In 2024, as war raged in Europe and a genocide unfolded in Gaza, foreign policy wasn’t the focal point of the radical-right internationale. Far-right leaders weren’t banging the drum on inflation or stagnant wages either. While these topics were occasionally instrumentalised to scapegoat minorities, the “elites”, or the “woke”, they mostly took a back seat. Even immigration, the Right’s longstanding scaremongering staple, had lost the centrality it held after the 2015 migrant “crisis”. Instead, the far right was waging a cultural crusade to preserve the “traditional family”, with a (white) man firmly at its head and plenty of offspring to secure the survival of civilisation.

Throughout the 2024 US presidential campaign, declining (white) birth rates dominated the rhetoric of J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president. His boss, Donald Trump, ran ads against gender transition procedures, ending with the line: “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”. Meanwhile, Elon Musk – the man behind the man behind the man – raged against the ‘‘woke mind virus” corrupting society.

The tone was similar among their European allies, who gathered at the “Wokebusters” Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary last April. At the conference, which was co-sponsored by American conservatives, Spanish far-right leader Santiago Abascal lashed out against “totalitarian gender ideology”, whilst Hungary’s Viktor Orbán stated that “the woke movement and gender ideology are exactly what Communism and Marxism used to be.”

According to the global far right, we should not worry about the climate crisis, the threat of war, or billionaires turning into trillionaires. What is truly threatening civilisation is a dip in white procreation or the use of inclusive pronouns.

While it is easy to debunk and even ridicule many of these absurd claims, their emotional resonance has rendered facts irrelevant; white men’s feelings have stopped caring about “our” facts. The success of today’s far right shows that many white men are so invested in traditional hierarchies – first the rich, then men in general, and last the non-whites – that they will believe and do anything to protect them.

A gender gap?

Across the world, the far right thrives primarily thanks to male support. But it is not just men who are attracted to it. Female leaders like Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, and Alice Weidel in Germany have contributed to making patriarchal values more palatable to women, reframing traditional roles as essential to preserving identity and order. The speech that made Meloni famous among the global far right – “I am Giorgia. I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m Italian, I’m Christian”– summarised this rhetoric well, portraying gender and family as shields against a supposed assault on identity by “big financial speculators”. Even Weidel, who is lesbian and a mother, now defends the traditional family as “consisting of a mother and a father”. In France, after seven years of Marine Le Pen leading the Rassemblement National, as many women as men are voting for the French far right. However, evidence of a gender ideology gap remains. In Germany, for example, young men are powering the rise of the AfD.

South Korea offers perhaps the starkest contemporary example of this divide, with young women and men becoming ideological polar opposites. Yoon-Suk Yeol, the ex-president who attempted a coup last December, was elected in 2022 on a radically and explicitly anti-feminist platform. This is despite the fact that South Korea has the largest gender wage gap in the developed world, and men convicted of sexual crimes in the country rarely get punished with more than a fine. Yet most young South Korean men believe they are the ones who are discriminated against.

In recent years, the concept of resentment (ressentiment in French) has gained traction to explain the toxic cocktail of grievance that underpins much of today’s far-right politics. This narrative revolves around the idea that those who vote for the far right have become disadvantaged in society, leading them to retaliate and radicalise. The merit of this explanation is that it gives emotion a central role in explaining the attraction of contemporary fascism. However, this account does not explain what the source of the grievance is and how these feelings affect voters.

To understand what’s driving these men to throw a fit over woke pronouns and reproduction rates, we need to consult some perhaps unexpected experts on white identity and male fragility: queer women of colour.

As culture wars increasingly displace class struggle, many white men cling to their racial and gender privilege, aligning with reactionary forces that promise to restore a fading dominance.

Double-edged patriarchy

Throughout her extensive work, feminist scholar and author bell hooks offers a compelling critique of what she calls the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, a system that places wealth, masculinity, and whiteness at the top of its hierarchy of oppression. In her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), she argues that this structure not only oppresses women and marginalised groups but also deeply damages the men it privileges.

Patriarchy, hooks maintains, socialises boys to suppress vulnerability and emotional expression, equating masculinity with control, dominance, and anger. This “normal traumatisation of boys” destroys their emotional capacity, a loss that is profoundly painful but goes unacknowledged – like the boy who is told to “man up” when he cries, or the teenager who is ridiculed for showing any qualities deemed effeminate. Instead of confronting this pain, men are taught to bury it in anger and violence – the only emotions patriarchy considers valid – and to channel their suffering into domination over others.

This dynamic of patriarchal conditioning doesn’t stop at emotional repression. It creates a culture where men externalise their insecurities to avoid confronting their own vulnerabilities. hooks argues that patriarchal masculinity thrives on projecting fear and shame outwards. Most men have, at some point, been labelled “gay” or “weak” for failing to adhere to rigid masculine norms. This name-calling, hooks suggests, is less about the target and more about the name-caller: a desperate attempt to deflect his own anxieties about masculinity by punishing those who expose its fragility.

