The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery

Abstract

This article analyzes the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, arguing that the rhetorical form of his appeals constitutes demagoguery defined by a reliance on victimized, White, toxic masculinity. Extending work on demagoguery, which has emphasized its characteristic lionization of certainty and demands for mastery, I suggest that Trump’s capacity to conclude his audience as at risk and vulnerable figures a condition inherent to democratic politics—undecidability—as a threat to personhood. Trump’s construction of a precarious and socially segregated “America” constitutes an image of masculinist totality that works on the basis of the incompleteness suffusing politics while undermining the possibilities for a feminist political ethics characterized by mutual vulnerability.