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Paper short abstract:

In Sweden many white men feel impelled to tell what they believe is the truth about society. This affective strategy might be a response to a threat of losing a more self-evident position as i.e. protector that the nation formerly offered them. Truth-telling has become a way of crafting masculinity.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, I will explore the concept of parrhesia, as addressed by Foucault in his late works, to understand certain strategies employed by white men in contemporary Sweden. Parrhesia is, in his sense, a special form of public truth-telling that, at the risk of one´s own person and position, had the goal to change the ethos. To change the ethics by telling it like it is. The whistle blower´s activity is an example of parrhesiastic speech.

Some white men, often with sympathies for far right parties, engage in this kind of truth-telling, or at least so it seems. The label "offended white men" (vita kränkta män) has been used to describe those men whose activities consists in i.e. trolling on social media - threatening and abusing women and non-whites/non-Swedes. Their arguments often form a disbelief in the democratic system, and critique of the feminist or multi-cultural versions of society that seems to offer them and their kind of masculinity no space.

Directed at changing society, often with an image of a glorious past in mind, they act in indignation over the "politically corrects" incapacity to accept their world views. They recurrently state that their views cannot be expressed "in this country", although the anonymity on the Internet seem to offer them an arena to do so.

In what ways can these practices of truth-telling be understood as a way of crafting masculinity? And could this way of crafting masculinity be perceived as "active citizenship"?