POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY

2020, VOL. 21, NO. 4, 432–450

https://doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2020.1851871

Populism, Ontological Insecurity and Gendered Nationalism:

Masculinity, Climate Denial and Covid-19
Christine Agiusa, Annika Bergman Rosamondb and Catarina Kinnvallb
a
Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; bDepartment
of Political Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

ABSTRACT
This article proceeds from a critical analysis of gendered narratives
of nationhood as manifested in far-right populist politics and
discourses in response to major security challenges. We focus on
how such narratives exemplify gendered nationalism and inform
the discourses of populist political leaders and their followers,
with a particular focus on the USA and the UK. We proceed from
an engagement with the ontological security literature to show
how masculine imaginations and fantasies of fear, hate and anger
—‘toxic masculinity’—are in fact gendered responses to
ontological insecurity across two major cases of insecurity:
climate change and the global coronavirus pandemic. The global
coronavirus pandemic and climate denialism have gendered
dimensions in populist, masculine discourses, as exemplified in
the response to the climate activist Greta Thunberg and to the
rejection of experts and lockdown measures in the case of Covid-
19. A key contention is that the reinvention of ‘nationhood’,
along gendered lines, has created a foundation for governing
practices in which hegemonic discourses turn into normalizing
narratives that justify masculinist responses to ontological
insecurity.

Introduction
The proliferation of populist, nativist and xenophobic parties and movements after the
millennium is hard to refute. These far-right1 movements and parties have not only
attained powerful positions across Europe, the USA and Russia, but have also been
elected to government in Brazil, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and elsewhere.
Common among most of these populist parties and movements are an aversion to glo-
balization and multiculturalism and anti-immigrant sentiments, which fuel a desire to
recover the lost ‘greatness’ of a nation in decline, in Europe and elsewhere. These anti-
globalization, anti-diversity and anti-immigrant discourses and narratives evolve

CONTACT Catarina Kinnvall catarina.kinnvall@svet.lu.se Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52,
22100 Lund, Sweden
1
The term ‘far right’ is used to refer to people, groups, movements, parties and politics on the far right of the political
spectrum. Alternative terms used in the literature and here are ‘extreme right wing’ or ‘radical right’.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 433

around emotive constructions of ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’, often exhibited in ima-
gined shared traumas and notions of (good old) times of unity and resilience. Anger,
pride, shame and other affective registers help to construct these narratives. These
affective narratives involved in the imagining of the nation, are highly gendered and
embodied. This can be seen in references to the motherland as nurturing its people or
in visualizations of the nation as weak and vulnerable, requiring a strong protector to
defend it against ‘decline’ or ‘invasion’. Less discussed perhaps, but equally present,
are anti-feminist and anti-women discourses. Such anti-gender and anti-women dis-
courses, on the one hand, tend to emphasize heteronormative values and understandings
of gender and society while, on the other, they largely espouse gendered conceptions of
feminine nations, traditions and bodies that need to be saved from ‘immigrant’ (specifi-
cally Muslim) authoritarian others. This latter discourse on ‘Muslim others’ is, at least in
Europe, repeatedly framed as concerns for gender equality and, in turn, for the survival of
the welfare state.2 However, whereas gender equality would involve a progressive and
transformative view of gender norms, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim discourses are
often couched in stereotypical views of women as inferior and/or in need of protection.
Populist and extremist politics thus appropriate the national narrative and reshape it,
emphasizing specifically gendered traits of the nation that are then pushed to the centre
of political debates. Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign evolved around
a narrative of a weakened America harmed by globalizing forces, corrupt elites and
immigrants, with the solution being to ‘make America great again’. Pro-Brexiteers also
equated membership of the EU with the weakening of state sovereignty and a chance
to ‘take back control’ by reclaiming the British nation-state and its ‘glorious’ past. Fur-
thermore, the uniting of anti-science post-truth politics and nation-state nostalgia
combine to significant effect when addressing major global security issues that confront
our current times. This can be seen in how populist leaders have responded to climate
change and the unfolding of the coronavirus pandemic.
In this article, we ask how we can understand the construction of gendered national-
ism in the hands of populist and far-right political leaders and their followers? Moreover,
how do these constructions play out and become normalized in inherently gendered nar-
ratives of climate change denial, anti-feminism and masculinist notions of entitlement?
Both questions proceed from the assumption that masculine imaginations and fantasies
of fear, hate and anger—‘toxic masculinity’3—are gendered responses to ontological inse-
curity. Drawing upon a specific masculinist understanding of ontological insecurity, we
argue that toxic masculinity prevails in far-right extremist rhetoric on the nation, climate
change and the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. We discuss how populist and extremist dis-
courses have unfolded in the USA during Donald Trump’s presidency and in the UK

2
A. Bergman Rosamond, ‘Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy and “Gender Cosmopolitanism”’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 16:2
(2020), pp. 217–235.
3
The term ‘toxic masculinity’ is used to refer to traditional cultural masculine norms that can be harmful to men, women
and society overall. From a psychological perspective, it has been described as ‘the need to aggressively compete and
dominate others’ and as ‘the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the deva-
luation of women, homophobia and wanton violence’. See T.A. Kupers, ‘Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health
Treatment in Prison’, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61:6 (2005), pp. 713–724; W.M. Liu, ‘How Trump’s “Toxic Masculinity”
is Bad for Other Men’, Time, 14 April 2016, https://time.com/4273865/donald-trump-toxic-masculinity/; M. Salter, ‘The
Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity’, The Atlantic, 27 February 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/
archive/2019/02/toxic-masculinity-history/583411/.
434 C. AGIUS ET AL.

during the Brexit process, specifically focusing on how ideas of gendered nationalism and
populism inform ontological security discourses surrounding these two developments. In
addition, we study two major crises that speak to ontological insecurity—climate change
(notably in the context of populist criticism of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg)
and the global Covid-19 pandemic—and how populist leaders engage a masculinist pro-
motion of the nation in relation to these issues. The empirical material largely consists of
media reports (including social media and visual images) and media interviews with pol-
itical leaders and other public figures.

Populism, ontological insecurity and gendered narratives of nationhood

The rise of populist, nativist and xenophobic parties and movements is a global phenom-
enon. These parties and movements have directed their emotional messages not only
against immigrant others, but also against national establishments and regional or
global associations, such as the European Union and the United Nations, often in oppo-
sition to the promotion of human rights, global gender equality, economic transforma-
tive change and climate action. Three major developments are likely to have contributed
to the increased strength of populist parties and movements: the introduction of austerity
measures in response to the global financial crisis of 2008 and, specifically in the Euro-
pean context, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis of 2010; the so-called migration crisis of
2015–2016; and the latest confrontations with ‘illiberal’ governments in Hungary,
Poland, the USA, Brazil and India, whose policies are undermining these countries’
national legal systems.

