Abstract
In this article, the author offers a critical contextual analysis that seeks to answer Giroux’s (2015) call for scholars to map and critically examine the “cultural circuits, points of connection, internalized values, discourses and pedagogies. . . responsible for both promoting and legitimating the likes of Donald Trump” (Don’t Get Distracted by the Buffoonery section, para. 1). To this end, this essay explores how the Trump candidacy and presidency, the rise of the Alt Right, and the appeal of New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, to his fans who have nicknamed him as the ‘Greatest Of All Time’ (i.e. The G.O.A.T.), are all linked by 1) the lionization of a particular performance of white masculinity as omnipotent, and 2) a desire to unapologetically revitalize white male privilege and prerogative as the unquestioned norm across American culture. The author articulates these three cultural sites together—Trump’s racial and gender performance as a politician, the alt-right’s visions of white national manhood, and cultural representations of Brady as the embodiment of white male omnipotence—to emphasize the point that the white supremacist and anti-feminist ideas expressed by Trump, his administration, and the alt-right are not just beliefs held just by a handful of white racists with ‘hate in their hearts.’Instead, these retrogressive and anti-democratic ideas about race and gender have been circulating and cross-pollinating across American film, television, and sport media (among other cultural sites) over the past decade and have primed anxious white men to perceive the Alt Right and Trump’s efforts to revitalize white male prerogative in American civic life as reasonable.
Highlights
JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIESSpencer welcomed the media’s critical gaze and attempted advance the Alt-Right’s iteration of white supremacist ideas packaged as they were in rhetoric about identitarianism and white identity politics by hitching them to Trump’s wagon
Within weeks of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, the New England Patriots—led by quarterback, Tom Brady—staged a historic comeback over the Atlanta Falcons to win SuperJOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES Vol 14:113Bowl LI
Cultural representations of Tom Brady in advertising, in sport media, and in his recent behind-the-scenes Facebook documentary titled: Tom vs. Time (Chopra & Emilani, 2018)— drenched as they are in long standing and quotidian signs and codes of white supremacy—are part of a cultural circuit that enables Alt Right ideas to circulate from the margins to the center of American media culture
Summary
Spencer welcomed the media’s critical gaze and attempted advance the Alt-Right’s iteration of white supremacist ideas packaged as they were in rhetoric about identitarianism and white identity politics by hitching them to Trump’s wagon. This was perhaps most evident in the days immediately following Trump’s unexpected presidential victory, Spencer was caught on video giving a rousing pro-Trump speech in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Washington, D.C. In one key passage, Spencer celebrated the idea that, in his view, the U.S was once again a white country. [Accompanied by a picture of Brady from Fall 2016 in front of locker with Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ red hat in locker] “#Superbowl
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