Paranoid Masculinity, Or, Toward A New Identity Politics

Introduction

White male alt-right identitarianism has become a major factor in contemporary Western society. That this is a phenomenon that thrives with, on, and through conspiracy theories is a fact few would have missed. In this article, I will argue and expand on the way in which this is an identitarian project not only surfing on the force of the many 21^st century conspiracy theories that proliferate in the public sphere but emerging also from a deeper and more culturally determined paranoia. The intimate association of paranoia and conspiracy theories in a U.S. political context has been such ever since Richard Hofstadter's seminal articulation of "the paranoid style in American politics" in the 1950s. Recently, it has been suggested that this influential association is unfortunate in that it inscribes broader social, economic, and political processes into psychological and pathological discourses (see Thalmann 2019). While agreeing that the concept of paranoia risks individualizing and pathologizing the broader political deployment and function of conspiracy theories, this article argues that we nonetheless need the former concept to explain the latter, at least when it comes to understanding their configurations in a U.S. context. Honing in on paranoia specifically in the context of the contemporary proliferation of conspiracy theories will enable me to elucidate ways in which these phenomena are linked to a particular conception of the subject and to the challenges to this conception, or perhaps rather, to its instantiations, in recent decades. This also, hopefully, contributes toward explaining the considerable predominance of white men in today's conspiratorial and identitarian movements.

Suspicious Subjects and Identities

At the heart of 21^st century nationalist and alt-right movements, we find a white male subject that needs to be protected from terrorizations and persecutions coming from independent women, from those of other ethnic- or racial backgrounds or sexual orientations, and from immigrants. Frequently, this subject is also hounded by a left-wing "elite" that deviously contributes to the undermining of white masculinity for example by letting immigrants invade and ultimately take over the American population or by giving women power enough to become independent of men, to choose their own partners, and to destroy family values. The "fear of falling" that Barbara Ehrenreich identified in the white middle-class—that sense of fear of losing control over yourself as well as over society—has, as Liam Kennedy has noted, generated a specific anxiety for white men who are now obliged to "confront their diminishing ability to assume normative roles of power and authority and transcend the politics of identity formation" (89).

As we have all been made witness to in recent years, the type of defense of white masculinity that consists in locating enemies with secret and malevolent intents has gained considerable force. These developments fit well into definitions of conspiracy theory. Relying on recent understandings provided by Michael Butter and Michael Barkun, Katherina Thalmann defines conspiracy theory as "the view that a group of powerful agents is operating in secret to pursue a malevolent goal, which is, in most cases, the take-over of power over a cultural, religious, ethnic, or political community" (2019, 2). At the same time, and obviously without denying the formation and force of conspiracy theories today, it also seems relevant to ask what kind of subject position sees itself as capable of, or at least wishing to, transcend identity formation in the first place. Typically, it is not the position of those who have never been allowed to forget the race, color, gender, sex, or sexuality of their bodies. Rather, it is a position of he who sees himself as a disembodied, free, autonomous individual who stands above the messiness of embodiment and who is eminently responsible for himself and for making his own decisions.

This is a subject position reaching back to a Lockean understandings of the individual as being in charge of his own destiny and to the "possessive individualism" that C.B. Macpherson develops further, consolidating John Locke's theories with Thomas Hobbes' and which has had considerable influence over societal and political beliefs and...