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You’ve got to fight to be white: the ruralfoundation of the new militia for race control

Spencer D. Wood, Joseph T. Jakubek Jr. & Kristin Kelly

To cite this article: Spencer D. Wood, Joseph T. Jakubek Jr. & Kristin Kelly (2015) You’ve gotto fight to be white: the rural foundation of the new militia for race control, Contemporary JusticeReview, 18:2, 215-230, DOI: 10.1080/10282580.2015.1025633

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2015.1025633

Published online: 07 Apr 2015.

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You’ve got to fight to be white: the rural foundation of the newmilitia for race control

Spencer D. Wood*, Joseph T. Jakubek Jr. and Kristin Kelly

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

(Received 8 October 2013; accepted 16 November 2014)

In this paper, we situate the recent rise of racialized and often violent politicaldiscourse within a framework of a class-based conception of nature and prop-erty. In this theoretical work, we contribute to thinking about how Whites areracially constituted by showing how an understanding of whiteness among thefar right is significantly linked to narratives surrounding rural spaces as havensof individualism and in sharp contrast to the perceived multiculturalism of thecity. In developing our argument, we utilize public statements made by TedNugent as observable examples of this far-right, violent, and racialized rhetoric.We argue that the far right is able to create a common ground with moderateconservatives around a shared understanding of rural places as embodiments ofvirtuous white culture, private property, and individualism. This politicizedwhiteness project, we argue, helps to galvanize and strengthen a conservativecoalition while simultaneously pulling their collective ideology further to theright.

Keywords: whiteness; militias; guns; violence; conservatism

Introduction

Over the course of 2012–2013, expressions of violent, racialized discourse aroundtwo political and social events raised concerns about the increasing prevalence ofracialized violence. For many, it felt as though such expressions were more explicitand openly made than at any time since prior to the 1960s civil rights movement.Like the growing number of profoundly racist comments made in response toonline blogs, news stories, and other postings (see Hughey & Daniels, 2013), thesecomments reveal a rising white militancy and consequently a continued expressionof the significance of race in the United States. Further, a large number of the mostvisible expressions carried symbolic reference to an imagined rural idyll that standsas a deeply individualist and profoundly white alternative to the problems associ-ated with the multicultural world of urban living and governance from Washington.Two events rose to the level of national awareness and stand as public windowsinto the often hidden world of racialized rhetoric for our analysis: the 2nd electionof Barack Obama and the issue of gun control brought forth through the Newtown,CT shooting and the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of TrayvonMartin.

*Corresponding author. Email: sdwood@ksu.edu

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

Contemporary Justice Review, 2015Vol. 18, No. 2, 215–230, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2015.1025633

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Below we review reactions to these events as part of a larger identity projectsurrounding whiteness. Following Winant (1997, 2004) and Hughey (2010), we sit-uate comments made by right-wing leadership as hegemonic markers of an exten-sion of militant whiteness that (1) draw on themes associated with rural identities,(2) are strongly tied to notions of private property, (3) suggest less distinction andmore continuity among whiteness projects, and (4) expand the claim that forms ofhegemonic whiteness often utilize rhetoric which actively criminalizes non-whitesand non-hegemonic forms of white identity. By bringing a lens that links whiteidentity to the rural content of the message, we are able to frame this component ofwhite racialized identity as something firmly rooted in rural culture and helpexplain a portion of the traction that these expressions are finding among the politi-cal right in the United States.

To begin, we first review recent literature on white identity. In particular, wefocus on the shifting components of right-wing and far-right white racial identitiesand offer a brief discussion of the processes by which non-whites are often crimi-nalized by a hegemonic view of white identity. We then discuss recent thinkingabout rural culture and how imagined understandings of rurality are being expandedto accommodate a militant white identity. In our third section, we present represen-tative statements made by Ted Nugent as an outspoken critic of the Obama Admin-istration, NRA board member, and gun enthusiast. Finally, then, we conclude bypresenting a model of this political framing and racialization process and a discus-sion of the implications of this expansion of militant white identity.

Literature review

Competing white identity projects

There is an ongoing effort to define whiteness and white identity by both homoge-nous aspects of structural white privilege (Feagin, 2006, 2013), and heterogeneousaspects of the multiple white identities which flux in competition and resources(Omi & Winant, 1994). Hughey (2010, p. 1292) offers a link between the two withthe concept hegemonic whiteness. Hegemonic whiteness sees white identity as:

a cultural process in which: (1) racist, reactionary and essentialist ideologies are usedto demarcate interracial boundaries, and (2) performances of white racial identity thatfail to meet those ideals are marginalized and stigmatized, thereby creating intra-racialdistinctions within the category ‘white.’

Building on R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, Hughey (2010,2013) notes that although whiteness is a varying social category across different socialcontexts, many white identities, and processes of identity formation, involve position-ing whites above non-whites while also distinguishing between (and marginalizing)forms of whiteness and white identity that fail to meet dominant ideals.

