Fanboying the Taliban: Manospheric Misogyny and the Project of Whiteness

This article considers the form of the Taliban through their citationality in the white nationalist manosphere as epitomizing the supreme expression of an excess Muslim masculinity. Further, when I track the figure of the Taliban as the figure of the Muslim writ large, I am also tracing the work of liberals and liberalism. Instead of focusing on the manosphere as a singular part of contemporary “culture wars”, as is commonly done, I analyze the white nationalist manosphere as a site where what Sherene Razack calls the “affective condition of whiteness” (Razack 2021: 225) and white aggrievement live and are performed, and link this affective condition to US Empire and its actual wars, particularly the Afghanistan war. This article interrogates the work that the Taliban as referent does to reveal the ways liberalism and white supremacy work in lockstep to consolidate the performative force of the Taliban , as simultaneously a spectral Muslim threat for liberals and as white aspiration for white nationalists.