White gods: Odin as the White male hope

Over the past decade, the undercurrent of interest in the alt-right and white nationalism – the belief that white people need a unified culture and possible statehood – has grown into a movement worthy of serious academic and political interest. The progressive platform rallying against the history of colonialism, the privileges of men, and the supremacy of whites through identity politics has created new problems with its proposed solutions. White, working-class men feel dispossessed in a world where diversity can be defined by “fewer white men.” The working-class feels no privilege in their race or gender, but rather, frustration. What is privilege if not the comfort of wealth? Due to these political changes, whites, and working-class men in particular are searching for new forms of identity to be able to access influence through identity politics themselves while their grasp on demographic power wanes. White nationalism and Odinism – a modern iteration of Viking religion – progressively are becoming some of the few not-exclusively-Christian options for white male identity. While most do not openly advocate for racialized violence, they do not publicly denounce it either, encouraging traditionally masculine ideals of sexuality and warrior culture. This thesis seeks to provide a snapshot of how white, working-class men are involving themselves in identity-making in a multicultural world through ethnographic analyses of white nationalism and Odinism.