New Culture Wars: Tradwives, Bodybuilders and the Neoliberalism of the Far-Right

The renewed interest in unearthing the structural similarities between neoliberalism’s ‘authoritarianism’ and the contemporary far-right has paid little to no attention to another critical overlap between the two: the deep aversion towards the ‘feminisation of society’. This paper aims twofold: first, I theorise the relation between gender and the state under neoliberalism as a fundamental aspect of its de-democratising project, which underscores a structural similarity between the two. Second, I highlight the role of politicising culture in both neoliberalism and the far-right. Drawing on Wilhelm Röpke’s theorisation of the cultural-symbolic and anthropological order as a political practice mystifying seemingly ‘autonomous’ political and economic orders, I show how the far-right ‘anti-gender’ culture wars are thoroughly compatible with neoliberalism. Despite the former’s rhetorical antagonism with the latter, ‘tradwives’ and bodybuilders are prime ‘authoritarian’ neoliberal subjects. I find evidence in the work of the German identitarians organised around the Institut für Staatspolitik.