Intersectional perspectives on the masculinity of crises: A digital ethnography of a far right metapolitical project

In the present study, I examine the gendered declinations of a Swedish metapolitical project, by analysing its politico-discursive production enabled by Web2.0 sociotechnical affordances against the wider context of contemporary multiple crises. More clearly, I focus on Arktos Media, a key entity in the Swedish far right ecosystem, which has developed an extensive intellectual project aimed to bring about a far right ideological turn (also known as a metapolitical project). Besides the extensive publication of far right intellectual output, Arktos Media organizes a political salon, named Interregnum, which reunites various actors from the European transnational far right ecosystem. My explicit focus in this study is on the imbrication of gender and crises in the far right masculinity performance at work in this metapolitical project. Consequently, the article makes both an empirical and a theoretical contribution to the field. Empirically, the study provides a digital ethnography of the manner in which far right performances of masculinity in the Interregnum political salon consolidate digital fraternities, which coalesce transnationally around a shared far right ethos of the underdog “us”, and resort to Web2.0 sociotechnical affordances to present themselves as capable to skilfully weaponize the digital landscape for their metapolitical project. These performances of masculinity are contoured in a nostalgic key, aiming to re-naturalize domination and hierarchy, and privilege white heterosexual masculinities across such intersectional axes of inequality as gender and sexuality, race, and social class. This empirical contribution is enabled by the theoretical contribution of this study. At the heart of my syncretic theoretical undergirding lies the concept of masculinity of crises, which I buttress with a superordinate intersectionality perspective that allows us to move past the sensationalist and asystemic imprecision of the concept of “toxic masculinity”. This enables a sophisticated analysis of the intersectional underpinnings of the co-constitutive dynamic between far right performances of masculinity and crises. The methodological and ethical aspects are also noteworthy. To provide thick empirical descriptions, I employed in this study a digital ethnography, which I supplemented with a methodology of tactical resistance and pragmatism that was solidly grounded into the feminist ethics concerned with marginalized and vulnerable communities. This enabled me to discern the coded and subtle uses of language in the Interregnum political salon, in a manner similar to other entities in the far right ecosystem.