Congratulations, neo-Nazis, quasi-Nazis and panderers-to-Nazis: You’ve managed to catapult your obsession with “cuckolding” into semi-mainstream political discourse.
It’s no secret that those on the far right in the US can’t stop talking about “cuckolding.” Some have been using “cuck” as a handy insult for any man they don’t like; others have concocted weird paranoid fantasies about black men “cuckolding” white men and the white race, literally and symbolically. It’s a ridiculous mixture of racism and misogyny.
And until recently, it was mostly confined to the neo-Nazis and “dark enlightenment” sorts. A couple of months back, you may recall, the cuck-callers tried ineffectually to torpedo a Nickelodeon show about a high school cheerleader-turned-quarterback for supposedly “promoting anti-white (and consequently pro-black (heh)) race cucking.”
That strange crusade never caught on but the same gang of far-right cuck-callers has hit the big time with “cuckservative,” a handy if ill-defined epithet for conservatives who aren’t conservative blatantly racist enough for the anti-“cultural Marxist” crowd.
Over the last couple of weeks, the “cuckservative” meme has blown up on Twitter, and ignited a miniature civil war on the right online. Right-wing and far-right “journalists” and bloggers, from Erick Erickson at Red State to Milo Yiannopoulos at Breitbart to Andrew Anglin at the Daily Stormer, have been busily churning out, er, thinkpieces on the subject. (Erickson, who’s been himself labeled a “cuckservative,” hates the meme; Yiannopoulos and Anglin love it.) Even the Washington Post has weighed in on the subject.
But if you want to understand what exactly this meme is all about you don’t need to wade into that flood of verbiage; all you have to do is to take a look at the #cuckservative hashtag on Twitter, where people are a bit more, well, succinct in expressing their thoughts on the matter. Oh, and they’re also racist as hell.
Let’s take a look.
https://twitter.com/Thug_Violence/status/626193948948586500
https://twitter.com/voxday/status/625642728760692737
https://twitter.com/MathFaithWorks/status/627947889394876416
https://twitter.com/nt955/status/624774918282973184
@horatio_iii Mommy Professor says it`s OK to hate White folks and America #DonaldTrump #Cuckservative #WhiteGenocide pic.twitter.com/NSw0LvXnBf
— RainbowCh1ldren (@RainbowCh1ldren) August 2, 2015
(All the slogans in this meme are literal neo-Nazi talking points.)
https://twitter.com/GOP__Patriot/status/627875524879081472
Dad likes to take me to sleepovers at his friends house. They have long noses, bushy beards, and funny looking hats. #Cuckservative
— Omar Searcy (@Searcysbull) August 2, 2015
https://twitter.com/Grimreaper8814/status/627943246384250883
https://twitter.com/Flatland_USA/status/627920343475183616
https://twitter.com/pinga_leche/status/627954682590269440
https://twitter.com/DarklyEnlighten/status/627979326433013760
https://twitter.com/LinuxL3wis/status/627833679801401344
Despite all this — and these Tweets are actually fairly typical for the #cuckservative hashtag — there are those who insist that there’s nothing racist — honest! — about the #cuckservative meme.
https://twitter.com/voxday/status/627077724700573696
And there are some slightly-less-far-right conservatives who’ve been trying to ignore the racism and recast the word as a handy put-down of “moderate” conservatives. Trouble is, most of the cuck-callers seem to think that pretty much all right-wing politicians and media personalities are “cucks.”
Their list of supposed “moderates” ranges from Jeb Bush …
… to Ted Cruz …
… to Bill O’Reilly …
… to Glenn Beck.
Indeed, the only big-name politician (aside from the late Adolf Hitler) that any of the cuck-callers seem to actually like is Donald Trump. (Well, Putin, too, but he’s not running for President over here.)
But that may change now that Trump has fired an aide for making a racist Tweet.
The #cuckservative meme may be too ridiculous, and too suffused with open racism, to survive for all that long in mainstream conservative circles. But there certainly a lot of people out there who want to keep this mishegoss going as long as they possibly can.
Especially this guy.
https://twitter.com/Unlucky_Devil/status/625849991379062784
The little ball gag is a nice touch.
—
Please read the recently revised COMMENTS POLICY before commenting.
EDIT: Minor fixes.
Too many cucks spoil the broth.
I love the one picture that’s all out on saying jews are importing foreigners because they’re at war with white people, but felt the need to self-censor the word “fuckers.”
@Orion
Well, that helped, thanks!
It takes a lot to make a poo
Some bigotry and racism too
Too many cucks
Too many cucks
Too maaaaany cucks
Wow to all those racist tweets. Thanks Obama!!