Populism, the far-right and ontological (in)security

Populists typically adopt a rhetoric and governing style that challenges the authority,
neutrality and expertise of traditional establishment elites.4 Populism comes in at least
two different guises—a left-wing, class-based and more inclusive form and a right-
wing, identity-based and more exclusive one.5 However, contemporary populism is
largely associated with the (radical) right, because of the right’s focus on nostalgic narra-
tives of the nation and the radical right’s nationalism.6 This longing for the nation has
been defined as nativism, ‘an ideology which holds that states should be inhabited exclu-
sively by members of the native group (“the nation”) and that non-native elements
(persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the nation-state’.7 The focus on
‘welfare chauvinism’8 is particularly associated with far right and centre-right discourses
in Europe, where discourses on social welfare have shifted from being a ‘right’ to a
‘privilege’ that must be defended against migrants who exploit the welfare system.9
4
R. Wodak (ed.), The Politics of Fear: What Right-wing Populist Discourses Mean (London: Sage, 2015).
5
C. Mudde and C.R. Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017).
6
C. Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition, 39:4 (2004), pp. 541–563.
7
C. Mudde, The Populist Radical Right in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007), at p. 22.
8
Ibid.; see also R. Wodak (2013). ‘‘Anything Goes!’ – The Haiderization of Europe’, in R. Wodak, M. KhosraviNik and B. Mral
(eds) Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse (London: Bloomsbury), pp. 23–37; and R. Wodak, The Politics
of Fear, op.cit.
9
M.E. Marsdal, ‘Loud Values, Muffled Interests: Third Way Social Democracy and Right-Wing Populism’, in R. Wodak,
M. KhosraviNik, and B. Mral, Right-Wing Populism in Europe, op.cit., pp. 39–54.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 435

Even though there is a tendency, particularly visible in political and media discourses, to
associate extremism and violence with radical Islam and jihadist movements, right-wing
populism also fuels violence, as it often triggers anti-establishment insurgencies pro-
pelled by ‘anger’ and ‘resentment’.10 The recent increase in violent acts perpetrated by
so-called nativist, ‘alt-right’ groups and individuals only serves to sustain this point.
Several studies also show that far-right leaders use populist narratives that render
three social categories salient: those at the top (the malicious elite), those at the
bottom (immigrants, asylum-seekers) and those in between (the virtuous people).11
Loss of faith in mainstream parties and moderate electoral candidates can, in part,
explain the recent surge in far-right populist parties and leaders. However, several
studies have identified a link between the increase in far-right populism and widespread
perceptions of crises, insecurity, anxiety and alienation due to to a sense of loss of control
—what Anthony Giddens12 has termed a ‘run-away world’, defined by increased globa-
lization and neoliberal reforms.13 Here, the conceptual lens of ontological security14 has
opened for the scrutiny of not only the multitudes of fears and insecurities that lie at heart
of populist politics and conflict, but also their gendered dimensions.15 Ontological secur-
ity refers to a ‘security of being’ and has to do with a person’s elemental sense of safety in
the world, where trust of others is like an emotional inocculation against existential
anxieties,16 whereas ontological insecurity refers to ‘the consequent attempts to deal
with … anxieties and dangers’, where ‘identity and autonomy are always in question’.17
Included in Giddens’ and Laing’s discussion of ontological (in)security is that individuals
and groups tend to address profound anxieties and insecurities by searching for stable
anchors, such as routines and biographical narratives, that can help alleviate
feelings of ontological insecurity. This search for ontological security is tied up with
narrative imaginations of what Giddens has signified as a ‘sense of place’, in

10
J.W. Müller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
11
K. Blee and M. Latif, ‘A Sociological Survey of the Far Right’, in S. Ashe, J. Busher, G. Macklin, and A. Winter (eds)
Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (London: Routledge, 2020); F. Mols and J. Jetten, ‘Explaining
the Appeal of Populist Right-Wing Parties in Times of Economic Prosperity’, Political Psychology, 37:2 (2016),
pp. 275–292; Wodak, The Politics of Fear, op.cit.
12
A. Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives (New York: Routledge, 1999).
13
B.J. Steele and A. Homolar, ‘Ontological Insecurities and the Politics of Contemporary Populism’, Cambridge Review of
International Affairs, 32:3 (2019), pp. 214–221, at p. 214.
14
R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960); Giddens,
Runaway World, op.cit., see also C.S. Browning, ‘Ethics and Ontological Security’, in J. Nyman and A. Burke (eds)
Ethical Security Studies: A New Research Agenda (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 160–173; C.S. Browning, ‘Brexit Popu-
lism and Fantasies of Fulfilment’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32:3 (2019), pp. 222–244; C. Kinnvall, ‘Glo-
balization and Religious Nationalism: The Search for Ontological Security’, Political Psychology, 25:4 (2004), pp. 741–767;
C. Kinnvall, ‘Ontological Insecurities and Postcolonial Imaginaries: The Emotional Appeal of Populism’, Humanity &
Society, 42:4 (2018), pp. 523–543; C. Kinnvall, ‘Populism, Ontological Insecurity and Hindutva: Modi and the Masculini-
zation of Indian politics’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32:3 (2019), pp. 283–302; M. Mälksoo, ‘Memory Must
Be Defended’: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security’, Security Dialogue, 46:3 (2015), pp. 221–237; J. Subotić, ‘Nar-
rative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 12:4 (2016), pp. 610–627.
15
W.K. Delehanty and B.J. Steele, ‘Engaging the Narrative in Ontological (In)Security Theory: Insights from Feminist IR’,
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22:3 (2009)., pp. 523–540; Kinnvall, ‘Populism, Ontological Insecurity and Hin-
dutva’, op.cit.
16
Giddens, op.cit., p. 38. Here, it is important to counter the criticism launched against Giddens’ focus on ‘being’ (see R.N.
Lebow, National Identities and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2016); C. Rossdale, ‘Enclosing Cri-
tique: The Limits of Ontological Security’, International Political Sociology, 9:4 (2015), pp. 369–386), to emphasize
that any focus on ontological securities and insecurities proceeds from a view of identity and identifications as pro-
cesses of becoming rather than being (see C. Kinnvall, I. Manners, and J. Mitzen, Special issue of European Security:
Ontological (in)security in the European Union, European Security, 27:3 (2018), pp. 249–265).
17
Laing, op.cit. pp. 39, 42.
436 C. AGIUS ET AL.

which spaces and narratives about certain locales offer important real and imaginary
anchors for political leaders in order to to pin down unknown anxieties among the elec-
torate.18 Far-right populists thus make use of symbolic and mythical narratives that rest
on imaginaries of a secure and stable past, in which nostalgia is used to appeal to suppor-
ters and guide future political actions.19 Such fictional narratives of the nation’s past
greatness are conveyed to new generations in search of answers to their anxieties.
However, such narratives also identify those who supposedly have taken this ‘greatness’
away—the establishment, immigrants, Muslims and women.20

Gender populism and gendered nationalism

The gendered dimension of these nostalgic narratives are confronted by, as well as depen-
dent on, various narratives of modernity,21 as far-right movements and leaders contrast
and reimagine memories of the past. Here, nationalist parties and movements define
national boundaries in ways that reflect the power of a dominant patriarchy—thus
confining women to certain traditional roles and thereby challenging statist feminist
notions of empowerment.
As noted by several feminist scholars, the control of female sexuality, bodies and
reproduction is crucial to nationalism.22 This is what Yuval-Davis23 defines as the
‘burden of representation’—with women coming to represent national unity and its dis-
tinctiveness. As Kandiyoti has argued,
the very language of nationalism singles women out as the symbolic repository of group
identity. [Thus,] nationalism describes its object using either a vocabulary of kinship
(motherland, patria) or home (heimat), in order to denote something to which one is ‘natu-
rally’ tied. Nationness is thus equated with gender, parentage, skin-colour.24

