America’s dark harbingers: a genealogical analysis of self-disposing right-wing subjects during the pandemic

ABSTRACT

This essay will review the emergence of the anti-public health practices of politically motivated individuals during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Thousands of Americans, largely part of the far-right and libertarian front, have died due to their insistence on ‘freedom’ from the imposition of public health and vaccine mandates. In the abstract, I define these as self-disposing political subjects. The historical factors which compose such political characteristics are discursively rooted in the shifting economic interests of elite donor classes under neoliberal arrangements of society. This analysis will examine the emergence, pre-existing factors, and the contingencies out of which these practices have come about as an outcome of dominant power and neoliberal relations perfected through biopolitical and psychopolitical technologies. The target of this analysis will be to understand the multiple contingencies from which these self-destructive acts of political resistance come from, how they express neoliberalism in times of crisis and what we might expect as we face a future defined by climate crisis, and the receding waters of liberal democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID
• neoliberalism
• subjectivation
• right-wing
• genealogy

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Correction

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Shannon Monnat for her ongoing guidance and support through the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion, the Maxwell School for their support of interdisciplinary scholarship and Dr. Gail Hamner for her contribution to the theoretical and political underpinnings of this essay

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction 10.1080/14735784.2022.2140775

Notes

1 This ‘we’ refers primarily to the average citizen and neoliberal political subject in the US. However, I also mean it personally, ‘we’ as scholars, theorists, professors and scientists employed in liberal institutions in the US. More globally it is a cautionary and borderless ‘we’ that includes the type of international reader to which this journal is aimed.

2 Martina, Renshaw, and Reed. 2020. “How Trump allies have organized and promoted anti-lockdown protests.” Reuters. See: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-protests/how-trump-allies-have-organized-and-promoted-anti-lockdown-protests-idUSKCN2233ES.

3 Edsall, T. 2018. “Trump and the Koch Brothers Are Working in Concert.” New York Times. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/opinion/trump-koch-brothers-alliance.html.

4 “See: Yamey and Gorski, 2021. Covid-19 and the new merchants of doubt. The BMJ Opinion, September 2021.” https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13/covid-19-and-the-new-merchants-of-doubt/

5 Covid, C. D. C., Team, R., & Sauber-Schatz, E. 2020. “Severe outcomes among patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – United States, February 12–March 16, 2020.” Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 69(12), 343.

6 See: Russell Kirk’s Ten Conservative Principles: https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/.

7 See: Bloomberg Business Week, 6-25-21, Donnan, S, Pickert, R. US Unemployment Rescue Left at Least 9 Million Without Help.

8 See: Pew Stateline Review Part IV. 2021, Vestal, C. New State Laws Hamstring Public Health Officials.

9 See: Daniel, W. 2022. “US Companies Post Their Biggest Profit Growth in Decades by Jacking Up Prices During the Pandemic.” Fortune Magazine. https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/us-companies-record-profits-2021-price-hikes-inflation/; See: Frank, R. 2022. Soaring markets helped the richest 1% gain $6.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Fed. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/richest-one-percent-gained-trillions-in-wealth-2021.html.

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Austin McNeill Brown

Austin McNeill Brown is an affiliated researcher at the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion at Syracuse University where he studies a variety of public health issues from addiction recovery to the effects of neoliberal policies on public health. He holds a master’s in social work from the University of Vermont, a BA in Psychology from Texas Tech University, and is currently a third year PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Social Science program at the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs, also at Syracuse University.