Nostalgia, Hypermasculinity, and the American Far Right: What Ever Happened to Being Proud of Your Boy?

Abstract

How should we understand the rise of white nationalism in the United States in the last decade? I analyze the language and behavior of the Proud Boys to understand what drives their politicized street violence as well as their aggressive and hateful rhetoric. In so doing, I highlight the interplay between nostalgia, mythology, and conspiratorial thinking to show how Proud Boys operate against a sense of loss—specifically, the loss of pride in their identities as white men—brought upon them by evil enemies. I argue that we can best understand the appeal of the Proud Boys’ chauvinist white nationalism by paying close attention to their anti-feminism, hypermasculinity, outspoken “Western-ness,” and nationalist nostalgia.

Keywords:

• White nationalism
• nostalgia
• political violence
• race/ethnicity
• white supremacy
• masculinity

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support and feedback over the years provided by my friends and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, including members of the Political Theory Workshop and the American Politics Working Group. Roberto Alejandro and Thomas Dumm have both provided the feedback, support, and mentorship over the years that has made this project possible, as have Justin Gross and Jesse Rhodes. Appreciation is also due to my two reviewers, who offered helpful and constructive feedback on the piece.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As of September 2023, a number of Proud Boys have been convicted on counts of seditious conspiracy, including former Chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Ethan Nordean, another Proud Boy highlighted in this analysis, was also convicted of seditious conspiracy and subsequently sentenced to eighteen years in prison. These charges finally reflect that attention had seriously been paid to right-wing white nationalist groups and their threat to American democracy. Yet, it took an insurrection for that attention to be paid, despite men like Nordean describing his plans just days before January 6, 2021, in posts and videos shared across the internet, despite Proud Boys building an organizational base over ∼ five years through various public channels. That organizational base remains, even if major players are now serving prison time. The mythologies of masculine whiteness, the fear, and the nostalgia remain, and other organizations will take up that mantle.

2 Logan Jaffe et al., “Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready,” ProPublica, January 7, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-for-weeks-in-plain-sight-the-police-werent-ready.

3 Andy Campbell, We Are Proud Boys (New York, NY: Hachette Books, 2022).

4 Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, Radical American Partisanship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

5 Wendy Brown, “No Future for White Men: Nihilism, Fatalism, and Ressentiment,” in In the Ruins of Neoliberalism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019), 161–88; Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in Vol. 14 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1994), 243–58.

6 Elisabeth Anker, Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

7 Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018).

8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); Samuel Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

9 Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.

10 Gavin McInnes, “Introducing: The Proud Boys,” Taki’s Magazine, September 15, 2016, https://www.takimag.com/article/introducing_the_proud_boys_gavin_mcinnes/.

11 Nicole Dissler, “Gavin McInnes and His ‘Proud Boys’ Want to Make Men Great Again,” Bedford + Bowery, June 28, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20190209020443/https:/bedfordandbowery.com/2016/07/gavin-mcinnes-and-his-proud-boys-want-to-make-white-men-great-again/.

12 Alexandra Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019). Minna Stern argues that Proud Boys and others on the alt-right spectrum locate feminism as a serious hurdle for restoring the “White Republic” (76). In her words, “Men are trapped in ‘caged manhood’ and feminism has taken the key” (84).

13 Michael Feola, “‘You Will Not Replace Us:’ The Melancholic Nationalism of Whiteness,” Political Theory 00, no. 0 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720972745; Michael J. Monahan, “Racism and ‘Self-Love’: The Case of White Nationalism,” Critical Philosophy of Race 9, no. 1 (2021), https://10.5325/critphilrace.9.1.0001.

14 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001).

15 Ibid., 41.

16 Robin, The Reactionary Mind. For the reactionary psyche, loss is a central concept. It indicates the feeling of diminishing power and privilege, specifically for white heterosexual men. It is against this loss that reaction takes place because it is motivated by the fear of loss of that power and privilege. The effectiveness of deploying loss as a rhetorical strategy comes in the form of affective relatability—we have all lost something, and we have all been victims of something. Who would not share in the desire to fix loss, by making things whole again, by making them right?

17 Samantha Kutner, in her work on the Proud Boys, has noted that self-assigned victimhood is a key rhetorical tactic. She argues that, “Proud Boys believe they are victims of modernity, feminism, and progressive values,” and that they are adept at both denial and blame shifting. Samantha Kutner, “Swiping Right: The Allure of Hyper Masculinity and Cryptofascism for Men Who Join the Proud Boys,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (2020): 14, https://icct.nl/publication/swiping-right-the-allure-of-hyper-masculinity-and-cryptofascism-for-men-who-join-the-proud-boys/.