Kandiyoti’s emphasis on ‘nationness’ as something to which one is naturally tied implies

that gender is performed in populist discourse and rhetoric—so-called gender populism.
Gender populism relies on ‘a simplifying understanding of gender as a “natural”,
essential dichotomous order, based on positioning men and women in hierarchical
locations in terms of power’,25 and, in so doing, employs a heteronormative vision of
gender identities.
18
V. Della Sala, ‘Narrating Europe: The EU’s Ontological Security Dilemma’, European Security, 27:3 (2018), pp. 266–279;
F. Ejdus, ‘“Not a Heap of Stones”: Material Environments and Ontological Security in International Relations’, Cambridge
Review of International Affairs, 30:1 (2017), pp. 23–43; J. Subotić, ‘Political Memory, Ontological Security, and Holocaust
Remembrance in Post-Communist Europe’, European Security, 27:3 (2018), pp. 296–313.
19
M. Kenny, ‘Back to the Populist Future? Understanding Nostalgia in Contemporary Ideological Discourse’, Journal of
Political Ideologies, 22:3 (2017), pp. 256–273.
20
Browning, ‘Brexit, Existential Anxiety and Ontological (In)Security’, op.cit.; Kinnvall, ‘Ontological Insecurities and Post-
colonial Imaginaries’, op.cit.
21
See C. Kinnvall and P. Nesbitt-Larking, The Political Psychology of Globalization: Muslims in the West (Oxford University
Press, 2011).
22
J. Butler and G. Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-state? (London: Seagull, 2010); S. Mojab, ‘Theorizing the Politics of “Islamic
Feminism”’, Feminist Review, 69:1 (2001), pp. 124–146; O.C. Norocel, Our People – A Tight-Knit Family Under the Same
Protective Roof: A Critical Study of Gendered Conceptual Metaphors at Work in Radical Right Populism (Helsinki: Unigrafia,
2013).
23
N. Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation (London: Sage 1997), p. 45.
24
D. Kandiyoti, ‘Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 20:3
(1991), pp. 429–443, at p 4.
25
T. Saresma, ‘Gender Populism: Three Cases of Finns Party Actors’ Traditionalist Anti-Feminism’, in U. Kovala, E. Palonen,
M. Ruotsalainen, and T. Saresma (eds) Populism on the Loose, pp. 178–195, at p. 178 (Jyväskylä: Nykykulttuurin tutki-
muskeskus, 2018).
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 437

Manifestations of this dichotomous order are often visible in the idea of ‘the people’
versus ‘the feminist elite’, and in the far right’s opposition to ‘gender ideology’. Focusing
on Brazil, Poland and Hungary, Mudde notes that the far right constitutes ‘gender ideol-
ogy’ as a major threat: as part of a left-wing conspiracy designed to weaken the traditional
nuclear family structure and women’s role as figurative mothers of the nation-state.26
Similarly, several studies have shown how emergent forms of gender populism include
misogyny, sexism and opposition to feminism, gender equality and same-sex marriage,
often by seeking to instantiate traditional family and associated gender roles. Such
moves are often accompanied by a ‘strongman’ style of political leadership.27 Meanwhile,
there has been an apparent rise in women’s participation in far-right movements,28 and
the emergence of ‘femonationalism’ has seen far-right, neoliberal and feminist forces
unite in their appropriation of feminist ideas and notions of gender equality to stigmatize
Islam and Muslim men,29 and to sustain their populist agenda. Hence, although many
far-right parties and movements converge in their emphasis on traditional family and
gender roles, as well as in their opposition to such things as same-sex marriage and abor-
tion, they often differ on issues of immigration and gender equality. Here, findings indi-
cate that many European far-right parties and movements use gender equality as a key
value separating the modern majority population from oppressive immigrant
Muslims.30 This implies that gender populism does not conform to one ideological
standpoint. Instead, Mudde suggests that there are varieties of sexism involved in far-
right discourses, including hostile and benevolent ones, both of which are present in
gender-based populism.31 Benevolent sexism proceeds from a patriarchal notion of
men as physically strong and powerful and families as heterosexual, male-dominated
and dedicated to the protection of ‘their’ women. Hostile sexism, in comparison, objec-
tifies women, ‘who are often viewed as trying to control men through feminist ideology
or sexual seduction’.32 Benevolent sexism defines the approaches of political leaders such
as Viktor Orbán in Hungary or the government of the Law and Justice party in Poland, in
which feminism, like homosexuality, is assumed to undermine traditional gendered
notions of the family. Hostile sexism figures among gamers (e.g. Gamergate), ‘incels’
(involuntary celibates) and so-called pick-up artists (where politicized rape fantasies
are openly debated).33 Common to both types of sexism—and something that is likely
26
C. Mudde, The Far Right Today (Cambridge: Polity, 2019a).
27
P. Caravantes, ‘New Versus Old Politics in Podemos: Feminization and Masculinized Party Discourse’, Men and Mascu-
linities, 22:3 (2019), pp. 465–490; M. Löffler, R. Luyt, and K. Starck, ‘Political Masculinities and Populism’, Norma: Inter-
national Journal for Masculinity Studies, 15:1 (2020), pp. 1–9; Norocel, op.cit.
28
A.A. Mattheis, ‘Shieldmaidens of Whiteness: (Alt) Maternalism and Women Recruiting for the Far/Alt-Right’, Journal for
Deradicalization, 17 (2018/2019), pp. 128–161.
29
S.R. Farris, In the Name of Women: The Rise of Femonationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), at p. 4.
30
See, e.g., T. Akkerman, ‘Gender and the Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Agendas’,
Patterns of Prejudice, 49:1–2 (2015), pp. 37–60; Löffler, Luyt, and Stark, op.cit.; R. Luyt and K. Starck, ‘Only for the
Brave? Political Men and Maculinities: Change Agents for Gender Equality’, in R. Luyt and K. Starck (eds) Masculine
Power and Gender Equality: Political Masculinities as Change Agents (New York: Springer, 2020), pp. 1–14; S. Mayer,
E. Ajanovic, and B. Sauer, ‘Intersections and Inconsistencies: Framing Gender in Right-Wing Populist Discourses in
Austria’, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 22:4 (2014), pp. 250–266.
31
Mudde, The Far Right Today, op.cit.; Mudde, ‘Why the Far Right is Obsessed With “Gender Ideology”’, New Statesman, 20
September 2019. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2019/09/why-far-right-obsessed-gender-ideology.
32
Mudde, The Far Right Today, op.cit., p. 150.
33
These people live in an online world where women are objects and identities are supposed to remain anonymous,
calling themselves PUAs—Pick-Up Artists—and use tactics like the Anti-Slut Defence and the Zero Night Stand,
often emphasizing a rape culture where women and girls are objectified to the point that they are taught to live in
fear (B. Walton, ‘Pickup Artists’ and Rape Culture: The Social Issue Behind the Problems at Waking Life Expresso’,
438 C. AGIUS ET AL.

to fuel feelings of ontological insecurity—is the tendency to view contemporary feminism

as a threat to the male self. This tendency is amplified and promoted by populist leaders.
As Homolar and Scholz demonstrate in the context of the 2016 US elections, ‘by building
his rhetorical toolkit around augmenting existing grievances and emphasizing the pro-
spect of further rupture and defeat, Trump generated ontological insecurity, manifested
simultaneously in a sense of loss and a desire for belonging’.34

Masculinity, ontological insecurity and social media

By picking up on feelings of alienation and inadequacy and sentiments of disempower-
ment among especially young white men, populist far-right parties and movements have
been able to take advantage of subcultural networks as breeding grounds for toxic mas-
culinities and political extremism.35 Such ‘masculinization’36 of nationalist discourse see-
mingly appeals to disaffected males joining far-right movements in search of a place of
belonging. Kimmel defines this socio-psychological state as ‘aggrieved entitlement’ to
explain how young men joining these movements express a ‘gendered sense of entitle-
ment thwarted by larger economic and political shifts, their ambitions choked, their mas-
culinity lost’.37
While economic factors such as downsizing and outsourcing contribute to ontological
insecurity and alienation (feelings of emasculation, loss of male privilege), entitlement
and resentment can come from different sources. In Sweden, for instance, the far-right
Sweden Democrats (who gained 17% of the votes in the 2018 election) have traditionally
appealed to white men with low levels of education. However, a recent report shows that
their voters are not predominantly marginalized in economic terms, but rather unite
around feelings of alienation from the larger society and anti-immigrant and anti-fem-
inist grievances.38 Sweden’s (until recently) open approach to asylum and its pursuit
of an overt ‘feminist foreign policy’,39 as well as its support for national and global
gender equality, have also provoked Sweden Democrat supporters. In the USA, Trump
has long promoted a xenophobia linked to sexual anxiety, beginning his presidential
campaign by demonizing Mexican immigrants as rapists, and the European far right
has attacked Muslim refugees as ‘rapefugees’.40 Traditional and digital media discourses,
as well as popular culture, have been key to the dispersion of such sentiments, whereby
visual symbols, imagery and myths about imaginary pasts and ‘others’ have been

