"They’re being called to save the country": Jackson Katz on how MAGA masculinity sells men purpose

America’s gender troubles helped to spawn the Age of Trump and the democracy crisis we currently face.

Fascism is coded as a masculine political ideology insofar as it emphasizes the strongman figure, violence and rejection of “political correctness." Politeness and empathy are branded as feminine and weak. Women are deemed vessels for producing more soldiers for the state. Rape culture is a defining feature of fascism. Fascism is also both homosocial and homoerotic in its aesthetic and attempts to channel male libidinal energy in the form of a fake populist mass movement in service to the Dear Leader (the fascist leader is almost always a man).

Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, fulfills most, if not all, of these roles for his MAGA cultists. Social scientists have shown hostile sexism and misogyny is tied to support of Trump, the MAGA movement and authoritarianism more broadly. Trump has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by many women. In the civil case filed by E. Jean Carroll, a court of law deemed Trump a sexual assaulter.

Public opinion polls consistently show that Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters are white men who are drawn to his regressive and reactionary performance of white masculinity. The white masculinity that Trump is performing is also racist and white supremacist. This does not limit its appeal to nonwhite people. Social scientists and other experts have shown that there are Black and brown men who are also attracted to Trump’s fake alpha male persona. Black and brown men’s support of Trump and the MAGA movement may be a deciding factor in what will be a very close 2024 election.

Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author and scholar-activist who has long been a major figure in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equity and prevent gender-based violence. He is a frequent contributor to Ms. Magazine, where he writes about masculinities, politics and violence. His new film is entitled
The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power, and the American Presidency." He is also a co-founder of the Young Men Research Initiative. Katz is the author of two books, including the classic bestseller "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help." His next book, entitled "Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue", is scheduled to be published by Penguin Random House UK in February 2025. His TEDx talk on that topic has been translated into 27 languages and has over 5.5 million views. He has lectured and trained in all fifty U.S. states, eight Canadian provinces and every continent except Antarctica.

In this conversation, Katz shares his concerns about the 2024 election and how too many men are willing to destroy democracy by supporting Trump and the neofascist MAGA movement. Katz details how the MAGA movement and the larger global antidemocracy movement are an unhealthy and destructive reaction to changes in society that make many men feel lost, marginalized and searching for meaning and community in their lives. Katz offers some hope that if Kamala Harris defeats Trump it will create an opportunity to vanquish Trumpism and to weaken the types of violent and antisocial masculinity that he and the MAGA movement exemplify and empowers and the great harm it does to American society.

How are you feeling? How are you managing this moment with the election being less than two weeks away?

This election is so consequential — and the race is way too close for comfort. For my part, I’m doing whatever I can to promote the idea that men who are concerned about the present and future of democracy and sanity in this country need to speak directly to our fellow men — including young men — and pull some of them back from the abyss. The polls are clear; there is a very large gender gap and men are on the Trump side of it — especially among white men.

On a more positive note, it’s encouraging to see that many people are really interested in thinking more critically about men and masculinities than perhaps they've ever been. To be sure, some of that interest is rooted in the fears of a Trump restoration and the role of the men’s vote in making it happen. Like some of us have been saying for the past decade, a critical factor in the rise of Trumpism and right-wing populism around the world is a sense of aggrieved entitlement on the part of white men. The global crisis in democracy is tied directly to a crisis in masculinity. And the crisis goes beyond white men.

The systemic and institutional and cultural problems related to gender and our democracy are very deep. We need to be having a sustained conversation about the epic struggle between traditional and more 21st-century understandings of “masculinity,” and the role of this struggle in the American and global democracy crisis. With popular initiatives like White Dudes for Harris that have arisen in this election cycle, I think it’s fair to say that this broader conversation is finally underway. 

In many ways, Trumpism and the American neofascist movement reflect a crisis in white masculinity. For all the years of talk about "working class" rage, it is not Black and brown working-class people who put Trump in office and are the foundation of MAGA, for example. White "working class" people, and white men in particular, elevated Trump and Trumpism. Trump and his MAGA movement are powered by white male rage.

It sure is. But it's important to consider that Trump and Trumpism didn’t arise out of nowhere. Since Richard Nixon’s landslide election to the presidency in 1972, the Republican Party has sought to appeal to white working and middle-class men not by offering them anything of value regarding policy, but by speaking to their identities and aspirations as men. Trump’s hypermasculine posturing and bullying behavior is merely an exaggerated version of a dynamic that was there all along. In a nutshell, that’s the premise of my new film “The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power and the American Presidency.” And of course, it’s not just conservatives in media and politics who are uncomfortable talking about issues of race and gender and how they intersect.

