contexts. To date, considerably less interest has been paid to gender in US (and North American) New Populism. I hasten to underscore that this is a suggestive, not exhaustive, list. Truly, we are in the midst of an explosion of attention to gender and populism. Much of this work has appeared since I began writing (and has greatly assisted the effort). Given the direction that masculinist populisms appear to be headed—​toward escalation—​I expect this surge of interest and insight to continue. See note 20 for examples. 231

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27

28

29

30

See especially “The Question,” the concluding chapter of T. Frank (2020) The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-​populism, New York: Metropolitan Books. See F. Panizza, “Populism and identification,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 406–​425. J. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” in Kaltwasser et al (eds), Oxford Handbook of Populism, pages 232–​247. For an example in addition to all the references in note 24, see M.M. Ferree (2020) “The crisis of masculinity for gendered democracies: Before, during, and after Trump,” Sociological Forum, Volume 35, Issue S1, pages 898–​917. Same meme from Chapter 11 note 20. See Schleusener, “ ‘You’re fired! ’,” page 200.

Chapter 14 1

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3 4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

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A.R. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, New York: The New Press, page 227. See ­chapter 14 of Hochschild, “The fires of history: The 1860s and the 1960s,” in Strangers in Their Own Land, pages 207–​220. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, page 230. J. Vallejo (25 February 2021) “Marjorie Taylor Greene adds ‘TWO genders’ sign to office door in escalation of anti-​Equality Act attack,” The Independent. J. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” in C.R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, and P. Ostiguy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 232–​247. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” page 245. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” page 233. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” page 242. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” page 246. Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” page 246, original emphasis. For a clear introduction to this important concept, see O. Hankivsky (2014) “Intersectionality 101,” The Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University, https://​bccam​pus.ca/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2020/​07/​Hankiv​ sky-​Inter ​sect​iona​l ity​1 01-​2 014.pdf. Several other useful primers are also readily available online. E. Hunt (13 May 2020) “What does it mean to be a Karen? Karens explain,” The Guardian.

Chapter 15 1

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The material in this section is supported by K.L. Ashcraft and L.A. Flores (2003) “ ‘Slaves with white collars’: Persistent performances of masculinity in crisis,” Text and Performance Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 1, pages 1–​29. For an overview of men’s movements, see ­chapter 4 (“The rhetorical shaping of gender: Competing images of men”) of N. Fixmer-​Oraiz and J.T. Wood (2019) Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, & Culture, 13th edition, Boston: Cengage. R. Bly (1990) Iron John: A Book about Men, Boston: Addison-​Wesley. It is interesting to note that Falling Down (1993)—​also starring Michael Douglas, only this time as an emasculated corporate stooge—​was released just six years after his portrayal of potent professional (finance) masculinity in Wall Street. For more, see our review of this work in Ashcraft and Flores, “ ‘Slaves with white collars’.” An exception to the low interest in white/​collar masculinity around this time is S. Robinson’s 2000 book Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press), which features a businessman with briefcase on its cover. 232

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E.A. Rotundo (1993) American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, New York: Basic Books. See also G. Bederman (1995) Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–​1917, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, page 87. Ashcraft and Flores, “ ‘Slaves with white collars’,” page 8. If you are unfamiliar with this rally, you can find a timeline and summary here: D. Lord (10 August 2018) “What happened at Charlottesville? Looking back on the rally that ended in death,” The Atlanta Journal-​Constitution. By the time of this writing, Kimmel had become something of a conflicted figure—​ preeminent scholar of men and masculinity, longtime spokesperson for a pro-​feminist group mentioned in this chapter (NOMAS) and, more recently, the subject of a #MeToo scandal involving accusations of sexual harassment and a sexist workplace culture. See, for example, R. Ratcliffe (15 August 2018) “US women’s rights campaigner accused of sexual harassment,” The Guardian. Complexities never cease. S. Sobieraj and K. Berry (2011) “From incivility to outrage: Political discourse in blogs, talk radio, and cable news,” Political Communication, Volume 28, Number 1, pages 19–​41. M. Kimmel (2017) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, New York: Bold Type Books, page 41. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 6. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 6, original emphasis. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 255. For instance, Giles apparently finds that Big Government, Barack Obama, the ‘nanny state,’ and Islam favor ‘pussies,’ whereas Christians, cowboys, the Constitution, and business owners do not. I would also note that the title of his book appears to riff (rip?) off the infamous November 2003 blog post by Kim du Toit, entitled “The Pussification of the Western Male,” which can still be found on corners of the internet, though it moves around. The vital relationship between ‘muscular’ evangelical Christianity and the rise of Trump is well analyzed by K. Kobes Du Mez’s 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, New York: Liveright Publishing. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 13. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 204. Kimmel, Angry White Men, pages 204–​205, original emphasis. This is the argument Lisa Flores and I make in “ ‘Slaves with white collars’.” Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 12. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page xiv. This appears to be a particularly cruel casting choice that employs a little person as a physical metaphor for ‘the little man’ and/​or diminished manhood. J. Hagan (1 October 2019) “ ‘I fucking love my life’: Joaquin Phoenix on Joker, why River is his rosebud, his Rooney research, and his ‘prenatal’ gift for dark characters,” Vanity Fair. Current references to being ‘woke,’ much like getting ‘canceled,’ are part of a long pattern of cultural appropriation of US Black vernacular. See, for instance, A. Romano (9 October 2020) “A history of wokeness,” Vox. Literally, decades of humor research—​too much to recite here. But for a playful introductory recounting, see G. Moss (29 April 2013) “A brief history of ‘women aren’t funny’,” bitchmedia.org. For example, see G. Baker-​Whitelaw (4 April 2019) “ ‘Joker’ is catnip for Batman’s toxic masculinity fandom,” dailydot.com; C. Michallon (6 April 2019) “If Joker is just another celebration of a toxic egotistical male justifying his bad behavior, I’m not here for it,” The 233

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Independent; R. Glese (9 October 2019) “Is ‘Joker’ about angry white men or for them? It’s still unclear,” Xtra Magazine; and R. Matadeen (29 November 2019) “Joker: How toxic masculinity created Todd Phillips’ film,” Comic Book Resources, cbr.com. See A. Abad-​Santos (September 2019) “The fight over ‘Joker’ and the new movie’s ‘dangerous’ message, explained,” Vox. The incel community is largely made up of men who do not fare well in the heterosexual economy and pin their plight on women for preferring ‘alpha’ to ‘beta’ men in bed yet exploiting the latter for their own selfish aims. Incel communities are associated with particularly violent expression, so the concern was that Joker granted them representation, or even a ‘shout out.’ For more on incels, see L. Bates (2021) Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All, Naperville: Sourcebooks. For example, see E. Kohn (5 November 2019) “Toxic masculinity at the movies: This year’s award season is all about bad men,” Indie Wire. The long-​running US comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (NBC) also lampooned the apparent fixation on “white male rage” at the 2020 Oscars. See K. Rosenblatt (26 January 2020) “SNL’s ‘white male rage’ song goes viral, prompting critical discussion of Oscars,” nbcnews.com. See, for instance, M. Boot (6 October 2019) “ ‘Joker’ nails the nihilism and opportunism of populist firebrands,” Washington Post; C. Devega (9 October 2019) “ ‘Joker’: A harsh indictment of neoliberalism and gangster capitalism,” Salon; and D. Di Placido (28 January 2020) “That silly ‘SNL’ skit highlights a popular misunderstanding about ‘Joker’,” Forbes. J. Quinn illustrates one way to go about this in “Send in the clowns: Twisted masculinity, supergendering, and the aesthetics of populism in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019),” in O. Hakola, J. Salminen, J. Turpeinen, and O. Winberg (eds), The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010, pages 187–​204. See Ashcraft and Flores, “ ‘Slaves with white collars’.” Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 46. T. Brennan (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. See note 31. For another interesting take, see A. Cohen (21 November 2019) “Let more women make films about toxic masculinity!” Refinery29. See Ashcraft and Flores, “ ‘Slaves with white collars’.”

