ABSTRACT
How can a democratic nation-state be governed by a president who has been seduced by the allure of fascism? This chapter attempts to theorize the operations of power in the Trump era, where state violence, racial injustice, border security, and an assertion of white supremacy have come to coexist with a curious amplification of love for the country. Building on these ideas, and through a critical reading of acts of political leadership, this chapter aims to uncover new analytic possibilities for interrogating the affective life of the state. More than instances of rhetorical persuasion, a politics of love has been central to the fascist allure that enamored the American nation-state. Even in the twenty-first century, as I argue here, political worlds are not merely imagined or discursive cultural regimes but also embodied forms: the life of the state has a corporal, affective, or emotional grounding. By a focus on the entanglements of subjectivities, bodies, and states, this chapter aims to contribute to an analytic assessment of a political regime that peddles in death, violence, greed, and an absence of empathy, while feeding on the loyalty and love of its subjects.