The GOP Patriot guy is very interesting. So I guess Republicans are really the party of open racists now. But but but Robert Byrd.
Hilariously enough, the crazies over at sluthate.com came up with this word.
http://sluthate.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=76736
@Janet,
Please refer to the comment policy regarding the use of the word ‘crazy’, thank you.
I think it’s wonderful that all these people are attempting to influence the Republican choice for presidential candidate by pointing out all the ones who are too moderate to receive their vote. (Is there anyone left in the clown car at this point for them to vote for?) I wonder what happens if they get their wish for a candidate who is suitably hard-line racist to meet their demands, and then discover their candidate is effectively unable to be elected, because the vast majority of people in the USA don’t want to have a bar of them?
The reason I don’t take Trumpery very seriously is that he’s playing to the racist base so vigorously that there’s no way for him to come back close enough to the center to have a serious chance of being elected. He certainly knows that, but he likes playing his ego-driven role too much to use any judgment. And there is no question that what he has done and said so far has damaged the chances of any Republican getting elected. He’s encouraging the racist right to flex their muscles, and that might make it necessary for ANY GOPer to move too far in that direction. If he sets off a competition to see who can be the most racist, it won’t end well for the Republican’ts.
The worst case for the GOP is that he gets enough delegates to keep anyone from getting to 50.01%, and thus ends up in a position to in effect choose the actual candidate. Imagine the optics of that situation.; I’ve just ordered several cases of popcorn.
The worst case for the GOP is that Trump wins the primary. I have a bet going that he will do exactly that. Naturally, not being a fan of the GOP, I hope this happens; it’ll turn the inevitable Clinton landslide into a shut-out (or might even result in Sanders becoming president.)
The real issue here seems to me to be that the Republican Party faithful have forgotten that politics is a game of rude and unnatural compromises, and have taken refuge in ideological purity instead. The inevitable result is that the party becomes a machine designed not to win allies but to alienate them, and becomes entirely unelectable. This is a problem for two reasons:
a) They end up doing hateful, spiteful things in order to play to their supporters.
b) America becomes an effective one-party state, meaning that Democratic leaders can’t be effectively held to account for things they do that are bad (for example, Obama’s drone program or the extreme delay in closing down Guantanamo Bay.)
We are already at a point where right-wing political culture is centred around fruitless gestures of defiance, in which eventual defeat is inevitable and the focus is on how long you forestall it or how good you look while doing it. It’s a culture which is focused on producing not victors but martyrs. This is not the behaviour of a rational polity; more dangerously, this is not the behaviour of people who can be reasoned with. As demographics tilt the field even further against the party faithful and isolate the hardcore even further, this is probably going to intensify.
The best-case scenario for the world is probably that the Republican Party shrinks to a tiny, hateful rump within the ex-confederacy, which means that the Democratic Party doesn’t have to keep pretending that they like one another and can schism into centrist and progressive wings (Clinton and Sanders, if you will.) Let’s hope that happens.
The worst-case scenario is that as the right hardens and shrinks, it turns to overt and regular political violence as part of the culture of martyrdom. If the worst comes to pass, then one day Dylann Roof may be seen as a mainstream Republican figure.
No, it’s most certainly not: the attitude to socio-economic inequality is now, as it has been for the past century and more, the key left/right difference, and inequality is growing leaps and bounds in most countries – or rather, being deliberately pushed up by the right. Of course the right want people to think the distinction is “meaningless”, and you seem to have fallen for their lies. In the UK, have you not noticed that an actual socialist is the frontrunner in the Labour leadership contest? That the SNP slaughtered Labour in Scotland by running a campaign opposing austerity and Trident, while the Green Party quadrupled its vote UK-wide doing the same? Going beyond the UK: Bernie Sanders is drawing crowds bigger than any other candidate in the USA by focusing precisely on economic inequality. Then we have Syriza, Podemos, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador…
This complacency is terribly dangerous. What if Trump (or someone who spouts the same racist filth and fully believes it) gets the nomination, then there’s a financial crash or major terrorist attack shortly before the election? Remember that Obama was at best neck-and-neck with McCain in 2008 before the crash of that year.
@ Nick
Well, what I was actually referring to was the fluidity of party politics now where the Tories adopt policies that seem more akin to old Labour (equal marriage; civil liberties) and Labour (post clause 4) moved to the Tories ground.
