Dominion Through Demography: How the Far-Right is Weaponizing Birth Rates to Subvert Democracy

• In Event: 50426 - Far-Right Extremism Inside the Government

Abstract

Declining birth rates have become a weekly headline in the United States. The vast majority of concern has been expressed on the American right, composed of a "pronatalist" coalition of white Christian nationalists and silicon valley tech billionaires, both represented within the Trump administration. I will demonstrate that dominant logic in the pronatalist movement, including that of JD Vance and other prominent Republicans, reflects an ancient ethno-religious logic about defeating one's opponents through competitive fertility, but also a modern Christian-American commitment to neoliberal economics that rejects structural-economic transformations to ease childcare burdens. Thus, the far-right is simultaneously mobilizing support for anti-immigration and regressive gender and family policies with promises of increasing birth rates through cultural transformation alone (which will fail), with the ultimate goal of subverting democratic access and protecting race, class, and gender hierarchies.

Author

• Samuel L. Perry, University of Oklahoma