The Citizen-Times, 2015, https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/2015/09/26/look-behind-pickup-artists-theory-and-

rape-culture-waking-life/72826230/; L. Nicholas and C. Agius, The Persistence of Global Masculinism: Discourse, Gender
and Neo-colonial Re-articulations of Violence (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
34
A. Homolar and R. Scholz, ‘The Power of Trump-Speak: Populist Crisis Narratives and Ontological Security’, Cambridge
Review of International Affairs, 32:3 (2019), pp. 344–364, at p. 360.
35
C. Kinnvall, ‘Borders and Fear: Insecurity, Gender and the Far Right in Europe’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies,
23:4 (2015), pp. 514–529; Mattheis, op.cit.; J. Veugelers and G. Menard, ‘The Non-Party Sector of the Radical Right’, in
J. Rydgren (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 412–438.
36
F. Scrinzi, ‘A “New” National Front? Gender, Religion, Secularism and the French Populist Radical Right’, in M. Köttig,
R. Bitzan, and A. Petö (eds) Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe (London: Palgrave, 2017), pp. 127–140.
37
M. Kimmel, Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into and Out of Violent Extremism (Oakland, CA: University of Cali-
fornia Press 2018), p. 1.
38
K. Jylhä, J. Rydgren, and P. Strimling, Sverigedemokraternas väljare. Vilka är de, var kommer de ifrån och vart är de på väg?
(Institutet för Framtidsstudier, 2018), https://www.iffs.se/publikationer/iffs-rapporter/sverigedemokraterna/.
39
Bergman Rosamond, op. cit.
40
D. Futrelle, ‘The Alt-Right is Fuelled by Toxic Masculinity – And Vice Versa’, NBC News, 1 April 2019, https://www.
nbcnews.com/think/opinion/alt-right-fueled-toxic-masculinity-vice-versa-ncna989031.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 439

securitized and sedimented. Political storytelling has become increasingly digitized, thus
enabling access to mass audiences—a fact utilized to strong effect by Trump in his use of
Twitter.41 Here, it is important to recognize that discourses are not simply textual or
verbal but also visual,42 and that far-right populism deploys a range of visual images
to portray its ideas (such as the red MAGA hats and Pepe the Frog memes).43
What needs to be emphasized is how these digital and visual developments of far-right
populism reflect a gender populism rooted in historically contingent practices and dis-
courses that continue to be related to national ideologies, identities and bodies. Accord-
ingly, they provide evidence of a particular form of emotionally gendered nationalism
that is loaded into national celebrations, memorial landscapes and other elements of
national iconographies—events and visual images that convey particular kinds of mascu-
linities in response to various forms of ontological insecurities. The next section deals
with these specific aspects of gendered nationalism and gendered bodies as forms of
gender populism. We discuss how these discourses, narratives and practices of gender
populism have become manifest in a ‘masculinist’ logic that undergirds the ontological
insecurity of gendered nationalism. This is exemplified through empirical illustrations
of gender populism in the USA during the Trump administration and in the UK
during the Brexit process. The discussion centres on the ways in which this masculinist
logic has relied on gendered discourses stoked in masculinist claims of ‘protection’,
‘manhood’, ‘imperial loss’ and ‘mythical pasts’, highlighting how these have been
played out not only in relation to toxic masculinity, but also in relation to anti-feminist
discourses and contested truth-claims.

Gendered nationalism and gendered bodies

As noted above, gendered dimensions of far-right and populist narratives engage with a
masculinist nostalgia perceived to be under threat. This masculinism is not simply per-
formed at the individual level but also fuels the narratives of the nation, producing a gen-
dered nationalism that seeks to recover the idea of a strong nation that has been weakened
by feminization. Spike Peterson has noted that women are historically constituted within
the nation in gendered terms—as biological reproducers of the state and as societal
members supporting nationalist objectives.44 Similarly, nationalism is gendered
because ‘the naturalization of domination (“us” at the expense of “them”) depends
upon prior presumptions of men/masculinity over women/femininity’.45 Key here is
the concept of ‘masculinist logic’—‘an underlying ethos or totalizing worldview that
implicitly universalizes and privileges the qualities of masculinity, and in doing so, sub-
ordinates and “other” alternative ways of understanding, knowing and being’.46 Mascu-
linist logic underwrites the ontological insecurity of gendered nationalism. It also prevails
41
K. Freistein and F. Gadinger, ‘Populist Stories of Honest Men and Proud Mothers: A Visual Narrative Analysis’, Review of
International Studies, 46:2 (2020), pp. 217–236; C. Hamilton and L. Shepherd, Understanding Popular Culture and World
Politics in the Digital Age (Oxford: Routledge, 2016).
42
R. Bleiker, Visual Global Politics (Oxford: Routledge, 2018); L. Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the
Bosnian War (London: Routledge, 2006).
43
K. Bedford, ‘Pepe the Frog and the Rise of Alternative-Right Memes’, The Point Magazine, April 2017, http://www.
thepointmagazine.com.au/post.php?s=2017-04-26-pepe-the-frog-and-the-rise-of-alternative-right-memes.
44
Spike Peterson V., ‘Gendered Nationalism’, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 6:1 (1994), pp. 77–83.
45
Ibid., p. 83, italics in original.
46
(Nicholas and Agius, op.cit, p. 5).
440 C. AGIUS ET AL.

in what Agius and Edenborg define as ‘gendered bordering practices’,47 where masculi-
nist logics of hierarchy and strength inform the security policies of states.48 Mastery over
sovereignty and destiny fuels the narratives around ontological security because failure to
assert sovereignty means threatening the survival of the nation and the state in the minds
of the individual or group. In the imaginaries of far-right populist and centre-right move-
ments, ideas of sovereignty and mastery rest on a political ideology that has as its core
myth the homogeneous nation—a romantic and gendered version of the homeland
and homeland culture, both of which act as emotional resources in the appeal
to ontological security,49 as the following subsections explain in relation to the USA
and the UK.

