Masculinities, citizenship and right-wing populism in Australia

In the settler-colonial context of Australia, this paper addresses the specific framing of masculinity with which right-wing populism seeks to engage. It reports on a recent online survey completed by 335 men. Their written responses pointed to troubles in their lives, including difficult relationship and career circumstances. However, they did not hold the vicissitudes of neo-liberal economics to account, but rather assigned blame to the ‘other’; women, feminism, queers, immigrants and so on. Many informants expressed strong mistrust of government. Divisive right-wing populist ideas routinely circulate on social media platforms; the men’s main source of news/information. Quite a few articulated nostalgia for an old-fashioned ‘tough’ gender order.

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.