18 John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1954).

19 Insofar as the “private life of power” is at stake, loss of that power translates into a direct attack on the holder. Loss operates in an intimate register and connotes an existential threat, but it is made political through the conservative’s rhetoric. Robin, The Reactionary Mind, 3.

20 Violence can be physical, psychological, political, social, or individual. It can produce actual bruises and cuts; it can maim bodies; it can cause death. It can be used for political purposes, to manipulate, to induce fear, and to tighten the grip of power. But it also encompasses hatred and racism. It encompasses bullying, aggression, taunting, and harassment. It encompasses exclusion and prohibition of entry into the sphere of political decision-making. It encompasses foreclosing ordinary engagement in everyday life. Violence can be meted out both on bodies and on possibilities.

21 For example, in my research, I let Proud Boys answer some of the following questions in their own words: Who are they? Who is their enemy? What is the source of their discontent? How do they articulate their problem? How do they intend to solve their problem? How will solving their problem overcome their loss, anger, or discontent? What is their vision of America? How do they cast or construct their problem in the context of America, American politics, or American history?

22 Proud Boys were famously seen in conjunction with the Oathkeepers and QAnon adherents in the January 6th Capitol Insurrection. Proud Boys have also collaborated in the Pacific Northwest with a group called Patriot Prayer. Proud Boys are notably different than each of these groups in the emphasis on pride and hypermasculinity in their nostalgic politics. Patriot Prayer, a much smaller group, focuses on the connection between freedom and faith, laments lost liberty, and aims to reawaken an “asleep” American populace; the Oathkeepers concern themselves with upholding and restoring the constitution; and QAnon is a big-tent conglomeration of conspiracy theory adherents driven to “save America from evil.”

23 This openly declared “self-love” is not as innocuous as it seems; in fact, as Monahan argues, white nationalists who claim to merely be defending whiteness prescribe a “self-love” that has been historically produced in and through racial animus. A false equivalence is assumed between white identity groups and nonwhite organizations. So, “the Proud Boy laments… ‘They can organize to protect the integrity of their community, culture, and identity… so why can’t we?’” Monahan, “Racism and ‘Self-Love,’” 3.

24 See Figure 21, Appendix A in Candice K. Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia: Conspiracy Theorism, White Nationalism, and Restoring American Exceptionalism” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2023), 239.

25 See Figure 36, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 250.

26 Feola describes the ‘double duty’ of white nationalist language: “What presents itself as a descriptive narrative of decline doubles as a publicly circulated framework through which the white nationalist subject is formed around the pathos of loss, now made legible in distinctly politicized terms.” Feola, “‘You Will Not Replace Us,’” 11–2.

27 Berkley Antifa, “White nationalist Kyle Chapman says he is assuming control of the Proud Boys and renaming it to Proud Goys after he uses racial slurs to describe Enrique Tarrio on Telegram,” Twitter, November 9, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201110015939; https://twitter.com/berkeleyantifa/status/1325981309211009025.

28 Ibid.

29 According to the SPLC: “The group’s founder, repeat-felon Kyle Chapman, organized FOAK after a melee with counter-protestors in Berkeley, California, to ‘protect and defend our right-wing brethren’ through ‘street activism, preparation, defense and confrontation.’” Southern Poverty Law Center, “Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK),” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/fraternal-order-alt-knights-foak.

30 Monahan, “Racism and ‘Self-Love,’” 9.

31 “To what extent will these immigrants, their successors, and descendants follow the path of earlier immigrants and be successfully assimilated into American society and culture, become committed Americans forswearing other national identities, and adhere through belief and action to the principles of the American Creed?” Huntington, Who Are We?, 178.

32 While part of Tarrio’s chairmanship was strategic, it should also be noted that Tarrio does act out the white hypermasculinity championed as part of Proud Boy values.

33 BBC Trending, “Anti-Fascist Meets Proud Boy in Portland – What Happened?” 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDNOiR1xCGI.

34 Ibid.

35 Put another way: “I want him to live in the America that I’ve always seen. I don’t want my grandson to be as marginalized as the Negros in the 60s. People hate white people. This is a problem with race.” Ibid. Here, a Proud Boy describes the society that he wishes to pass to new generations of Americans. Often this concern about what America will be left for future generations is conveyed by Proud Boys.

