The Madness of the MAGA Misogynoir and Menagerie
Inside the RFK Menagerie
The story about the Dead Bear Cub dumped in Central Park by Donald Trump’s new running mate, Robert F Kennedy Jnr, just seemed like another weird story from the weirdest election you’ve ever seen. But things are unravelling further and its worth joining the dots between the racism, misogyny and misogynoir on display and the MAGA republicans relationship to nature and wildlife.
The latest story about RFK Jnr’s past comes from his daughter Kick Kennedy. She recalls the time her dad cut off a whale’s head and tied it to the family car. In a story that has been rediscovered from 2012 she tells how the whale washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port and he sped to the scene:
“[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York,” she said.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”
It’s like Blind Boy meets Herman Melville.
The emergence of the whale head story, following the bear tale and the suggestion that he has a fondness for barbecued dog have been mocked and memed to death. But I think there’s a link between the candidates attitudes to wildlife, environment and gender. It’s not just the extraordinary sense of entitlement which unites Trump, JD Vance and RFK Jnr, their entire campaign is run on misogyny. Trump’s own attitudes to women has been well documented but the other two less so.
Old audio was recently uncovered with Vance explaining his views on unpregnant teachers:
Unearthed audio: JD Vance says teachers who do not have biological children “disorient and really disturb” him: “She should have some of her own [children]” pic.twitter.com/Rqx2PLfjT5
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 27, 2024
Here he is again this time JD Vance praises Tudor Dixon, who said teenage rape survivors being forced to give birth can be “healing” for them: “The great Tudor Dixon!”:
JD Vance praises Tudor Dixon, who said teenage rape survivors being forced to give birth can be “healing” for them: “The great Tudor Dixon!” pic.twitter.com/TYmpCmz5Sq
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 27, 2024
It’s a tough competition between the three men. RFK Jnr is alleged to have cheated on his wife with 37 different women in a single year…and kept a journal detailing the cheating. His wife killed herself after finding the journal. These are the men running for office in America.
The French writer Jeanne Burgart Goutal author of Être écoféministe : théories et pratiques (Being an Ecofeminist: Theory and Practice) (L’Échappée, 2020) explains the connections between MAGA’s treatment of women and nature: “What they have in common is the conviction that there are inextricable links between the ecological crisis and the patriarchy. According to ecofeminists, the exploitation of nature and male domination have deep shared roots, and use similar mechanisms such as objectification, devaluation, and violence.”
Certainly the attitudes played out by Trump, Vance and Kennedy have these core themes with an undercurrent of violence and threat combined with extreme anti-ecological thinking, control and hyper-misogyny. JD Vance has been repeating his themes on how childless women are of less value and should have subsequent fewer voting rights, if any at all. Trump’s views and actions do not need repeated here.
The sense of entitlement reeks in all three men, but the twist is that each considers and portrays himself as an ‘outsider’. This has been deeply challenged by the Appalachian community that JD Vance pretended to be part of in his memoir A Hillbilly Elegy, Trump, the man who descended on a golden staircase and inherited his fortune revels in his ‘outsider’ status, while even RFK Jnr – who literally comes from one of America’s premier dynastic families – styles himself as a radical anti-establishment independent.
The problem for these people, and the constituencies they represent is that they are being exposed to a mainstream audience and they are completely unaware of how they are perceived. If they lose then Kennedy will have completed wrecking his families already tarnished name, Trump will never run again and Vance will return to the couch. If they win they will unleash horrors that they are foreshadowing for us all right now.
Fascism and Omnicide
The relationship between fascism, ecological destruction and the sort of sexual toxicity on display here can be gleaned from mapping them against Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism – in which he identifies fourteen features of fascist ideology which are constant across time. Here’s three that jump out:
“To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
“Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.”
“Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.”
Hyper-nationalism, hyper-machismo, overt racism, a language of, and deification of violence, and a hatred of the weak whilst masquerading as populism, all are present and correct in the MAGA movement.
The extra element that Trump holds is what some have called “jouissance” – a pleasure from perpetual stimulation.
Author Jay Griffiths points us to this phenomena of fascism and anti-ecology: “Such detestation of the natural world, amounting to biophobia, is one of the hallmarks of libertarians and alt-Right alike.”
She explains: “Climate-change denialism is the signature deceit of alt-Right and libertarian rhetoric, top trumps in their pack of ‘alternative facts’. But the alt-Right has a host of alt-facts at its fingertips. Politics has always been riddled with propaganda, spin and cover-ups, the difference is that the libertarian mindset relishes its dishonesty; part-trick, part-game, part-combat. Over and over, all members of the far-Right use the notion of ‘free speech’ to vindicate offensiveness and outright lies.”
Shir Squire Starmer and his self-proclaimed “Englands Patriotic Party” joined at the hip with Gordo Broons North Britons deny the very existence of “British nationalism” as they watch the 10 year cycle of rioting in Englands green and pleasant land (aka the UK). Complain that rioting has not occurred in Auld Scotia, now or previously, and the Unionist commentariat get pure raging.
If only rioting had broken at the Supreme Court judgement that somehow Scotland was not a colony, when our assets are patently exploited for the benefit of others………….?
But we are stuck with the singular 2014 vote, and must learn to live with the consequences.
Trump and his gang—the appalling Tories—-Labour hucksters on the make—-Putin and Netanyahu using the moral weakness of the “democratic” West to subjugate, annex and destroy.
The individuals discussed in this article should long ago have been referred for mental health evaluation and help based on their behaviour.
Unfortunately they can, due to their wealth and privileged background, carry on behaving in such an irrational and destructive manner with impunity. Many people, without their wealth and privilege, will suffer the consequences of their behaviour which will inevitably affect their physical and mental health.
I think a binding element in all this is sadism–the “thrill” of dominating & degrading nature, sensuality, women, “weak” men, animals…each of these is, in a real sense, just a variation of any of the others, to the sensuality of the sadist. I won’t attempt to develop this further here, but it is what struck me in your brilliant, insightful piece, Michael–now shared at X and Bluesky. Please continue.
The shitshow being unleashed in America is a kind of heavily diluted karma.
Last week, about 150 million Americans voted for one or other of the two presidential candidate who supported genocide in Gaza. In the case of Harris, they voted for a candidate who had spent 13 months as the nominal second-in-command of the administration which armed and funded the genocide, fedcut military intelligence, and gave it the diplomatic cover of a UNSC veto.
Some of those people cheer the genocide. Some are indifferent to it, and probably some are unaware of it. Some are appalled by the genocide. But for all of those 150 million, genocide was not added line. Not a deakbreaker.
So now a bunch of nasty psycho loons are in government in Murica. Its gonna be grim and its gonna be cruel. But also, it will be many orders of magnitude less grim and less cruel than the genocide which those sane voters have just backed on Gaza. Murica is getting off very lightly, but that won’t stop lots of Muricans howling in narcissistic fury at feeling a tiny fraction of the pain that the American Empire inflicts on others.
Pass the popcorn.