Chapter 16 1

2 3

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Again, I borrow this useful distinction from Kimmel, who repeats versions of this phrase throughout Angry White Men (M. Kimmel [2017] Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, New York: Bold Type Books). The difference between what is real (actually felt) and true (accurate) is also well captured by R.E. Hall’s notion of “entitlement disorder,” a distortion of the senses brought about by the experience and/​or expectation of privilege. See R.E. Hall (2004) “Entitlement disorder: The colonial traditions of power as white male resistance to affirmative action,” Journal of Black Studies, Volume 34, Number 4, pages 562–​579. Z. Stanton (20 May 2021) “How the ‘culture war’ could break democracy,” Politico. Although it still centers the US, Wikipedia’s entry for “culture war” provides some useful global illustrations. See K. McKinney (15 May 2014) “Here’s why women have turned the ‘not all men’ objection into a meme,” Vox. For an example, see c­ hapter 6, entitled “Men who hurt women,” in L. Bates (2021) Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All, Naperville: Sourcebooks, pages 177–​193. The opendemocracy. net “walking tour” of gender and populism (S.A. Sofos, 27 January 2020) mentioned in

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Chapter 13 note 4 also gestures toward the global threat. Scroll down to “Misogyny and gender violence” and see associated citations. A. Paybarah and M. Ives (28 December 2021) “Gunman kills 5 in shooting spree across Denver area, police say,” New York Times. @KyleClark, 28 December 2021, 5:02pm, “The shooting spree suspect’s business published a three-​book series of what could be described as alpha male sci fi, published from 2018–​2020, celebrating brutal violence against the characters’ perceived enemies and graphic sexual assaults.” Then, replying to his own tweet, that same day, 8:43pm, “Three of the five people killed by McLeod were women. His writings are full of alt-​ right misogyny. In the scene describing murders at a Denver tattoo shop, he names an actual business and two artists there. Denver Police say that block was the scene of his second shooting.” J. Jacobo (20 July 2017) “A look back at the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting 5 years later,” abcnews.com. K. Hamm (24 March 2021) “Tracking Colorado’s mass shootings: 52 have died in 9 incidents since 1993,” Denver Post. See “Number of mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and November 2021, by shooter’s gender,” statista.com; and “Mass shooting fact sheet” at Rockefeller Institute of Government, rockinst.org. J. McBride (29 December 2021) “Lyndon McLeod aka Roman McClay: 5 fast facts you need to know,” heavy.com. Details like this commonly remain un-​or under-​reported; hence, evident ties to aggrieved masculinity disappear. The 26 May 2021 mass shooting in San Jose, CA is another example. Whereas most reports refer vaguely to angry writings, see the added gender-​sexual detail—​which nonetheless appears ‘unrelated’—​in J.P. Sulek, R. Salonga, and N. Savidge (14 July 2021) “Border patrol: VTA shooter had ‘dark thoughts’ about harming two people,” The Mercury News. Tribune News Services (10 December 2016) “Dylann Roof ’s confession, journal details racist motivation for church killings,” Chicago Tribune. See J. Ho (17 March 2021) “To be an Asian woman in America,” CNN.com and R.C. Jones (29 March 2021) “Atlanta shootings point to intersection of racism, sexism,” University of Miami, News@theU. G. Steinem (August/​September 1999) “Supremacy crimes,” Ms. See Bates, Men Who Hate Women, especially c­ hapter 1 on incels, “Men who hate women,” and ­chapter 6 on “Men who hurt women.” See also Kimmel, Angry White Men, ­chapter 2 on “Angry white boys” and c­ hapter 5 on “Targeting women.” Notably, the Men’s Rights lawyer Kimmel features in c­ hapter 3, Roy Den Hollander, himself became a shooting murder suspect (and died by self-​inflicted gunshot) in 2020. See “Mass shootings in the U.S. by shooter’s race/​ethnicity as of November 2021,” statista. com; and “Mass shooting fact sheet,” rockinst.org. The Orlando shooter displayed intense racist and homophobic affinities. The Virginia Tech shooter harbored keen resentments toward women, glorified the Columbine High shooters as “martyrs,” and committed his atrocity in the same week, eight years later. For Orlando, see P. Williams, T. Connor, E. Ortiz, and S. Gosk (12 June 2016) “Gunman Omar Mateen described as belligerent, racist and ‘toxic’,” nbcnews.com; and J. Heer (14 June 2016) “Was Omar Mateen a self-​hating gay man?” New Republic. For Virginia Tech, see the compilation of sources at this wiki page: https://i​ nce​ ls.wiki/w ​ /S​ eung-H ​ ui_​ Cho; an 18 April 2007 report at CNN.com, “Killer’s manifesto: ‘You forced me into a corner’ ”; and N.R. Kleinfeld (22 April 2007) “Before deadly rage, a life consumed by a troubling silence,” New York Times.

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The term “networked misogyny” comes from S. Banet-​Weiser and K.M. Miltner (2016) “#MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, structure, and networked misogyny,” Feminist Media Studies, Volume 16, Number 1, pages 171–​174. A major obstacle to recognizing individual male perps as a collective phenomenon—​and, therefore, naming the communal threat as aggrieved masculinity—​is ‘bad’ habit #1 from Chapter 3: the relentless tendency to see (white) men as individuals first, not shaped by gender and other identity particulars. This is why Part I emphasizes the need to overcome such habits. See K. Cross (2015) “Fictive ethnicity and nerds,” in E. Shevinsky (ed), Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Start-​up Culture, New York: OR Books, Kindle location 704-​844. M. Kunzelman (28 May 2021) “Ex-​Southwest pilot sentenced for lewd act on flight,” AP News, apnews.com. See A.R. Brough and J.E.B. Wilkie (26 December 2017) “Men resist green behavior as unmanly,” Scientific American. J. Anshelm and M. Hultman (2014) “A green fatwā? Climate change as a threat to the masculinity of industrial modernity,” NORMA, Volume 9, Number 2, pages 84–​96. M. Gelin (28 August 2019) “The misogyny of climate deniers,” New Republic. The ‘elsewhere’ Gelin references for the second quote is a 19 December 2018 interview with Deutsche Welle, entitled “How right-​wing nationalism fuels climate denial,” dw.com. Similar points about gender and the earth have long been made by ecofeminists (see, for example, M. Mies and V. Shiva’s 1993 book Ecofeminism [London: Zed Books]). For the quote at the end of this paragraph, see M. Hultman and P.M. Pulé (2019) “Industrial/​ breadwinner masculinities and climate change: Understanding the ‘white male effect’ of climate change denial,” in H. Rydström and C. Kinnvall (eds), Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications, London and New York: Routledge), pages 86-​100, as quoted by Gelin, “The misogyny of climate deniers.” For example, see A.M. McCright and R.E. Dunlap (2011) “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States,” Global Environmental Change, Number 21, pages 1163–​1172. O. Krange, B.P. Kaltenborn, and M. Hultman (2019) “Cool dudes in Norway: Climate change denial among conservative Norwegian men,” Environmental Sociology, Volume 5, Number 1, pages 1–​11. C. Daggett (2018) “Petro-​masculinity: Fossil fuels and authoritarian desire,” Millennium, Volume 47, Number 1, pages 25–​44. K. Meyer (29 June 2021) “Threatened masculinity as an obstacle to sustainable change,” Energy Transition. See Meyer, “Threatened masculinity” and Gelin, “The misogyny of climate deniers.” H. Tabuchi (4 September 2016) “ ‘Rolling coal’ in diesel trucks, to rebel and provoke,” New York Times. This report comes out of Colorado, no less. Like I said, sometimes it helps to start close to home. J.M. Metzl (2019) Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, New York: Basic Books. T. Frank (2004) What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, New York: Henry Holt. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, page 16. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, page 254. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, page 8–​9. The chapter is entitled “The Man Card.” Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, pages 61–​77. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, page 109. Metzl wonders how this evidence might transform suicide prevention. Also on page 109, he asks “How in the world might we go about 236

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changing white masculinity? Or can we open a space to talk about why white men feel they need guns in the first place?” These are excellent questions, but they remain more of an aside for Metzl. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, page 16. Here, Metzl is talking about how anti-​Blackness begets anti-​whiteness as well. I agree and mean to enhance—​not distract from—​that vital point by specifying that misogyny is also crucial to the mix.

