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Weaponizing Masculinity
... Although the interest in examining gender narratives within right-wing populist discourse is a recent phenomenon, a growing body of literature highlights how this discourse is specifically aimed at stoking men's status anxieties. More specifically, right-wing populism is using gender rhetoric to encourage men's resentment and turn frustrated desires and unmet expectations into collective actions in support of policies that promise to alleviate anxieties and realize a complete social transformation (Pease, 2019;Löffler et al, 2020;Hakola et al, 2021;Kaul, 2021;Homolar and Löfflmann, 2022). Part of this strategy involves reinstating humiliation as the primary discursive mechanism to evoke an emotional response capable of mobilizing the electorate (Homolar and Löfflmann, 2021). ...
... Part of this strategy involves reinstating humiliation as the primary discursive mechanism to evoke an emotional response capable of mobilizing the electorate (Homolar and Löfflmann, 2021). Some research has shown that populist actors portray men as victims and neglected in the face of discourses that prioritize other forms of inequality and disadvantage while systematically ignoring the inequalities that have devastated their lives and limited their opportunities (Roose, 2017;Kantola and Lombardo, 2021;Homolar and Löfflmann, 2022). ...
... Additionally, this literature has pointed out that radical right-wing parties rely on a charismatic leader-also a characteristic of populism-who displays continuous demonstrations of virility. Some research has shown how such leaders as Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and Bolsonaro perform continuous demonstrations of stereotypically masculine attributes: the archetype of the "tough guy," who has the initiative and courage to make tough decisions, advocates a legitimate use of violence while showing his own courage and manhood, and exhibits his "active heterosexuality" through libidinous behaviors toward women (Eksi and Wood, 2019;Smith and Higgins, 2020;Mendonça and Caetano, 2021;Homolar and Löfflmann, 2022). ...
In Spain, the gender gap in support for the far-right populist party VOX is notable, with two thirds of its voters being men. This article explores how VOX’s populist rhetoric around masculinity attracts male voters. It is argued that the collective identity promoted by the party aligns with hegemonic masculinity, which elevates male social status and serves as an effective strategy for capturing this electorate. To examine this dynamic, a critical discourse analysis was conducted on a sample of 34 videos from VOX’s YouTube channel. A deductive approach was employed, integrating categories that encompassed the masculine gender dimension and key concepts from the discursive approaches of populism. Overall, VOX discursively constructs a common identity around masculinity through populist rhetoric that combines victimization and recognition, which seems to have contributed to attracting male Spanish voters.
Male victimhood ideology, the belief that men are the primary targets of gender discrimination, has gained traction among young men in recent years, but the underlying sources of these sentiments remain understudied. Utilizing four different datasets, collected in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023 from representative samples of Korean men, this study investigates whether identification with male victimhood ideology is explained by objective economic hardships faced by men or by their perceptions of a status loss. The economic hardship perspective finds little support, as men who were less educated, had lower incomes, were unemployed, or had non-regular employment were no more likely to identify with male victimhood than their more economically stable counterparts. Instead, a perceived decline in socioeconomic status relative to one’s parents emerged as a significant predictor of male victimhood ideology, particularly among men from middle to upper class backgrounds. Additional analyses show that this pattern is not observed among Korean women of the same age group. Overall, the analysis of the four datasets consistently shows that male victimhood discourse is embraced most by those who perceive a loss of privilege, rather than by those who are marginalized.
This article offers insights into the nature of patriarchy as a structuring condition of global order, and – significantly – the process of change that has enabled its endurance. We are, today, witnessing the emergence of multiple challenges to the existing order and the tying of the political campaigns of these challenges to an agenda of anti-feminism (what we term ‘patriarchal backlash’). We argue that current ructions cannot be understood in a linear sense of feminist progress and regression, nor can these patriarchal challenges to the existing order be understood in isolation from one another. We propose a feminist dialectical approach to theorising patriarchy as a structuring condition of global order and as a useful methodological tool to understand change and transformation. Rather than seeing feminist movements or instances of patriarchal backlash as ‘outside agitators’ to patriarchy, we view them as necessary internal contradictions within patriarchy and the driving engine for its transformation. We propose here feminist dialectics as providing the conceptual tools to understand patriarchy’s variation over time and across space and its endurance as an ordering condition of the international.
This article speaks to an established interest of International Relations scholars in the construction of the ‘China threat’ in US political discourse. We advance recent works which have argued that the rise of China has contributed to the success of populism in the United States and Western liberal democracies more widely. Specifically, we transpose the concept of the ‘populism of the privileged’ to the international realm to understand how narratives of status loss nurture perceptions of collective trauma and victimhood. We argue that the concept helps explain why Trump’s anti-China populism is centred on the counterintuitive articulation of an American underdog identity at the domestic and international levels. It sheds light on why populist narratives of unjust suffering have grip even if supporters stem from comparatively privileged groups. Victimhood-centric narratives are always relational and, as we show, the imaginary of lost status is a powerful device in the populist toolbox.
This chapter examines how communicative practices, emotion, and everyday experiences of insecurity interlink in processes of populist political mobilization. Combining insights from international security studies, political psychology, and populism research, it demonstrates how populist political agents from the right of the political spectrum have constructed a powerful security imaginary around the loss of past national greatness, which creates affinities with the experiences of those who feel disempowered. As we show, populist humiliation narratives stoke anxieties over the decline of the ‘true’ people in the present with the promise of reversal and redemption to mobilize popular resistance against ‘politics as usual’. They are a key discursive mechanism that helps turn abstract notions of enmity into politically consequential sentiments of loss, betrayal, and oppression. Humiliation binds together an ostensibly conflicting sense of national greatness and victimhood to achieve an emotive response that enables a radical departure from established domestic and international policy norms and problematizes policy choices centred on collaboration, dialogue, and peaceful conflict resolution.
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