"Cuckservative" is a pejorative [1] formed as a portmanteau of "cuck", an abbreviation of the word "cuckold", and the political designation "conservative". [2] It has become a derogatory label used by white nationalists and the alt-right in the United States to denigrate other conservatives. [3] [4] [5] [6]
The word "cuckservative" reached a high level of mainstream political conversation around mid-July 2015, where it gained media attention just a few weeks before the start of the first Republican primary debate for the 2016 United States presidential election. [4] [7]
The term, as well as the shortened form "cuck" for cuckold, originated on websites such as 4chan (specifically the /pol/ imageboard) and 8chan, the right-wing message board My Posting Career, [1] [8] the blog The Right Stuff , [9] and other sites associated with the alt-right. [8] [10] [11]
One definition of "cuckservative" is someone who is associated with the right-wing politics in contemporary America but also opposes white supremacy. [12] According to Richard B. Spencer, [13] a white supremacist, the term is a shorthand used to express "a certain kind of contempt for conservatives". [14]
Initially, the term was also used by social conservatives in a manner similar to "Republican In Name Only" (RINO) against conservatives who were seen as not conservative enough. [3] [15] Social conservatives use the term to condemn Republicans they accuse of running on socially conservative values to appeal to their base during an election cycle only to use vote trading to compromise on those values while in office and, thus, capitulate to liberal politicians and public sentiment. [3] [14] Some observers, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, say that the term's usage was rising among white supremacists in the United States as of August 2015. [8]
The term "cuckold" has a long history as an insult implying that a specific man is weak and emasculated, and may even feel pleasure at his own humiliation. The shortened form "cuck" arose in this manner as an Internet insult, and it also refers to a genre of pornography in which a married woman spurns her weak husband for sex with a strong man. The husband is thus cuckolded or "cucked". [1]
Some American political writers have suggested that the terms "cuck" and "cuckservative" are fetish charged due to their pornographic roots, instead of simply being a sexual insult like the original "cuckold". [16] [3] [17] Thus, "cuck" is said by various writers to project the insulter's anxieties and insults by insinuating that the target is weak or enjoys his humiliation. [18] [19] The term "cuckservative" is said to imply that certain Republicans are humiliated through their actions while feeling thrilled from their own degradation of others because of the "abandonment of their own moral standards." [8] [16]
White supremacists have used the term to condemn white politicians who they say unknowingly promote "the interests of Jews and non-whites." [5] The Anti-Defamation League says that the term is used by white supremacists as a synonym of the pre-existing phrase "race traitors". [5] Those in the self-described conservative media targeted by the "cuckservative" slur, as well as journalists and commentators from other media outlets, have decried the term as an anti-Christian, [4] racist slur [20] and a rallying cry for white supremacists and neoreactionaries. [21]
A conservative news site in Spain translated "cuckservative" to "cornuservador", stating that: "Republicans are nothing but the 'controlled opposition' completely in the hands of the political left, whose only aspiration is for those rare occasions when those hands pat them on the head, and the media rewards them with the coveted adjective 'moderate': these are the cornuservadores." [22]
Jeet Heer of The New Republic wrote that the word is a "fine example of how the sound of a word can reinforce its meaning: abrasive on the ears, cuckservative appropriately enough has an ugly origin and meaning". [16] The word was most popularly adopted in mid-2015 after some alt-right web users were disapproving of the attempts by John McCain, Jeb Bush, and other Republicans to establish more politically conservative positions, dubbing those who did "cuckservatives". Over a matter of weeks, the term then proceeded to attain usage additionally on social media and the wider internet. [16]
Writing for Hot Air , Taylor Millard criticized the word and its history of usage by white supremacists on the political right. He called it short-sighted, giving his opinion that Rand Paul's popularity at leading majority-black universities could make African Americans more conservative in the future. [12] Matt Lewis, in The Daily Beast , gave his opinion that the word could become as popular with Republicans as "RINO" (Republican In Name Only), even if they were oblivious to its often fetish connotations. [21] Writing in The Washington Post , David Weigel described the term as arising from disaffected elements of the right wing. [1]
The Council of Conservative Citizens is an American white supremacist organization. Founded in 1985, it advocates white nationalism, and supports some paleoconservative causes. In the organization's statement of principles, it states that they "oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind".
In US politics, Republican in Name Only is a pejorative used to describe politicians of the Republican Party deemed insufficiently loyal to the party, or misaligned with the party's ideology. Similar terms have been used since the early 1900s. The acronym RINO became popular in the 1990s, and both the acronym and the full spelling have become commonly used by former president Donald Trump and his supporters to refer to his critics within the Republican Party.
