Abstract
White masculine victimhood refers to the perception that white men are unfairly marginalized due to societal shifts, despite their longstanding systemic privileges. Structural analyses of male decline, particularly among white men, emphasize material factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, and the erosion of blue-collar jobs (McDowell, 2000). Scholars like Faludi (1999) and Kimmel (2017) contextualize their studies with these economic shifts, pointing to economic precarity as the major reason behind the masculinity crisis. The book under review, however, argues that white male grievances stem less from material deprivation than from perceived symbolic losses and cultural displacement. This includes the loss of cultural centrality and masculine identity in a society increasingly shaped by feminism and multiculturalism. Building on this argument, Kelly uses psychoanalysis, rhetorical criticism and critical media studies to explore how contemporary white masculinity resorts to images of death, destruction, and the apocalyptic to navigate this perceived sense of loss, and maintain its structural privilege.
Kelly views white male victimhood as part of larger, culturally ingrained patterns of thinking and behaving that shape people’s response to trauma and power—what Gunn (2018) calls ‘psychical structures’. This framework helps explain why white men may experience social change as a ‘catastrophic loss’ (p. 3). Drawing on Freud, Kelly employs the death drive and cultural melancholia (grief about loss) to reveal its cyclical nature. The death drive is a compulsion toward self-destruction and repetitive behavior, compelling men to project their inner vulnerabilities (e.g. the fragility of the ego) onto external enemies, such as ‘man-hating feminists, gold-digging ex-wives, political correctness, job-taking immigrants’ (p. 2). Melancholia, meanwhile, is the unresolved grief that traps white men in nostalgia for an imagined past when they were ‘whole’. Unable to mourn this illusory loss, Kelly explains, they repeatedly adopt the victim identity and cling to victimhood narratives until this comes to define their identity.
Methodologically, Kelly shifts from asking ‘what texts conceal’ to ‘what texts do’. This means that he explores how rhetorical forms actively structure content and shape public communication, analyzing elements like victimhood narratives in online posts, and death imagery in paramilitary performances. His critical media study further indicates that media platforms are neither passive nor neutral containers. Rather, they channel and amplify male grievance by rewarding regression through validations of outdated hypermasculine ideals, repetition via algorithmic boosts of recurring victimhood narratives, and rage by turning anger into viral content that fuels engagement. This echoes Chouliaraki’s (2024) critique of profit-driven algorithms amplifying privileged grievances (e.g. wealthy elites’ ‘victimhood’ in economic downturns), while obscuring systemic vulnerabilities.
The book is divided into five chapters, each exploring a distinct medium through which the white masculinity crisis is communicated. Chapter 1 focuses on the reality TV show The Doomsday Prepper. Kelly argues that the show frames the apocalypse as an opportunity to reclaim a hypermasculine ideal, positioning white men as saviors of a weakened, emasculated society. The show’s narratives portray disasters as solutions to the masculinity crisis and invite audiences to view the apocalypse as a moment of masculine necessity. The characters of male preppers are shown as industrious and vigilant, evoking the myth of the self-made man. This distinctly American trope, which glorifies white male labor and a premodern fantasy of individualism, rejects modern social values and ‘resuscitates a past that never existed’ (p. 31).
Chapter 2 investigates how digital platforms amplify men’s rights activism (MRA). Kelly shows how the ‘Red Pill’ narrative weaves fragmented grievances into a melodrama of male victimhood, using exaggerated claims (e.g. false rape accusations) and pseudoscience (e.g. women’s ‘hypergamy’, or preference for higher-status partners). This narrative transforms individual frustrations into collective anger directed at the ‘autocratic rule of feminism’ (p. 67). Kelly also highlights how algorithms reinforce these narratives by prioritizing engagement through upvoting and cross-linking, often funneling users towards extremist hubs.
Chapter 3 delves deeper into the ideological foundations of the ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) movement. Kelly analyzes the manifesto of a university shooter, revealing its themes of persecution, misogyny, and entitlement. The attacker frames his grievances as systemic oppression caused by social progress, disguising his narrative of victimhood as a quest for justice. His fantasies of regeneration through violence and domination align closely with fascist ideologies. The incel movement, as Kelly concludes, is not an aberration but a logical extension of MRA, with its roots in the same victimhood rhetoric.
Chapter 4 examines the U.S. open-carry movement and gun rights activism, focusing on how victimhood discourses are visually enacted through public displays of firearms. Kelly explores how guns function as ‘phallic implements’ (p. 129) that symbolically restore masculinity in response to perceived emasculation by a ‘feminized’ state. The movement’s rhetoric draws on nostalgic archetypes like cowboys and militias, romanticizing their historical roles while obscuring their entanglement with racial violence. By staging visually striking image events (e.g. carrying firearms in supermarkets) that challenge social norms and draw media attention, open-carry practices transform public spaces into arenas that reinforce patriarchal and racial hierarchies.
Chapter 5 analyzes Trump’s political rhetoric through the lens of sadomasochism, where individuals or groups simultaneously embrace victimhood and display aggression towards others. Trump’s rhetoric frames America as a victimized nation demanding retribution, blending masochistic narratives of suffering with sadistic fantasies of revenge. His supporters thus see humiliation and cruelty as necessary for national revival, which deepens their sense of victimhood and desire for revenge. Trump’s rhetoric, as Kelly suggests, represents ‘an iteration of “political perversion”’ (Gunn, 2018) that exploits collective trauma and fuels a cycle of aggressive retribution.
In the conclusion, Kelly offers potential antidotes for the apocalyptic turn in white masculine victimhood. One solution is the development of counter-networks, such as the #MeToo movement, grounded in empathy and mutual support. Another is the reimagining of masculinity itself—one that replaces domination with care, rigidity with diversity, and grievance with solidarity.
Apocalypse Man demonstrates solid analytical rigor in exploring how white men’s victimhood discourses shape and reinforce reactionary ideologies. Kelly highlights the cultural consequences of such narratives and their impact on audience engagement. However, the book would have benefitted from exploring how these dynamics intersect with non-white, non-male groups, who remain absent from the analysis. Are these groups complicit in fostering apocalyptic manhood, or do they resist it in ways that remain underexplored?
Despite this limitation, the book has much to offer scholars and students of rhetoric, psychoanalysis, media studies, and interdisciplinary discourse analysis, who will find it particularly compelling. In the US political climate that was current at the time of writing this, where grievance politics thrive, Apocalypse Man is an essential read for understanding the discourses of men’s rights groups, which may at times seem illogical, and their broader cultural implications.