Hipster Racism - What's Irony Got to Do With It?

Abstract

This essay interrogates the radical political potential concealed within American hipster culture. It seeks to illuminate the current decline of white hipster’s critical habitus, which historically has been conveyed through
irony. Contemporary white hipsters seem to rely on nostalgia rather than irony, which can culminate in hipster racism, instead of promoting progressive, liberal lifestyles. This development mirrors a larger shift in American society in which the muddled boundaries between entertainment and politics have become highlighted. To illustrate these developments, the article offers a case study of Gavin McInnes’s hipster performance. McInnes, a comedian and cofounder of the renowned hipster magazine Vice, utilizes hipster culture and irony for promoting right-wing causes from within his fraternal organization Proud Boys. While McInnes rejects allegations of racism, this article argues from a performance studies perspective that this allegedly satirically performed racism still exploits inequality, promotes white supremacy, and has an equally if not more detrimental effect on McInnes’s audience as conventional racism by de-sensitizing people’s awareness of discriminatory practices.