Fending Off Ambiguity at All Costs: Why Women Are Attracted to the Far Right

Claudia Leeb

Autors/ores

Claudia Leeb Washington State University

Paraules clau:

women, far right, psichoanalysis, critical theory, aggression

Resum

Why do women support far-right leaders, movements, and parties, given their anti-feminist agenda that perpetuates women’s oppression? Women are drawn to the far right because they have a character structure that cannot admit ambiguity. Those who find ambiguity threatening tend to think in rigid categories, which implies their acceptance of binary oppositions, their acceptance of black-and-white solutions, and their total and unqualified acceptance or rejection of other people. In contrast, women with a character structure that can admit ambiguity are less prone to fall for the propaganda tactics of the far right. The far right effectively lures women with a character structure that cannot admit ambiguity to the far right because it offers them rigid binaries, including rigid male/female, friend/enemy, and ingroup/outgroup binaries that allow such women to fend off any ambiguity, which is overwhelming for them. In this paper, I draw on the work on fascism of the Austrian psychoanalytic thinker Elke Frenkel Brunswick and critical theory to provide a psychoanalytically inspired framework that helps explain why any ambiguity is overwhelming for such women and why they must fend off ambiguity at all costs.

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