Chapter 17 1

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See c­ hapter 1, “Manufacturing rage: The cultural construction of aggrieved entitlement,” in M. Kimmel (2017) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, New York: Bold Type Books, pages 31–​67. For some of the research he relies on, see also S. Sobieraj and K. Berry (2011) “From incivility to outrage: Political discourse in blogs, talk radio, and cable news,” Political Communication, Volume 28, Number 1, pages 19–​41. Simon Strick, whose work I will lean on later in this chapter, and Joshua Roose are exceptions to this trend. See S. Strick (2020) “The alternative right, masculinities, and ordinary affect,” in G. Dietze and J. Roth (eds), Right-​wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond, Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing, pages 207–​230. See also J.M. Roose (2021) The New Demagogues: Religion, Masculinity and the Populist Epoch, New York: Routledge; and A. Possamai, J. Roose, B. Turner, S. Dagistanli, M. Voyce, and L. Worthington (2020) “Shari’a in cyberspace: An analysis of Australian and US internet sites,” in A. Possamai-​Inesedy and A. Nixon (eds), The Digital Social: Religion and Belief, Berlin: DeGruyter, pages 129–​152. There are plenty of researchers who track the manosphere, but its relation to New Populism is not their particular concern. For example, see M.H. Ribeiro, J. Blackburn, B. Bradlyn, E. De Cristofaro, G. Stringhini, S. Long, S. Greenberg, and S. Zannettou (8 April 2021) “The evolution of the manosphere across the web,” paper presented at the 15th International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM); and K.C. Fitzgerald (2020) “Mapping the manosphere: A social network analysis of the manosphere on Reddit,” M.A. thesis submitted to the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. Other notes provide additional citations for research on specific aspects of the manosphere. A. Nagle (2017) Kill All Normies: The Online Culture Wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the Alt-​right and Trump, Winchester: Zero Books. Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 17. Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 110. Nagle, Kill All Normies, pages 111–​112. See S. Banet-​Weiser and K.M. Miltner (2016) “#MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, structure, and networked misogyny,” Feminist Media Studies, Volume 16, Number 1, pages 171–​174, for the “networked misogyny” cite. The second quotation here comes from Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 110. E.A. Jane (2017) Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History, London: Sage. L. Beckett (1 October 2017) “ ‘A white girl had to die for people to pay attention’: Heather Heyer’s mother on hate in the US,” The Guardian. See B.J. Kelley (27 November 2017), “ ‘White sharia’ and militant white nationalism,” Southern Poverty Law Center at splcenter.org. L. Bates (2021) Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All, Naperville: Sourcebooks, page 27. M. Kranish (14 July 2021) “How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance,” Washington Post. 237

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C. Michel (12 April 2021) “Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s ‘great replacement’ segment used a new frame for an old fear,” Think, nbcnews.com. K. Stuart (3 December 2014) “Zoe Quinn: All Gamergate has done is ruin people’s lives,” The Guardian. Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 8. Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 7. The irony should not be lost here that the manosphere, for its central symbol—​the red pill—​latched on to a film made as a “trans metaphor” by trans women, the Wachowski sisters. See “The Matrix is a ‘trans metaphor,’ Lilly Wachowski says,” (7 August 2020), bbc.com. See A. Feinberg (13 December 2017) “This is the Daily Stormer’s playbook,” Huffington Post; and J. Citarella (15 July 2021) “There’s a new tactic for exposing you to radical content online: the ‘slow red-​pill’,” The Guardian. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 215, leaning on S. Ahmed’s 2010 use of this phrase in The Promise of Happiness, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nagle, Kill All Normies, page 52. Quoted in Bates, Men Who Hate Women, pages 280–​281. See K.D. Williamson (23 July 2021) “The American Right hits its hippie phase,” National Review. This is the title of c­ hapter 3 of Nagle, Kill All Normies. Kimmel, Angry White Men, page 41. For example, C. Knaus and M. McGowan (26 July 2021) “Who’s behind Australia’s lockdown protests? The German conspiracy group driving marches,” The Guardian. Quoted in Knaus and McGowan, “Who’s behind Australia’s lockdown protests?” My critique is not directed at Roose per se, because this quote may be a matter of selective journalistic framing. Later, for instance, Roose was quoted in Aljazeera as specifying that misogyny lies at the core of the far right: “The far right has its vocabulary. It has far-​ right discourse. It’s anti-​Semitic. It’s racist. It’s anti-​Muslim. It’s primarily anti-​women.” See A. MC (5 October 2021) “Australia’s far right gets COVID anti-​lockdown protest booster,” Aljazeera. My critique stands regardless, but just to be clear, its object is the sort of thinking on exhibit in the excerpt, not Roose or his important scholarship. See T. Lindeman (11 February 2022) “Maple leaf flags, conspiracy theories and The Matrix: Inside the Ottawa truckers’ protest,” The Guardian. As E.A. Jane explains on page 667 of her 2018 article, “Systemic misogyny exposed: Translating rapeglish from the Manosphere with a random rape threat generator” (International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 21, Number 6, pages 661–​680): “It is impossible to designate the precise moment the Manosphere … moved from the peripheries of cyber culture to a more core location,” but by the time GamerGate came around, “the power and core cultural positionality of the Manosphere was well established.” S. Nørholm Just (2019) “An assemblage of avatars: Digital organization as affective intensification in the GamerGate controversy,” Organization, Volume 26, Number 5, pages 716–​738. Strick, “The alternative right.” See Chapter 13 note 11. For a fuller (self-​)description of the Proud Boys, see the Southern Poverty Law Center at splcenter.org. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 72. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 215. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 227. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 228. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 211. 238

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Strick, “The alternative right,” page 227. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 227. Strick, “The alternative right,” page 228. Steve Bannon didn’t simply draw from the manosphere. He was a founding member and, later, executive chairman of Breitbart News, a far-​r ight outlet that notoriously whipped up outrage over attacks on Western Man. Bannon is both a key manosphere contributor and direct liaison to the White House. He entered his positions in Trump’s campaign and administration from his Breitbart posts. In short, zero degrees of separation here. On page 228, Strick gives the example of a legislative proposal for filtering online content called “Article 13.” I offered some examples earlier in this chapter (for example, Tucker Carlson) and will provide more in the text that immediately follows as well as Chapter 19. The Federalist published the full text online; see 1 November 2021, “Hawley at NatCon: Leftists want men to stand down, but we’re standing up instead.” T. Sampson (2016) “Various joyful encounters with the dystopias of affective capitalism,” ephemera, Volume 16, Number 4, page 72. For a taste of the complex ways scholars are conceiving of the manosphere beyond a technical network, see the 2018 special issue of Feminist New Media Studies dedicated to online misogyny, beginning with the introduction by D. Ging and E. Siapera, Volume 18, Number 4, pages 515–​524.

Chapter 18 1

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G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. M. Salter (27 February 2019) “The problem with a fight against toxic masculinity,” The Atlantic. See G. Steinem (August/​September 1999) “Supremacy crimes,” Ms. M. Kimmel (2018) Healing from Hate: How Young Men get Into—​and Out of—​Violent Extremism, Oakland: University of California Press. B.E. Wexler (2008) Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, page 39. T. Brennan (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, page 2. T.D. Sampson (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, page 127. See S. Nørholm Just (2019) “An assemblage of avatars: Digital organization as affective intensification in the GamerGate controversy,” Organization, Volume 26, Number 5, pages 716–​738. Sampson, Virality, page 127. T. Sampson (2016) “Various joyful encounters with the dystopias of affective capitalism,” ephemera, Volume 16, Number 4, page 72.

Chapter 19 1

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K. Kafer (2 August 2021) “Colorado students are being fed the poison fruits of Critical Race Theory,” Denver Post. In the actual paper copy I was reading, the page was 1D (which is just fun to say these days). All the quotations from and references to Kafer in this chapter are from this article. I.X. Kendi (2019) How to Be an Antiracist, New York: One World; R. DiAngelo (2018) White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, Boston: Beacon Press. For more on this trend, see Chapter 11 note 18. For more on the term woke, see Chapter 15 note 27. 239

