Trumpism, Tom Brady, and the reassertion of white supremacy in militarized post-9/11 America *

'Winning Bigly': Sporting Fantasties of White Male Omnipotence in the Rise of Trump and Alt Right White Supremacy

“…In Knight, Trump chose not just a coach who symbolized 'winning sportsman' and 'manly leader' to represent his campaign, but he selected a white man whose long record of refusing to follow the norms of political correctness, feminism, and multiculturalism signified his investment in upholding white male prerogative. Indeed, Trump's embrace of Knight further exemplified the way the restoration of an unapologetic, omnipotent white masculinity is a key part of his project to 'make America great again' (Kusz, 2016a(Kusz, , 2016b(Kusz, , 2017.…”

“…But, such a reading is only possible for those unfamiliar with the cultural roots of the commercial's imagery and blinded by the myths of racial colorblindness and postracialism that govern contemporary popular racial discourse. Once one realizes how this repertoire of images that constitute this vision of Brady trace back to Leni Reifenstahl's (1935) Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, one must reckon with the way that faith in postracialism can allow for a white supremacist fantasy of Brady to be forwarded as the perfect embodied representative of the American nation (Kusz, 2017). The commercial's repetition of discipline and hard work also evinces the producerist ethos that Berlet and Lyons (2000) argue organizes so many right-wing populist and the White Right movements in the past and present.…”

Concussions and Capital: Tom Brady, CTE, and the NFL’s Crisis of Identity

“…. to shore up the interests of the white patriarchy” (Kusz, 2017, p. 231). Any scandal involving Brady must be read alongside his dominant position in a diverse but highly racialized Patriots organization, his connections to a volatile political climate rooted in “white male anxieties” (Oates, 2017, p. 1) and nationalist fervor, and his performance of gender within a heavily publicized (and international) celebrity couple.…”

“…An apolitical, football-first figurehead proves especially appealing to profit-minded stakeholders as protests against racial injustice during the National Anthem have ruptured the post-racial fallacy so central to football’s mystique. Furthermore, Brady’s ability to shrug off his long-standing friendship with Donald Trump points to the “white supremacist logics” that imagine “both as innocent white men whose fratriarchal bond was deemed not to be worthy of investigation” (Kusz, 2017, pp. 230-231).…”

Book review: Playing While White: Privilege and Power On and Off the Field

“…Given the unexpected success of the Trump presidential campaign and its unapologetic desire to re-strengthen American white supremacy after the Obama presidency, Playing ’s focus on how white power and privilege are naturalized and normalized through sport media representations could not be more timely. Whether using white sportsmen like Bobby Knight, Tom Brady, and Joe Paterno as racial dog-whistles to sell his message of white male victimization to anxious whites during his presidential run (Kusz, 2016, 2017; Oates and Kusz, in press) or demonizing Colin Kaepernick and other black NFL players as unpatriotic for protesting police brutality and racial oppression during the playing of the national anthem, Trump has intentionally and repeatedly politicized sport to support his white supremacy qua ‘America First’ agenda. And while no cultural study can predict socio-political futures with much certainty, the good ones can alert us to social problems looming on the horizon, or help us to make sense of social and political crises as they emerge.…”