During his comparative investigation of white nationalists and white anti-racists,Hughey (2010, p. 1295) found that both form white identity around the notion of a‘victimized and culturally stigmatized’ white race. Both groups also use a languageof inferiority when discussing non-whites in a way that legitimizes whiteness andasserts the racial normativity of whiteness. For Hughey, these ‘varied beliefs in thecultural or biological inferiority of non-whites work as powerful catalysts inconstructing the meanings of white identities’ (2010, p. 1299). White identity

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formation, then, involves the use of narratives which paint non-whites as exudingundesirable traits and social dysfunctions (Hughey, 2012b, 2013; Parks & Hughey,2011; Simon, 2007; Webster, 2008). As such, whiteness and white cultural identityis largely taken to be the normative racial category (Delgado & Stefancic, 1997)and non-white culture is often linked to bad values and pathological behavior(Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Hughey, 2012b, 2013). In more recent work, Hughey (2012b,p. 77) describes the hegemonic use of whiteness:

Hence, we must realize that dysfunction and pathology are raced, gendered, andclassed terms that are deployed toward or against certain peoples’ interests. The oper-ation of these terms often results in the deification of certain white formations contrathe demonization of nonwhites as a whole.

Here, we see a similarity between the process of hegemonic white identity con-struction and Bourdieu’s (1984) concept, emotional capital. For Bourdieu, emo-tional performances are often deployed to signify group boundaries and identifygroup membership. Many times these performances draw group boundaries aroundcategories of politics and race and include a hierarchy of ‘narratives of belonging’(Hughey, 2012a). These hierarchical narratives situate whites as culturally superiorto the perceived dysfunctions of non-whites (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Hughey, 2010,2012b; Simon, 2007; Webster, 2008). Emotional performances are central to thesymbolic representation of these narratives, which encompass ‘specific assumptionsabout racial groups, their supposed character traits, [and] relationships betweenthem …’ (Hughey, 2012b, p. 169).

This process is further explored in Parks and Hughey’s edited volume TheObamas and a (Post) Racial America? (2011), where contributors discuss howmuch of the social resistance to Obama’s presidency is not a response to theeconomic or political reforms that have happened during his tenure, but rather isresistance to Obama himself. This resistance uses emotionally laden narrative thatoften paints Obama as a ‘consummate un-American “other”’ (Hughey, 2012b,p. 169) who is out of place within the walls of the White House. The racializednarrative of Obama’s ‘otherness’ is utilized when framing his presidency andpolitical reforms as illegitimate, while also claiming that Obama himself is‘politically improper’ and a ‘racial provocateur’ (Hughey, 2012b, p. 171). Whilethese framings that work to justify racial inequality and white normativity areproblematic and arguably occurring with greater frequency, also they areincreasingly linked to violent images, discourses, and practices.

Violence, privilege, and whiteness

White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective oftheir behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and mustbe protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by thewillingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask ques-tions before taking action. This is what the worship of death looks like (hooks, 2000).

Many social media websites echoed hooks’ words soon after George Zimmerman’sverdict was made public. The death of Trayvon Martin has reignited a discussion ofwhite normativity. Hooks’ quote encompasses the repercussions of white dominance

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and the recreation of white privilege, while reaching beyond a simple discussion oftraditional race hegemony and touching on the larger narrative describing what it is toexperience racial inequality in modern America. This type of hegemonic white identityimplies, either implicitly or explicitly, the ‘othering’ of racialized social groups andinherently involves a hegemonic perspective of normative whiteness (Parks & Hughey,2011; Simon, 2007). Normally, racist and violent rhetoric is not condoned, noracceptably used, in modern political dialog. However, threats of violence and the useof racist language have been used to convey a message of dominance on behalf ofthose who are doing the threatening (Olzak, 1990; Parks & Hughey, 2011; Tolnay &Beck, 1995). In the recent past, threats of violence have been used to intimidate racialgroups into not exercising their legal and voting rights (Wood & Samuel, 2010). Soonafter the Civil War, during the time of reconstruction, black enfranchisement was metwith violent opposition in many regions of the South. Fear of crime and socialdysfunctions of non-whites ‘was first exploited by white southern politicians seekingfirmer ground for resisting the Civil Rights Movement’ and segregation (Simon, 2007,p. 33). Undesirable traits, social dysfunctions, and fear of crime have always beenused as a tool of legitimation for racialized narratives due to their ability to shape‘how power is exercised throughout hierarchies of class, race, and gender’(Simon, 2007, p. 29).

