Q and A on Gender, Science, and the Alt-Right, with Alexandra Minna Stern, author of “Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate”
Over the past two years, the GenderSci Lab studied the uptake of scientific claims about gender/sex within rightwing white nationalist movements. Together, we read a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarly research on the so-called “alt-right,” the manosphere, and other manifestations of rising rightwing white supremacist, men’s rights, and nationalist movements globally. An especially illuminating source for us was Alexandra Minna Stern’s timely and insightful 2019 book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate.
Alexandra Minna Stern, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, is a leading expert in the history of science and medicine. Her research has focused on the history of eugenics and scientific racism. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate engages our current moment, exploring the distinctive beliefs and strategies of the so-called “alt-right” within the larger ecology of rightwing movements. Analyzing digital community spaces, popular media, and the history of right wing movements, Proud Boys traces the alt-right’s social worlds and intellectual lineages, reconstructing them for the uninitiated.
This week, the GenderSci Lab’s empirical and conceptual examination of claims about Western male sperm count declines was published in the journal Human Fertility. In this Q & A, we ask Professor Stern more about the specific ways in which the alt-right animates fears of white male decline, revives biologically essentialist ideas about gender, and insinuates the authority of legitimate scholarship, in particular through appeals to science. We also invite her reflections on how interdisciplinary feminist science studies scholars can responsibly engage with the alt-right’s deeply problematic claims.
GSL: Proud Boys and White Ethnostate’s analysis of the alt-right’s ideologies, political theories, and tactics consists of a content analysis of the alt-right’s online discourses—a new direction for you. From your standpoint as a historian, can you reflect on the challenges, advantages, limitations, horrors, and delights of mapping a movement using internet-based sources?
AMS: This book was something of a departure for me, insofar as it is a contemporary intellectual history whose evidence consists of almost completely “born digital” sources, including a wide range of social media content and ephemera. At the same time, in 2015 and 2016, I was attuned to the expanding alt right and resurgent white nationalism because of my background in the history of eugenics and overall interest in political authoritarianism. New and noisy jeremiads about “white extinction,” “the Great Replacement,” and the evils of feminism are but the latest version of eugenic panics of white male victimhood that characterized the early 1900s. As I wrote Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate I scoured all the publications I could find about the 21st century alt right, far right, and white supremacy, and quickly learned that most of the critical literature focused on specific individuals and organizations. My aim was different — to explore alt-right ideas, tracing continuities and discontinuities with previous incarnations of fascism and anti-democratic ideologies. Thus, the book engages with these longer histories, and looks closely at the influence of European identitarianism on what one scholar has called the “fourth wave” of the global far right. I used a historian’s interpretive skills to carefully read contemporary primary sources produced by the alt-right and contextualize their discourses. To write this book I needed to delve into several new scholarly fields including digital studies and media studies, learning about social media content moderation (or lack thereof), algorithms, platforms, and memes. I wanted to probe the internet not just as a transactional site of information exchange, but as a set of practices with affective and emotional dimensions. I learned so much from reading smart digital studies scholars who have studied how social media and its influencers have enabled racism and radicalization.
GSL: What do you believe your training in history of medicine/science, and specifically in the history of eugenics, brought to your analysis of new alt-right movements today in Proud Boys?
AMS: I believe my training and prior work was brought to bear most directly in terms of grasping how the demographic anxieties that gripped eugenicists in the early 1900s are nearly identical to those expressed by white nationalists today. In fact, I decided to write the book in the summer of 2016 after stumbling across far right centennial celebrations of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (which was published in 1916 and went to inform stringent immigration restriction). These included a lengthy essay by Richard Spencer, birthday paeans on one white nationalist web site, and the recent re-issue of Grant’s xenophobic tract by a neo-pagan white nationalist press. Alt-right assertions about demography, the census, the quality and quantity of the population, as well as loud calls to retroactively reverse birthright citizenship, can be interpreted as 21st century eugenic nativism.
“White nationalists and race realists cherry pick the ‘scientific’ theories that support their versions of biological essentialism.”
GSL: In Proud Boys, you note that alt-right leaders appeal to biological science to support their claims. For example, you quote one leader asserting that “science reveals new findings that support us almost every week.” (This is a phenomenon also noted by other scholars, for example in recent work by Donovan & Panofsky, with respect to claims about genetics and racial ancestry.) The alt-right’s “antifeminism, xenophobia, and racial othering,” you write, is “anchored to a rigid dogma of innate biological differences and natural hierarchies.” During your research, what did you learn about how the alt-right appeals to science and engages with the scientific community?