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B. Wallace-​Wells (18 June 2021) “How a conservative activist invented the conflict over Critical Race Theory,” The New Yorker. Wallace-​Wells, “How a conservative activist.” C.F. Rufo (8 July 2020) “Cult programming in Seattle,” City Journal. C.F. Rufo (18 July 2020) “ ‘White fragility’ comes to Washington,” City Journal. S. Dorman (1 September 2020) “Chris Rufo calls on Trump to end critical race theory ‘cult indoctrination’ in federal government,” foxnews.com. At the time of writing, the full segment is embedded in this article, or you can view it by searching for this date along with “Tucker Carlson Chris Rufo Critical Race Theory.” The quotations included here come from my own transcription of the segment. See Christopher Rufo’s contributor page at city-​journal.org/​contributor/​christopher-​f-​ rufo_​1334, which lists all of these articles and plenty more posted since the time of writing. See L. Power (15 June 2021) “Fox News’ obsession with critical race theory, by the numbers,” Media Matters; and J. Barr (24 June 2021) “Critical race theory is the hottest topic on Fox News. And it’s only getting hotter,” Washington Post. G. Beck and Staff (21 April 2021) “Critical race theory: Here is a list of organizations to help you help your children navigate the CRT minefield,” wbex.iheart.com (WBEX 1490AM/​FM 92.7). See F. Sineas (24 June 2021) “What the hysteria over critical race theory is really all about,” Vox. Or you can see the Center for Renewing America’s (CRA) own “State tracker: CRT legislation” at citizensrenewingamerica.com. A. McFadden (30 June 2021) “Secretive ‘dark money’ network launches anti-​critical race theory campaign,” opensecrets.org. T. Kingkade, B. Zadrozny, and B. Collins (15 June 2021) “Critical race theory battle invades school boards –​with help from conservative groups,” nbcnews.com. T. Meyer, M. Severns, and M. McGraw (23 June 2021) “ ‘The Tea Party to the 10th power’: Trumpworld bets big on critical race theory,” Politico. The Center for Renewing America (CRA) can presently be found at americarenewing.com and citizensrenewingamerica.com (which, apparently, is a slightly different name for the same enterprise). However, specific content availability and locations changed frequently while I was writing, so I downloaded the actual documents discussed here. I refer to them in subsequent notes as (1) “Toolkit” (full title is “Combatting Critical Race Theory in your community: An A to Z guide on how to stop Critical Race Theory and reclaim your local school board,” posted 8 June 2021) and (2) “Model language” (full title is “Model school board language to prohibit Critical Race Theory,” posted 4 June 2021). Currently, the bulk of CRA’s focus goes to CRT, but other foci read like a laundry list of New Populist concerns: Big Tech, Big Government, COVID-​19 restrictions, election security, secure borders, and religious freedom (reframed as “healthy communities,” or a flourishing civil society). Toolkit, page 5, original emphasis. Toolkit, page 9. Toolkit, page 5. Toolkit, page 7. Toolkit, page 9. Model language, page 8. CRA (18 May 2021) “Policy brief: A comprehensive overview of critical race theory in America,” americarenewing.com. Such anti-Semitism was on display at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville (see Chapter 15 note 10). Those who caught video or sound bites from the rally may still be haunted by the incessant chant, “Jews. Will not. Replace us.” See Chapter 17 note 23. 240

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36

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D. Brooks (25 January 2018) “The Jordan Peterson moment,” New York Times. See Wallace-​Wells, “How a conservative activist.” C. Mudede (21 June 2021) “Uber hack Christopher Rufo boosts Jordan Peterson’s bête noire Cultural Marxism, rebrands it Critical Race Theory, and thereby perpetuates an anti-​Semitic theme,” The Stranger. @realchrisrufo (replying to @jamespoulos) 6 January 2020 at 10:52am, “Jordan Peterson is your dad now.” See The Federalist (1 November 2021) “Hawley at NatCon: Leftists want men to stand down, but we’re standing up instead.” See Wallace-Wells, “How a conservative activist.” Kimberlé Crenshaw explains this in that New Yorker article. See c­ hapter 6, “Branding work: Occupational identity as affective economy (aka the Glass Slipper, take two),” in T. Kuhn, K.L. Ashcraft, and F. Cooren (2017) The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism, New York: Routledge, pages 160–​183. K.L. Ashcraft (2020) “Senses of self: Affect as a pre-​individual approach to identity at work,” in A.D. Brown (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Identities in Organizations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 848–​863. See Meyer et al, “ ‘The Tea Party to the 10th power’.” A. North (18 September 2020) “How #SaveTheChildren is pulling American moms into QAnon,” Vox. K. Tiffany (18 August 2020) “The women making conspiracy theories beautiful,” The Atlantic. T.D. Sampson (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, page 60.

Chapter 20 1

2

3

4

5 6

7 8

American poet and humorist Dixon Lanier Merritt penned the well-​known pelican limerick, as confirmed by the New York Times (“D.L. Merritt, wrote limerick on pelican,” 11 January 1972) on the occasion of his death. E.E. Jones (10 November 2020) “Eastern review –​Polish ‘western’ of male humiliation and revenge,” The Guardian. My use of this term bears little to no relation to a 2016 book by this name, Critical Feeling: How to Use Feelings Strategically (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), by R. Reber. Although Reber similarly plays off the notion of critical thinking, he emphasizes how individuals can strategically master their own feelings in order to optimize personal outcomes. His model thus presumes and shores up the self-​contained individual. By now, it should be clear that this is not my interest. B.J. Allen (2011) Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity, 2nd edition, Long Grove: Waveland Press. T. Brennan (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. See, for example, the work of the Network Contagion Research Institute (at networkcontagion.us). See Chapter 8 note 13. Such factors certainly enabled GamerGate, which we discussed at some length in Chapter 17. For example, see A. Massanari (2017) “#GamerGate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures,” New Media & Society, Volume 19, Number 3, pages 329–​346.

241

Index References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (231n3).

#MeToo  112 #savethechildren  208 A affective intensification  197 aggrieved entitlement  44, 46, 47, 95, 97, 110–​13 contagion of  116 deep story of  82–​3, 110, 133 desire  94 Donald Trump  49 endangered masculinity  118 festering  93 of New Populism  82–​3, 137 process of  94 responsibility for  87, 89–​90 see also aggrieved masculinity; anger management aggrieved masculinity  115–​19, 118, 134, 152 as an animating force  206 availability and entitlement  6 as a brand  206 as class hero  150 communicability  160 confrontation  8 culture wars and  162 disease of  6 as everyone’s problem  154 feeling and  5 hazardousness of  7–​8 histories of  141 as an infectious sensation  206 intensification of  174–​6 manosphere  188–​9 mobile and infectious  137 New Populism and  134–​6, 136, 137 obfuscation of  7 populism and  4, 6 pro-​masculinist men’s movements  143 public health problem  see public health relishing a fight  7

sensation of  4–​5, 6 sociophysical contagion  155, 160 sympathy with  134 usurping class  142 vessels  161, 163 victimization  161 virality of  197 world danger of  7 see also dominant masculinities; endangered masculinity; Joker (2019); manly grievance; manosphere; masculinity crises alt-​r ight (alternative right) movement  164, 177, 180, 181 see also far-​r ight movements; manosphere alternative facts  79 anger  1, 2, 85–​95 COVID-​19 pandemic  16, 60 fast and slow  115 see also aggrieved entitlement; aggrieved masculinity anger management  100–​2, 113, 115, 159, 172–​3, 190 Anglin, Andrew  181 Anglo-​American world  49–​50 Angry White Men (Kimmel)  48, 145, 145–​6, 174 animating force  159 aggrieved masculinity  181, 206 of New Populism  137 animation  116–​19 Anshelm, Jonas  168 antagonism  New Populism  72, 74–​5, 76 populism  67 three-​dimensional (3D)  69, 70, 110–​13 anti-​feminism  125, 126 groups  143 men’s movements  142 online movements  175 anti-​genderism  125, 127 anti-​government government  97, 98

