Gender in White Nationalism and Right-Wing Populism
Though their values are not entirely interchangeable, white nationalist and right-wing populist movements in the US are unified by a common interest in the white, patriarchal, nuclear family. The woman’s role, both in these movements and in the home, occupies an impossible space characterized by an advocacy for submission and a propensity for self-subjugation. This dissonance is characterized by symbolism and mollified by nostalgia.
Sophie Bjork-James introduces gender at the intersection of “the Racist Right and the Religious Right” (59) in her essay, “White Sexual Politics: The Patriarchal Family in White Nationalism and the Religious Right.” She identifies that, while race would be the expected site of overlap between white nationalist and white evangelical groups, “white sexual politics” is the ideology producing the fantasy of a white future, rendering gender inextricable from race (Bjork-James 59). “Gender does the dual work of articulating a set of valorized identities for participants while also creating a system of moral justification for prejudice,” (Bjork-James 59). By pushing a narrative of the ideal, white family unit to be protected, white nationalist and right-wing populist movements perpetrate violently racist and sexist ideologies from a position perceived as defense.
Bjork-James traces white supremacist ideology to its origins of a capitalist, imperialist history. “The emergence of capitalism instituted new gender relations through instituting a divide between waged and unpaid labor, largely falling along gendered lines,” (Bjork-James 60). As women were ousted from their roles in the productive economy, the motherly role emerged as an alternative, unwaged profession. This material reality was supported by a deeply symbolic order. Historically, “European nationalism was facilitated by the sanctioning of ‘middle-class manners and morals’ in the familial sphere,” (Bjork-James 60). Constructs of degeneracy and respectability were used as justification for colonist domination, and the paternal, nuclear family was used as a framework for removing autonomy from colonized peoples. When white nationalist and right-wing populist movements seek to return to a historical sense of greatness, this is the “greatness” they refer to. As stated in a popular white supremacist slogan, these movements work to “secure the existence of our [white] people and a future for White children,” (Bjork-James 64). And the common thread from colonized history to white supremacist future: white reproduction.
White reproduction is cemented as one of the most important ways for white supremacy to proliferate, such that in certain contexts it elevates the white wife’s status. The American Nazi Party’s essay, “What We Stand For” outlines an organizing set of objectives for the future, including concepts from “Aryan” citizenship to the subsidization of “pure scientific research,” (American Nazi Party 2-7). In a section entitled Motherhood & Family, the American Nazi Party states, “We further recognize the importance of the unique role that has been assigned to the woman as the creator of the next generation of racial life, and consequently believe that a special degree of respect should be accorded to her as mother,” (American Nazi Party 4). White supremacist valuation of women is therefore entirely dependent on her ability to bear children and raise them according to white supremacy. As with its history, the future of this fictional role, and the symbolism that comes with it, is valued over the real people involved.
In the present day, however, those real people subjugated by white nationalism and right-wing populism are the same ones who advocate for it. Alexandra Minna Stern examines how the trope of the white wife–specifically, the trad wife–is implemented in modern day alt-right movements. Some of the most effective raconteurs of this trope are women claiming to have adopted the lifestyle themselves. For example: the Twitter- (and later, Gab-) user, Vampress Wife. “Every day Vampress Wife posts [...] testimonials about a wife’s physical and mental submission to her husband. These gendered discourses are inextricably linked to combative statements about the ostensible threat of white extinction and the evils of feminism and immigration,” (Stern 332). This content not only confirms gender’s entwined role in xenophobia and racism, but also reveals a method of fearmongering and use of online space to detach from reality.
White female proliferation of white nationalism isn’t relegated to anonymity; Lauren Southern, an alt-right influencer profiled in “White Noise,” operates in real life. In White Noise, she counterprotests a feminist rally with a sign that says, “There is no rape culture in the West.” She elaborates aloud, “Rapists go to prison here. Rapists are actually hated here. Rapists are fired from their jobs. Men who make rape jokes are fired from their jobs. Go to Africa and you'll see a real rape culture!” (White Noise). This narrative is reminiscent of a logic studied by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.” She states that, historically, rape laws were implemented as a way to establish control over white women’s sexuality. Because Black women were considered inherently unchaste, this prevented the definition of rape from applying to them, if they were raped by a white man (Crenshaw 157). However, while Crenshaw’s evaluation of Jim Crowe-era rape culture is one of exclusion of the Black female experience from the definition of rape, Lauren Southern’s framework is one that privileges the white rapist perspective to the exclusion of all rape, but rape by African men. Once again, the ideology of right-wing populism and white nationalism is not based in the reality of individual experience, but in fictional narrative, which undermines even the women who perpetuate it.
Analyzing white nationalist and right-wing populist movements through the lens of gender, it is clear the content of the white, patriarchal, nuclear family is made prominent through symbolic, nostalgic, and hallucinatory form. Whether about the naturalization of gender roles, denial of truth, or defense of the west, white nationalist and right-wing populist movements are reliant on women to foster these narratives, in the home and outside of it.
Works Cited
Bjork‐James, Sophie. “White Sexual Politics: The Patriarchal family in white nationalism and the religious right.” Transforming Anthropology, vol. 28, no. 1, 1 Apr. 2020, pp. 58–73, https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12167.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics [1989].” Feminist Legal Theory, 19 Feb. 2018, pp. 139–167, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429500480-5.
Lombroso, Daniel, director. White Noise, The Atlantic, 2020, Accessed 2026.
Stern, Alexandra Minna. “Gender and the far-right in the United States: Female extremists and the mainstreaming of contemporary white nationalism.” Journal of Modern European History, vol. 20, no. 3, 18 July 2022, pp. 322–334, https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221110101.
“What We Stand For.” American Nazi Party, 21 Apr. 2021, www.americannaziparty.com/what-we-stand-for/.