AMS: Most bluntly, white nationalists and race realists cherry pick the “scientific” theories that support their versions of biological essentialism. Many of their favorite thinkers were funded by or allied with the Pioneer Fund, a trenchantly eugenic organization that bankrolled research by Arthur Jensen (on race and intelligence) and Philippe Rushton (whose simplistic “genetic similarity theory” upheld racial hierarchies), as well as a good number of the authors cited by Murry and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. In addition, my familiarity with the circular logic embedded in biological essentialism, whether in relation to the M/F gender binary or to supposed innate racial differences of intelligence and temperament, enabled me to understand how the glue of biological essentialism coheres far right tenets of superiority and inferiority. In terms of engaging with scientists, the alt right either promotes a small group of fairly marginal scientists who traffic in crude racial and behavioral genetics or turns to right-wing podcasters and media personalities who uphold their views. These have included the Canadians Jordan Peterson and self-proclaimed philosopher Stefan Molyneux, who, before he was de-platformed, interviewed Charles Murray and Linda Gottfredson.
GSL: Proud Boys makes clear that a central theme in alt-right discourse is that of the emasculation of the modern male in a feminist age. In the GenderSci Lab’s work analyzing scientific claims about Western male declines in sperm count (and the cultural uptake of such claims), we became interested in similar connections made between white male health, fertility/reproductive success, and social status. What, at core, does the alt-right believe about the status of Western masculinity and men today? How is masculinity and the status of men outside of the West conceptualized by the alt-right? What role do you think these beliefs, often generated by or amplified in the virtual “manosphere,” play in mobilizing the alt-right?
AMS: You have identified a key through-line of my book—and that is the alt right cannot be fully understood without attention to its deep-seated misogyny and sexism. Indeed, the alt right would not have cohered, to the extent that is became an umbrella for a hodge-podge of actors and ideas in the 2010s, without the significant role of “incels,” as well as men’s right groups, pick-up artists, which fixate on women while reviling them and identify feminism as the biggest threat to white masculinity today. This dimension of the far right, too, highlights the centrality of the internet as an engine of misogyny. For example, Gamergate, in which female gamers and video game producers were doxed and relentlessly harassed, erupted online. Far right movements, and indeed many social movements including those on the left, have had regressive gender politics that often revolve around embattled and aggrieved masculinity.
White male victimhood is core to the far right, and its discourses of extinction revolve as much around fears of male erasure as they do around racial demographic anxieties. There are some far right figures who evince worries about the trivialization and degradation of sperm in the context of reproduction guided by feminism rather than by patriarchal control.
GSL: We were fascinated by your observations about the alt-right’s fixation on male body image and fitness (e.g., p. 115). You note a prevalent discourse maligning obesity. Alt-right men are excoriated to optimize their physiques, be in nature, and eat cleanly. Yet, vegetarians are derided as “soyboys.” What role do you see these conceptions of the ideal body and of health, fitness, and biology, playing within alt-right discourses on the status of masculinity? How do these sometimes contradictory and often body- and health-shaming discourses function tactically in the alt-right movement?
AMS: This is an interesting attribute of the “fourth wave” of the far right—the extent to which it wants nothing more than normalization and disassociation with the Neo-Nazis and skinheads of the past. Many ideas and figures in the US far right today were influenced strongly by the identitarian movement in Europe and sought to emulate it by embracing a more clean-cut, hipster fascist aesthetic. The (now defunct) Identity Evorpa, for example, vetted its potential members for fitness and style, and surveyed them to make sure they didn’t have arrest records, swastika tattoos, or beer bellies. This brand of masculinity was seen as integral to normalization and to a broader acceptance of alt-right ideas about white identity politics and gender traditionalism. It has been hard, though, for US fascists to mimic their European counterparts. These days, the far right—from the Proud Boys to the Oathkeepers—is trending more towards renegade paramilitaries who do not care so much about these aesthetics, so it’s not clear if this was a short-lived, largely unsuccessful, identitarian make-over, or something more long-lasting.
“ Far right figures … evince worries about the trivialization and degradation of sperm in the context of reproduction guided by feminism rather than by patriarchal control.”
GSL: As Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate amply documents, alt-right leaders are openly misogynist and antifeminist. You write that “although women have minimal representation in the alt-right, they are symbolically omnipresent,” either as those who will “produce the babies,” or as “targets of belittlement and hostility when the depravities of feminism are under discussion.” Alt-righters believe that non-traditional lifestyles for women are contributing to reduced fertility and “white extinction.” But while this “retrograde gender politics” serves as “an unfailing turnstile into the alt-right,” you note that the alt-right has found that nothing works better to stoke followers’ fear and hatred than to invoke the notion of nonbinary gender (and a liberal order that affirms the identities and human rights of trans people). Transphobia, you write, connects to “fears of white male victimhood” and is the “butter on the bread of much alt-right and alt-right vlogging.” Can you tell us more about the distinctive role that transphobia plays in fueling the alt-right mantra of endangered masculinity?