242

Index

handling of global crises  99 see also anger management anti-​government populists  63 Anti-​Mask League  44 anti-​masking  41, 42–​4, 98 elected politicians  63 rally (2020)  47 anti-​populism  159 avoiding the pitfalls of  89 blaming and shaming the base  63–​4, 75, 83, 92–​3 criticisms of  abandoning class politics  91 identity politics  91 politics of reprimand  91 semantics and sentiments  91 dead-​end of  86 history of  87 opposition as illegitimate Other  93 weakness of  89 anti-​racist trainings  200 The Atlantic (Salter)  192 attention economy  185 audience democracy  78–​80, 81 B babies, categorization of  25 ‘bad’ white people  94 Banet-​Weiser, Sarah  44 Bannon, Steve  187, 202, 207 Barad, Karen  33 base, the  ‘Adorable Deplorables’  93 anti-​populism  63–​4, 75, 83, 92–​3 ‘basket of deplorables’  75, 83, 92–​3 bearing responsibility  89 blaming and shaming  63–​4 cultural alienation of  94 New Populism  86, 90, 92–​3 populism  63 as ‘white trash’  92, 93, 93–​4 Bates, Laura  177, 186 Beck, Glenn  202 Berry, Jeffrey  145 beta males  152 Big Tech  80, 90 binaries  see gender binary biodiversity  32–​3, 52 biology  17 biopower  197 Black Lives Matter  86, 91, 112, 200 blue pill  180, 191 Bly, Robert  143 bodies  biology  13, 17 at birth  36, 51 gender and  34, 35, 37, 39, 46 gendered sociality  52 nature and nurture  51

permeability of  31 women’s, shaming of  130 bodily messaging  197 Boebert, Lauren  122 Bolsonaro, Jair  21 Brain and Culture (Wexler)  196 brand  181 identity and  206 branding  205, 206 Brennan, Teresa  31, 49–​50, 196, 212 Brooks, David  204 ‘bumpkin’ stereotypes  108 C cancel culture  27 capitalism  152 capitalist achievement  144 capitalist manhood  144 Capitol insurrection (2021)  61, 63 aggrieved entitlement  94–​5 arrests  89 destruction  85 flags  85 images  85 masculine aesthetics and energies  128 wealthy right-​wing bankrollers  90 Carlson, Tucker  90, 175, 178, 202 Caste (Wilkerson)  121 cause  116 animation  116–​19 gender  105, 114, 120–​32, 133, 136–​40, 155 as linear  116 of New Populism  105–​6 aggrieved masculinity  117–​19 see also gender-​first analysis class-​forward analysis  113–​14, 133 class inequality  110–​13 cultural marginalization  108–​10 economic inequality  106–​8 online culture war  175–​7 racial and religious resentment  110–​13 Center for Renewing America  203 Cernovich, Mike  182 cis men  5, 37, 42, 43, 110, 117, 166, 179 cis women  24, 122, 126, 129 cisgender  23–​4, 139 City Journal  200, 202 civil disenfranchisement  94 Clark, Kyle  164 class  91–​2, 113–​14 associated characteristics of  108 crossing class lines  93 culture and  105–​14 gender and  127, 131–​2 heterogeneous notion of  109 hijacking of  6, 114, 137, 141–​55, 183, 210 homogenous notion of  108–​9 versus identity politics  108–​9, 110, 132

243

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

masculinity and  141–​2 overcoding of  112 relative standing  111 socioeconomics  105–​14 sympathy  133–​4 usurped by aggrieved masculinity  141–​2, 210 see also middle classes; working classes class-​based analysis  132 class condescension  148 class feeling  116 class-​forward analysis  113–​14, 116, 136 gender and  142 class grievance  144 class inequality  7, 105, 107–​8 as cause  110 cultural marginalization  108–​10 racial and religious resentment  110–​13, 114 social class inequity  108 unfolding of  110 class Othering  92 class politics  109, 132, 144 intersection  109 class struggle  91–​2 culture wars and  112 class vulnerability  7 climate change  16, 154 aggrieved masculinity and  168–​70 anger management and  100 effeminization  168 nature/​earth as ‘second sex’  32, 169 petro-​masculinity  169 rolling coal  169 climate denialism  168, 169 and gender  168–​70 Clinton, Hillary  83, 145 dubbed ‘Crooked Hillary’  75 CNN  90 Colbert, Stephen  79, 214 Colorado  164 Columbine High School shooting (1999)  164 comedy  150–​1 communicability  211, 213 aggrieved masculinity  160 of feeling  3, 4, 95 of gender  54–​5 proof  79 value by transmission  79 see also feeling(s) communication  79 communicative capitalism  78–​80 connectivity  80–​1 consciousness  37, 46 contemporary populism  see populism content  77, 82, 116 awaiting assignment  82, 115 feeling through  81, 115 sensation and  83

Conway, Kellyanne  79, 187 COVID-​19 pandemic  100, 160, 210–​11 anti-​government government  98 bungled management of  7 class inequality  107–​8, 227n6 collision with New Populism  98 discrimination of  13–​14 flattening the curve  160 gender  18 grievance  62 hard and soft realities  14, 18 international comparisons  20–​1 international leadership patterns  21 populist strongmen  21 women leaders  19, 21 leadership  20 lessons to learn from  15–​16 lockdowns  60, 61, 63, 106, 107, 182–​4 low vaccination rates  99 politicization of  60, 98 populist strongmen  48–​9 preparation and planning for  20 protesters  107 protests  60–​1, 107 shecession  18 transmission of viruses  13 in the UK  20–​1 in the US  20–​1 virus mitigation  8 weapons of defense  20 see also anti-​masking; mask-​ulinity; masks; virus mitigation Crenshaw, Kimberlé  200, 205 critical feeling  211–​17 definition  212 disinformation/​misinformation campaigns  213, 214 empathy from the side  215 mind over body, rejection of  214 The People  214, 215 critical race theory (CRT)  see CRT (critical race theory) critical thinking  212, 213, 214 CRT (critical race theory)  199–​208 cult indoctrination  201 cultural Marxism and  203–​4, 205 existential threat of  201 gender and  203 ideology  203 K-​12 education  202 as a manly grievance  202–​5 pervading federal government  200–​1 prohibition of  201 sense bite  207–​8 threat to children  200–​2 as viral masculinity  205–​8 cultural marginalization  108–​10, 109 cultural Marxism  203–​4, 205 cultural unacceptability  83

244

Index

cultural warfare  211–​17 culture wars  17, 105, 109, 159–​73 aggrieved masculinity and  162 backlash  112 class struggle and  112 movement  161 objectionable positions and players  161 online  174–​6 polarization  111–​12 see also aggrieved masculinity D Daggett, Cara  169 Daily Stormer  181 Davies, Will  115 Davis, Angela  204 Dean, Jodi  79 decentering  139–​40 deep story  82–​3, 110, 133 deimatic behavior  101–​2 democracy scare  88 democratization  74, 80 DeSantis, Ron  99 DiAngelo, Robin  200 disinformation campaigns  213, 214 diversity  29 dominant masculinities  118, 135–​6, 139, 144 complicity of subordinates  154 cultural narratives of  154 difficulties of  154 films  147 forms of supremacy  152–​4 grievance  155 inflating  155 downrising  63, 87, 107, 183–​4, 215 as model of agency  96, 183–​4, 215 concept for contemporary media ecology  184 of passions  89–​90 stakeholders  90 see also anti-​populism; cause; New Populism doxxing  179, 185 Dunn, Harry  89 Dying of Whiteness (Metzl)  170–​1, 172 E economic class  108–​9 economic inequality  106–​8 ego  48, 49 ego shield  42, 49 electoral politics  76–​7 elite, the  66 catering to Others  76 favoring Others  69 high standard  68 New Populism and  72 The People  enemies of  111 versus  66, 67, 68, 72

theft of democracy  76 turncoats  76 emotional containment  196 empathy  from the front  4, 7, 8 from the side  2–​3, 4, 6, 8, 159 critical feeling  215 Daniel Maples  45 see also lateral empathy endangered masculinity  117–​18, 137, 210 saving  181–​2 see also aggrieved masculinity; masculinity crises establishment  see elite, the ethnofeminism  125 EXIT  193 experts/​expertise  215 F face coverings (COVID-​19 pandemic)  19, 41, 42–​4 see also masks fake news  72, 75, 79 fake populism  88 far-​r ight movements  177 gender agenda  177 lockdown protests  182–​3 see also Gamergate controversy (2014); manosphere fast anger  115 feeling(s)  45 communicable reality  48 gendered  5, 6, 35, 37, 39, 54–​5 movement of  116 New Populism and  81–​2, 83 over ideology  81–​2, 83 political  81 thinking and  212 through content  81, 115 viral  163 see also communicability; critical feeling; sensation feminism  92, 112, 125 blamed by populists  135 blue pill  180, 191 manosphere and  181–​2 New Populism and  125, 126 populism and identity politics  130 see also anti-​feminism feminist activism  130 feminist populism  130 feminization  32 femonationalism  125 Fight Club (1999)  143, 144, 146, 147, 153, 180 Fisher, Mark  108 flaunting the low  68–​9, 73, 86 Fleck, Arthur (Joker character)  147–​50, 151, 153

