White Power and American Neoliberal Culture

"A great idea consummately well explored. Bringing white power and neoliberalism into the same analytic frame allows the authors to avoid suggesting that one explains the other. The result is an examination of our present danger that is able to apportion blame to both liberals and white nationalists and to explain why the two so enduringly coexist."--David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness and T he Sinking Middle Class "Patricia Ventura and Edward Chan expertly trace the alignment of white power and neoliberalism through both ideologies' deployment of the figure of the white heteropatriarchal family as a bulwark against an increasingly multiracial, globally connected nation and as a substitute for state power. Ventura and Chan illustrate not simply why we have seen a resurgence of the white power movement, but through attention to neoliberal culture, how the foundations of white power ideology underlie US culture today and provide fertile ground for future radicalization."--Lee Bebout, author of Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown and White "This book could not have been timelier. As pundits and politicians blame an aberrant Donald Trump for the flowering of white nationalism, Ventura and Chan find its roots in neoliberalism. Just as the liberalism of colonizing nations birthed 1930s fascism, the neoliberalism of American empire is the source of fascism's latest iteration. The authors take us into the dystopian imagination of white nationalist culture, where straight white men rule, white women are baby-making machines, and the rest of us are disappeared--imprisoned, deported, starved, or murdered by the state. For the latter, this is no dream; it is lived reality and heritage. For the struggling white working class, white power is only a dream."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Donald Trump as emperor may have no clothes, but he does have baggage. To unpack all that he carries and signifies, White Power and American Neoliberal Culture tracks the catastrophe of white nationalism through the long genealogies of white supremacist and racial capitalist formations. With detail from white power novels and manifestos, Ventura and Chan cut to the heart of white nationalists' neoliberal promise of freedom--the heterosexist patriarchal family--and demonstrate how their rage is directed not simply at the social service state but at society itself. It's a gripping, vital study."--Shana L. Redmond, 2022-2023 President of the American Studies Association and author of Anthem and Everything Man "An urgent work of striking originality. This book puts whiteness, neoliberalism, and culture into dialogue in a manner that illuminates the discourse of white power and recent resurgence of far-right extremism on the one hand and the persistence of everyday racism and ongoing advance of social conservatism on the other. With theoretical sophistication and analytic care, the authors demonstrate the dynamic interplay and chilling convergence of white power and neoliberalism around the family that have significant implications for our understanding of cultural politics and democratic action."--C. Richard King, coauthor of Beyond Hate: White Power and Popular Culture