Gendered nationalism in Trump’s America

The amplification of gendered nationalism was a defining feature of Trump’s presidency.
In Trump’s narrative, America had been weakened as a state, its national pride and pres-
tige abused by other powers through globalization and ideas about diversity that failed to
speak for ‘true Americans’. His campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ captured
the idea of a once great nation in decline and humiliation. The insecurity imagined in this
discourse is an embodied one, where globalization steals jobs from working US citizens,
partners take advantage of US security, and Mexicans and other ‘illegal’ migrants pour
across the country’s weak borders, bringing crime, rape and violence, and destroying
America from within. Slogans attached to ‘building the wall’ have been accompanied
by further claims of decay: an America weakened by its own internal institutions, such
as the media (‘fake news’) and government corruption (‘drain the swamp’ and ‘rigged
systems’).50 Here, the nation is imagined as vulnerable and in need of (strong male) pro-
tection. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Trump
spoke of a ‘moment of crisis for our nation’, adding that ‘the attacks on our police, and
the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not
grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country’.51 Employing a crisis logic, the solution
to this ‘American carnage’ is (in ‘Trumpian’ discourse) found in the figure of the strong
male leader who is able to protect America against both (progressive) internal and exter-
nal threats.
Feminists have long observed that the ‘politics of protection’ relies on gendered
notions of weakness and strength, legitimating actions that seek to ‘save’ or ‘protect’ citi-
zens, in particular women. In the US context, such narratives pertain to the necessity of
protecting not just the country’s borders but also its women. A key example here is
Trump’s warning that a ‘caravan’ of many young, strong men was advancing towards
47
C. Agius and E. Edenborg, ‘Gendered Bordering Practices in Swedish and Russian Foreign and Security Policy’, Political
Geography, 71 (2019), pp. 55–66; see also N. Yuval Davis, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations (London:
Sage, 2011).
48
R. Jones and C. Johnson, ‘Border Militarisation and the Rearticulation of Sovereignty’, Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, 41:2 (2016), pp. 187–200; C. Agius, ‘Rescuing the State? Sovereignty, Identity, and the Gendered
Re-Articulation of the State’, in S. Parashar, J.A. Tickner, and J. True (eds) Revisiting Gendered States: Feminist Imaginings
of the State in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 69–84.
49
Kinnvall, ‘Ontological Insecurities and Postcolonial Imaginaries’, op.cit.
50
J.W. Peters, ‘More Trump Than Trump Himself’, New York Times, 7 June 2018.
51
Cited in M. Levinger, ‘Love, Fear, Anger: The Emotional Arc of Populist Rhetoric’, Narrative and Conflict: Explorations in
Theory and Practice, 6:1 (2017), pp. 1–21, at p. 7.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 441

the USA’s southern border in November 2018—‘like an invasion’.52 The use of inflam-
matory language in constituting migration as a threat to US women has been coupled
with a general backlash against women, illustrated in the appointment of conservative
Supreme Court judges who are committed to restricting abortion rights. The discourse
of protection, then, mixes with populist impulses and infringements on women’s
rights. Narratives, once established, can be repurposed and imbued with new messages,
even if these are contradictory, with the protection logic pursued by Trump being incon-
sistent with the separation of women and children at the border and the caging of
migrant children.
Trump makes use of discursive promises that he couples with masculinist virility and
body language, juxtaposing himself against male leaders of other nations. Key examples
here are his threats to North Korea and comparisons between the size of his ‘nuclear
button’ and that of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un,53 and admiration for
authoritarian figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Philippines President
Rodrigo Duterte, while belittling political opponents like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
and Joe Biden for lacking strength and leadership. For Trump, politics is about winners
and losers, the strong versus the weak, the effeminate versus the masculine. This mascu-
linized embodiment54 has a good deal of support from voters. A recent study shows how
the vote for Trump among (mostly Republican) men and the working class was affected
by the view that American society had ‘grown too soft and feminine’.55 Such views fit into
a broader pattern of gendered nationalism manifest in the president’s attacks on women,
especially women of colour in Congress,56 with the president regularly questioning these
individuals’ patriotism in an effort to undercut their arguments.

Gendered nationalism and the Brexit process

The Brexit referendum result in the UK in 2016 echoes the gendered populism associated
with Trump. While largely analyzed in terms of race and class, feminist scholars have
noted that Brexit is a gendered political project.57 The agents of Brexit were largely pri-
vileged white English males, such as Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and
Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, with the former being associated
with many accusations of sexual harassment and misogynous language. Nigel Farage,
another vocal supporter of Brexit and the former leader of the UK Independence
Party (UKIP), has also drawn upon his English masculine attributes in campaigning
for Britain’s departure from the EU. However, the majority of Scottish voters and
52
B. Mealer, ‘This is What Trump’s Caravan “Invasion” Really Looks Like’, The Guardian, 26 November 2018, https://www.
theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/26/migrant-caravan-disabled-children.
53
C. Eroukhmanoff, ‘A Feminist Reading of Foreign Policy Under Trump: Mother of All Bombs, Wall and the “Locker Room
Banter”’, Critical Studies on Security, 5:2 (2017) pp. 177–181.
54
C. Cohn, ‘The Perils of Mixing Masculinity and Missiles’, New York Times, 5 January 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/01/05/opinion/security-masculinity-nuclear-weapons.html.
55
M. Deckman and E. Cassese, ‘Gendered Nationalism and the 2016 US Presidential Election: How Party, Class, and Beliefs
About Masculinity Shaped Voting Behavior’, Politics & Gender, (2019). doi:10.1017/S1743923X19000485.
56
P.R. Lockhart, ‘The Racism in Trump’s Attacks Should be Impossible to Deny. But for Many Media Outlets and Politicians,
it Somehow Wasn’t’, Vox, 15 July 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/15/20695427/donald-trump-tweet-
racist-aoc-tlaib-omar-pressley-nationalism.
57
G.K. Bhambra, ‘Brexit, Trump, and “Methodological Whiteness”: On the Misrecognition of Race and Class’, British Journal
of Sociology, 68:S1 (2017), pp. 214–232; A.A. Hozić and J. True, ‘Brexit as a Scandal: Gender and Global Trumpism’,
Review of International Political Economy, 24:2 (2017), pp. 270–287.
442 C. AGIUS ET AL.

politicians were opposed to leaving the European Union, most notably female First Min-
ister Nicola Sturgeon, who remains committed to Scottish independence and re-entering
the EU as a sovereign state.58 Brexit, then, is primarily an English exercise in gendered
nationalism, supported and taken forward by leading Conservative male politicians,
who managed to convince a sufficient number of discontented voters that leaving the
EU would safeguard jobs at home and curb immigration. The prevalence of ‘intersec-
tional inequalities’ that emerged from years of austerity policies in response to the
2008 financial crisis, along with the perceived threat of migrant labour from the EU,
thus made Brexit possible.59
Here, we contend that the decision to leave the European Union is an obvious act of
gendered nationalism, guided by a desire to ‘take back control’ from Brussels and beyond,
regardless of the economic and political consequences of doing so, one of these being the
possible breakup of the United Kingdom itself, with pro-independence sentiments
running high in Scotland. Nonetheless, the referendum debate and Britain’s departure
from the EU were imbued with a protection logic that drew upon an imaginary threat
of ‘the other’ against which Britain needed to protect itself through enhanced gendered
nationalist practices. This logic was also made possible by appealing to an imaginary loss
of a ‘whitewashed’ British imperial past,60 one that has given rise to a distinct set of tra-
ditions and religious values that are deeply embedded in Britain’s self-narrative—a story
defined by a ‘postcolonial melancholia’61 and a longing for a powerful masculinist past.
Leaving the EU, then, would not only cure the loss of sovereignty and identity, but also
restore Britain’s former glory, associated with times of imperialism and colonial and gen-
dered repression.62 Tropes of masculinist protection prevail in such calls for the restor-
ation of Britain’s former glory. Exploiting the electorate’s anxieties about threats against
economic and ontological security, the emotional underpinnings of Brexit serve as a stark
example of gendered, as well as racialized, nationalism—protecting the nation from
anxiety over jobs, services and British identity—where the latter has resulted in an
increase in gendered violence targeting specifically Muslim women who wear a hijab
(headscarf) or a niqab (face veil).63 Key here is also the 2016 killing of British
Labour Member of Parliament Jo Cox, a proponent of the EU and anti-Brexit cam-
paigner, who was murdered by a 53-year-old gardener with gendered far-right
convictions.
The kind of racism and misogyny outlined in Trump’s America and in the Brexit
process is in line with the ideas of far-right parties and movements whose meta-narra-
tives evolve around emotive and exclusive masculinist ontological security constructions
of ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’. It is embodied and envisages the nation in patriarchal
terms. These narratives display a number of masculinist logics that inform populist dis-
courses on major security threats and exacerbate ontological insecurity. They do so in

58
A. Henderson, C. Jeffery, and D. Wincott, ‘How Brexit Was Made in England’, British Journal of Politics and International
Relations, 19:4 (2017), pp. 631–646; N. McEwan, ‘Brexit and Scotland: Between Two Unions’, British Politics, 13:1 (2018),
pp. 65–78.
59
Hozić and True, op.cit., pp. 270–272.
60
Bhambra, op.cit.
61
P. Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
62
Bhambra, op.cit.
63
I. Zempi, ‘Veiled Muslim Women’s Responses to Experiences of Gendered Islamophobia in the UK’, International Review
of Victimology, 26:1 (2019), pp. 96–111.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 443

ways that reinforce the desire to ‘protect’ the nation (or a specific idea of the ‘national
interest’) against those who offer a different vision of societal and national security, as
the next section on climate change and the current Covid-19 global pandemic illustrates.