AMS: One of my more interesting findings is that gay identities are accepted by some on the alt-right (and some of its prominent leaders have all but come out as gay) but trans people and identities are viciously dehumanized. In some ways, this shows how the alt-right partakes of the contemporary framework in which sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct, not conflated. From the perspective of some on the alt-right, gay men are XY people attracted to other XY people, and as such, do not trouble sex-gender dichotomies, but trans folks disrupt the gender binary and destabilize the far right’s much coveted essentialist architecture. This is one of the reasons why I think transphobia is a hallmark of the far right today and why supporting trans rights is critical to countering its toxic effects.
GSL: You make clear that the alt-right, as a movement, mainly exists within the virtual geography of the internet. This reality constrains their ability to gain real political power in some ways, as they can be easily derailed by de-platforming by mainstream financial institutions and social media companies; at the same time, it also makes tracing the alt-right’s boundaries and engaging with it more challenging. It seems that the alt-right, with their veneer of secular intellectualism, their Pepe the Frog memes, and their dark web discussion boards, are in many ways a small group, not fully contiguous with other elements of the broader right. But their influence is large. Their savvy approach to the culture wars, trading Confederate flags and swastikas for khakis, fit bodies, the imagery of science, and the pretense to legitimate intellectual community—exemplified by alt-right platforms such as Quillette and OpenPsych.org—has made them remarkably effective in elevating once-anathemic biologically essentialist ideas about racial and gender hierarchy back into the mainstream. How can scholars most effectively respond to these efforts to mimic our modes of authorized knowledge production without elevating and legitimizing them? One of the dynamics you point out is that through these methods, the alt-right pulls in some legitimate academics who may not be aware of the origins of the platform and who controls it. How can we expose and counter this dynamic?
AMS: There is a fine line between critically examining the far right and oxygenating it. Many smart journalists have taken up tricky questions of how to cover the far right without amplifying its messages and enabling its goals of normalization. In writing the book, I was careful to structure sentences so that it was clear when a quote or idea came from a white nationalist and when I was unpacking or analyzing it. Creating these kinds of expository boundaries is very important. It definitely plays into the far right’s hand to show an image without any context or interrogation. In terms of countering and exposing, of my aims in the book, and my subsequent research and media engagements, is to demonstrate how we can decode the far right—its memes, symbols, catchphrases, talking points, and dog whistles. These days, much of the far right has abandoned the term alt-right, which reached its discursive highpoint in 2016 and 2017, and lost luster after the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. How do alt-righters describe themselves today? As dissidents, patriots, and American firsters. It is critical to track these discursive and memetic changes, now more than ever, as we move into the 2020s and against the backdrop of Trumpism without Trump as president.
“ We should embrace narratives that help us imagine the kind of future that we want for our communities.”
GSL: We were struck by a point that you made in Chapter 6 about the characteristic “aversion to complexity” of the authoritarian right (citing the work of Karen Stenner). At the GenderSci Lab, illuminating the full complexity of concepts at the intersection of gender/sex and science is a big part of what we do! If the alt-right refuses to engage with this complexity, how can they be reached? What strategies might interdisciplinary feminist and anti-racist researchers in the biomedical sciences, history and philosophy of science, science studies, and women, gender, and sexuality studies bring to the table that could help arm people against the lure of the alt-right’s simplified worldview?
AMS: The cross section of scholars you mention would all benefit from learning more about the complex and often corrosive role of social media in spreading and fomenting anti-democratic ideas and violence. Writing my book, I learned the most from scholars such as Jessie Daniels, Lisa Nakamura, and Whitney Phillips. The twisted rise of Q’Anon and massive disinformation has shown us that the presentation of facts—no matter how compelling and grounded in reality—is not enough. As progressive scholars, we should not be afraid of the power of story-telling and narrative form, and we should embrace narratives that help us imagine the kind of future that we want for our communities and this country. Although my book was focused on dismantling a set of retrograde ideologies, when I think forward, I believe it is more sustaining to envision and work towards a vibrant multiracial democracy characterized by gender egalitarianism, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ equality.
Recommended Citation
Richardson, S. S. “Q and A on Gender, Science, and the Alt-Right, with Alexandra Minna Stern, author of ‘Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate.’” GenderSci Blog, 2021 May 4, genderscilab.org/blog/q-and-a-alexandra-minna-stern
Statement of Intellectual Labor
Interview questions were were developed by Sarah Richardson, Kelsey Ichikawa, and Tamara Rushovich, in consultation with the lab. They were refined by Richardson, Marion Boulicault, and Jonathan Galka. Richardson conducted the interview and Stern provided answers by email. Richardson authored the introductory text. Boulicault, Galka, Richardson, and Shattuck-Heidorn edited the final interview.