US Fascist Iconography
Image by Igor Omilaev.
Masculinism has always driven fascist ideals – alienated men have time and again become fodder for movements that idealize violence, conquest and power. The MAGA version of masculinism has been built to battle long standing US trends of multiculturalism and the rise of women. Restless, frustrated male aggression may not be the only factor animating MAGA fascism, but without it the Republican worldview would lapse into familiar conservatism – a philosophy of bland nostalgia, unacknowledged bigotry, moldy military alliances and curmudgeonly justification for inaction on issues like climate remediation and poverty.
Masculinism, according to Josh Vandiver, often operates on a subconscious level:
“…the first rule of masculinity is: Do not talk about masculinity. In naming the phenomena of men, boys, and the various masculinities they embody, the scholar breaks a key taboo.”
The cultural and political manifestations of sexual expression have been so deeply buried that they operate on the level of iconography – making them inaccessible to personal scrutiny. In the words of Susan Sontag, “sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers” defines the aesthetics of fascism. MAGA masculinity takes its narrative form from the assumption that men (by which I mean white, working class men) have been assaulted by a feminized, bureaucratized, weakened country, governed by a shadowy deep state that burdens society with unnecessary rules, and panders to the demands of women, minorities (notably, sexual minorities) and immigrants. At the core of the vaguely articulated complaints of self-proclaimed, marginalized white men is the despised notion that being a man involves a complex variety of possibilities.
Right wing ideology, according to Vandiver, “entertains no rivals.” There is only one acceptable set of values that defines MAGA manhood – one must oppose ideas that are counterintuitive, ambiguous or complex. Masculinity only embraces terse truths – there are two genders and no confusion about gender roles. MAGA celebrates police, soldiers and profit driven aggression as embodied by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Ultimately, MAGA masculinity requires the Darwinian principles of unregulated markets, abandoned safety nets and the use of force as a means of creating order, hierarchy, and predictability. Masculinism drives violence and gives fascism the means to shape public behavior.
Fascism elevates symbolism above practical concerns, it favors visceral responses over pragmatic goals. Transgender athletes have no impact on day to day quality of life for the masses, but transgender people pose a great symbolic challenge to the rigid proscriptions of fascist sexuality.
If gender can be defined along a huge continuum of expression, the capacity for authorities to mobilize state violence becomes unsustainable. The MAGA aspiration to theatrically flaunt its ability to arbitrarily seize dark skinned people and send them to suffer and die in an El Salvadoran gulag cannot prevail if masculinity exists in multiple forms. Military obedience, not acts of nuanced introspection, serves state aggression.
The three essential targets of MAGA’s mobilized outrage are transgender people (particularly transgender women), dark skinned immigrants and women who usurp male power. If the actual goal of Trumpism is to drain power from ordinary people and concentrate wealth in elite hands, the underlying distraction involves a rigid reordering of sexual choices – for fascism obsessively assembles its worldview around a manifesto on sexual impropriety. MAGA offers a quid pro quo to the disenfranchised hordes of “forgotten” white men – these will be paid in theatrical spectacles like this photo-Op of Kristi Noem standing in triumph before a caged assortment of vanquished Salvadoran (alleged) “gangsters.” These broken men, juxtaposed with MAGA sex symbol, Noem, are a visual prompt to remind white men that their dark skinned sexual rivals must be violently eviscerated to restore the proper masculine hierarchy. One is reminded of the lynching of Emmitt Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Kristi Noem, claiming Norwegian heritage, brandishing a Rolex watch, has created a visual definition of MAGA class, racial and sexual roles. If we merely mock Noem for her pretentious cosplay, we miss the underlying iconography.
By fascist iconography, I don’t mean merely the symbols, runes and crosses that decorate flags, but the entire propaganda machinery, the memes, images, slogans, videos, lies, photographs and punditry that seek out the dark, irrational, subconscious layers of the MAGA mind.
The Noem photo-Op invites the viewer to engage with a contrived narrative about power and violence. Noem occupies the foreground, wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with an official seal. Yet, despite this casually officious pose, her hair cascades across her breasts under a tight fitting, white shirt. Her expression, mouth agape, anxious, vaguely lustful yet severe, depicts the ambiguity of the MAGA ideal woman. She is at once the object of desire for the caged Latino men used as background props, and the front for MAGA violence. White men captured and deported these tattooed, shirtless, brown men so that Noem can safely flaunt her proximity, and deliver a cliched lecture to dark skinned people across the globe. Come to America and you will be locked in a cage, Noem informs the world. This is as bizarre a photo as any visual from Der Stürmer – it encapsulates MAGA paranoia and the belief in Trump as superman.