The use of hegemonic white normativity has also led to the criminalization ofnon-whites and non-hegemonic forms of whiteness (Hogan, Chiricos, & Gertz,2007; Webster, 2008). In this sense, non-normative identities are often seen as lessthan deserving in matters of citizenship and social aid, while placing a stigma ofdependence and untrustworthiness on those who do not conform to hegemonic ide-als. Seen often in the political rationalizations of crime by white individuals, thevirtuosity of normative American ideals are not found within these cultural groupsand therefore occupy subordinate social positions and statuses (Johnson, 2009;Simon, 2007). Citizenship, in the hegemonic perspective, describes upstanding pro-ducers who are keepers of the American dream and individual freedom. Individualswho are deemed to occupy lower social statuses are often categorized as depen-dents rather than producers, who therefore do not deserve the same rights as citi-zens, and who largely need to be coerced and criminalized through institutionalizedmeans of social and economic control. These dependent individuals are often equa-ted with urban non-whites and viewed through an ideological perspective whichequates urban environments with ‘social conflict, disorganization, and higher ratesof crime and violence’ (Carrington & Scott, 2008, p. 641; Felson, 1994). However,as Carrington and Scott (2008) have found, rural men often have a higher probabil-ity to commit violent crimes and to support a violent form of masculinity. This typeof rural identity construction stems from an ideology which idealizes militant mas-culinities and the ‘relationship between men’s bodies and the rural landscapes theyinhabit’ (Carrington & Scott, 2008, p. 641; Kimmel & Ferber, 2006).

In his book, Angry White Men: American Masculinity At The End Of An Era,Kimmel (2013) discusses at length the connection between rurality, masculinity,political affiliation, and racialized violence. Rural men, who suffer from whatKimmel describes as aggrieved entitlement, are angry over the perceived loss oftheir dominance over the social and natural landscape. By connecting this anger todownward social mobility, increased gender and racial equality, as well as anEdenistic view of traditional masculinity and entitlement, Kimmel places ruralmasculinity, political affiliation, violence, and the justification of normative white

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identities at the intersection of the growing support and popularity of the far rightamong more moderate right-wing conservatives. As a recent article in the Atlanticpoints out, rural America is very white. Among the jobs counted by the Bureau ofLabor Statistics, 33 are characterized by the fact that 90% or more of theirworkforce is white. Among these, the category ‘farm managers and ranchers’ issecond after only veterinarians (96.5% white) with a 95.8% white workforce(Thompson, 2013).

The rural idyll

Defined as an imaginary pastoral world, the rural idyll looms large in the Americanpsyche and in our culture. In his recent reflection on what constitutes the ruralidyll, David Bell, asks about the missing pieces required to imagine a rural worldthat is full of the pastoral images we often associate with a Norman Rockwellpainting (Bell, 2006). For Bell, the problem of the rural idyll is that it is a ‘manu-factured landscape, the product of a particular moral ordering or act of purification’(Sibley, 1995 cited in Bell, 2006) and consequently one that only exists in theimagination.

As Bell succinctly summarizes, there are three themes of the rural idyll: ‘thepastoral (“farmscapes”), the natural (“wildscapes”), and sporting (“adventur-scapes”)’ (Bell, 2006, p. 150). These themes we argue are deeply imbued in the ris-ing right-wing violent, racialized rhetoric. For members of the political right, thepastoral imagery depicts all of the virtues of hard work, producerism, and privateproperty, long associated with Jeffersonian or Agrarian Democracy. These valueslie at the core of the American credo and as such are broadly shared. In the imagi-nary of the far right, there are few places left in America where one can find suchvalues being actively reproduced across generations. In the imagined rural, though,such values are regular occurrences.

Similarly, the new militant right wing sees virtue in the natural theme of theidyll. The natural conveys a sense of what is wrong with the urban and hence virtu-ous with the rural. The rural is a place for one to engage nature but also to prevailover nature through the successful extraction of produce, game, and recreation.Unlike a more urban view of nature, the rural inhabitant sees nature as providingopportunity to demonstrate one’s mastery over nature, not ability to commune orpeacefully cohabitate. Nature is a place in which one is either the hunter or thehunted and in such a view, survival is evidence of one’s prowess. For the militantright wing, the city conjures images which are just the opposite. It is a place where,being coddled from the violence of nature, one consequently grows soft and depen-dent. Such dependence, in this view, is the chief culprit in creating the illusion thatgovernment interference and assistance is needed. For the militant right wing, therural idyll as they imagine it provides space for a return to values of Americanindependence born out of the domination of nature.

Finally, rural spaces provide opportunity for sport. While the imaginations ofthe urban vacationer put forth by Bell might think of hiking and canoeing, the ruralinhabitants and others imagine a place where they can hunt, shoot guns, and driverecreational vehicles. In the urban view, nature is fragile and vulnerable to humanmistakes, while this is much less the case in the view from the long-time ruralinhabitant. Rather, nature is robust and dangerous and able to withstand not onlythe extractive efforts placed on it by human beings, but, by extension, a wider

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variety of sporting endeavors. Such endeavors, then, are not typically cast asexamples of leaving no trace, but rather as using all available technology to lift par-ticipants deeper into nature with little concern for the marks. In fact, it is the markson nature that prove one’s mastery through sport.