36 In my estimation, too, this post-racial vision implies that: “You can be a part of our fraternity, too!” if you espouse the values Proud Boys articulate.

37 Daniel M. HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 12.

38 Enrique Tarrio, “Enrique Tarrio, Chairman of the Proud Boys,” interviewed by Milo Yiannopoulos, Censored.tv, 2020, https://censored.tv/watch/shows/friday-nights-all-right/episode/friday-nights-all-right-season-2-episode-3-enrique-tarrio-chairman-of-the-proud-boys.

39 The Christchurch shooter infamously opened his manifesto, The Great Replacement, as such: “It’s the birthrates…” repeated three times.

40 White Noise – Inside the Racist Right. Directed by Daniel Lombroso. The Atlantic, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/white-noise-movie/.

41 Jill Locke, Democracy and the Death of Shame: Political Equality and Social Disturbance (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

42 See Figure 26, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 243.

43 Dissler, “Gavin McInnes and His ‘Proud Boys.’”

44 SBS Dateline, “Meet the Proud Boys: A Group That Says It Speaks for a New Minority: The Disenfranchised Young Male,” 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7f4b1o6BKM.

45 Or as Wendy Brown puts it, “freedom is torn out of the habitus in traditional values by which it was to be contained and disciplined in the original neoliberal formation” (“No Future for White Men,” 171). Now unable to locate their freedom in traditionally established cultural values, which have been thrown into question by real social and political changes, Proud Boys perceive themselves as left with limited options. Continuing on, Brown notes how, “this politics of ressentiment emerges from the historically dominant as they feel that dominance ebbing—as whiteness, especially, but also masculinity provides limited protection against the displacements and losses that forty years of neoliberalism have yielded for the working and middle classes” (“No Future for White Men,” 175).

46 One constant catch-all term for Proud Boy enemies—enemies inflated to the level of threatening the American republic—is “Communists.” From a Proud Boy post on Parler: “Remember who your enemies are: Communists who terrorize and assault those they do not agree with. They are cowards who strike when you aren’t looking. They will seek an adversary, older, smaller, weaker. They will use weapons on these aforementioned targets. They do not care to exchange ideas and live peaceably, they care only to sow fear and discord until their ideology reigns all of us in under the yoke of fear. Stand up for something or you will fall for anything.” See Figure 25, Appendix A, in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 242.

47 See Figure 36, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 250.

48 See Figure 29, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 244.

49 SBS Dateline, “Meet the Proud Boys.”

50 McInnes, “Introducing: The Proud Boys.”

51 “Proud Boys founder denies inciting violence, responds to whether he feels responsible for group’s behavior,” ABC News, December 12, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/US/proud-boys-founder-denies-inciting-violence-responds-feels/story?id=59758209.

52 See Bill Morlin, “New ‘Fight Club’ Ready for Street Violence,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 25, 2017, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/04/25/new-fight-club-ready-street-violence.

53 Will Sommer, “The Fratty Proud Boys Are the Alt Right’s Weirdest New Phenomenon,” Medium, July 13, 2017, https://medium.com/@willsommer/the-fratty-proud-boys-are-the-alt-rights-weirdest-new-phenomenon-7572b31e50f2; “Behind the Bandstand at the Boston ‘Free Speech’ Rally, the Proud Boys Are Doing Their Initiations and Beat-Ins,” Twitter, May 13, 2017, https://twitter.com/JackSmithIV/status/863434782142812166.

54 Ibid.

55 As Proud Boy NobleBeard says: “We wanted them off the streets for your safety.” Rufio Panman, “Rebel Talk Episode 2,” 2020, https://rumble.com/vcbz9d-rebel-talk-episode-2.html.

56 Ibid.

57 The communities and values that Proud Boys want to cultivate are elaborated below in the context of Proud Boys’ articulation of traditional gender roles. These are traditionally organized communities, where the men are empowered and brave patriots who stand up for liberty and the women stay at home maintaining the domestic sphere and raising children who can fulfill their roles/duties. One Proud Boys account on Parler demands that women, “get married, have children, cultivate wonderful communities in which we can live in… to save the West.” See Figure 31, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 246.

58 “Patriot Who Knocked Out Masked, Antifa Thug – Full Interview,” Freedom News TV, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NawLIiOZh3A.

