Abstract
Drawing on such examples as Turning Point USA's “Champions Don't Kneel” event at its 2021 AmericaFest, Donald Trump's political uses of sport and his performance of white male omnipotence, Richard Spencer's writings on sport, the symbolic importance of Tom Brady's white masculinity, and the decidedly anti–politically correct white majority fratriarchal rhetoric and community built by Barstool Sports, this article urges sport studies scholars to prioritize race and gender in their analyses of today's Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republican/Far Right coalition and the ways it uses sport to attempt to normalize fascistic attitudes, practices, and ideologies. Drawing on the work of Lauren Berlant and John Remy, the author argues that “Big Man sovereignty” and “fratriarchy” are useful concepts to make sense of today's far-right politics. Finally, he invites sport studies scholars to increasingly look to fascism studies—and especially work on fascistic formations in American history—rather than populism studies to make sense of today's reactionary turn on the right.