Differing views of the rural

In the imagination of the militant right wing, then, is a view of the rural idyll thatis being drawn upon to construct an alternative to the liberal and urban way of life.Just as it is for the urban liberal, the right-wing militant view of the rural idyll isdefined in relation to what it is not (Bell, 2006; Short, 2006). In this way, the ruralidyll is most distinctly not urban and by extension not immoral and not multicul-tural. The rural idyll, then, is largely imagined as a respite from the travails ofmodernity, its concomitant problems, and the city. We are not the first to recognizethat this imagination of the rural is antithetical to issues of diversity and multicul-turalism. As Bell says, ‘… if we think of the city as … the site of multiculturalismand diversity, then the country is by contrast a monoculture with no space for dif-ference – other than its absolute difference from the urban’ (Bell, 2006, p. 151).

Such a construction of a social geography requires the active expulsion andrepulsion of those who do not fit. Bell refers to these manufactured others as the‘rural abject’ and argues that such a construction requires not only opposition tothe urban, but also the ability to define what is rural but not part of the idyll (Bell,2006, p. 151). Central to this construction is the production and categorization ofothers. For Bell, othering is led by an urban cadre of idyll consumers who vacationin the countryside and expect to have authentic experiences of yesteryear. Withinthis scenario, redneck culture is othered as undesirable and depicted as such, forone of Bell’s analyses, in the prolific genre of rural horror films. Key here, for Bell,is the need to tame the idyll, including its people.

Lauer (2005) positions the rise in popularity of sport utility vehicles (SUV’s)with the rise of fear of crime and the taming and idealization of the rural by urbanconsumers. Using the fear of crime as what pushes consumers to buy vehicleswhich are marketed on their ‘military ruggedness and off-road capability’ aspects,Lauer suggests that some urban consumers are viewing SUV’s as ‘embodyingentrenched American ideas about rugged individualism, manifest destiny, and sub-limity of nature’ while incorporating the pastoral, natural, and sporting aspects ofthe idyll into an urban existence. This may be exactly what rural inhabitants findobjectionable in the urban view of the rural idyll. When urban vacationers areviewed as infringing upon rural space, they often are seen as bringing their urban-constructed view of the rural to a world in which they are unwelcome. These vaca-tioners often find salience in the fact that their rugged vehicles can offer a retreatfrom the social anxieties which are found in the city and allow them to communewith nature through an urban understanding of the rural environment (Anderson,2000). Lauer suggests that these urban vacationers utilize their SUV’s for the abilityof the vehicle to provide personal safety, in the fact that SUV’s are heavily fortifiedand occupy high ground, and provide space in the notion that an SUV is able tocross tough terrain and remove an urban individual from the plight of urban living.This idea of ‘privileged space’ is used in the marketing of SUV’s which often jux-taposes urban and rural living; ‘The image of town and country gentility conjures a

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fantasy land of landed aristocrats with gated city homes and spacious countryretreats, with the SUV at home in both’ (Lauer, 2005, p. 161).

This taming approach in the eyes of the urban idyll vacationer and consumer isprecisely what defenders of a new more militant idyll find objectionable. For theseoutspoken defenders of a less genteel rural idyll, the regenerative power of ruralspaces rests squarely in proportion to the degree with which notions of indepen-dence and private property dictate proper normative behavior. That is, the vaca-tioner’s desire for pastoral peace quickly butts up against the gun-enthusiastproperty owner’s desire to shoot their semi-automatic weapons. Similarly, for alarge portion of the rural populace, interactions with nature are culturally quite dif-ferent. As Grigsby has shown in her work on Missouri catfish noodlers, there is aunique cultural approach to rurality among people who have lived there for genera-tions and whom we might easily classify as redneck (Grigsby, 2012). So, while forBell the rural idyll is a product of the urban ‘bourgeois imaginary’ (2006, p. 158),we explore how a decidedly non-urban imagination of the rural idyll is being uti-lized to culturally demarcate a politically, class-based, and racially charged rhetoricof the right and far right in the US.

In the next section, primarily we use public statements made by Ted Nugent asa vocal defender of gun rights and outspoken critique of the Obama administrationas a window into how evocations of a different rural idyll are being deployed forstrategic political maneuvering. In Winant’s sense of white racial projects (1997,2004), we explore how Nugent’s rhetoric around those three themes symbolizes aneffort toward the cooptation of the rural idyll and by extension a movement ofextreme right ideology into the far right and even liberal rhetoric. By putting fortha different, less urban and more rural vision of the rural idyll and then attaching itsymbolically to language around contemporary politics, spokespeople for anexpanding militant cadre of conservatives are able to redefine whiteness further tothe right and pull middle-ground conservatives with them.