The emotional toll of this system manifests itself in men’s health and wellbeing. Men in Europe are three to four times more likely than women to die from “deaths of despair” – suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol abuse. Men are also far more likely to spend time behind bars; in Europe, they make up roughly 95 per cent of the prison population. These grim statistics are the consequences of a system that teaches men to deal with their struggles through self-destruction, aggression, and domination.

Yet men don’t just endure this system – they cling to it. Although it takes a heavy toll, it also grants them privileges over women, other men, and marginalised groups that many find impossible to relinquish. Hooks argues that men fear losing the only sense of power and identity they have been allowed to cultivate, albeit at great personal cost. This traps them in a system that both grants them privilege and ensures their continued suffering. And instead of addressing this pain or resistance to change, patriarchy teaches men to lash out, reinforcing the very structures that confine them.

In hooks’ view, patriarchy operates within the broader system of imperialist white-supremacist capitalism. This system ensures that masculinity and whiteness, even when paired with economic hardship, provide a sense of superiority that overrides class solidarity. As culture wars increasingly displace class struggle, many white men cling to their racial and gender privilege, aligning with reactionary forces that promise to restore a fading dominance. In doing so, they reinforce the systems that oppress them, trading the potential for collective liberation for the power to oppress others.

In the contemporary politics of the radical right, challenges to traditional hierarchies – whether through feminism, multiculturalism, racial justice, or LGBTQIA+ rights – are reframed as existential threats and marginalised groups are recast as invaders who destabilise the social order. At the heart of white male resentment thus lies a fear of diminished power: the erosion of privilege that once felt natural, inevitable, and unassailable.

At the heart of white male resentment lies a fear of diminished power: the erosion of privilege that once felt natural, inevitable, and unassailable.

This fear is fuelled by societal changes. In education, for instance, women are surpassing men; in 2023, 49 per cent of women aged 25-34 in the EU held tertiary degrees compared to 38 per cent of men. And the number of women in positions of power has risen sharply in recent decades. Such shifts, combined with economic precarity, contribute to feelings of insecurity among men, as traditional sources of male dominance are eroded.

Rather than confronting the inequalities at the roots of their insecurity, many men embrace forms of “redistributive resentment”, which blames economic hardships on marginalised groups. Immigrants, for example, are blamed for the high cost of healthcare or the lack of affordable housing. The material struggles at the basis of this resentment are often more perceived than real. Research shows that in South Korea, where grievance politics almost led to a coup, much of the male victimhood ideology stems from a sense of status decline (relative to other groups) rather than objective economic hardship.

So-called “elites” are also a target: they are accused of siding with marginalised groups – immigrants, but also LGBTQIA+ communities – to undermine the traditional (patriarchal) family and the (white) nation. This “recognitory resentment”, as it is sometimes called, is less a demand for visibility and recognition than a desire to reassert a once-unquestioned superiority.

The strategic mobilisation of these forms of resentment not only reinforces existing hierarchies but also deepens societal divisions, as it redirects legitimate concerns away from systemic issues and towards vulnerable groups. When you’re busy kicking down, you don’t have time to look up.

Affect: emotions are political

Hooks’ work highlights how the personal is deeply political: societal structures of power (patriarchy) are internalised and reproduced at the personal level (misogyny). Conversely, she shows how the political is deeply personal: individual attachments (masculinity) are reproduced and protected through the political sphere (fascism).

This dialectical relationship is key to understanding why today’s far right has become so emotionally charged. Sarah Ahmed, another prominent queer-feminist writer of colour, investigates it in her book The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004). Ahmed looks at how our feelings aren’t merely private experiences but can be, and often are, deeply political forces. Emotions like fear, disgust, and rage are constructed and circulate within society, attaching themselves to objects, signs, and bodies. How does a flag, a pronoun, or a mosque become an emotional landmine, sparking outrage and resistance? These objects aren’t inherently powerful, but the emotions that stick to them through repeated associations are what gives them their charge.

The same applies to the figure of the “stranger”, often racialised, who is framed as a threat to the social order. This figure (the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the Muslim) incites fear because of the accumulation of negative emotions – suspicion, anxiety – that have been stuck to it over time through media representations, political rhetoric, and societal discourse. This negative emotional attachment reinforces exclusionary hierarchies, shaping policy and everyday interaction in ways that sustain systemic oppression.

When you’re busy kicking down, you don’t have time to look up.

This dynamic is equally visible in the politics of gender and race, where the concepts of “gender ideology” and “woke” operate as phantasms – spectral images onto which fears and disgust are projected. Through this mechanism, “wokeness” is no longer understood as awareness about racism and discrimination, but is reframed as a threat to the existing (patriarchal and racialised) order. These projections, rooted not in material realities but in the emotional anxieties of white men, are exploited to galvanise fear and outrage. By conflating issues like trans rights with existential threats to civilisation, these symbols fuel reactionary politics and justify authoritarian measures under the guise of preserving tradition.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, one of his first actions was to restrict the use of the term “cishet”. The term names cisgender heterosexuality as a specific category, disrupting its position as the default, an unquestioned norm. By trying to suppress it while letting Nazi slurs proliferate unchecked on his platform, Musk showed the potency of these emotional attachments.

