Affective Economies of White Nationalism: Tracing the Right-Wing Populist Rhetoric of Brexit and Trump 2016

Abstract

This article builds on Sara Ahmed's (2004b) theory of affective economies and Charles W. Mills' work on the Racial Contract to examine how right-wing populist discourse circulates within affective economies of white nationalism to obscure the histories and ongoing consequences of colonialism. Using a qualitative sample of responses to a few of Donald Trump's tweets published the day after the Brexit referendum, I trace specific tropes of right-wing populist discourse implicated in the self-referential logic of white nationalism: the call to "take our country back", the claim to speak on behalf of "the people" and references to an international class of "globalists" secretly working to undermine national sovereignty. I examine how these tropes gain velocity through the design affordances of Twitter, circulating in the form of tweets, hashtags, images, memes, videos, and mantras, to bring white subjects into affective alignment with a fantasy of white nationalist identity that defines itself in opposition to non-white others. Wary of the tendency to locate the violence of postcolonial whiteness exclusively within the most belligerent strands of right-wing populist rhetoric, I conclude by considering how resistance to right-wing populism can inadvertently risk re-inscribing affective economies of white nationalism.