Whiteness and the new militant rural idyll

Our central focus in this section revolves around the highly visible statements ofNRA board member, Ted Nugent. While these are single quotes and we did notmake an effort to randomly sample quotes or other public statements among mem-bers of the right, we argue that they are nonetheless good expressions of broadlyshared values. Nugent is outspoken and widely followed among members of theright and far right. Elected to the NRA board in 1997, Nugent has become one ofthe most visible advocates of 2nd Amendment rights, limitations on governmentassistance, and opposition to immigration. Among the right wing, and especiallyadvocates for gun rights, Nugent’s popularity has rocketed over the last few years.He was second only to Oliver North in total votes during the 2010 Board election.He has an active Twitter following and speaks openly about threats to personalfreedom and the American way of life embodied in liberal politics at his numerousconcerts each year. These commentaries often address black crime and do not shyaway from racial conflict. In short, Nugent serves as a window into the far rightwhiteness project.

Importantly, throughout his commentary, one finds regular symbolic reference tothe ideas in the previous section that depict a more militant rural idyll. His state-ments resoundingly celebrate a return to an imagined way of life drawn deeply on

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a vision of a conservative rural idyll that lies in stark contrast to the liberal valuesbelieved to be held by urban people. In his words, he is part

of a very great experiment in self-government where we the people determine ourown pursuit of happiness and our own individual freedom and liberty not to be con-fused with the Barack Obama gang who believes in we the sheeple and actually isattempting to re-implement the tyranny of King George that we escaped from in1776. (Johnson, 2013a)

Below, we discuss the ways in which conservative rural cultural values articu-late with dimensions of militant white identity by using Nugent’s comments inresponse to the election of Barack Obama and the issue of gun control. We do thisby organizing each discussion around Bell’s three themes of the idyll; the pastoral,the natural, and the sporting. We recognize that there is overlap among the differentthemes, but below we try to tease out the distinct features. For example, the cele-bration of private property and the desire for freedom from bureaucratic intrusion isalso part of what makes the rural imaginary a special place of retreat. Still, the ideaof retreat is slightly different from, and captures a notion of home or an imaginedparadise that is not easily reducible to the more singular notion of private property.Below, we present an analysis of a selection of these exemplary quotes.

The pastoral quality

This section discusses how the rural idyll is characterized as anti-federal govern-ment and extensively rooted in the idea of private property and individualism. Theelections of Barack Obama symbolize the worse possible scenario for the whiterural property owner concerned about heavy-handed policy mandates from Wash-ington. Despite his grandparents living in Kansas, Obama’s racial construction isonly seen as urban and as such signifies a complete disregard for rural America.Nugent captures this vision of the ideal citizen by drawing on the ideas of individu-alism and private property central to the pastoral theme by saying,

In a sea of soulless, sheeplike dependency, it’s easy to spot the fiercely independentpeople who continue to declare our independence. We are the producers, the peoplewho make the country work. We are business owners and hardworking employees.We are fiercely American; we believe in self-reliance and rugged individualism …Fiercely independent Americans are shocked and saddened by how far our belovedcountry has slid into socialism … Defiance is in the DNA of fiercely independentAmericans. We defy the notion that the wealth we create through our hard work,sweat and risk can or should be spread around for others. We find that concept to beabhorrent – anti-freedom and anti-American … Fiercely independent Americansexpect no charity but are the first in line to give generously when charity is needed.We are givers, not takers. We can always be counted on to offer a hand up to thosewho want to help themselves. We don’t give handouts, as we know that destroys self-reliance. … As we continue to slide further into the big-government abyss that ourFounding Fathers warned us about, we must either reverse course and embrace theideals of freedom and limited government our founders envisioned, or we choose biggovernment, unsustainable debt and ultimately, tyranny. (Nugent, 2012a)

Such framings routinely emphasize the effort and merit of the hard-workingindividual. This central component of the pastoral is set in stark contrast toObama’s urban experiences in Chicago and his perceived heavy-handed and

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anti-individualistic approach to governance. This characterization becomes particu-larly salient when situated as part of a vision of the rural idyll that is in oppositionto the urban, the diverse, the multicultural, and of course the individual. For themilitant right wing, Obama represents a tyranny of democracy as he is dependenton the votes of the urban masses that, unlike the imagined rural citizen, are primar-ily non-white and excessively rely on government assistance for their well-being.Another particularly racial and graphic portrayal symbolically lynched Obama link-ing his perceived anti-democratic, and hence anti-American, agenda with his racialotherness. During the 2012 republican national convention, Clint Eastwood per-formed a dramatic and imagined conversation with President Barack Obama inwhich the President was imagined to be sitting in a chair next to Eastwood at thelectern. After this performance, there were reportings of individuals hanging chairsfrom trees in their yards as a thinly veiled reference to lynching the president (Eng,2012; Murphy, 2012). Eastwood too threatened the president during the perfor-mance when he made a throat slashing gesture while commenting that ‘Whensomebody doesn’t do the job, you’ve got to let them go’ (Eng, 2012).