Gendered responses to climate change activism: the case of Greta

Thunberg
The gendered logics that underscore far-right populism—strength, self-interest, protec-
tion of borders, economy and heteronormative society—inform policy positions and
shape our understanding of ontological security. Several scholars have identified a link
between different forms of masculinity, sustainability and climate change.64 Here, Cara
Daggett has noted that ‘as the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the
West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny’ in
what amounts to a ‘petro-masculinity’ and ‘the role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing
white patriarchal rule’.65 Telling here are the connections between climate change denial,
outright hostility for Greta Thunberg’s activism and her celebrity persona, and a mascu-
line sense of entitlement to car ownership, as illustrated by the photos in Figure 1, taken
by one of the authors in a university car park in Lund, Sweden.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg first acquired fame in 2018 by staging Friday
school strikes for the climate in Stockholm outside the national parliament, actions that
soon culminated in a global movement. Active on social media (with over 4.1 million fol-
lowers on Twitter and 10.6 million on Instagram), Thunberg has become a prolific figure
with significant global visibility, receiving invitations to speak at events such as the 2019
UN Climate Summit in New York and the 2019 UN Climate COP25 in Madrid, as well as
the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in 2020.
Far-right populist critics have refuted her message and activism, questioning her right
to speak on climate change, and have attacked her character, motivation and appear-
ance.66 For instance, in 2019, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson,
declared that Thunberg should go back to school, as she is a child whose activism will
not change the world. He also doubted her authenticity, claiming that her activism is
staged and propped up by vested interests.67 He was, moreover, dismissive of the possi-
bility of the environmentally sustainable global order that Thunberg calls for: ‘of course
one can evoke media attention and be celebrated by sailing to America, but … how will
trade and the world economy survive if such a transformation takes place? You cannot
replace flights’.68 Åkesson reduces Thunberg to a person not grounded in reality,
64
J. Anshelm and M. Hultman, ‘A Green Fatwa? Climate Change as a Threat to the Masculinity of Industrial Modernity’,
Norma: International Journal of Masculinity Studies, 9:2 (2014), pp. 84–96; A. Kronsell, C. Dymén, L.S. Rosqvist, and L.W.
Hiselius, ‘Masculinities and Femininities in Sustainable Transport Policy: A Focus on Swedish Municipalities’, Norma:
International Journal of Masculinity Studies, 15:2 (2020), pp. 128–144.
65
C. Daggett, ‘Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire’, Millennium, 47:1 (2018) pp. 25–44, at p. 25.
66
Greta has joined a growing number of young women activists known for their vocal criticism of global injustices and
gendered violence—Nobel Peace Prize winners Malala Yousafzai and Nadia Murad are examples of such young women
who refuse to comply with typically patriarchal gender norms that are prevalent in the ideology of populist and far-
right parties.
67
Expressen (2019, April 25). Jimmie Åkessons känga till Greta Thunberg: ‘Ett barn’. https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/
jimmie-akessons-kanga-till-greta-thunberg-ett-barn/.
68
Cited in Aftonbladet (2019) Åkessons känga till Greta: ”Då skulle världsekonomin kollapsa. https://journals.sagepub.
com/doi/abs/10.1177/1369148117730542?journalCode=bpia.
444 C. AGIUS ET AL.

Figure 1. Climate denial, car ownership and masculinity.

Source: Photos taken by Annika Bergman Rosamond, June 2020, in Lund, Sweden.

someone who does not understand the workings of the world or the national economy—
and in so doing, he privileges masculine pro-market knowledge over sustainable
change.69
Climate change denialism has also been a feature of Trump’s campaigning and presi-
dency. He has regularly called it a ‘hoax’, and in 2012 tweeted that it was a concept
‘created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive’.70
Trump’s discourse about climate change positions the American economy and worker in
opposition to the ‘globalist’ responses to climate change that rely on scientific expertise
and cooperation; the environment is something to exploit and retain control over to
benefit American ‘greatness’. This emphasis on economic greatness can also help to
explain the coming together of industrialists and working men in their climate-denialist
and anti-feminist views, where they tend to join forces to ‘reassert the privileges of mas-
culine hegemonization’.71 A self-professed billionaire such as Donald Trump could thus
come to power by offering a sense of ontological security and paternalism to working-
and middle-class white men who find the promises of corporate capitalism alluring,
even if largely out of reach (Pulé & Hultman, 2019). Moreover, Trump announced the
USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement soon after coming to office in 2016
‘because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses,
and taxpayers’.72 Trump was, in part at least, elected on the populist promise of creating
jobs in areas where heavy industry, typically employing male workers, had been shut
down and jobs outsourced to other parts of the world. In appealing to the working-
class vote, he resorted to the language of ‘petro-nostalgia’ and a ‘mid-20th century
fantasy of American life, when white men ruled their households uncontested’.73 That

69
Daggett, op.cit.
70
cited in BBC News, 23 January 2020, ‘What Does Trump Actually Believe on Climate Change?’ https://www.bbc.com/
news/world-us-canada-51213003.
71
P. Pulé and M. Hultman, ‘Industrial/Breadwinner Masculinities: Understanding the Complexities of Climate Change
Denial’, in C. Kinnvall and H. Rydström (eds) Climate Hazards, Disasters and Gender Ramifications (Oxford: Routledge,
2019), pp. 86–97, at p. 91.
72
M. Pompeo, ‘On the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement’, Press Statement, 4 November 2019, https://www.state.
gov/on-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-the-paris-agreement/.
73
Daggett, op.cit. p. 31
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 445

nostalgic dream does not embrace the idea of climate change action, associated with
Greta Thunberg.
Indeed, Thunberg’s anger at the world’s inaction over climate change at the 2019 UN
Climate Summit (her famous ‘How dare you!’ speech)74 was belittled by Trump, whose
sarcastic response exemplified a dismissal of her ethical message, knowledge and very
persona.75 Thunberg’s discursive style and disregard for convention, as well as her
global transformative message, sit uncomfortably with populist leaders who privilege
the national economy and view sustainable change as threats to economic growth and
nostalgic notions of the working man. Thunberg’s disregard for convention and her neu-
rodiversity have been the subject of what can only be described in terms of a masculinist
logic of misogynous bullying and dismissal of her knowledge. Fox News journalist
Michael Knowles described her as a ‘mentally ill Swedish child’, forcing the news
network to apologize on his behalf.76 In this context, Guardian journalist Gaby
Hinsliff notes that
female climate campaigners are perhaps uniquely prone to press the buttons of what might
be called toxic libertarians, people who combine a burning desire to do what the hell they
like with the fury at the very idea of being nagged, nannied or told what do, especially by
women.77