245

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

Flores, Lisa  142, 144 Floyd, George  47, 200 formative encounters  34 fossil fuels  169 Foundation against Intolerance and Racism  202 Fox News  90, 112, 202 fractional politics  129 Frank, Thomas  3, 87–​8, 108, 130, 170 on anti-​populism  91 Frankfurt School of Critical Theory  204 Freedom Convoy  183 fringe groups  124–​5 gender  124–​5 G Gamergate controversy (2014)  112, 127, 179–​82, 184–​5 affective intensification  185 anti-​feminism  179–​80 countercultural feeling  181 doxxing  179 manly grievance  185 manosphere  179 mobilization of young men  180 resistance and protest movement  181 gaming industry  127 gender  bad habits  18, 27, 129, 130 being and becoming  35 body parts  16 cisfolk  25–​6 cis men  5, 37, 42, 43, 110, 117, 166, 179 cis women  24, 122, 126, 129 cisgender  23–​4, 139 class and  131–​2 commonplace accounts of  21–​2 COVID-​19 pandemic  18 as a definitive feeling  34–​40 detection  36, 37–​8, 39 everyday encounters  26, 53–​4 fast thinking  37, 39 as feeling  35, 39 hard and soft  16–​17 humor and  150–​1, 179, 180, 182 less conscious flows of  54 as a matter of life and death  51–​5 men and women  25, 26 before  34–​40 mythical woman’s standpoint  22 New Populism and  120–​33, 134, 136 non-​/​semi-​conscious  46 outdated approaches  16 people as bodies  34 performance model  38–​9, 221n10 polarization of  125 popular view of  51 race and  23 re-​examining  19

realness of  25, 26, 35, 39, 51–​3 recognition  36, 37–​8 as a repetitive, definitive energy  54 sensory social reality  52 sex and  17 smell  36, 37 as social construction  17 social encounters  35 sociophysical  16, 25, 26, 33, 51 specificity of men’s standpoints  22 taste  36–​7 touch  36 transgender  24 value and  29 violence and  143, 162, 166, 167 gender-​based analysis  132 gender-​based social movements  142–​3 gender binary  17, 17–​18, 18 as transnational code  137 common sense of  134 diminishes nature  32 dispensing with  30 erosion of  33 feeling  5 habits  see habits hierarchies of value  30, 32 influence of  52–​3 men versus women  23–​4 New Populism and  134, 136 premier services of  31 reinstating  126–​7 simplicity of  137 unmarked by difference  31 use, then refuse motto  138 valuing select people  31–​2 valuing things  32 of the West  23 gender biodiversity  32–​3, 52 gender equity  143 gender extremism  127 see also pro-​masculinist groups gender-​first analysis  137–​8, 141–​55 manosphere  178–​9 regional specificity  138–​9, 142 gender identity  23–​4 gender ideology  46, 125, 192 gender leadership styles  of men  21–​3 multiplicity of  23 of women  21–​3 gender normativity  126–​7, 128 gender oppression  112, 137 gender politics  128, 129 explicit identity politics  131 gender scholarship  144 gender studies  125, 126 gendered bodies  5 gendered feeling  5, 6, 35, 37, 39, 54–​5 genderism  17

246

Index

general will  65, 66, 67, 127, 128 Giles, Doug  146 Global Health Security Index  20 ‘good’ white people  92 Good White People (Sullivan)  92 Gotham City (Joker place)  148–​9 Great Recession (2008)  105 Greene, Marjorie Taylor  122, 134 grievance politics  59, 82 gun culture  167, 171, 172 gynocracy  180 H Haak, Captain Michael  167–​8 habits  27, 51 bad  18, 27, 129, 130 binary oppositions  29–​30 breaking  28–​30 celebrating binary difference  29 gender equals women  28 men are human  28 standpoints  28 underrepresentation  28 women are gendered  28 The Hangover (2009, 2011, 2013)  150 hard and soft  class and gender  131–​2 class-​based analysis  132 class versus identity politics  109 COVID-​19 pandemic  13–​14, 18 gender  16–​17 gender-​based analysis  132 gender binary  211 reality  13–​19 sciences  17–​18 social and physical worlds  15 thinking  15 hard sciences  17–​18 Hawley, Josh  187–​8, 205 healing wounds  144 Hesse, Monica  94 heterosexuality  5, 121, 122 Heyer, Heather  177–​8 hierarchies of value  30, 32 Hillbilly Elegy (Vance)  4, 108, 110 Hochschild, Arlie  3–​4, 73, 82, 83, 93, 110, 110–​13, 133–​4, 227n10 homonationalism  126 How to Be an Antiracist (Kendi)  200 Hultman, Martin  168–​9 humor  150–​1, 179, 180, 182 Hunter, James Davison  111–​12 I identity  81 brand and  206 identity politics  66, 91–​2, 106, 108, 133–​40, 199–​208 associated characteristics of  108 versus class  108–​9, 110

New Populism and  106, 128, 130, 131, 134–​5 straight white men  143 identity politics 2.0  206, 208 ideology  CRT and  203 feeling over  81–​2, 83 gender ideology  46, 125, 192 harmful gender, exposing  192 market ideology  79 toxic  170–​1 If Masculinity is “Toxic” Call Jesus Radioactive (Giles)  146 impermeability  48 manly  31, 49, 50 paradox of  101 toxic masculinity  195 incels (involuntary celibates)  152 industrial breadwinner masculinity  168–​9 Ingraham, Laura  202 internet, New Populism and  78–​80 intersectional approach  109, 138, 142, 216 Iron John (Bly)  143 J Jensen, Siv  122 Johnson, Boris  21 Joker (2019)  147–​52 class suffering  152 toxic masculinity  152 Jones, Ellen  210 Judis, John  67 K K-​12 education  202 Kafer, Krista  199–​200, 201, 204 Kendi, Ibram X.  200 Kill All Normies (Nagle)  175–​6 Kimmel, Michael  44, 48, 82, 145, 174, 182, 192 on middle and working-​class white men  146 on white American men  145–​6 Kjaersgaard, Pia  122 Kopfle, Rachel  199 L Lahren, Tomi  48 lateral empathy  3, 7, 8, 159 cultural warfare through critical feeling  211–​17 Le Pen, Marine  121 leadership styles  see gender leadership styles left cultural establishment  69 Lévi-​Strauss, Claude  68 LGBTQ+​ people  31, 44, 126, 163, 165, 179 Life After Hate  193 Lilla, Mark  108 Limbaugh, Rush  61, 145 lockdowns  60, 106, 107 protests  61, 63, 182–​4

247

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

lower-​class whites  92 Lowndes, Joseph  131, 135 M madmen  163, 166–​7 MAGA (Make America Great Again)  1, 37, 38, 76, 83, 218n2 majoritarian politics  66, 127–​8, 129, 130, 135 managerialism  99–​100 manliness  117–​18 manly grievance  141, 147 crimes  167 CRT (critical race theory)  202–​5 cultural warfare of  161 Gamergate controversy (2014)  185 heterosexuality of  5 as identity neutral  134–​5 mass shootings  164–​5, 167 populist politics  145 regional specificity of  139 regional variations  5 responses to  8 transmission of  206 variability of  194 viral passion  160 see also aggrieved masculinity manly impermeability  31, 49, 50 manly right(s)  168–​9, 172, 176 wronged  137, 159, 184–​6, 189, 210 see also gender binary; New Populism manosphere  174–​90 aggrieved masculinity  187 attention economy  185 blue pill  180 content  187 countercultural passion  181–​2 definition  176–​7, 186, 189 diversity  186 far-​r ight communities  178–​9 Gamergate controversy (2014)  179–​82 hidden familiarities  177 intensification of aggrieved masculinity  175 lockdown protests  182–​4 meaning of  176 operating on a transnational scale  185, 186–​7 red pill  180, 183, 191, 193 replacement theory  178 rise of  176 shared feeling  187 sharing hostility  186 significant influence on feeling  184 super-​spread of aggrieved masculinity  178–​9 value for New Populism  184 see also alt-​r ight (alternative right) movement; far-​r ight movements Maples, Daniel  43, 44–​6, 47, 48, 101

