Dave Weigel writes: Late last week, a neologism was born. Twitter was the incubator. “Cuckservative,” a portmanteau of “conservative” and “cuckold” (i.e. a man whose wife has cheated on him) burned up Twitter as fans of Donald Trump’s politicking warred with the movement conservatives who opposed it.
RedState.com’s Erick Erickson, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis, and the team at the well-read conservative blog Ace of Spades were among the critics suddenly deluged with accusations of cuckservatism.
Below, we explain.
What is “cuckservatism?”
I’ll defer to Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute.
“#Cuckservative” is a full-scale revolt, by Identitarians and what I’ve called the ‘alt Right,’ against the Republican Party and conservative movement,” Spencer explained in an e-mail. “The ‘cuck’ slur is vulgar, yes, but then piercingly accurate. It is the cuckold who, whether knowingly or unknowingly, loses control of his future. This is an apt psychological portrait of white ‘conservatives,’ whose only identity is comprised of vague, abstract ‘values,’ and who are participating in the displacement of European Americans — their own children…
According to Spencer, “Trump is a major part of the ‘cuckservative’ phenomenon — but not because he himself is an Identitarian or traditionalist. His campaign is, in many ways, a backward-looking movement: ‘Let’s make America great again!’ Why Trump is attractive to Identitarians and the alt Right is: a) he is a tougher, superior man than ‘conservatives’ (which isn’t saying much), and b) he seems to grasp the demographic displacement of European-Americans on a visceral level. We see some hope there.”
…The white nationalism represented by Spencer has struggled to find footing. Youth for Western Civilization, a student group that attempted to bring millennials on campus into the “traditionalist” cause, burned brightly for a few years, then went inactive.
If you’re asking how many people might agree with the underlying argument — that the conservative movement has accommodated the cultural left for too long — the answer might be millions. As many as 45 percent of self-identified “conservative Republicans” oppose any legal status for undocumented immigrants — i.e., they oppose the establishment Republican position, as represented by Jeb Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Obviously, most of the people on the “kick ’em out” side of the ledger would hardly consider that an expression of white nationalism. “Cuckservative” is a frame that might be bigger than its founders intended.