The dog and goat murdering Noem is no feminist, her violence supports the spirit of masculinism – to employ manly force as a means of persecuting and “disappearing” disfavored “intruders.” Trump’s ironic meme, boasting of his intention to protect women, becomes the unspoken backdrop to Noem’s bravery. Women can be aggressively violent, so long as men protect them. That Trump is a serial sexual predator only serves to solidify the power of masculinism – preying upon women and protecting them become part of a single iconographic understanding. The contradiction means nothing – the idea of masculine power allows us to suspend logical analysis.
The passivity of the Salvadoran prisoners depicted in Noem’s photo, the obedient, fearful “willingness” to be exploited as objects, speaks to the larger sexual themes of fascism – even lustful criminals can be made to surrender, just as Trump’s followers have subordinated their own needs and desires to the MAGA state. Susan Sontag recognized that capitulation characterized the sought after mindset for those under the domination of the leader – in her famous essay, “Fascinating Fascism,” on Leni Riefenstahl she stated:
“The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, “virile” posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.”
The Noem photo-Op achieves something that Leni Riefenstahl could not even imagine, the blurring of boundaries between fascist victims and adherents – the alleged gang members in CECOT prison have been made to seem as complicit as the attendees of a Trump rally. In a fascist utopia acolytes and victims share a strange commonality – all have lost agency, all have become tools in a predetermined narrative.
In this context, it becomes clear why transgender women have such an improbably prominent role in the MAGA narrative – those transitioning from male to female reject the narrow vision of men as embodying an obedient, violent and mindless subordination to hierarchical ends. The MAGA mindset cannot absorb the simple reality that sexual identity manifests a vast and complex set of possibilities, but rather chooses to see transgenderism as conscious deception. The transitioning woman – in MAGA rhetoric – does not truly identify as female, but uses this false motivation to gain a predatory advantage. Men, posing as women, seek to invade girl’s bathrooms and also wish to dominate smaller female opponents on the athletic turf. MAGA gender rhetoric expresses fantasies bereft of imagination – everything is transmogrified into projection, a cynical default to predatory fantasies. In that sense, transgender women cannot – as CECOT prisoners, pose with an air of meek, defeated acceptance – surrender. Their opposition to masculinism cannot be undone, renounced or reconsidered. They have only one mandate – to “disappear.”
There has been an ongoing dialogue on Trump’s fidelity to fascism, with Noam Chomsky, for example, arguing back in 2020 that Trump had no understanding of fascist principles that place state power above corporate power. Trump does not manifest the visual/aesthetic qualities that we recognize as a cornerstone of fascism – his nattering, petty, improvisational one liners of self-promoting falsehoods, his boasting about scoring perfectly on a dementia assessment exam seem like a clownish parody of fascist bravado.
But Trump’s regime now has taken on a more pointedly racist, violent and homophobic aura. The ability of the new fascist state to appeal to younger white males, to apply theatrical techniques to politics based on cruelty, arbitrary acts of illegal violence, and the progress that the MAGA movement has made employing fascist narrative techniques on a grand scale ought to frighten anyone paying attention. Trump has floated the idea of declaring martial law, rounding up tens of millions for deportation, and sending US citizens to concentration camps on foreign soil. We will be less likely to dismiss Trump’s assertions as empty self promotion, if we see his threats in the context of an escalating system of fascist propaganda and imagery. Trump’s campaign ads portrayed huge, masculine figures in women’s garb hovering threateningly over petite women. These images chillingly reflect the long history of fascist scapegoating, the prominent and repetitious threat of sexual aggression projected onto the regime’s victims.
One of Trump’s first executive orders banned transgendered people from the military. This theatrical act may appear to be little more than adolescent attention seeking, but we might rather see it as an act of preparation for escalating violence. The concept of the “new man” became a central theme in the iconography of 1930’s European fascism. Mussolini, for example, stated:
“What an immense moral force is contained in the patriotic spirit of those who come back from the front … The disabled servicemen of today are the vanguard of the great army who will return tomorrow. They are the thousands who await the millions of demobilised soldiers. The brutal and bloody apprenticeship of the trenches will mean something … The old men … will be swept aside.”
MAGA fascism may strike us as blundering, asinine slobber, but, historically, the celebration of hyper-masculine heroes has morphed from acts of indulgent theater to apocalyptic bloodshed. The goal of resistance is ill served by our failure to examine MAGA iconography carefully.