‘Running the World Since 1776’ t-​shirt  42–​3, 44, 46, 47 Marcuse, Herbert  204, 205 market ideology  79 masculine supremacy, superiority  152–​4 expectation to come ahead of Others  cheating from below  153 injustice from above  153 identification with the universal subject  153 narcissism  154 pursuit of self-​containment  153 for selected men  154 masculinity  airline pilots  123 class and  141–​2 endangered  117–​18, 137, 181–​2, 210 imperiled  117–​18, 128 intensifications of  123 multiple  138–​9 of New Populism  120–​1, 122–​3, 127 overrepresentation of  123 risk of  162 subjection to oppression  154 white  122 women and  121 Stop the Steal rally  121 ‘Women for Trump’  121 women’s involvement  121–​2 see also aggrieved masculinity; dominant masculinities; toxic masculinity; viral masculinity masculinity crises  123, 142, 144, 147–​8, 153, 155 films  142 see also aggrieved masculinity; endangered masculinity mask-​ulinity  19, 41, 41–​50, 162, 191 Asian cultures  43 conservative white men  43 energy  42, 47, 50 media  42 narrative  41–​2 unmanliness of  42 see also Maples, Daniel; toxic masculinity masks  19, 41, 43–​4, 47 aggrieved entitlement  47 men and women, differences between 42 sensation of permeability  48 unpleasantness of  47, 48 mass shootings  see shooting sprees The Matrix (1999)  180, 183 McVeigh, Timothy  143 Me The People (Urbinati)  79 Meloni, Giorgia  122 Men Who Hate Women (Bates)  177, 186 men’s movements  143 see also far-​r ight movements; Proud Boys men’s rights activists  176, 186

248

Index

metaphors  191–​8 Metzl, Jonathan  170–​1, 172 Middle America  72 middle classes  166 white  92, 143, 146 working classes and  146 Miller, Stephen  187 misinformation campaigns  213, 214 misogyny  164, 178 see also networked misogyny Moreton-​Robinson, Aileen  82 MSNBC  90 Mudde, Cas  65, 68 Mudede, Charles  204 mythopoetic men’s movement  143 N Nagle, Angela  175–​6, 180, 181, 182 National Review  61 nature versus nurture  16, 18, 33, 38, 51 network capitalism  81 network society  80 networked misogyny  166, 176 neurasthenia  144 New Populism(s)  71–​84 agenda  97 agents of  89 aggrieved entitlement and see aggrieved entitlement aggrieved masculinity and see aggrieved masculinity antagonism  72, 74–​5, 76 anti-​government  77–​8 audience democracy  78–​80 as a backlash project  77 base of  see base, the ‘The Big Lie’  76 Big Tech and  80 causes of  105 aggrieved masculinity  117–​19 cultural marginalization  108–​10 economic inequality  106–​8 online culture war  175–​7 racial and religious resentment  110–​13, 114 characteristics of  73–​4 class-​forward explanations see class-​forward analysis collision with COVID-​19 pandemic  98 communicative capitalism  78–​80 contagion  80–​1 countercultural vibe  180, 182, 189 democracy scare  87–​8 democratization  74, 80 demonization  75 direct, person-​centred leadership  72–​3 diverse and changing nature of  71 electoral politics  76–​7 exclusion of Black and Brown voters  94 elite right 

denying accountability  90–​1 implicated in  90 enemies of  cheaters  111 elite establishment  111 hunt for  74–​5 European  128 exposing  138 extremist outliers  124–​5 fallout for democracy  87 feeling over ideology  81–​2, 83 feminism and  125, 126 flaunting the low  73 fringe groups  124–​5 gender and  120–​33 gender binary and  134, 136 gender-​first analysis of  see gender-​first analysis global  139 government by polarization  77 identity politics and  106, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134–​5 imperiled masculinity  117–​18, 128 internet  78–​80 left-​wing contributions  91–​2 as a majoritarian movement  127–​8 masculinity of  120–​1, 122–​3, 127 movement of  116–​17 Othering  94 as a pandemic of feeling  81 participation and performing in  83, 87 passion and  82 path of  74 patriarchy  123–​4 The People  enemies of, hunt for  74–​5 versus establishment/​elite  72–​8 thinning boundary between  78 victimhood  78 popular sovereignty  74 as public health threat  see public health rapid global transmission of  80, 87 re-​possessing democracy  76 reasonable concern  100 representational democracy  77 Right People  76, 77 sleight of hand  136–​8 subordinated whole  131 transnational binary code  137 true populism and  88 undeserving third party  73 victimization and entitlement  82 white masculinity  145 women’s involvement  121 see also downrising; manosphere; The People NOMAS (National Organization for Men against Sexism)  143 Nørholm Just, Sine  185, 197

249

WRONGED AND DANGEROUS

O Obama, Barack  145 Obama, Michelle  73, 93 object  207 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria  169 Occupy Wall Street  65, 70 Old School  150 OpenSecrets.org  202 ordinary people  3, 4 Ostiguy, Pierre  68 Othering  30–​1, 69, 92 definition  30 New Populism  94 Others  31, 32, 76, 153 aggrieved masculinity and  162–​3, 164–​8 ‘cheaters’  111 populism and  69–​70, 73 undeserving  83 outrage culture  92 outrage media  145, 174, 175 Oxford Handbook of Populism  88 P pandemics  211 see also COVID-​19 pandemic ‘parasitic’ racial figures  135 Parents Defending Education  202 passion  82 Pastel QAnon  208 patriarchy  123–​4 Pelosi, Nancy  85 Pence, Mike  85 The People, No (Frank)  87 People’s Party  74, 88 Peterson, Jordan  204 petro-​masculinity  169 Petry, Frauke  121 Phillips, Guy  47 Phillips, Todd  150–​1 Phoenix, Joaquin  150–​1 physical world  14–​15 pick-​up artists  186 polarization  1 political correctness  27, 180 political feeling  81 political incorrectness  68 politics  79 fractional  129 personalizing  79 see also gender politics; identity politics; majoritarian politics populism  60 3D antagonism  69, 70, 110–​13 aggrieved masculinity see aggrieved masculinity antagonism  67 base of  see base, the characteristics of  65–​6 confronting  3

earliest manifestations of  65 electoral success  77 elite-​sponsored  63 extreme demands of  67 flaunting the low  68–​9 ideological plasticity  65–​6 language of popular sovereignty  66 magnetic figures/​leaders  67–​8 majoritarian politics  66 new breed of  15, 16, 62 Others  69–​70 permeating governments  15–​16 radical demands of parties and movements  77 raging  62 resentment  62 right-​wing  61, 69–​70 socioeconomic factors  4 spread of  15 surges  3, 4 as a threat to democracy  15, 218n3 undemocratic tendencies of  69 validating  3–​4 virility of rallies  5 vital signs of  66–​70 whiteness and masculinity  135 worldwide movements  65 see also anti-​populism; downrising; New Populism Populism and the Crisis of Democracy  87, 218n3 populist downrising  see downrising The Populist Explosion (Judis)  67 populist identities  135 populist strongmen  campaigning  78 celebrity culture  70 COVID-​19 testing  48–​9 leadership during COVID-​19 pandemic  19, 21, 98–​9 personalistic approach  78 pufferfishery of  101 power  28 priming  197 pro-​feminist groups  143 pro-​masculinist groups  124, 127, 143, 189 progressive identity politics  180 Proud Boys  124, 186 as ‘Western chauvinists’  186 public health  7–​8, 99, 215 aggrieved masculinity, threat to  159–​73, 191, 198 anger management  172–​3 climate change  168–​70 global nature of  163 harm to Others  164–​8 madmen  163, 166–​7 NAMALT  162 naming killers  164

250

Index

organized public threat  166 Others  162–​3 population as a whole  162 risk  165 rolling coal  169 shooting sprees  164–​6, 167 supremacy crimes  164–​8 crisis  21 virus mitigation  8 pufferfish/​pufferfishery  97–​102, 155, 209–​10 anger management  172–​3 self-​defense  170–​1 Pussification: The Effeminization of the American Male (Giles)  146 Putin, Vladimir  21 Q queer rights  126 queer theory  23 R race  anti-​Blackness  135, 200 anti-​masking  42–​4 anti-​Semitism  145, 240n24 class inequality  110–​11 COVID-​19 pandemic  13–​14 culture wars  111–​12 gender and  23, 73, 131 ‘good’ white people and  92 white nationalism  143 white supremacy  92, 93, 111, 124, 166, 178, 179, 186 whiteness  111 see also CRT (critical race theory) racialization  69 racism  91, 107, 177 burying  92 Othering  92 Reagan, Ronald  61 real populism  88 reality, forms of  13 red pill  180, 183, 191, 193 as a virus  193 regional specificity  138–​9, 142 Reid, Joy  202 religion  111 Christian nationalism  111 class inequality and  110–​12 culture wars  111–​12 evangelical New Populism  132 religious right  61, 111 religious supremacy  66, 125, 165 replacement theory  178 representational democracy  77 resentment  77, 97, 99 contagious  4 economic and cultural  113 manly  145 networks of  62

