On Winners, Losers, and Tribalism

“This means conservatives are actually quite willing to engage in radical social change, but only if they feel that it is necessary to counter efforts by the Left to destroy these hierarchies.”

Introduction: A History of Losers

Over the past two centuries we have come to witness the sociolinguistic transformations of the word “winner” and its less-favored antonym, “loser.” In the aftermath of the Second World War, Europe and America found that power and profits were increasingly dependent not simply on the production of goods but also on the constant regeneration of consumer desires. To sustain its survival, this new economic order required the development of a new socio-cultural formation, which championed the cause of commodity consumption. As a result, people were judged by their capacity for consumption, their standard of living, and their lifestyle as much as by their capacity for production. Subsequently, the rise of more positive social responses to young people in the early 1960’s was derived from a further extension of the market economy in American cultural life. The “winner” image, mapped out as the ethos of hedonistic materialism along with a “Playboy” attitude, was then marketed as a quintessential drive for this social transformation.

The counterculture movement in 1960-70’s America, however, saw a huge surge of protest from historically marginalized groups, openly questioning the archetypes of success that were being propagated in the service of boosting national confidence and morale. This “winner” image was criticized heavily by prominent figures of the time, from Malcolm X to the Beatles to Che Guevara, who highlighted the vast number of “losers” being created in order for this ideologically conservative, heteronormative, white-male image to be a “winner.” Subsequently, the term “loser” began to change its social currency. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, the Kurt Cobain image of disenfranchised anger, Beck’s “Loser,” and Outkast’s colorful embrace of all things different reflected the social landscape of what was considered acceptable or worthy of praise. The outcast or “loser” became as appealing as it was rebellious.

In the past couple of years, however, the rhetoric of “winning” has made a stark re-emergence. Donald Trump’s assertion that America is “going to win so much you may even get tired of winning” or Richard Spencer’s glee at “so much winning” after the election reflect an interesting juxtaposition of how these individuals self-identify. Namely, that they are the ones who are now marginal, or outsiders, who have been silenced for a very long time—and are now on their way to making a comeback. The framework and style of communication portrayed by postmodern conservatives—namely that of competition—rests upon this very idea: a need to “win” again by preserving tradition and values in the face of sinister, omnipresent liberal adversity.