Tag: Capitalism

The Milk Mustache Is Back: Trump, RFK Jr., and the Return of White Power Milk

Corey Wrenn, PhDLeave a comment

 

By Vasile Stănescu

When the White House posted “Make Whole Milk Great Again” beside an image of Donald Trump, it appeared to be another skirmish in an ongoing debate over dietary guidelines. In fact, it drew on a much older political tradition: the use of animal product consumption as a symbolic marker of whiteness, masculinity, and national belonging.

The phrase “Make Whole Milk Great Again” isn’t coincidental. It echoes the same cultural anxieties that, over a hundred years ago, led white working-class Americans to assert their consumption of animal products as a “privilege of white citizenship” (DuPuis, 2002). Then, as now, economic insecurity and immigration fears converged on the dinner plate.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as Chinese immigration increased, milk became weaponized. The National Dairy Council proclaimed that “people who have achieved” were those who consumed “liberal amounts of milk” (Olsen, 1920). Agricultural histories celebrated “Aryans” as “the heaviest drinkers of milk,” suggesting this “may in part account for the quick and high development of this division of human beings” (Hedrick, 1933). Even Herbert Hoover proclaimed in 1920: “The white race cannot survive without dairy products” (Riverside Daily Press, 1920, p. 2). This wasn’t fringe pseudoscience. It was mainstream dietary racism, positioning animal products, and milk in particular, as proof of white superiority (Freeman, 2013; Stănescu, 2016). Against Chinese immigrants portrayed as “effeminate rice eaters,” the right to consume animal products became defined as a right of white male citizenship. The factory farm system, emerging in the 1920s and 1930s, made meat and dairy ever more available and affordable; if eating animals equaled wealth, then cheaper animal products made people feel richer even as their real wages stagnated. Under “slaughterhouse capitalism”, animals were exploited more so that human workers could steadily be exploited more (Stănescu, 2025).

Milk’s literal whiteness also makes it a perfect vessel for white supremacist ideology: a commodity fetish embodying purity, cleanliness, and racial identity. Film directors understand this iconography. In Get Out, a white woman’s glass of milk reveals her commitment to white supremacy. As Jordan Peele explained, there’s “something kind of horrific about milk” as an image (Yamato, 2017). Like Ivory soap in the colonial era, which McClintock (1995) identified as embodying the “civilizing mission,” milk became a visual representation of the fantasy of racial whiteness itself.

Fast forward to 2017: the alt-right storms an art installation drinking milk, Richard Spencer tweets “I’m very tolerant…lactose tolerant!”, and neo-Nazis type “Heil Milk” across the internet (Freeman, 2017; Nagesh, 2017; Swerdloff, 2017). They’re drawing on contemporary academic research about lactose tolerance and race (research published in venues like The Economist and PBS) to justify the same old supremacist ideology in new scientific clothing (Cook, 2015a, 2015b; Harmon, 2018; Stănescu, 2018).

RFK Jr.’s dietary rhetoric revives these patterns. When economic anxiety rises and demographic change accelerates, we witness the same proxy battle: the reassertion of animal product consumption as a marker of white masculinity and citizenship. The alt-right’s favorite insult, “soy boy,” is simply an updated version of the 19th century’s “effeminate rice eater” (Adams, 1990/2015; Sommer, 2017; Stănescu, 2016).

The milk mustache is back. As economic instability deepens and demographic change accelerates, we can expect to see more performative acts of meat and dairy consumption. Now, as before, these are public rituals designed to assert whiteness, masculinity, and citizenship through the fantasy that animal consumption equals wealth, status, and national belonging. Understanding this history reveals that challenging animal agriculture isn’t only about animals. It’s about dismantling the systems of oppression that harm us all.

 

References

Adams, C. J. (2015). The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory (25th anniversary ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. (Original work published 1990)

Cook, J. (2015a, March 28). No use crying: The ability to digest milk may explain how Europe got rich. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2015/03/28/no-use-crying

Cook, J. (2015b, December 3). Got milk? How lactose tolerance influenced economic development. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/got-milk-lactose-tolerance-influenced-economic-development

DuPuis, E. M. (2002). Nature’s perfect food: How milk became America’s drink. New York University Press.

Freeman, A. (2013). The unbearable whiteness of milk: Food oppression and the USDA. U.C. Irvine Law Review, 3(4), 1251–1279.

Freeman, A. (2017, August 30). Milk, a symbol of neo-Nazi hate. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/milk-a-symbol-of-neo-nazi-hate-83292

Harmon, A. (2018, October 17). Why white supremacists are chugging milk (and why geneticists are alarmed). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-supremacists-science-dna.html

Hedrick, U. P. (1933). A history of agriculture in the State of New York. New York State Agricultural Society.

McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge.

Nagesh, A. (2017, February 21). Secret Nazi code kept hidden by “milk” and “vegan agenda.” Metro. https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/21/secret-nazi-code-kept-hidden-by-milk-and-vegan-agenda-6463079/

Olsen, H. P. (1920). The milk dealer. The National Journal for the City Milk Trade, 10(1).

Riverside Daily Press. (1920, February 5). XXXV(31), p. 2. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=RDP19200205.2.97

Sommer, W. (2017). How “soy boy” became the far right’s favorite new insult. Medium. https://medium.com/@willsommer/how-soy-boy-became-the-far-rights-favorite-new-insult-e2e988d365c7

Stănescu, V. (2016). The whopper virgins: Hamburgers, gender, and xenophobia. In A. Potts (Ed.), Meat culture (pp. 90–108). Brill.