Similarly, Ted Nugent, in an interview with the Christian National Radio show‘Sons of Liberty,’ draws attention to Obama’s urban background during a discus-sion of the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi:

It’s gone tipsy turvy where we have a Chicago gangster, ACORN community orga-nizer, scam artist and die-hard Communist as the President of the United States, agunrunning Attorney General, an absolute buffoon for a Vice President and a mur-derer as the Secretary of State who intentionally kept security away from Americancitizens so they can get blown to smithereens. (Nugent, 2013a)

For Nugent, it is upside down to have urban, and in the case of Obama andAttorney General Eric Holder, non-whites, define the social reality and conduct for-eign policy. Right-side up would, of course, have members of his rural idyll deter-mining social and foreign policy. By highlighting the urban origin and the immoralcharacter of the Obama administration, Nugent sets them in opposition to his imag-ined world of idyllic virtue where individuality is emphasized over bureaucracy. Inone simple statement, he alludes to the shared understanding of a virtuous ruralidyll and sets it in opposition to the urban and diverse Obama administration.

For Nugent, there is a strong connection between being self-sufficient and beingrural because being urban conveys the opposite. By highlighting Obama’s urbanbackground, he establishes the distinction between his audience and the federalgovernment. If to be urban is to be Obama, then to be anti-Obama is to be rural. Ifbeing urban is to embrace multiculturalism, then to be rural is to be post-racial oreven monocultural. The dichotomies implied by the rural idyll, just as discussed byBell (2006), are necessary for the Eden to exist. So, when Obama is similarly castin opposition to the most sacred of all of the imagined qualities of the rural idyll,the individual, and framed as un-American, so also implicated are those of a multi-cultural hue and those from elsewhere.

The natural quality

This moves us toward the next dimension of the rural idyll, the natural quality andthe idea of retreat. Nugent’s framing of Obama’s administration as being opposed

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to individualism and the narrative of the American dream is used to devalue non-white culture and ideologies by symbolically equating them with Obama and there-fore not welcome in the edenic retreat. Further, Nugent’s overarching narrativeimplies that non-white individuals and non-white culture will inevitably have a neg-ative effect on hegemonic whiteness and the greatness of American society andshould consequently be avoided.

The far-right view of the rural idyll is characterized by an edenistic retreat fromnon-white citizenry and their respective social problems. In this way, this dimensionof rural culture is very much like a new pastoral, but one that is purified, whitened,and free of the tarnish of both non-Americans and urban liberals. Residents in thisspecial place are free to experience nature, the wildscape, including hunting andshooting guns, and consuming nature’s resources while engaging in the day-to-dayroutines of rural living without fear of interference from outsiders.

In this contending militant rural idyll, however, nature is less something to bepassively enjoyed and admired, as the urban consumers of the rural idyll wouldhave it, but rather a dangerous place where survival is paramount. In this naturalview of the rural idyll success is the evidence of one’s virtue and prowess. Impor-tantly, inhabitants are not obligated to get along, but rather are required and free todefend themselves, and by extension all of the virtuous true Americans, from anyperceived threat. They are armed as a militia to defend the homogeneity of theirEden. Social issues surrounding entitlement and welfare programs are seen asenabling the weak and unfit who, as in nature, should be labeled as the rural abjectand purged from the community. Social provisioning from outside, that is from thefederal government, lies in stark conflict to rural ideologies that emphasize individ-ual initiative and resolve. As such, they are treated as part of a domineering gov-ernment’s infringement upon the capacity of individuals to work, succeed, anddefend their property.

In such a view, special programs and accommodations only work against thelong-term interests of society by fostering a sense of dependency and insulatingindividuals from the necessary feedback that they are on the wrong track. In thesurvival of the fittest world of nature, too much coddling of the weak and vulnera-ble prevents them from developing the survival skills they need. For example, evenaccommodating Spanish speakers is counterproductive for Nugent:

the most racist thing our government does is to print literature in Spanish, therebyencouraging people not to learn English and deny themselves all the American Dreamhas to offer. (Nugent, 2013c)

Similarly, messages of racial superiority and inferiority are wound closely to theidea of an imagined America as an ideal. Nugent said to the crowd at a 2011 con-cert in Nashville, TN:

there is a Mexican dream. Get the fuck out of Mexico. That’s the fucking Mexicandream. In case we got any of our import motherfuckers out there, when you come toAmerica leave your fucking baggage at home. You came here because where youcome from sucks. Don’t turn this place into the place you got away from, becausewhere you got away from sucks shit. (Nugent, 2011b)

While deeply nativist, the natural theme of the rural idyll also withholds itsretreat-like qualities from the poor. As evidence of their unfitness for Eden, the

