Author ORCID Identifier:
Date of Graduation
8-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Communication (MA)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Communication
Advisor/Mentor
Neville-Shepard, Ryan
Committee Member
Hatfield, Joe
Second Committee Member
Reed, Joel
Keywords
affective indoctrination; antifeminism; Christian nationalism; fascism; scouting; whiteness
Abstract
This thesis provides a material rhetorical analysis of Trail Life USA and American Heritage Girls, two Christian nationalist scouting organizations that aim to renew and restore their cultural dominance across America. In examining how these programs route children’s bodies through ritual and affective indoctrination, I find that a fascist becoming underpins these groups’ (re)production of perfect, patriotic children. The first chapter discusses how boys enrolled in Trail Life USA become fascist as self-defense against American boyhood’s perceived eradication. Trail Life USA restores masculinity through rituals of autogenetic sovereignty, returns to originality through homosocial and affective intensity, and invocations of exceptional heritage in defense of their civic, political, and martial authority. In the second chapter, I examine how American Heritage Girls transcend the affective gender binary while remaining tethered to the antifeminist fascism. To preserve their second-rate citizenship under white male supremacy, girls elevate themselves through performances of countercultural authenticity and punishing threats by exercising masculine affect and authority. This thesis argues that scouts’ embodied experiences in these programs function as virtual repetitions of combined pastness and futurity, through which children become the affects and agents of fascism.
Citation
Studebaker, M. A. (2025). Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Material Rhetoric of Becoming Fascist in Parachurch Scouting Organizations. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/5903
