The Virility of Fascists
These pieces, which have recently branched out from Spencer to whimsical descriptions of European-based neo-Nazi groups more broadly, share a fascination with his virility. They are almost eager to reassure readers that, despite the fact that Spencer throws around “Heil Hitlers,” his appeal is somehow remarkable: bound to his good taste, as though that good taste is somehow a reflection on morality. Beyond that, each of these profiles—be it in Mother Jones, the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times—are equally captivated by the image of masculinity Spencer exudes. Fascinated by Spencer’s fascism, the profiles perform a naturalization of Spencer’s physicality, pretending that his posture is simply the way of the world.
Mother Jones’s profile of Spencer takes pains to highlight a (it must be said, fictional) tension between urbane sophistication and debased racism. Spencer uses chopsticks to “pluck slivers of togarashi-crusted ahi from a rectangular plate” while sharing his opinions about race. He eats Thai noodles at an “eclectic” restaurant. He sips merlot, much like, well, a wine-sipping liberal. Spencer, a former Ph.D. student, appreciates the sublime paintings of Caspar David Frederich, and cites Friedrich Nietzsche. (If history has taught us any lessons, one should be wariness of white men who are just a bit too keen to extrapolate on Nietzsche’s ideas.) The piece treats these proclivities with a surprising reverence.
And yet, this doesn’t seem to quite explain the fascination with Spencer’s looks. Some have accused the media of “normalizing” the racist, sexist ideologies spouted by alt-right and, to a certain extent, that’s true. There is, sometimes, an attempt to dance around the reporter’s infatuation; many of the profiles include a variation of the sentence, “Style is consciously constructed.” It’s a kind of plausible deniability, as though by pointing out something so excruciatingly obvious, the reporter is indicating that s/he sees through the artifice.
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