God's Viral Warriors

Abstract This article introduces the character of the viral God warrior : the online/offline represented/performed self of Christianity, nationalism (e.g., Christian Nationalism), muscular masculinity, and, significantly, whiteness. Through an online ethnography focusing on critical visual and discourse analyses, and critically reading semiotic signposts and codes, the article suggests that this emergent masculinity is complex, contradictory, and not easily categorized as “open” or “closed,” toxic or desirable. It is, like masculinity more broadly, hybridized, dynamically fluid, and intersectional. Nonetheless, it is a troubling masculinity in the way it allows for a meeting of extremism and the mainstream and acts as a sanitizing mask (through the vectors of faith, health and patriotism) that belies latent racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and authoritarian (and fascistic) characteristics that virally disseminate through broader society and culture.