Steven Ernest Sailer is an American far-right writer and blogger. He is currently a columnist for Taki's Magazine and VDARE, a website associated with white supremacy. Since 2014, his personal blog, iSteve, has appeared in The Unz Review.
Fourteen Words is a reference to two slogans originated by David Eden Lane, one of nine founding members of the defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order, and are accompanied by Lane's "88 Precepts". The slogans have served as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists internationally.
The National Policy Institute (NPI) was a white supremacist think tank and lobbying group based in Alexandria, Virginia. It lobbied for white supremacists and the alt-right. Its president was Richard B. Spencer.
Taki's Magazine, called Takimag for short, is an online magazine of politics and culture published by the Greek paleoconservative commentator and socialite Taki Theodoracopulos and edited by his daughter Mandolyna Theodoracopulos. It has published articles by far-right figures such as Gavin McInnes and the white supremacist Jared Taylor; the white supremacist Richard Spencer was an early Taki's editor.
A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is aware of and tolerates his wife's infidelity is sometimes called a wittol or wittold.
Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) was a far right student group registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the United States. The group became a corporation in 2006 and began actively organizing in 2008. Kevin DeAnna founded the organization. Its honorary chairman was former Colorado US Representative Tom Tancredo.
Richard Bertrand Spencer is an American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and white supremacist. Spencer claimed to have coined the term "alt-right" and was the most prominent advocate of the alt-right movement from its earliest days. He advocates for the reconstitution of the European Union into a white racial empire, which he believes will replace the diverse European ethnic identities with one homogeneous "White identity".
The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white supremacist conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate plot to cause the extinction of whites through forced assimilation, mass immigration, and/or violent genocide. It purports that this goal is advanced through the promotion of miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non-white immigration, racial integration, low fertility rates, abortion, pornography, LGBT identities, governmental land-confiscation from whites, organised violence, and eliminationism in majority white countries. Under some theories, Black people, Hispanics, and Muslims are blamed for the secret plot, but usually as more fertile immigrants, invaders, or violent aggressors, rather than as the masterminds. A related, but distinct, conspiracy theory is the Great Replacement theory.
The alt-right is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has been declining since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.
The Right Stuff is a neo-Nazi and white nationalist blog and discussion forum and the host of several podcasts, including The Daily Shoah. Founded by American neo-Nazi Mike Enoch, the website promotes Holocaust denial, and coined the use of "echoes", an antisemitic marker that uses triple parentheses around names to identify Jewish people.
Paul Ray Ramsey is an American far-right vlogger, YouTube personality, and public speaker.
Michael Enoch Isaac Peinovich, more commonly known as Mike Enoch, is an American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, blogger, and podcast host. He founded the alt-right media network The Right Stuff and podcast The Daily Shoah. Through his work, Enoch ridicules African Americans, Jews, and other minorities, advocates racial discrimination, and promotes conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial and white genocide.
The alt-lite, also known as the alt-light and the new right, is a loosely defined right-wing political movement whose members regard themselves as separate from both mainstream conservatism and the far-right, white nationalist alt-right. The concept is primarily associated with the United States, where it emerged in 2017. The term remained in vogue during the Trump administration, as observers assessed all sources for right-wing populism, but has mostly faded from popular discourse as of 2024.
Jack Michael Posobiec III is an American alt-right political activist, television correspondent and presenter, conspiracy theorist, and former United States Navy intelligence officer.
Antifa is a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the United States. It consists of a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups that use nonviolent direct action, incivility, or violence to achieve their aims. Antifa political activism includes non-violent methods like involving poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. Some who identify as antifa also use tactics involving digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, and property damage. Members of antifa aim to combat far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
James Orien Allsup is an American white supremacist, neo-nazi, and former political commentator and podcaster.
Paul Nehlen is a white supremacist and former Congressional candidate from Wisconsin. During the 2016 and 2018 Republican Party primary elections in Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, he spouted various racist, white nationalist, nativist, protectionist, and antisemitic views. In 2016 he was defeated by incumbent Paul Ryan by 84 to 16 percent. The 2018 primary was won by Bryan Steil; Nehlen came third.
Opponents of the alt-right have not reached a consensus on how to deal with it. Some opponents emphasized "calling out" tactics, labelling the alt-right with terms like "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "white supremacist" in the belief that doing so would scare people away from it. Many commentators urged journalists not to refer to the alt-right by its chosen name, but rather with terms like "neo-Nazi". There was much discussion within U.S. public discourse as to how to avoid the "normalization" of the alt-right. The activist group Stop Normalizing, which opposes the normalization of terms like alt-right, developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension. The extension went viral shortly after the release of Stop Normalizing's website. The extension changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". The extension and group were founded by a New York-based advertising and media professional under the pseudonym George Zola.
Media related to Cuckservative at Wikimedia Commons