This masculinist logic also prevails in populist discourse more generally, with far-
right politicians such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismissing the idea that
climate change is a matter of a global urgency, often by elevating his nation’s right
to bolster its economic growth through forestry, despite the latter’s obvious threat
to the global environment. Bolsonaro has on several occasions denied the connec-
tions between the recent fires in the Amazon rainforests and climate change, and
has contested the land rights of indigenous groups living in that vast geographical
area.78 Greta Thunberg has criticized Bolsonaro’s position by noting that ‘indigen-
ous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal
deforestation. Over and over again. It is shameful that the world remains silent
about this’.79 This in turn has led Bolsonaro to dismiss Thunberg as a ‘brat’
who should not be given media attention80—that is, should be silenced. Both Bol-
sonaro’s dismissal of climate change research and activism and his nationalist
defence of Brazil’s right to extract resources from its rainforests appear to also
be rooted in his preference for misogynous and racialized language. His belittling

74
G. Thunberg, ‘Transcript: Greta Thunberg’s speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit’, NPR, 23 September 2019, https://
www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit?t=
1582751729000.
75
J.E. Greve, ‘Greta Thunberg Turns Tables on Trump and Quotes His Mockery in New Twitter bio’, The Guardian, 24 Sep-
tember 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/24/greta-thunberg-trump-twitter-bio.
76
A. Gabbatt, ‘Fox News Apologises to Greta Thunberg for Pundit’s ‘Disgraceful’ Remark’, The Guardian, 24 September
2019, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/24/fox-news-greta-thunberg-michael-knowles.
77
G, Hinsliff, ‘How Greta Thunberg Became the New Front in the Brexit Culture War’, The Guardian, 17 August 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/17/greta-thunberg-brexit-culture-war-nigel-farage.
78
Z. Rahim, ‘The Amazon is Not on Fire’: Brazilian Leader Bolsonaro Lashes Out Over Criticism’, The Independent, 30
October 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-fires-rainforest-bolsonaro-speech-saudi-
arabia-latest-a9177976.html.
79
Sky News, 10 December 2019, ‘Greta Thuberg Called a Brat by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro’, https://news.sky.com/
story/greta-thunberg-called-a-brat-by-brazils-president-jair-bolsonaro-11883240.
80
Ibid.
446 C. AGIUS ET AL.

of Thunberg’s intervention on the Amazon rainforests is imbued with misogynous

undertones, and he has also been known to verbally assault his
nation’s black population, stating in 2018 that they were ‘apes’ who ‘should go
back to the zoo’.81
These discursive approaches by far-right populist leaders exemplify gendered popu-
lism and nationalism, where challenges to authority are met with portrayals of opposing
views as weak, dysfunctional or backward. Under such leadership, the defence and sur-
vival of the nation against globalizing forces and scientific orthodoxy is prioritized and
celebrated as a strength in response to an emasculated sense of ontological insecurity.
This emasculation also carries through and upholds the populist approach to the
current global coronavirus pandemic, where the economic imperatives of the state and
distrust of expertise risk the health and security of the body politic, as the next
example shows.

The corona crisis and toxic masculinity

As in gendered discourses on the far right and climate denial, toxic masculinity also
defines the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic by populist leaders. Trump, Bolsanaro
and others have dealt with the crisis primarily by dismissing it and the emergent
global and national scientific knowledge on how to manage it. They have done so per-
sonally, in their refusal to wear masks and appropriately social distance, supposedly to
appear strong and resilient in the face of the current crisis. Trump notably refused to
wear a mask until July 2020, because it would reportedly ‘send the wrong message’
and make him appear preoccupied with health during an election year instead of
focusing on reopening the national economy.82 Trump also advised the US population
to treat the virus as a common cold, giving them bogus advice by suggesting that they
might inject disinfectant to treat the virus. He overlooked scientific knowledge, claim-
ing that hydroxychloroquine was a ‘miracle’ drug that could cure Covid-19, in contra-
diction to scientific evidence.83 In Brazil, one of the worst-affected countries,
Bolsonaro has dismissed the severity of the pandemic, saying: ‘because we have a
more tropical climate we’ve almost reached the end [of the outbreak], or it’s
already over … the virus doesn’t spread as fast in warm climates like ours’, and that
‘after being stabbed, I’m not going to be brought down by a little flu’.84 Both Bolso-
naro and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson caught the coronavirus, later followed by
Trump. While Johnson appeared somewhat humbled by his experience (praising the
National Health Service that he and his party have done much to defund) and
reflected that he perhaps should have taken the UK into lockdown earlier, Bolsonaro
and Trump both continued to ignore the severity of the pandemic, regularly appearing
81
A. Forrest, ‘Jair Bolsonaro: The Worst Quotes from Brazil’s Far-Right Presidential Frontrunner’, The Independent, 8
October 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-who-is-quotes-brazil-president-
election-run-off-latest-a8573901.html.
82
Associated Press, 8 May 2020, ‘Face Masks Make a Political Statement in Era of Coronavirus’, https://apnews.com/
7dce310db6e85b31d735e81d0af6769c.
83
Associated Press, 22 May 2020, ‘Trump Clashes With Scientists Over Coronavirus’, https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-
pandemic/trump-clashes-scientists-over-coronavirus.
84
C. Robertson, ‘Coronavirus: Nine Times Jair Bolsonaro Dismissed the Severity of COVID-19’, Sky News, 7 July 2020,
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-nine-times-jair-bolsonaro-dismissed-the-severity-of-covid-19-12023297.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 447

without a mask in public and Bolsonaro vetoing sections of a bill that would make
masks mandatory in public places.85
Much of the populist response has been to project strength and authority at times of
crisis and ontological insecurity. Trump has clashed with state governors over social-
distancing measures and lockdowns.86 Aware that economic decline could affect his
electoral chances, Trump urged economies to open up and tacitly—and at times
overtly—gave support to (often armed) individuals in Michigan and other Democratic
states protesting the lockdowns, tweeting ‘LIBERATE Minnesota and Virginia’.87
Another key feature of his coronavirus policy was to blame China for the outbreak.
Here, he reiterated the same nationalist and populist rhetoric he used before the pan-
demic to stage a trade war with China, but a particular form of ‘corona-nationalist’ dis-
course has also been advocated as a way of providing a metaphor for a ‘foreign
infection’88 invading the body politic and bringing the nation down. As the Covid-19
pandemic evolved, Trump, like other populist leaders such as Bolsonaro and Johnson,
projected a masculinized response, ‘wary of showing vulnerability and prioritizing
highly masculinized views of strength’, which included contradicting or ignoring
public health experts and refusing to wear masks or practise social distancing.89
As of the 9 November 2020, the USA has had 8.8 million cases and 243,771 deaths
related to Covid-19.90 Furthermore, the impact of the coronavirus places women in a
more vulnerable position: increased rates of domestic violence are widely reported,
and in the USA women are over-represented in the care industries, with 85% employed
in nursing and 76% in healthcare roles.91
By contrast, the female leaders of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway,
Taiwan and New Zealand have been lauded for superior ‘crisis management’ compared
to male leaders because of their ‘resilience, pragmatism, benevolence, trust in collective
common sense, mutual aid and humility’.92 Furthermore, the possible connection
between the spread of the coronavirus and environmental degradation, while not yet
conclusively established, suggests the need for significant change in human activity in
a post-Covid world. While populist leaders look for a ‘return to normal’, many are
suggesting that the ‘new normal’ will require a transformative rethink of global consump-
tion and economic growth, as well as a turn towards more sustainable methods of pro-
duction. As the World Health Organization has noted: ‘More generally, most emerging

