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The Battle for White Male Supremacy

The Hydra Reshaping Right-Wing Politics

Explains how interconnected race and gender ideologies underlie grievance politics on the Right and reveals how both are transforming American politics, policy, and law.

In The Battle for White Male Supremacy, Mary McThomas sheds new light on the entwined racial and gender ideologies that have come to define large segments of the American Right and are roiling American law and politics. Individual chapters trace the development, ideas, and influence of several key groups: incels, alt-right vigilante groups, Christian nationalists, and men’s rights groups at war with the judiciary. While these groups are often treated as discrete phenomena with distinct histories and ostensibly different goals, all share an interconnected belief system of victimhood and embattled white masculinity. By tracking these similarities, McThomas exposes how racial and gendered belief systems are connected both within and across groups.

What is more, McThomas shows that these groups’ beliefs and tactics have moved from the extremist fringes of society to the mainstream of American politics. They’ve gained broad traction in public opinion and political discourse, and they are transforming law and policy at both the state and federal levels.


256 pages | 8 halftones | 6 x 9

Political Science: American Government and Politics, Race and Politics

Reviews

“With sharp intersectional analysis and an unflinching eye, McThomas shows how race and gender grievance don’t just coexist on the American right—they are mutually constitutive, each hierarchy propping up the other. This is the rare book that connects incel forums, Critical Race Theory bans, statehouse anti-trans bills, and the modern Republican Party into a single, coherent, and deeply persuasive story.”

Ashley Jardina | author of "White Identity Politics"

"This is a brilliant book; one that is impossible to put down once started. Mary McThomas deftly guides her reader through theory and concept, analysis, and empirical data from surveys of the US population to produce an incisive and highly persuasive argument about the overlapping ideological systems of white supremacy and male dominance and their influence in right-wing politics. The Battle for White Male Supremacy is a tour de force.”

Jane Yunhee Junn | University of Southern California

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. A Mythical Beast Rises
Chapter 2. The Hydra’s Body: Embattled White Masculinity
Chapter 3. Incels and the Crusade for Sexual Dominance
Chapter 4. Violent Snowflakes: Vigilantism in Defense of White Masculine Privilege
Chapter 5. Onward Christian Soldiers: White Evangelical Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism
Chapter 6. At War with the Judiciary: The Battle for Paternal Rights and Sexual Privilege
Chapter 7. Counting Heads: Public Opinion and the Hydra’s Reach
Chapter 8. Marching Toward an Unknown Future: Who Will Win the War of Worldmaking?

Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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