Modernidade e Extrema-Direita : o encontro entre as narrativas das milícias e Donald Trump

Abstract

The political landscape of the United States has historically been marked by a strong connection to the militia movement, composed largely of groups that present themselves as legitimate defenders of American values. However, what has been observed in recent decades is the consolidation of far-right movements, particularly in the United States after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, through nationalist, populist, and authoritarian militia mobilizations. This phenomenon is tied to what Brown (2006; 2015; 2018) discusses as the crisis of modernity, described as an event that breaks with traditional orders and generates profound ontological insecurity among sectors of society that historically occupied the top of social hierarchies. Dissatisfied with the loss of certain privileges and disillusioned by the unfulfilled promise of social mobility, these population sectors react through radical movements, acts of domestic terrorism, and, most notably, the formation of militias. In this sense, through a bibliographic investigation of theoretical and conceptual works on militias, masculinity, paramilitarism, and the crisis of modernity, as well as an analysis of Donald Trump’s main public statements and those of the militia group Proud Boys, we argue that it is possible to establish a connection between the rise of far-right militias in the United States and Donald Trump’s populist rhetoric during his first term (2017–2021), based on the understanding that this rise is linked to a crisis of modernity.