Why are white supremacists so ugly?
Beauty is an incredibly constructed concept; what we define as attractive is not objective. Social norms play into our intellectual concepts, making it incredibly hard to divorce sociocultural learning from perception. In other words, society defines beauty, and our individual feelings are based on that definition.
The issue of the ugly look of white supremacy has been on my mind since the death of Jason Arday. Nathan Cofnas’ writing pushed a narrative about Arday into the public eye, even as many of these plagiarism cases remain largely campus-only investigations. Why? Cofnas’ Cambridge fellowship had not been renewed; potentially, because he was a white supremacist. Or perhaps, it was due to something else. We, as the public, do not know, which affords him privacy he didn’t afford Arday. Similarly, given that Cofnas’ work deals with the largely discredited eugenics, it would seem plausible he was not renewed because his personal feelings added bias that invalidated his work. But aside from the deficiencies in his research methods, many people remarked on his appearance as news of Arday’s death came out.
Cofnas is one of many high-profile white supremacists whom the Internet describes as looking like a thumb. So why are so many white supremacists so unsupreme? It grows out of a terrible mix of patriarchy and capitalism.
Since the age of exploitation, the appearance of non-white people was expressly vilified by White colonizers. Some of the language around skin color, for example, was a purposeful effort to dehumanize non-white people.
Eugenics, the particular specialty of Cofnas, grew out of the flawed premise that whiteness was the pinnacle of humanity. In looking at these early racial comparisons, the system was clearly flawed: for white people to be seen as the apogee, the other races were caricatured and literally aped. In other words, the only way white people could be seen as superior was to lie about the other races.
Along with justifying colonization and enslavement of other races, the focus on centering white beauty was also due to the fetishization of non-white people by male colonists. If, in colonization, the white person is superior to all other races who are barely human, then there should be no mixing of races. But from the earliest European expeditions, the male sailors began forcing themselves on non-white people. So, in their conceptualization, they were engaging in sexual acts with subhumans. Rather than admit to the humanity and beauty of non-white people, they preferred to frame their feelings as near bestiality. The level of depravity is hard to fathom.
From these early moments of sexual assault by Europeans to the eventual settlements of the Americas in the 18th century, the perfection of beauty in the white female became calcified around the non-brown or black body. While the whiteness of skin was long prized for its association with purity and aristocracy, the sun-darkened skin of peasants in the feudal era became a marker of inferiority. White women’s beauty was largely about absence. They didn’t have large buttocks like Africans or rounded breasts like South Asians. Their hair was not curly, dark, or wavy. White beauty was what the men who raped their enslaved women and indentured servants claimed to like.
White women’s appearance was also often seen as requiring coordination. An 18th-century woman was often powdered, trussed up in stays, perfumed, and then dressed in rich clothes. That this was also the era of the rise in mannequins is not surprising. In all ways, the Age of Exploitation refined how beauty was about objectifying women within patriarchy. White women were living dolls and an engine of the growing consumer economy. Native, Black, and Asian women became objects of desire and also scorn. White beauty was connected with consumerism, a relationship that would only intensify after the Industrial Revolution.
As beauty was a tool men used to assert their hierarchical power, it was largely not wielded against men. Masculinity was assessed by wealth and intellect. Certainly, some men were seen as handsome. But often men were assessed as well-turned-out. Think of the early 19th-century dapper dresser, Beau Brummell, who is still credited with being one of the early wearers of the suit.
In the 21st century, stupidity has been a form of currency. Look at the Trump administration. But it’s a losing battle in terms of masculinity.
Some of the real losers in our popular culture went down the brash ideas, no-thoughts school of communication because they couldn’t measure up. Charlie Kirk dropped out of college and never had a chance at the military. Rather than own up to his failings and improve his skills, he found an alternative career making up stuff about race to stoke the dumbest and angriest of us. His trajectory aligns with that of many men who chose anger rather than having to face people they see as inferior. Women, POCs, and Black people are all outperforming white men in higher education.
The stupidity games of American media also have their limits, particularly when there are real-world economic outcomes. Being dumb doesn’t pay off in masculinity cred in the long term. But, the short term gain is enough to make some sign on, because at essence White Supremacy is an isolating not collective adventure.
But for the stupidity set, they can hone their physicality as a performance of masculinity. Looksmaxxing is an assertion of physical beauty as masculinity, in an interesting form of equity with how women are objectified in society. Given that surgery is a commodity, the ability to buy looks has also cheapened it. Additionally, the beauty norms are largely attuned to very specific, largely insular subcommunities.
