By David Futrelle
“Degenerate” was a favorite term of opprobrium for the Nazis, who used it to vilify everything in the culture that made them uneasy, from modern art to jazz music — all of which, naturally, they blamed on the Jews.
This ugly term, with all of its historical baggage, has been making a bit of a comeback in recent years, in large part due to the revival of Nazi-style bigotry associated with the alt-right and similar movements. If you’re unfortunate enough to get into an argument with a far-right culture warrior online, it’s only a matter of time before they call you a degenerate.
I thought it might be, well, revealing, to see exactly who and what these right-wing trolls consider degenerate these days. Scrolling through search results on Twitter, I found no shortage of tweets containing some version of the word “degenerate” — some with targets that looked oh-so-similar to the rhetoric of the original Nazis, alongside some that, well, took me a little by surprise.
Here are the Top 20 Things That Are Degenerate This Week, according to some of the worst people on the internet.
Halloween:
People trolling the #NoNutNovember hashtag:
Blow jobs:
Jews (but of course)
“Talmudic Jew morality”
Somehow also non-Jews:
Cuckold meme-makers:
“Bolshevik quota feminist rats”
People who don’t believe in God except for me:
Margaret Sanger and possibly the rest of the world’s women
The Daily Telegraph?
Deadspin?
“Race mixing”
The “Degeneracy Industry: (but of course):
The “Globo-Homo Agenda”
Drag queens reading stories to children at the library:
“F*gs”
The “delusional, perverted, baby-murdering, Christian-hating, economy-destroying, eco-terrorist, Islamic-supremest, Globalist far-left Liberal Party of Canada.”
The entire “human homo-sapiens specie”
Minus the wholesome white women:
If the alternative to degeneracy is to hang out with these people, I’m definitely sticking with the degenerates.
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I can believe there are men who don’t like blow jobs – everybody’s different, after all – but believing that you have to be a porn addict to enjoy a blow job?
Um.
Dammit, they’re onto us! They’ve found our secret plan. I’ll be shredding documents if anyone needs me. /s
Gaaaaaah.
(Elizabeth Bathory? Really?)
The irony of someone going by Elizabeth Báthory lecturing others about morality…
What if you’re an adult Christian and you have children who are too young to go trick-or-treating on their own? Do you have to see if you can find a non-Christian to take them around? Are they out of luck?
What if children come to your door asking for candy? Must you refuse? Can you ask your own children to give the candy out for you, since they are still young enough to celebrate the holiday?
okay, first of all: Bolshevik Quota Feminist Rats is such a good band name. I picture a percussion-heavy riot grrl outfit. First single: Wholesome White Women. A tongue-in-cheek story song about a vigilante group of PTA moms (part of the chorus explains that, no, they’re not all white, but it’s hard to see under the masks and gloves). Drag Queen Library Hour is the B-side and has a muddy disco backing track… or maybe some city pop St Pepsi-style old distorted commercial sampling.
Second of all: Yikes. Lots of goofy, bad takes made by exhausting, unhappy people. I wonder what it must be like to be so self-absorbed to think all these other people in the world have sex or exist to hurt you. I can’t get over the phrasing of “a practicing LGBT.”
Hallowe’en. The eve of All Hallows’ Day, the Christian feast of All Saints. Pretty sure it’s okay for Christians to celebrate it. Then again, PJW has never been one to know what the fuck he’s talking about.
@Viscaria
The whole Christians not doing Halloween reminds me of Chick Tracts. Jack Chick was opposed to celebrating Halloween, but he wanted adults to pass out candy with his hateful evangelical comic books attached to disperse his message. As usual with fundamentalist types, spreading their message is more important than following the rules.
Wow this just makes me feel sad
Nagalfar, there was a house in the neighborhood when I was a kid that handed out chick tracts. I had a decent collection. They were too cheap to attach any candy though.
I was a sheltered kid so those tracts were how I first learned about swinging, bsdm, drag, and a number of other things I wasn’t supposed to know about. Own goal, really.
Didn’t Margaret Sanger support eugenics?
@Citerior Motive
She did. My guess is the neo-Nazis don’t know this, or thought she was insufficiently antisemitic. Or they don’t like the possibility of white fetuses being aborted.
I guess we know who didn’t get invited to the party with all the ladies in the sexy whatever costumes, and is all pissy about it. Sucks to be you, Paulie.
After reading those Tweets; I just wanted to go turn on my Mp3 player, and listen to some1970’s smooth rock. That always makes me feel a little bit human.
Very tolerant for 2 decades? I call bullshit.
@ Citerior Motive
Sadly, so did Marie Stopes (contraception pioneer on this side of the Pond) we do all need to acknowledge that people who do admirable work sometimes give headroom to some pretty unsound ideas.
“Talmudic” == “making an argument I can’t refute”
I always figured the objection to celebrating Halloween among American evangelicals was rooted in good, old-fashioned anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigotry
After reading those, I’d like to introduce rationing of adjectives.
Well, I guess Noam Chomsky doesn’t get quite the uncritical reception some think he des-
Whoa whoa whoa, you think those are intellectuals? I mean, Richard fucking Spencer?
My favourite is the one that says that ‘straight, non-fetishistic’ men don’t buy things. As if there’s not literally hundreds of things that straight men have claimed and won’t let anyone share.
@EmpressPenguin
That’s the one that jumped out at me too! I have noticed that some blokes can completely disattach their own spending from their ideas of consumerism because it is (in their eyes) Sensible Man Spending rather than Silly Woman Spending.
Apologies for the very stereotypical example (its just one I’ve happened to observe) but like the kind of guys who have a interest in gadgetry or video games and spend a shit ton on accessories and updates and add-ons. But this is logical, manly spending – legitimate and justifiable! Women buying anything, on the other hand, is mindless materialism that’s burning the planet alive.
Fun fact: We’ve been listening to The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 – and all this stuff was conspiracy du jour over a 100 years ago – that “the Jews” are driving feminism and degeneracy and weakness in men.
These folks should get a new conspiracy. It would be so dull if it weren’t so dangerous.
Another fun fact: Jewish women actually did drive feminism in 1900s /1910s Hungary, because they made up a substantial (though I assume still minority) number of the professional, middle-class women in Budapest.
@Cat Mara
It likely is rooted there. A lot of evangelicals don’t see Catholics as Christians.
@Crip Dyke: his idea of “tolerant” was probably “Well, I didn’t beat them up even if they deserved it! Now they’re getting all uppity!”
“I tolerated homosexuals so long as I never had to see them, hear them, or think about them.”
If degeneracy is the plague, then these alt-right rants are the useless strings of onions worn around the neck to ward it off. They don’t do any good, they’re rooted in superstition and bad science, and it makes them objectionable to others.