Schmittian Moments 11: Appendix 2

Authoritarian regimes appeal to different segments of society not only through ideology or law but also through how they engage with gender roles, racial identity, and wealth dynamics. These three axes, gender, race, and class, interact differently across the forms of authoritarianism seen in Modi’s India, Trump’s United States, Putin’s Russia, and Xi’s China, producing distinct structures of legitimacy, control, and mobilization. 

In gendered terms, each regime constructs a preferred ideal of masculinity and femininity which maps onto its broader project of authority. Modi’s regime draws heavily on a revivalist Hindu masculinity, projecting the strong, ascetic, warrior-man as the guardian of cultural purity and tradition. Women are celebrated when framed as maternal figures or as nationalist symbols, but their autonomy is often sidelined. Trump’s style centres on a belligerent, confrontational masculinity that feeds off grievance and dominance, with women either idolized in traditional roles or vilified when asserting independence. The gender order under Trumpism relies on nostalgia for patriarchal family structures and anxiety about shifting gender norms. Putin’s Russia reinforces a stoic, militarized masculinity and a conservative femininity tied to fertility, motherhood, and the church. Gender nonconformity is framed as a Western decadence, a threat to the moral fabric of the nation. In Xi’s China, gender is subordinated to state functionality, with masculinity and femininity both instrumentalised. Men are expected to be disciplined, obedient, and nationalistic, while women are increasingly encouraged to marry, reproduce, and support social stability. Feminist movements are tightly repressed, and gender becomes a zone of managed reproduction rather than individual self-expression. 

Racial identity, though differently constructed in each regime, also plays a critical role in the production of authoritarian belonging. In India, Hindu nationalism has racialised Muslims and lower castes as internal threats, combining ethnonationalism with a civilisational hierarchy that naturalizes upper-caste dominance. The construction of the nation is simultaneously cultural and racial, masked in the language of religion. Trump’s America revives and retools white racial grievance, framing nonwhite populations, especially immigrants and Black Americans, as destabilizing forces, while offering white citizens a mythology of lost greatness. Authoritarian appeal here draws on a racialised vision of the nation that collapses whiteness and Americanness. In Russia, while race is less explicitly mobilized, a Slavic ethno-nationalism undergirds Putin’s project, with Central Asian and Caucasian minorities often marked as less civilized or suspect. Russian identity is both racial and imperial, projecting a core ethnic ideal while marginalizing those outside it. Xi’s China operationalises Han dominance as the racial basis of national unity, suppressing Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian identities through surveillance, assimilation, and reeducation. Ethnic minorities are not simply othered, they are rewritten into the narrative of a unified Chinese state in ways that erase distinctiveness while demanding loyalty. 

The economic or wealth-based structures of authoritarian legitimacy show both overlap and divergence. Across all regimes, the super-elite or oligarchic classes are strategically integrated into the power structure, rewarded for loyalty but always subject to implicit threat. Modi’s India grants them access to public resources through crony capitalism while expecting ideological alignment with the state. Trump’s America offered tax cuts and deregulation in exchange for political and cultural support, shielding the wealthy from scrutiny while channelling public resentment toward minorities and intellectual elites. Putin’s oligarchs are permitted immense wealth only through demonstrable loyalty, and are always one step away from sanction or seizure. Xi’s China tolerates wealth accumulation only to the extent that it does not threaten the Party’s ideological supremacy or social control, disciplining billionaires when they appear to act autonomously. For the upper middle classes, authoritarianism offers a promise of stability, cultural recognition, and managed privilege. These groups often serve as the ideological or managerial class, benefiting from nationalism and order as long as they do not cross political lines. The middle and working classes are variably manipulated or neglected, offered symbolic inclusion through nationalist rhetoric, modest welfare, or job creation schemes, while being kept at a distance from actual power. The poor and unemployed are often instrumentalised as reservoirs of resentment or as subjects of surveillance, viewed less as citizens than as bodies to be governed, policed, or disciplined into productivity or passivity. 

What emerges across all this is a pattern of selective inclusion and targeted repression. Each regime assembles a coalition of gendered, racialised, and economic identities that it frames as authentic or loyal, while casting others as deviant, dangerous, or foreign. The appeal of authoritarianism thus lies not only in the figure of the strong leader or the rhetoric of national revival, but in how it offers each segment of the population a specific fantasy, of restored masculinity, racial superiority, economic security, or moral order. These fantasies are not universal but tailored to fit the insecurities, desires, and resentments of their target groups. The genius of authoritarian systems lies in their ability to map their survival onto existing social divisions, turning inequality into identity and subordination into a story of collective destiny.