Stănescu, V. (2018). ‘White power milk’: Milk, dietary racism, and the ‘alt-right.’ Animal Studies Journal, 7(2), 103–128.

Stănescu, V. (2025, October 6). Slaughterhouse capitalism. Current Affairs. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-industrial-slaughter-became-the-blueprint-for-modern-capitalism

Swerdloff, A. (2017, February 21). Got milk? Neo-Nazi trolls sure as hell do. VICE. https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/kbka39/got-milk-neo-nazi-trolls-sure-as-hell-do

Yamato, J. (2017, March 1). Jordan Peele explains Get Out’s creepy milk scene, ponders the recent link between dairy and hate. Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-get-out-milk-horror-jordan-peele-allison-williams-20170301-story.html

 

What Sociology Can Tell Us about Empathy for Animals

Corey Wrenn, PhDLeave a comment
Photo Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD
University of Kent

Empathy for Animals is a Core Human Value

Humans across the globe share their homes with dogs, cats, rodents, and other animals. We call them companions, pets, or even family members. Thousands of pounds are invested in these animals with regard to food, treats, toys, clothing, kennels, healthcare, and even birthdays and funeral services. Clearly humans deeply care about other animals. At our core, we have empathy for animals other than ourselves.

Exploitative Economies Distort Our Empathy for Animals

So why do so many humans stop short of extending this compassion to animals categorized as food, clothing, or labour? Sociology offers a variety of explanations according to theoretical perspectives. Many sociologists, however, point to the economic structure of a society and the commodification of nonhuman animals. David Nibert has argued that our switch to a hunting economy not only created a society newly structured around the oppression of animals (speciesism) but it also created a society divided by gender. The transition to agriculture entrenched speciesism further with the advent of domestication. This also introduced class division since agriculture allowed for surplus goods (and unequal distribution).

By the late 1500s, early capitalism and colonial expansion spread and deepened speciesism across the globe (and, in doing so, introduced racial division as well). Today, in late-stage capitalism, speciesism (animal agriculture in particular) is more intensive than ever. It is rapidly normalizing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other previously colonized spaces as a result of Western coercion. These are regions where plant-based consumption was once normative. The loss of traditional foodways is not only harmful for nonhuman animals identified as “food,” but the global poor identified as their consumers. Social stratification, in other words, is rooted in the adoption of speciesism as a primary economy both past and present.

Distorted Empathy for Animals Includes Humans, Too

Notice how human oppression codeveloped with animal oppression. This intersectionality is key to the sociological understanding of speciesism. Species, race, class, gender, and other social categories are economically functional. They ensure that unpleasant jobs will be filled and that labour may be exploited for low cost (or for none at all). These categories also represent social difference and tend to facilitate conflict and discourage cooperation. For sociologists, this tendency is politically relevant. A divided society, after all, is more easily manipulated by the dominant class in support of its own interests.

The most fundamental social division is that between humans and other animals. It is this animalization which separates those who are marginalized from those who are centered in society with regard to social recognition and allocation of resources. Women are animalized, people of color are animalized, humans with disabilities are animalized, homosexual people are animalized, ethnic minorities are animalized, and non-binary and trans humans are animalized. Even nonhuman animals themselves are animalized.

This is because “animal” is a social category imbrued with symbolic meaning. Just like race really has more to do with power, prestige, and access to resources than it does with one’s actual skin color, species is also not so much about one’s biological makeup (i.e. if one has hands or hooves, skin or scales). All groups, whether human or nonhuman, that are labeled “animal” are described as physically and cognitively inferior to the dominant class and can be denied rights accordingly.

Unteaching Empathy

True, nonhuman and human animals are indeed biologically different. But there are many more commonalities between the two groups. Why do we emphasize difference over sameness? I have described a society that is fundamentally in conflict. In order to maintain such a volatile system, powerful ideologies must be introduced and enforced through institutions and socialization. Psychologists point to a variety of cognitive and emotional mechanisms for managing the discomfort humans feel when faced with contradictions in their empathy toward other animals. Sociologists, however, are interested in how our empathy for some animals and our lack of empathy for others is learned (or, more accurately, is taught).

We are taught by our parents that some animals are for petting, some animals are for admiring, some are pests we should kill, and others are food we should eat. Doctors (who generally lack nutritional training) teach us that eating animals and drinking nonhuman breastmilk is good for us. We are taught by our teachers, museums, and zoos that nonhuman animals are ours to exploit. Mainstream media (which long since converged in the 1990s under the ownership of a handful of powerful billionaires) programs us that animals are objects and our using them is good for the economy. We’re being taught these lessons from childhood throughout our life course.

Reclaiming Empathy

Fortunately, if speciesism is something that is learned, that means it is something which can be unlearned. Sociologists are also interested in how social change happens and how social justice can be achieved in a society that is fundamentally unequal. Although the system may be rigged against us (and nonhuman animals), individuals can resist the erosion of our empathy by choosing food, clothing, and entertainment which does not harm other animals. Individuals can also work to create a more inclusive, peaceful world by getting active in our communities and putting pressure on policy-makers. It is possible to reclaim our empathy for animals.