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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And it makes them cry. They’d be so much happier if they could only find their way to a different, less fear-dominated worldview.
The Chick Tract thing makes me laugh, I think he might have been an early example of a professional troll. We used to get them given to us in the Plymouth Brethren.
The whole second season of Riverdale was basically Jack Chick’s ‘Dark Dungeons’ comic condemning D&D for being a demonic cult.
Way to spin that shit.
Love Riverdale by the way.
@Surplus
Like this?
There’s only one thing I consider “degenerate” and that’s Daylight fucking Savings Time. Sure, “fall back” means we get an “extra hour” of sleep, but it really fucks me up something fierce. The light is all messed up and the regular time when you’re supposed to feel like going to bed is an hour earlier than usual. Now I’m spending Monday morning with a splitting headache.
The eastern seaboard really needs to get rid of this nonsense.
Is Halloween supposed to be too Satanic for Christians or too dorky for adults? Or both, if that’s even possible?
If it’s Satanic, it’s hardly safe for Christian children either. If it’s just dorky, it’s hardly less dorky for non-Christian adults.
@Katamount
What really messes with my head is the spring forward part of DST. In my home state of Massachusetts, there is a movement to get rid of daylight savings time and put New England in the Atlantic Time Zone (UTC-4:00) with Puerto Rico and the maritime provinces. I would like to get rid of DST, but I would not like to be in the Atlantic time zone, seeing as that would mean that the sun would rise around 8 AM in the winter and doesn’t make sense with where MA is geographically.
Everything they don’t like is an Abomination unto Nuggan and perversions up with which they will not put!
Thought this might interest some of you:
http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/yes-you-can-catch-insanity
Apparently, at least sometimes psychiatric problems are the result of low-grade ongoing strep infections …
@Virgin Mary:
I’ve never played any RPGs, but I’ve seen a lot of comments on Tumblr along the lines of:
(Chick Tract): There is a “Dungeon Master.” His word is law and the player have to obey, even if he orders them to kill themselves for real when their character in the game dies.
(Actual DMs): Crying in frustration because the players are all ignoring the elaborate plot set up for them, and are instead investigating a completely ordinary rock that was mentioned in the description of a scene and wasn’t supposed to be important.
A chap in around 1810 wrote a book about Ireland.
He claimed that the word Samhain derived from Bal Sam – Lord Death. A deity unknown to history, and certainly to the Celts.
Samhain actually means “summer’s end” and was a time of frolics, fun, and bonfires.
An awful lot of Evangelical Christians seem to have believed him.
@Bluecat Man, I had a lot of ‘Lord Sam Hane, Lord of DEATH!!!!’ garbage thrown at me when I was a practicing Wiccan. I of course was going ‘whaaaaaa?????’ *scratches head*
My husband is really good at pretending then if he doesn’t actually like blow jobs. That’s like his main request of sexual stuff
Though I was also super shocked when he told me he doesn’t like it when I cup his cheek when I kiss him. He told me that after like over a year of me kissing him like that and never led on that he doesn’t like it. Just doesn’t like it when someone touches his faces. Reminds him of when his face used to get grabbed to make him look at something as a child when he couldn’t do anything about it but he also didn’t want to discourage me from kissing him lol.
The “male supremacists” are talking about degeneracy. They claim it is misandry if someone doesn’t like their sexual choices and then they go on with their conspiracy theories about how “oppressed” they are:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProMaleCollective/comments/da9e48/degeneracy_the_concern_of_the_sexually_frustrated/
https://promalecollective.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/144/
Wow, just wow!!!
@Moon Custafer:
I maintain that “The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo” is one of the greatest things ever written about FRPG gamers.
My spouse still tells the tale of Cruddo the Hobbit. He (spouse) wasn’t even involved in the campaign, he was in a long movie-theatre lineup in the early ‘eighties and couldn’t help overhearing the players behind him. What he heard inspired him to song:
Cruddo, Cruddo the Hobbit, born to crash and burn;
Cruddo, Cruddo the Hobbit died on his very first turn.
The minute that poor Cruddo departed from this life,
That little &*%$! had more uses than a Swiss army knife…
“We take Cruddo’s entrails, braid them into ropes and use them to swing across the rift.”
“NO. There is nothing left of Cruddo at this point. Let poor Cruddo rest in peace!”
@Lumipuna
I suspect what he means is that women shouldn’t go out in short dresses.
The Liberal Party of Canada is far-left? Hunh? (*tilt*) How far askew does your political perspective have to be to think that? What does he think of the NDP, then?
Really, the Liberal party is pretty much the definition of Status Quo here, and that is their main problem. At least they’ve been making noises towards and occasional actual steps leftward over time, but they tend to think of themselves as the ‘natural ruling party’ way too much, and rest on their laurels. Most of their problem in the prairies is that they don’t have to win in the prairies to win the federal elections, and their rather obvious lack of caring has polarized things. And the occasional ham-fisted attempts at getting support in Alberta (like the pipeline) often end up making things worse.
And yeah, Chick Tracts can be amusing until you realize that Jack Chick took all that entirely seriously. The couple who’d spent their time and money building schools for distant villages went to Hell because they didn’t believe the ‘right’ way, while the murderer who found God in prison and said the magic words before he was put to death went to Heaven. It was an entire belief system based on being able to smugly stand by and do nothing aside from tut-tut people.
@Jenora Feuer
It’s like Alex Jones: it’s somewhat fun to watch at first for the absurdity, then depressing when you realize he actually believes what he’s saying*. The other problem with Chick Tracts is how militantly anti-Catholic, antisemitic, and homophobic they are.
*At least I’m pretty sure Alex Jones believes himself.
No DST nonsense in Saskatchewan. Of course having the time zone divider go across the middle of the province complicates things. So, which neighbour do you want to sync up with, Alberta or Manitoba?
As far as eugenics goes before WW2 it was an equal opportunity mistake. Left wingers, right wingers, centrists, the religious, the non-religious, all had their eugenics proponents.
@Naglfar:
And racist, and misogynistic, and utterly ahistorical in their understanding of things… really, listing what is right about Chick Tracts would be a much shorter list.
As for Alex Jones, I have no idea how much he actually believes, and I’m not sure he does either. He seems to exist for the rant, and the details of what he’s ranting about don’t actually matter so much as the state of perpetual indignation.
@Jenora Feuer
I know, I was just trying make a shorter list. Sorry if I left those things out. Like you mentioned, it would be hard to list all the problems.
I can’t think of anything for that list.
@Naglfar:
They accurately describe the set of beliefs of a disturbingly large number of people.
@Jenora Feuer
Sadly, I see that there are a lot of people who do hold those views. And unfortunately they have a tendency to find their way into positions of power.
Humans are not a specie. We’re organisms, not coins. Also, since when is Richard Spencer an intellectual?
The origins of Halloween celebrations are definitely pre-Christian. As are a lot of our Easter and Christmas celebrations. And, it turns out, infidels like myself celebrate them much the same way.
Some sects of Christianity are horribly offended at any celebration too recently adopted from pre-Christian societies. Sucks to be them.