59 Ibid. Further, Nordean argues, “They have no fighting etiquette either. There is no moral foundation for them. They were throwing explosives into a crowd of people, there could have easily been a baby stroller nearby, there’s no thought process into what they’re doing, and so on that level you know you can’t really have any sympathy for them, you just have to eliminate them as a threat.” Ibid.. After this description of the lack of etiquette and proper masculine qualities for fighting (threatening women and babies, cowering behind women in the crowd, taking cheap shots, etc.), Nordean and Jones proceed to discuss the decline of masculinity.

60 Ibid.

61 Before Panman’s comment about great men standing strong, he recognizes the bravery of his men: “I gotta keep giving honor to my boys because I truly believe we saved lives that day.” Ibid. Another Proud Boy, NobleBeard, describes himself and his ‘boys’: “We’re looked almost as soldiers of the right wing, we’re out there, people are looking at us to lead the way. While we will gladly step up and take our place where they need us, we’re still people.” Panman, “Rebel Talk Episode 2.”

62 Ibid.

63 SBS Dateline, “Meet the Proud Boys.”

64 “Patriot Who Knocked Out Masked, Antifa Thug.”

65 HoSang and Lowndes articulate ‘multicultural masculinity’ as follows: “…several far-right formations that have accompanied Trump’s rise have integrated civic-nationalist and racial-nationalist discourses in ways that have openly facilitated the participation of some people of color in these movements. In this context, calls to defend ‘civilization,’ ‘culture,’ ‘the West,’ or… ‘Judeo-Christian values’ can be used to legitimate and reproduce a nationalist project that is at once inclusionary and hierarchical.” HoSang and Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots, 110. It is important to note here that multicultural masculinity is tied directly to the kinds of Western (white) values that such men must go to the lengths of violence to protect; protecting these values is patriotic (chauvinist) and nationalistic, yet available to anyone willing to embody those traditional masculine values.

66 Panman, “Rebel Talk Episode 2.”

67 Another example from McInnes: “The plight of the Western male is there is a war on masculinity going on in the West, and it starts in kindergarten where children are punished for being rambunctious, boys are punished for being rambunctious.” SBS Dateline, “Meet the Proud Boys.”

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, 75.

71 At this point, Proud Boys begin to tread more seriously in white nationalist territory. Their emphasis on traditional, natural, biological gender hierarchies makes for very easy slippage into racial hierarchies backed by “race science.”

72 See Figure 39, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 253.

73 Ibid.

74 “The Proud Boys bemoan that men are falling behind, becoming depressed and marginalized, and have a nostalgia for a time when ‘girls were girls and men were men.’ The main culprits of this desolation are feminism and leftism, which according to the Proud Boys, spur women to assume ill-fitting male roles based on the specious logic of gender equity. The cure for this malaise is the full restitution of the male/female ‘biological binary.’” Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, 71.

75 As Proud Boy “Noblebeard” puts it on Parler: “… women do not belong on the front line at rallies or the battles that happen at them. For every female that is upfront it’s 1 less capable man up there defending… Want to be there at rallies be there in a support capacity but know your place, it’s in the back. Women are to be protected. They put us in jeopardy by being upfront… And there is no PG [Proud Girl] and no woman is a PB [Proud Boy]. It will NEVER happen. PG doesn’t exist.” And some women agree with his argument; one commenter on this Parler post says, “Exactly. Women are to be PROTECTED. Let the men do the work. And more men to step up so women don’t feel like they need to. We need more and more men to wake up and stand up” See Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” Supplemental Content, Parler, @Noblebeard, Women stay back.

76 Ibid.

77 See Figure 23, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 241.

78 As one Proud Boy argues: “Masturbation is lack of impulse control. So, if you can control your impulses, you can control most aspects of your life.” SBS Dateline, “Meet the Proud Boys.”

79 See Figure 22, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 240; Figure 28, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 244.

80 See Figure 36, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 250.

81 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 43.

82 Ibid.

83 See note 62 above.

84 See Figure 35, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 250.

85 Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” Supplemental Content, Parler, @RufioPanman, Jan 6 calls for violence.

86 See Figure 15, Appendix A in Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” 234.

87 “patriots.win” is the new replacement site for “thedonald.win,” the forum where in large part individuals and groups organized and planned tactics in plain sight prior to the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021. Individuals on this site posted goodbyes to their families prior to January 6, asked about the locations of “high value” targets, and went as far as to ask when the orders to kill “communists” would come through.

88 See Travis, “The Violence of Nostalgia,” Supplemental Content, patriots.win, The civil war is already here.

89 W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York, NY: Free Press, 1935), 714.

90 Ibid.