populist  62, 84, 88–​9 racial and religious  110–​13, 114, 170, 171 retrotopian nostalgia  83 reverse discrimination  153 rolling coal  169 Roose, Joshua  105, 183 Rotundo, Anthony  144 Rufo, Christopher  200–​1, 202, 204, 205 Rumi  35 S Salter, Michael  192 Sampson, Tony  80–​1, 196–​7 Sandia National Laboratories  201 scapegoating  92 Schleusener, Simon  112 self-​contained individual  31, 49, 153 foundational fantasy  49–​50, 52 impermeability of  31 self-​defense  170–​1 self-​governance  81 self/​selves  senses of  206, 208 as sleepwalkers  208, 211–​17 semantic police  27 sensation  79 feeling as  4–​5 gender and  34–​5, 35–​6, 37 manly impermeability  49, 50 New Populism and  83 senses of gender  55 toxic masculinity  44, 46–​7 sense bites  207–​8 senses of self  206, 208 sex, gender and  17 sexuality  30, 33, 36, 127, 187 culture wars  17 feminism and sexual justice movements  135 heteronormativity  163 New Populism agenda  128 see also feminism; heterosexuality; LGBTQ+​ people shitposting  185, 197 shooting sprees  164–​6, 167 evidence of manly grievance  165 sleepwalkers  208, 211–​17 slow anger  115 Sobieraj, Sarah  145 social identity  35 social media  79–​80, 81 biological metaphors and  81 network-​body relation  81, 175–​7, 189, 214 social world  14–​15 socioeconomics  105–​14 sociophysical  49, 211, 214 approach  15, 27–​40, 48, 53–​4, 55 contagion  81 aggrieved masculinity  155, 160 definition  15

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gender  16, 25, 26, 33, 51 model  41 sensation  120 sense of self  35 viral masculinity  196 sociotechnical networks  81 soft  see hard and soft soft sciences  17, 18 South Korea  20 Spierings, Niels  128 Steinem, Gloria  166, 192 ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies  62, 76, 94–​5, 121, 186 Strangers in Their Own Land (Hochschild) 3–​4, 73, 82, 93, 110, 110–​13, 133, 170, 227n10 Strick, Simon  181, 185, 186–​7 strongmen  see populist strongmen structural racism  205 Sullivan, Shannon  92 supremacy crimes  164–​8 symbolic messaging  197 Szudlo, Beata  122 T Tea Party  65, 70, 145, 182 The Concord Fund  202 theft  75, 76, 82 The Good People  93 The Heritage Foundation  200 The Judicial Crisis Network  202 The People  66, 67 2020 presidential campaign  75 anger of  83 anti-​Blackness  135 authenticating  131 critical feeling  214, 215 democracy  birthright of  76 proprietors of  76 dominant masculinities and  135–​6 versus the elite/​establishment  66, 67, 68, 72–​8, 111 enemies of, hunt for  74–​5 gender and race partiality  131 identity politics  135 identity positioning  131 low standard  68 New Populism  72–​8 as perpetual victims  75 populist leaders and  78 rage of  83 true and authentic  111 The Real People  77 The Right People  76–​8, 82 The Right Wronged People  100 thinking  212 see also critical thinking 3D (three-​dimensional) populism  69–​70, 110–​13

Thunberg, Greta  169 toxic behavior  192 toxic ideology  170–​1 toxic masculinity  9, 43, 44–​5, 48, 50, 143 communal transmission of  192–​4 definition  191 exposing harmful gender ideology  192 impermeability  195 limitations of concept  192, 194 remedial programs  193 see also Joker (2019); mask-​ulinity; viral masculinity toxic spill  194–​5 transgender  24 trolling  181, 182, 185 true populism  88 Trump, Donald  1, 21, 61, 62, 202 ‘Enemy of the People’ phrase  75 fake news and Twitter  79 flaunting the low  68, 73 political language of New Populism  72 political rallies  68 response to COVID-​19 pandemic  48–​9 supporters  images of  86 see also base, the Trumpism  72–​3 truthiness  79, 214 2020 US presidential elections  1–​2 Democrats  enemy off The People  75 establishment elite  75 New Populism antagonism  75 U Undoctrinate.org  202 Unite the Right rally (2017)  144, 177–​8 universal subject  30, 106 cost of being  31 New Populism and  134 Othering  30–​1 self-​contained individual  31, 49–​50, 52, 153 superiority and  153 see also masculinity; Western Man Urbinati, Nadia  76, 78, 79, 88 V Vance, J.D.  4, 108, 110 victimization  82, 97, 161, 170, 203 violence  162, 166, 167, 180, 206 anti-​Black  47 domestic  150 fast anger  115 gender and  143, 162, 165, 166, 167 manly grievance  166, 167 police  167 see also shooting sprees viral combat  8 viral feeling  163

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Index

viral masculinity  9, 192, 194–​5, 206 communicability of  195–​8 CRT (critical race theory)  205–​8 identity politics of branding  206 individual and environment concept 195–​8 movement  215 activation  196 circulation  196 transformation  196 viral mitigation  191–​2 Virality (Sampson)  80–​1 virility  aggrieved masculinity  4 populist rallies  5 virus mitigation  8, 99, 209 leadership and compliance  18–​19 Vought, Russel  203 W war on terror  197 Washington, Booker T.  171 Washington Post  178 Wayne, Thomas (Joker character)  148, 149, 150 Web 2.0  79, 105, 112, 176 Weidel, Alice  121 Western Man  30, 106 New Populism and  134 Othering  30–​1 self-​contained individual  31, 49–​50, 52, 153 see also masculinity; universal subject Wexler, Bruce  196 WhatAreTheyLearning.com.  202 What’s the Matter With Kansas? (Frank)  170 white anxiety  178 White Fragility (DiAngelo)  200

white health  170–​1 white male producers  135 white masculinity  122 white men  29 anger of  145–​6, 166 Angry White Men (Kimmel)  48, 145, 145–​6 as core of working class  109, 112 entitlement of  146 feminism and  112 mask aversion  42, 43, 50 middle and working-​class  109, 146 see also New Populism; universal subject; Western Man The White Possessive (Moreton-​Robinson)  82 white professional men  144 white sharia  178 white supremacy  92, 93, 111, 124, 166, 178, 179, 186 white trash  92, 93, 93–​4 white victimization  170–​1 Wilkerson, Isabel  121 woke culture  151 Hollywood  151 working classes  91, 107, 108–​9 alienation  144 feminism and  92, 112 generic  109, 110 middle classes and  146 universal  108 white men  109 X xenophobic leaders  88 Y Yiannopolous, Milo  182 Z Zakaria, Fareed  106–​7

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“Toxic masculinity is pervasive in contemporary politics and Ashcraft offers the best analysis to date. Wronged and Dangerous is also a sensitive engagement in the troubled politics of belonging, resentment, and anger.” Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University

“Ashcraft’s examination of the relationship of gender and class in our political moment is both urgent and brilliant. It is easily one of the best books on populism in recent years.” Joseph Lowndes, University of Oregon

“Ashcraft’s persuasive account of how unhappy masculinities form the bedrock of right-wing populism provides cause for concern: misogynistic dragons we thought had been slain are now rousing. Aimed at an intelligent, general readership, it is a manifesto and call to action; intellectually rigorous, compassionate, thought-provoking, and an excellent read. Its ideas should become part of our everyday conversations.” Nancy Harding, University of Bath

“At once personal, searching, and accessible, and often funny, Ashcraft’s gender analysis charts a humane path forward through the political storms of wounded masculinity.” John Durham Peters, Yale University

Karen Lee Ashcraft is Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. She grew up in the lap of evangelical populism, and her research examines how gender interacts with race, class, sexuality, and more to shape organizational and cultural politics.

Is populism fueled by a feeling of manhood under attack? If gender is its driving force, are there better ways to respond? COVID-19 delivers a stark warning: the global surge of populism endangers public health. Wronged and Dangerous introduces “viral masculinity” as a novel way to meet that threat by tackling the deep connection of our social and physical worlds. It calls us to ask not what populism says, but how it spreads. Leading with gender without leaving socioeconomic forces behind, it upends prevailing wisdom about populist politics today. You do not need to know or care about gender to get invested. You only need to be concerned with our future.

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