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poor are blamed for their own condition and left as fodder for the successful.Nugent wrote in a December 2011 op-ed for the Washington Times:

The majority of people who are poor in America are poor because they knowinglyhave made poor decisions. That may be ugly and uncomfortable to the soulless, politi-cally correct masters of denial, but it’s the truth nonetheless. Being poor is largely achoice, a daily, if not hourly, decision … We need to punish poor decisions instead ofrewarding them. We cannot continue to offer a safety blanket to those Americans whomake poor choices. The fewer social welfare programs, the better. This, too, may beugly and uncomfortable, but we must make hard choices that force people into mak-ing smart, responsible decisions … (Nugent, 2011a)

Further, the retreat that the rural idyll promises is a symbolic escape from theurban and its emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. Nugent captures thisfocus on homogeneity succinctly:

Diversity is America’s greatest strength, according to the left and its socialist, Marxist,commie cohorts and co-conspirators running rampant across the country. If you listencarefully to these America-hating, social-engineering liberals, virtually all behavior,conduct, morals and beliefs make America stronger. This, of course, is toxic, brain-dead logic that leaves ordinary Americans shaking and scratching their heads in con-fusion and disgust. We recognize bull dung when we hear, see and smell it, and wehave no desire whatsoever to embrace it … The left is forcing its version of diversitythroughout our society and culture. According to the left and its acolytes, we are sup-posed to respect people who refuse to respect Old Glory or learn English, look for ajob or put forth the effort to do an honest day’s work. We are supposed to respect allcultures, values, laws and religions – even when they have proved throughout historyto be dangerous and diametrically opposed to our American way of life, customs,laws and traditions. It will be a cold day in hell before I embrace voodoo-like reli-gions and unclean stone-age cultures that retard progress instead of advancing it. Thereal issue is that by forcing diversity and multicultural nonsense in our workplaces,schools and government agencies on people who still cherish common sense and tra-ditional American values, we’re ripping the nation apart. (Nugent, 2012c)

In a July 2013 piece written for the website Rare.us, Nugent discussed theacquittal of George Zimmerman and wrote:

We are most offended that the president of the United States and the U.S. attorneygeneral are clearly guilty of racism when they intentionally bring race to the forewhen they make public judgments based on the color of someone’s skin instead ofthe content of their character in total defiance of the findings of the FBI, Departmentof Justice, entire state’s investigative resources and a jury verdict. (Nugent, 2013b)

Nugent also called Trayvon Martin a ‘17-year-old dope smoking, racist gangstawannabe’ and that ‘Trayvon Martin was … responsible for his bad decisions andstandard modus operendi of always taking the violent route … The only racism onthat night was perpetrated by Trayvon Martin, and everybody knows it’ (Johnson,2013b). Here, Nugent vilifies the President through claiming his actions were dri-ven by blind racism while also using stereotypical racialized and violent rhetoric todemonize Trayvon Martin based on the color of his skin. This type of rhetoricimplies the normativity of a white perspective while also critiquing the demarcationof racialized boundaries when these lines are drawn by non-white individuals.

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The sporting quality

This section discusses how the construction of the rural idyll as a sporting paradiseplaces emphasis on the significance of personal freedom and concern for the 2ndAmendment at the fore. Below, we analyze the presence of racialized and violentrhetoric around the issue of gun control as it briefly rose to the national fore fol-lowing the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT and theGeorge Zimmerman verdict.

Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass shootings in 30 states. Twenty-fiveof these have happened since 2006; seven of them in 2012 alone. Most of theseshootings have been politicized heavily and used by political actors as support fortheir own interests and agendas. Some claim that these events meant that individu-als are not safe when access to high-powered weapons is available to all; othersargue that individuals can only be safe through the ability to own and use thesesame high-powered weapons. Whatever the perspective, these events have createdpolitical discourse and discussion around the constitutional rights of American citi-zens as well as the ability for state and federal governments to regulate the sale ofweapons and ensure varying levels of security and safety for their citizens.

On 13 April 2012, Ted Nugent intimated that he might harm President BarackObama if necessary to protect his right to own guns. More specifically, Nugentsaid, ‘If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be eitherdead or in jail by this time next year.’ Although Nugent vehemently opposedclaims that he was not in fact threatening the life of the President (Nugent, 2012d),his use of violent rhetoric around the issue of gun control speaks to the pervasive-ness of the rural idyll within his thinking. Nugent went on in an October 2012interview with NRA News, saying ‘I believe if you hate the NRA, if you hateguns, if you hate Ted Nugent, then you clearly hate America. And I have neverapologized, I’ve never defended – there is nothing to defend – but in this culturewar we do sometimes have to explain ourselves’ (Gertz & Johnson, 2012). Men-tioning the culture war, Nugent uses rhetoric involving competing ideologies andnarrative construction. By clearly demarcating social boundaries between what ide-ologies are deemed acceptable, Nugent utilizes aspects of identity politics to arguefor the virtuosity of a rural, white identity.

