Plutocracy, Masculinity, and the Psychology of Fascism

Now that the U.S. faces the return of a fascist President to power, we must consider the connections among plutocracy, misogyny, and fascism. In 2016, many pundits attributed Trump’s election to the rightward shift of white working-class voters in response to economic anxieties inflicted by neoliberal globalization. Political scientists quickly refuted this theory, pointing to polling and other data indicating that Trump supporters were driven by racial anxieties spurred by immigration. Trump’s appeal lay in his fascist politics of racial nostalgia–his then-implicit promise to restore whites to a dominant position in society. There is a lot of truth to this story. However, its narrow focus on working-class voters lets racist plutocrats and small business owners off the hook. It also fails to account for the misogynistic gender politics of fascist movements like Trump’s. Here I want to unpack the gender politics of plutocracy, which locates primary responsibility for fascism at the top of the class hierarchy.

We can get some insight into American plutocracy by considering how it has changed since the New Deal. Mark Mizruchi, in The Fracturing of America’s Corporate Elite, tells the story of two different types of corporate leaders. One type, which dominated America’s corporate elite from the mid-1930s – 1970s, accepted the New Deal framework–social insurance, welfare programs, progressive taxes, regulation, and labor unions.  This center-right corporate elite supported public policies that promoted the national interest in ways that also promoted corporate interests. It was willing to pay high taxes to build Eisenhower’s national highway system. But there were always far-right business leaders who loathed the New Deal. Over time, they used their political influence to minimize their taxes, dismantle labor unions and undermine regulations on their businesses. Once liberated from these constraints, corporate elites went their separate ways and lost any capacity to rally each another around common national interests that might also help their bottom lines. A critical moment came during Clinton’s health care reform efforts in the mid-1990s. Initially united in support of the reforms, the corporate elite fractured in the face of hostility from more reactionary business leaders. The latter now dominate the corporate elite.

Evan Osnos paints a vivid portrait of the cultural changes wrought by this overturning of who was dominant in America’s corporate elite. He shows how Trumpist plutocrats, many of whom made their fortunes through illegal financial scheming, overpowered the staid, respectable Bush-style plutocrats who had formerly controlled the culture of Greenwich, Connecticut. (Prescott Bush, a leader of the New Deal/postwar corporate elite, raised his son George H. W. Bush in Greenwich.)

I read in Osnos’s story a clash between two ideals of plutocratic masculinity. The New Deal/postwar ideal of a masculine leader was responsible, prudent, orderly, law-abiding, sober, disciplined, conscientious, and willing to take initiatives on behalf of and even sacrifice some profits for ends–such as the national interest–larger than themselves. Men upholding this ideal follow norms of civility and respect, carry themselves with dignity, and constrain their impulses. The U.S. military leadership advocates a similar ideal, with additional stress on honor, courage, patriotism, and sacrifice for the nation.

The Trumpist ideal of plutocratic masculinity is brash, aggressive, impulsive, vulgar, and contemptuous of all moral, legal, and social constraints. Trumpist plutocrats such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen (or, in his day, Jordan Belfort) demand impunity above all. They revel in transgressing the law, morality, and social conventions to take what they want. They extol such behavior as “disruptive,” visionary, and heroic.  They bully and threaten anyone who gets in their way, including their employees, whistleblowers, politicians, state regulators, public prosecutors, and the press. They want others to see them as Ayn Rand did–as brilliant rugged individualists, infinitely superior to the weak, envious, parasitic rabble. They recognize no cause higher than themselves.

Both ideals of masculinity define themselves in opposition to the feminine, which they cast as inferior and subordinate. But the center-right plutocrats pride themselves on their gentility toward women who adhere to the inferior “complementary” role accorded to them. The Trumpist plutocrats (if they are heterosexual) often sexually harass and abuse women, even those conforming to feminine roles, and even boast about it. No wonder so many of Trump’s proposed nominees for cabinet or advisory positions–Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, etc.–have been accused of sexually abusing women.

Once economic inequality in the U.S. became so vast that the Trumpist plutocrats won de facto impunity, it was inevitable that their brand of masculinity would triumph. With their unaccountable power to transgress laws and norms, they effectively cast as losers the upholders of the center-right norms of “respectable” masculinity. In the ruthless masculine dominance game they play, they humiliate the “respectable” men with vulgar insults. Trump demonstrated this fact in the 2016 debates against his rivals for the GOP nomination, and in his repeated derision of members of the military who uphold moral constraints and sacrifice for the nation.

What is the appeal of Trump’s fascism to his non-plutocratic supporters? The other day one of my students told me that his fraternity brothers were huge fans of Trump because they saw him as strong and manly. I view him as by far the psychologically weakest U.S. President in history. What accounts for this radical difference in perceptions? The answer to this question helps us understand the psychological allure of fascism to misogynistic men who don’t and never will enjoy plutocratic impunity.

Trump’s two outstanding personality traits are narcissism and impulsivity. Narcissists put on shows of self-confidence and grandiosity. Yet inside, they suffer from a pathetic lack of self-confidence. Unable to muster up any sense of inner self-worth, they depend on the adulation of others to feel good about themselves. Trump’s extreme psychic fragility is evident. Although he has enjoyed extraordinary privilege, indulgence, and bailouts his entire life, he is a bundle of grievances. He whines about the “unfairness” of every challenge, setback, and external constraint. His thin skin makes him incapable of rising above or brushing off criticism as beneath his notice, and thereby lets others disturb and dominate him. He openly envies and slavishly flatters people he perceives as stronger than himself, such as Putin and Kim Jong Un.

Ezra Klein has recently focused on Trump’s impulsivity and disinhibition. He lacks self-control. He blurts out what’s on his mind even when saying it goes against his interests. His supporters see such behavior as authentic and honest. However much he spreads lies with his words, he expresses his real emotions, which largely consist in his grievances against cultural elites. His supporters share the same grievances, including against anyone defying conservative gender norms, such as ambitious and successful feminist women. They love Trump because “He gets us.” They bond with him over a shared sense of ressentiment. Yet, as Nietzsche insisted, ressentiment is a feeling of the weak.

The non-plutocratic men who fantasize that they will be uplifted by supporting Trump are sadly mistaken. Notoriously, Trump humiliates everyone in his inner circle, reducing them to “dignity wraiths.”  He has repeatedly ripped off his more distant true believers as well as closer ones.

The non-plutocratic emulators of Trump’s misogyny are in even worse shape. Full of resentment over women’s advances, for which they blame their own decline, they imagine that they can regain their masculine dominance by insulting women. Yet “Your body, my choice” was spread by Nick Fuentes, who is a self-proclaimed incel. Men who lack great wealth and power court their own inceldom by emulating Trump.

More generally, men damage each other and themselves in playing by bullies’ rules of patriarchy. According to these rules, masculinity is defined in terms of contempt for anything feminine in others or oneself, such that anyone who displays any hint of what is seen as feminine is deemed properly subject to humiliation. Since subordination is itself marked as feminine, men also bully one another to determine who is dominant or subordinate, so as to constitute themselves as masculine and their rivals as feminine. Everyone loses under these rules, including even the “winners” of these games. For “winning” amounts to a kind of emotional stunting, social alienation, and moral and spiritual self-mutilation. Trump supporters and emulators don’t have to take my word for this. They just have to listen to Arnold Schwarzennegger, who explains why fascism is for losers.