As to the actual political ground; it’s quite complicated. There’s a big schism in Labour as to whether they weren’t left enough (hence the SNP) or whether they need to move more right (adopting the Welfare Bill). Corbyn is doing well but there are lots of reasons for that (he’s seen as ‘authentic’; he has a personality (the rest of the runners are non entities). Labour is probably a spent force now for the next few election cycles though so their internal politics is probably an irrelevance.
The SNP vote in Scotland is probably as much to do with the stich up over the referendum than their policies. They are also very pro business (look at their corporation tax policies etc).
Party politics isn’t something I’m particularly bothered with. I have friends who are MPs in all 3 main English parties. I think generally politicians do try to do their best; but the system is inherently corrupting; it just causes them to become out of touch. They all turn into policy wonks. Having said that, I don’t think Ed Milliband was going to hand over the keys of the country to the Soviets (I quite liked him) and I don’t think IDS is planning to machine gun people on benefits.
I don’t buy the old ‘false consciousness’ narrative. In fact it’s interesting that amongst my Labour friends one of the things their analysis shows as to why they did so badly is that they were seen as too dismissive of people. There was too much ‘if you don’t agree with us it’s because you’ve been brainwashed by Murdoch or you’re nasty’. People were put off by the arrogance and elitism. When looked at in isolation a lot of Labour policies were popular but the party wasn’t. It’s something they need to work on.
Having said all that I’m hoping Corbyn wins. There’ll at least be an opposition and it can be a real field test as to whether England (as opposed to Scotland) actually does want a left wing government.
It *is* worth worrying about Trump a little (no more though, not at this early stage). But it is also worth remembering that, four years ago, we were all worried about Michele Bachmann becoming President.
Imo, the best case scenario (and worst case for the Republicans) is that trump ends up losing the primaries by a small margin and decides to run as an independent, thus splitting the conservative vote between himself and the Republican candidate.
But I’m a Canadian, so my grasp on American politics is tenuous at best.
@ Alan Robertshaw – I didn’t know about the LD leader, though, after looking him up, I think we’d welcome that sort of anti-gay person over here as a great improvement over our homegrown sort.
It calls to mind the story *Rumpole and the Rights of Man* in which Rumpole looks forward to winning a murder case for a defendant of colour being tried by a racist judge, only for the judge to play the dirtiest trick in the book and give the defendant a fair trial. That the judge withheld his prejudice (later confirmed in a speech at the Rugby Club) from the jury is the basis for the conviction’s being overturned on appeal in Strasbourg. In the end, after the victory turns out to have a sour flavour, the only consolation is that Rumpole has had the opportunity to drink some Tokay d’Alsace, a wine which, unusually in his experience, tasted of grapes.
@ DJG
Is that the story that contains my favourite Rumpole line “So long as the judge is a Jamaican teenager with previous convictions, we have every chance”?
As an aside I was a member of John Mortimer’s chambers; which were the basis for the fictional chambers in the books. I’ve had the surreal experience of reading a passage from a book describing the room that I was reading the book in.
The thing about trump is that when 538 average 7 national polls, they found that 43% of Republicans have a negative opinion of Trump. He has 20% of the Republican vote in national polls. Pundits thought that it would crash, and it hasn’t crashed, so we can probably assume he’s keeping that 20%. His problem is that there’s only 37% left who don’t hate him, which makes it really hard for me to imagine how he makes it to 50.
When 538 combined 1st choice polls with favorable/unfavorable, Walker came out currently ahead by a mile. He’s already got a decent 1st-choice vote (14%), more than half of Republicans like him, and very of them hate him. Jeb’s 1st choice and favorables are almost as good, but he has twice the unfavorable Walker has.
@ Alan – Now that must have been quite the experience!
Your line has an earlier feel to it; Jamaican teenagers have a feel of the Featherstone era. This story may be one of the early ones from the late period when he looked to the Middle East and Asia. It’s in the collection with the first story told by Hilda and the story in which Claude Erskine Brown has a fat pupil.
Never quite got that meta, but I have read a passage from a book describing a chase through a park that I had been walking through the previous day. (Charles de Lint’s Jack the Giant-Killer, while I was living in Ottawa.)
I can one-up that: Back in high school, I read a book set in a semi-fictionalised version of my high school that also used the logo of my middle school (which was in a completely different state). The same author also wrote a book set in the area I grew up in about a kid who adopted orphaned pelican chicks at the same age I adopted an injured pelican chick.
I swear I’m not making a word of this up.
Or… Possibly middle school and other middle school. I don’t know what’s considered middle school, we don’t have that here. =P
@ SFHC
Er, have you considered the possibility the author was stalking you?
@Alan
HAH. Felt like it at times. o_O But nope, they were written before I was born.