Further, Nugent supports the importance he places upon 2nd Amendment rightsby linking aspects of the rural idyll with the success of the nation’s history. Nugentstated during a 2012 commercial for Nugent’s Discovery Channel show, ‘TedNugent’s Gun Country,’: ‘I bleed red, white, blue and liberty. And nothing saysliberty more than the right to bear arms. Guns built this country and good men withguns made it the American dream’ (Nugent, 2012c). In this sense, guns are notonly beneficial to modern American society, but also integral to its continuedhistory (Nugent, 2012b).

Conclusion

We have tried to show how elements of a familiar rural idyll are being utilized tolegitimate a radical and militant far-right agenda. Though we have drawn onlyselectively from an outspoken right-wing activist and leader, we feel confident thatthese quotes and the values and views they present are representative of a largerworld view. By putting forth a different, less urban and more rural vision of the

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rural idyll and then attaching it symbolically to language around contemporary poli-tics, spokespeople for an expanding militant cadre of conservatives are striving toredefine whiteness further to the right and pull middle-ground conservatives withthem.

We try to capture these major themes of our argument in Figure 1. The figuretries to depict a social space in which three continuums interact to draw parametersaround this whitening project among the right. The three continuums are as fol-lows: along the bottom is a political continuum from progressive to conservative;on the left is a continuum showing views of the individual that range from depen-dent to independent; and, on the right, is a similar continuum showing class-basedviews of nature that range from a bourgeois rural idyll characterized by the ‘leaveno trace’ mentality to a working class rural idyll that emphasizes the dangers ofnature and the need for dominion over nature.

Within this political space, the upper left corner coinciding with progressivepolitics, urban populations, and a bourgeois view of nature is home of ideas ofmulticulturalism, non-productive populations, imposed notions of dependency onthe state, and consequently in the eyes of the right, higher levels of criminal activ-ity. By contrast, the lower right quadrant of the figure is just the opposite. Here,one finds the independent, rural producer citizen who views nature as a space forthe exercise of fundamental rights, is profoundly patriotic, and is supportive ofimagined shared cultural values with the all-white, Christian, founding fathers.Within this space, then, rhetoric that establishes a shared view of nature as some-thing tempered by the rights of private property and our God-given right to itsdominion works as a bridging mechanism creating common ground between the farright and more moderate groups. More insidious, when this rhetoric is tied to viewsof urban and multicultural populations as antitheses to the noble farmer citizen,far-right ideologues are able to pull moderates into policy decisions and extreme

Figure 1. The whitening of the right project.

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pronouncements about needs to defend their rights against the multihued, depen-dent, and menacing hordes of the city. We argue that this is a racialization projectthat is taking place within the sphere of white America and striving to create anew, increasingly conservative, and more stable hegemonic white identity.

So, just as Winant and Hughey have focused on how elements of whiteness arebeing defined and redefined across and within different political alignments ofwhites. This study looks at how a particular form of violent whiteness is builtaround themes central and consistent to a rural identity. Bell and others have shownthat the rural idyll is flawed in its recognition of poverty, inequality, urban criminal-ity, and natural resource misuse, but little discussion has been made about the over-whelming white character of the rural idyll. We offer this addition and situate itmore concretely in a host of newer symbols central to a more militantly patrioticrural white population.

McDermott and Samson (2005, p. 256), suggest that ‘navigating between thestaying power of white privilege and the multifarious manifestations of the experi-ence of whiteness remains the task of the next era of research on white racial andethnic identity’ and this study posits a link between a growing sector of militantwhite identity and the concept of the rural idyll. We show how violent racializedexpressions, previously only utilized among the far right and white nationalist orga-nizations with any sort of regularity, are being tied to national imagery of a ruralidyll in effort to consolidate a white identity among the right and far right. By link-ing previously unacceptable statements of race purity and violence with notions ofan imagined tradition drawn from the rural idyll, the far right forces a gambitamong those of the right; either get on board with the violently racialized worldview, or declare your opposition to the sacredness of the rural idyll.

Following Winant (1997, 2004), we find that this effort toward colonization ofthe white habitus of more politically moderate whites reflects a rightward shift inracial politics and a consolidation of categories of whiteness in the ongoing post-civil rights period of white racial formation. Like Hughey, we find that this effortto consolidate the factions of whiteness suggests that at their core the different fac-tions may well share common threads of white identity which lie suppressed untilactively linked to other desirable cultural values. Once awakened, this new coalitionof conservative whiteness represents an armed militia largely oriented around racecontrol.

AcknowledgmentsWe are very grateful for the helpful comments from the editors and anonymous reviewers,as well as comments made on earlier drafts by Ricardo Samuel.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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