Abstract
Set against recent eruptions of right-wing violence in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oakland, Kimmel’s article challenges contemporary White Supremacist Movements in the United States of America. In what he reads as “growing bands of America’s domestic terrorists”, Kimmel explores a major shift in the organizing strategies of the American right wing and investigates their structures in the last three American governments (Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), including a discussion of the 9/11 terror attacks and their immediate effects. He reasons that the American right wing is fueled by hypermasculine egomania, an inverted minority discourse, changes in power distribution, and conspiracy theories characterized by anti-globalization, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, and homophobic stances.
Author’s Note: A later, and somewhat different, version of this chapter was published as chapter 7 of Angry White Men (Nation Books, 2013).
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Notes
- 1.
The report was withdrawn after a firestorm of protest by Republican Congressmen. See Mysoreback (2012).
- 2.
Catholicism is certainly stocked with conservatives on social issues, but White Supremacists tap into such a long and ignoble tradition of anti-Catholicism that they tend to have their own right-wing organizations, mostly fighting against women’s rights and LGBT rights.
- 3.
While there is no research documenting the numbers of militia and Patriot group members with military experience, a quick perusal of militia websites reveals anecdotal evidence. For example, in the “Meet the Commander” section of the Michigan Militia Corps homepage, readers are told that “during the Viet Nam War, Lynn had a farmer’s deferment, but he decided to give it up when he was 20 to be drafted…Lynn spent 1 1/2 years in Viet Nam between 1967–1969 and was given an Honorable Discharge with a Purple Heart. After his discharge, he came back to Michigan and worked on a farm until September of 1978 when he developed ‘Stiff Man’s Syndrome,’ a rare neuro-muscular disease that incapacitates the effected individual. He was confined to a wheelchair until 1991…[when] he started his gun store” (July 11, 1999). Other sites, like the webpage of the Ohio Unorganized Militia, fly a “POW/MIA” flag, with the words “we will never forget” beneath it.
- 4.
If they were executed, they’d be “forgotten” he continued, but “unsexed and free they would be a constant warning and ever-present admonition to others of their race” (Lydston 424).
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Kimmel, M. (2017). White Supremacists, or the Emasculation of the American White Man . In: Horlacher, S., Floyd, K. (eds) Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50820-7_10
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