Social media play a crucial role in amplifying and exploiting such attachments. Platforms like Twitter, now X, are engineered to maximise engagement, and thrive on ragebait – content designed to spark outrage and strong emotional reactions. This dynamic elevates feelings over facts, fostering an environment where “vibes” overshadow reality. X has now become the place where white male anxieties are confirmed, amplified, and weaponised, whether or not the underlying narratives are true.

In January, when climate change and inadequate infrastructure caused devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Musk and other right-wing figures pointed their fingers at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. This grotesque misattribution of blame weaponised the fires to stoke resentment against marginalised groups, diverting attention from systemic issues. Similarly, the German far right was quick to instrumentalise a terrorist attack that killed five people at a Christmas market in Magdeburg last December, blaming it on asylum policies and calling for mass “remigration”. Facts are subordinated to narratives that amplify fear and division, ensuring that emotional resonance – not truth – drives political discourse. The circulation of such lies doesn’t simply distort reality; it reinforces white male anxieties by framing inclusivity as the danger.

The radical right thrives on this dynamic, turning emotional attachments to privilege into a politics that bypasses reason entirely.

Self-help vs. collective struggle

Culture war, not class war, is the defining element of today’s politics. This is what leads masses of men to rally behind the richest man on earth as he tells them that the “woke mind virus”, not rising inequality, is threatening their place in society. The emotional attachments to patriarchy and white supremacy are so deeply rooted that they overshadow the reality of capitalist exploitation. Men rise up in arms to protect their privileges, but fail to realise what they are losing, both materially and emotionally, by clinging to these oppressive systems.

The far right, however, has done one thing right: it has validated these men’s feelings. Its leaders claim to understand the frustrations of those who feel disenfranchised, presenting themselves as champions of their cause. By contrast, much of the progressive left has called out the oppression caused by white men, but has failed to acknowledge their sense of victimhood. This has made it all the easier for the far right to direct their anger towards scapegoats – immigrants, LGBTQ+ communities, women – rather than at the system that also oppresses these men. It’s a simple lesson from extensive narrative research: don’t forget to mention the white men, or they will feel left out.

As for women, perhaps their embrace of reactionary politics reflects not capitulation but a strategy to secure their place on the broader hierarchy – a hierarchy built on both racialised and gendered identity. This aligns with the wider dynamics of an increasingly precarious, capitalist society prioritising individual competition over collective care. Instead of envisioning a future of shared abundance and solidarity struggle, contemporary precarity teaches people to hoard and defend what they have. This is reflected in the popularity of self-help gurus in far-right circles: individual empowerment – the idea of the “hustle” – replaces collective struggle as a means to fulfil hopes and dreams.

Anxieties and emotional attachments cannot be dispelled by logic alone

Logic and compassion

To fight the lure of fascism, the manipulation at the heart of its narratives must first be exposed. The far right exploits grievances to encourage people to “kick down” at those with less power rather than “kick up” at the true sources of inequality. The false notion of a zero-sum game between identity groups also needs to be deconstructed.

But anxieties and emotional attachments cannot be dispelled by logic alone. Progressives must also make alternative desires, shared among white men and everyone else, more compelling. The desire to live carefree rather than toil to survive, the joy of solidarity over the grind of isolation, and the universal human need to feel heard, loved, and connected. These aspirations are under siege from late capitalism and contemporary authoritarianism but remain vital to any counter-narrative.

The far right has created phantasms to portray even minor steps towards gender and racial equality as threats to civilisation. Progressives must challenge this by bringing material issues like class and climate to the forefront of politics. This, however, cannot be done by ignoring the role that race and gender play in our politics. A holistic vision is needed, one that addresses the intersecting nature of oppression. A vision that unites people across their differences while recognising the specificities of their struggles.

Most importantly, we must recognise that politics is both personal and emotional. Rational analyses of class struggle, however accurate, fail to address the visceral fears and desires that drive political behaviour. For many, the far right offers an emotional refuge; not just for their grievances, but for their identities. The men who are both protectors and victims of patriarchy need more than just arguments; they need space to confront the guilt, shame, and anger generated by patriarchal masculinity and its defence.

As Ahmed notes, “Politics should leave room for therapy.” Political struggle is not merely ideological; it’s also deeply emotional, requiring us to address the personal and systemic blockages that hinder progress. This means challenging the emotional attachments that sustain oppressive systems whilst offering alternative paths to belonging and identity.

In the final chapters of The Will to Change, hooks calls for compassion towards men, not as an excuse for the harm they do but as a tool for their transformation. To counter the reactionary tide, we must not bow to the violence of white men, nor fail to see them as human beings and even as victims. Emotional labour might be tiresome, but it is a potent tool for change.