Historically, beauty norms were slow to change. Since industrialization, changing beauty norms have accelerated to sell more products, but they still usually dissipate across society. Despite the broader reach of algorithmic social media, many fads move too quickly or require too much surgery to become widespread. Other 21st-century beauty fads serve as such clear markers of a subculture, like MAGA face, that they don’t broaden beyond the in-group.
MAGA face is not rooted in historical beauty or even a growing fad. It is solely perpetuated by the insular tastes of the in-group. While some of the markers, like blond hair, speak to their beliefs of white superiority, other norms are harder to pin down. Why the inexplicably squinted eyes and sharpened cheekbones? Hardline cultural groups, like MAGA, whose membership is a slippery concept like whiteness, need to assert culture through something easily recognizable. Basically, they need to have an odd look so that you can’t accidentally qualify.
MAGA also has a clear class system. While the Trump inner circle is typified by bad taste and worse plastic surgery, the foot soldiers of the movement are right now typing furiously on phones in trailers in poorly populated parts of this country. They don’t have the money for the surgery. They can only join this movement through their words. They’ve also bought into the movement for the promise of harming others. Hate isn’t a great beauty regimen in general. But for the MAGA faithful, they’ve been voting against their self-interest for years, which likely results in less dental care and less money for grooming materials. Racism isn’t only expensive but bad for your looks.
Additionally, MAGA is based on delusion, like Trump will make other people hurt and Trump will help me. That kind of delusion allows them to look in the mirror and see white supremacy. The blinders and the essential lie that the poorest white man is better than the most educated Black one keep them from seeing themselves as the thumb they are. They’ve also seen the Hitler Youth ideal. In their mind, exposing their innate hate is one step closer to the possibility of looking ideal.
Finally, intelligence has been a tried-and-true way for men to perform masculinity. Nathan Cofnas proudly posted on Substack that he set off a protest against him. He seems to have reframed the Trafalgar Square Jason Arday vigil to center himself as a hero. His delusional nature, though, is born from the Enlightenment, when men’s looks were nothing compared to his intellect. Even today, as he celebrates his part in Jason Arday’s death, I’d guess he cannot fathom people commenting on his looks. He’d see any mention of his looks as plebeian and immaterial. He’s too intellectually superior to entertain the petty concerns of looks (ie he reframes the argument to an arena where he thinks he will win).
His idea of white superiority is based on the world he’s constructed in his mind, and one that definitely underpinned the whole academic structure for generations. Being a white man need not be questioned, just as no one originally questioned the eugenics work in the 19th century. One might look at him and see glasses—a marker of deficiency- but he’d point out that the mind is all that matters. One might line him up with superior-looking Black men, and he’d say But their minds are inferior on his scale. Like the MAGA foot soldiers, he’s ignoring what he sees in the mirror. For him, it’s because intellect is more than visual appearance, but in that too, he shows his weakness. The man is employing a defunct science and expecting the world to assess him by an 18th-century idea of what a superior man is.
His biggest delusion is that he will be an academic at Harvard in eugenics. As he’s said many times, Cambridge did not renew his contract, and he was forced to start this hate campaign. He understood a world where he was superior, and the real world didn’t align with his social construct. Rather than improve his research (like reading the giant body of work that has discredited eugenics or getting therapy), he decided to ruin a man’s life, solely for the crime of being a Black academic. He didn’t qualify for tenure, lost his contract, and lashed out. So, in reality, he is so inferior that he had to ruin someone superior. He restructured reality by pushing the press to hound Arday rather than face up to the truth.
Here’s the ugly truth men like Cofnas represent, and I’ve met my fair share of academic incels over the years. They retreat into the life of the mind because real life has passed them by due to its incredible difficulty. They love the culture of bullying and rise to the challenge, publishing and succeeding in skills that require no socializing. Since academia thrives on petty critiques and holding grudges, they are fine as long as they are not challenged. If something sets them off, they will take everything down. They’ll destroy anything that makes them feel inferior, be it a student’s reputation or a colleague’s life.
What’s funny about all these white supremacists is that they don’t see how their race-based claims discount who they are. They see their superiority as based on the happenstance of birth. The rest of us grow and change to feel good about ourselves, but at least we get to celebrate ourselves authentically. Instead, they only have this racial mindset to buoy their rotten souls from sinking into an abyss of hate. For academics like Cofnas, their only goal is the same as the MAGA foot soldiers: never face up to their true inferiority.
NB: While he sees himself as better than the hoi polloi or the common MAGA troll, he’s the same but with a better vocabulary (I know that’s not hard). But his goal is the same. They act for attention. They want any attention so they feel something. The way to handle them is to choke off their attention. Like here on Substack, ignore him completely. Block him and his ilk. These kinds of people grow in the light because they cannot see reality through their inherent darkness.