Many men who identify as liberals or on "the left" walk very cautiously on this terrain. When it comes to feminist critiques of white masculinity, either they don't know what to say, or they make a joke about it, or they just shut up because they’re worried that they might slip up and say something that comes off as misogynous. Some of that discomfort is a function of not having thought too deeply and engaged in robust debates about these issues. Think about how many men over the past couple of generations have graduated from college without ever taking a course on gender and sexuality. Or a course in Women’s Studies? We should criticize the racism and misogyny at the heart of Trumpism, but it is much easier to criticize men on the right and MAGA than it is to look closer to home and address how these dynamics show up in liberal and progressive circles. That having been said, when Trump says Make America Great Again, he’s really just telling white men that he's going to put them back on center stage again. 

As an expert, how do you understand the concepts of "gender" and "masculinity"? These are foundational concepts that are often misunderstood by the general public.

The simple answer is sex is biological and gender is socially determined — and therefore highly variable. For example, different societies around the world have very different ideas about what is “masculine” and what is “feminine.” In the same society, definitions change over the generations. Look at how many young fathers today are emotionally present in the lives of their kids, compared to the fathers of people in my generation.

On a more superficial level but still revealing, when I was young in the 1970s, I only knew a handful of men who had ever worn an earring. Today you see all sorts of tough men who wear two earrings — and no one cares. Also, masculinity as a singular concept is too narrow, because it doesn’t account for all the differences between and among men. Men occupy a range of social positions based on race, socioeconomic status, sexuality, etc. There is a definite hierarchy among men that reflects larger hierarchies of power and privilege in American, Western and global societies. A gay working-class Black man experiences — and performs — his masculinity in very different ways than a rich heterosexual white man. That is why thinking more broadly about "masculinities" instead of one singular type of "masculinity" is more useful and productive.

Also, our notions of gender are much more complex and nuanced now. We are not limited to binaries: men vs. women, straight vs. gay, masculine vs. feminine. In fact, one of the driving forces behind right-wing populism and authoritarianism is that it’s a reaction to the breakdown of these binaries and the social changes that have resulted. Many people want simple solutions from what they believe were simpler times. For a certain percentage of white men, supporting MAGA — on an emotional level — means supporting a return to "traditional" values and social norms, where the world made sense because straight white men were firmly in charge.

What does it mean to be a man in the MAGAverse and TrumpWorld? In the Age of Trump?

Traditionally, the two main pillars of men's identity in Western societies have been protector and provider. Of course, men of color and poor men have often been denied the opportunity to live that out. In the current moment, long-term shifts in the global economy and labor markets, automation and new technologies like AI and the ongoing societal transformations catalyzed by feminism have challenged those pillars of masculine identity. More and more men are living economically precarious lives. This has unsettled their understanding of what it means to be a man. It’s important to see MAGA as more than a political phenomenon. MAGA is also a social movement that gives people a sense of meaning and purpose and a powerful feeling of camaraderie and community. Many men who are drawn to Trumpworld feel validated and supported as if they still matter in an era of feminist-inspired social change. In fact, if you listen to the rhetoric on the right, they’re being called to save the country!

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For white evangelical Christians, there’s the added appeal that they’re fulfilling a Biblical mandate to reassert their authority — especially in the family. Trump might be a deeply flawed person, but he’s the blunt instrument that’s going to return them to lost glory. 

In the last few years, there has been much talk about a so-called crisis among men and boys. Where is this coming from?

This notion of a "crisis in masculinity" is a recurring theme in American history. It turns up almost every time there's a major shift in the economy or a powerful women’s movement that challenges traditional patriarchal power. These developments unsettle traditional ideas about gender and power — and millions of men find themselves searching for some sort of stable identity as men. It’s important to acknowledge that many men and young men are struggling, in many ways because the old definitions of “manhood” no longer work — if they ever did. Men and boys today have all sorts of challenges: mental health crises, depression, relational challenges, loneliness and opioid addiction. Unfortunately, right-wing voices in media and politics continue to push them to respond by doubling down on traditional expressions of masculinity — which is tragic because some aspects of traditional masculinity — like the idea that “real men” can’t acknowledge vulnerability and just have to “suck it up” — have contributed to many of their problems in the first place! I believe strongly that people to the left of center need to acknowledge and recognize that the struggles of boys and men are real and then go out and make the case that progressive policies would benefit men and boys way more than the policies of MAGA and neofascist movements that want to roll back women’s rights, LGBTQ gains and other forms of social progress. 

What type of masculinity does Donald Trump channel and perform?

I have long believed that Trump rose to political power because he correctly intuited that people would respond to the image he had created of himself as a tough guy businessman who was a counterpuncher; when he was hit, he’d hit back harder. That’s the way he channeled the many resentments of white men — and many of the white women adjacent to them as well.

I think there are dueling narratives at play here. Many liberals and progressives look at Trump and see a conman, a deeply insecure, malignant narcissist who lacks basic human empathy; a man of immense wealth and privilege who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who doesn’t care about anyone but himself and a few family members. But his MAGA people and other followers see something very different. They see an antihero who’s sticking it to the smug elites. Or they see a heroic tough guy who’s standing up for them, who responded to an assassination attempt with a cry of ‘fight, fight, fight!”