85
L. Paraguassu and A. Mano, ‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro Catches Coronavirus, Shrugs off Health Risks’, Financial Review, 8 July
2020, https://www.afr.com/world/south-america/brazil-s-bolsonaro-catc’hes-coronavirus-shrugs-off-health-risks-
20200708-p55a4l.
86
New York Times, 21 April 2020, ‘Trump Insists He Has “Total” Authority to Supersede Governors’, https://www.nytimes.
com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-updates.html.
87
Al Jazeera, 17 April 2020, ‘“LIBERATE”: Trump Tweets Support for Anti-Lockdown Protests’, https://www.aljazeera.com/
news/2020/4/17/liberate-trump-tweets-support-for-anti-lockdown-protests.
88
J. Viala-Gaudefroy and D. Lindaman, ‘Donald Trump’s ‘Chinese Virus’: The Politics of Naming’, The Conversation, 22 April
2020, https://theconversation.com/dAonald-trumps-chinese-virus-the-politics-of-naming-136796.
89
S. Rana, ‘COVID-19’s Gendered Fault Lines and Their Implications for International Law’, ANU College of Law, 24 June
2020, https://law.anu.edu.au/research/essay/covid-19-and-international-law/covid-19%E2%80%99s-gendered-fault-
lines-and-their-implications.
90
Worldometer, COVID-19 data, 2020, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/.
91
J. Cheeseman Day and C. Christnacht, ‘Women Hold 76% of All Health Care Jobs, Gaining in Higher-Paying Occupations’,
US Census Bureau, 14 August 2019, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/08/your-health-care-in-womens-
hands.html.
92
L. Champoux-Paillé and A. Croteau, ‘Why Women Leaders Are Excelling During the Coronavirus Pandemic’, 13 May
2020, https://theconversation.com/why-women-leaders-are-excelling-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-138098.
448 C. AGIUS ET AL.

infectious diseases, and almost all recent pandemics, originate in wildlife, and there is evi-
dence that increasing human pressure on the natural environment may drive disease
emergence (…) strengthening health systems, improved surveillance of infectious
disease in wildlife, livestock and humans, and greater protection of biodiversity and
the natural environment, should reduce the risks of future outbreaks of other new
diseases’.93
Our discussion of gendered responses to climate activism and the global Covid-19
pandemic is illustrative of the tendency to dismiss female knowledge and to elevate
the self and the nation in a fashion that is detrimental to people’s sense of ontological
security. As we have illustrated, Bolsonaro, Trump and Åkesson all draw on masculinist
tropes in dismissing Thunberg’s calls for climate actions. A key contention here is that
there are close connections between climate change denial, the coronavirus crisis and
prevalent myths about the strong male leader defending his nation and its economic
growth in the face of climate change and other security threats.

Concluding remarks: gendered bodies and masculinist ontological

insecurity
In this article, we have explored how gendered logics underpin far-right populist con-
ceptions of the nation and ontological insecurity. In doing so, we have examined how
anti-feminist sentiments and discourses inform the exclusionist imagining of the nation
and the desire for protection and order against undermining forces. Central to our discus-
sion has been the framing of such discourses in the context of ontological (in)security.
Populist appeals to order and control and a recovery of national pride, borders and strength
are specifically about creating a sense of ontological security, be that for individuals or
levelled up to the state. As populist discourses, particularly those of the far right, are
now a regular or normalized part of the global political landscape, the ways in which
such discourses become entrenched in the public sphere leave us with important questions
that are in themselves a feature of masculinized ontological insecurity.
Undoubtedly, and as discussed throughout, patriarchal discourses on toxic masculi-
nity have not only become more entrenched in the public sphere, but have also come
to characterize democratic politics in which voters are mobilized on the basis of
emotional appeals to a masculinist logic and a promise to protect the nation from
exogenous threat. Such a logic is also evident in the backlash against feminist ideas,
with the latter being perceived as threats to the masculinist undergirdings of the
nation. The rise of ‘angry white men’ finds a home in the discourses of far-right populism
and in the idea that gender politics and feminism have gone too far. This logic, in turn,
has given rise to a sense of loss and entitlement in the face of economic, social and cul-
tural changes, which feed the notion that democracy and mainstream politics fail to rep-
resent the interests of those ‘angry white men’.94
This backlash culture has contributed to sentiments of gendered ontological insecurity
among populist leaders. Moreover, research on feminism, gender populism and the
emergence of far-right parties and movements shows that groups, institutions and
93
World Health Organization, ‘Q&A: Climate Change and COVID-19’, 22 April 2020, https://www.who.int/westernpacific/
news/q-a-detail/q-a-on-climate-change-and-covid-19.
94
Nicholas and Agius, op. cit., p. 4.
 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY 449

states in Europe and elsewhere have become increasingly concerned with defining and
closing down community and national boundaries in response to actual or perceived
threats against what they see as ‘their’ culture, religion or tradition.95 And, as we have
contended throughout, this is always a gendered process that rests upon binary under-
standings of gender norms and gendered nationalist appropriations. Such appropriations
are also evident in the close links between climate change denial, racism and misogyny,
and have furthermore become visible in populist and extremist discourses in relation to
the coronavirus crisis—not least manifest in the increased hate attacks against female and
otherwise gendered public figures.
The ontological insecurities displayed through this masculinist logic are frequently
justified through a discourse that elevates the nation’s lost, romanticized and mythical
past—a past that can be recreated, remembered and reshaped through a reinstalment
of strong male leaders who can guard the nation against progressive ideas, newcomers
and ‘the other’ more broadly. As Peterson and Sisson Runyan96 have argued, this is a
deeply political process, as
masculinism also operates to materially exclude or marginalize all those who are feminized,
whether women or men. Understood as a key ‘move’ in producing, reproducing, and nat-
uralizing gender hierarchy, masculinism and masculinist lenses are political and deeply
implicated in exclusionary practices

that discriminate women’s knowledge and position in society. While the gendered
aspects of far-right populism have not gone unnoticed, bringing them and their impli-
cations to the fore may enable resistance to such masculinist ‘exclusionary practices’
and narrow visions of the nation and the world.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Christine Agius is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University
of Technology. Her research interests include critical security studies, gender, bordering practices,
identity, and Nordic politics. Publications include The Social Construction of Swedish Neutrality:
Challenges to Swedish Identity and Sovereignty (2006, Manchester University Press), The Politics
of Identity: Space, Place and Discourse (edited with Dean Keep, Manchester University Press,
2018), The Persistence of Global Masculinism: Discourse, Gender and Neo-Colonial Re-Articula-
tions of Violence (with Lucy Nicholas, Palgrave, 2018) and articles in Cooperation and Conflict,
Security Dialogue, Political Geography, and other journals.
Annika Bergman Rosamond is Associate Professor in International Relations at the Depart-
ment of Political Science, Lund University (LU). She is also the Director of the MA in
Global Studies at the Graduate School, Faculty of Social Sciences, LU. Her main research
interests include cosmopolitan thought; feminist foreign policy, feminist security studies as
well as celebrity humanitarianism and politics. She has in journals such as Foreign Policy
Analysis, Critical Military Studies, Global Discourse, Global Society, Ethics and International

95
Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking, op. cit.
96
V. Strike Peterson and A.S. Runyan, Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium, 3rd edn. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2010).
450 C. AGIUS ET AL.

Affairs, SAIS journal of International Affairs, European Review of International Studies and
International Feminist Journal of Politics.
Catarina Kinnvall is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden
and the co-editor of the Palgrave Series in Political Psychology. Her research interests involve
political psychology, international relations and critical security studies, with a particular focus
on gender, migration and populism in Europe and South Asia. She is the author of a number
of books, and articles in International Theory, Review of International Studies, Cambridge
Review of International Affair, Cooperation and Conflict, Journal of Common Market Studies,
Postcolonial Studies, Alternatives, European Security, Political Psychology, Humanity and
Society, Global Society, and other journals.