Saying the quiet part loud: Liberalism, racialization, and benign hegemony legitimation narratives

Recent rhetoric raises fresh questions about liberalism, racialization, and legitimation in US foreign policy. Policymakers and scholars have praised the United States for externalizing liberal values and binding itself within a multilateral ‘liberal international order’, while critics have condemned it as frequently unilateral and hypocritical. Both camps predict broad consistency in the resonance (or lack thereof) of US benign hegemony claims, defying more complex real-world patterns. This article reconceptualizes benign hegemony as a legitimation narrative portraying the hegemon as nonthreatening, directing inquiry toward its resonance rather than as a systemic characteristic. Building on growing literature on foreign policy narratives and the intertwined histories of liberalism and racialization, it examines how three mechanisms—exclusionary identity politics, a civilizing mission, and dehumanization—shape the diverging resonance of US benign hegemony narratives. Its findings are particularly relevant as China weaves narratives of a benign rise and the second Trump administration says the quiet part loud.