A few days ago, I wrote a diary on a very specific concept: the rise of the term #cuckservative. Banter that was promoted by Brietbart and others as a way to signal to other conservatives people who were simply not "conservative" enough. When I wrote it, I was completely unprepared for the response the diary would provide.
The diary didn't go RecList at DailyKos. It wasn't heavily circulated. But the immediate and often vicious response to it was something I have never seen from anything I had written; and it introdued me to the true dark side of conservative media, the GamersGate world, and what it feels like to be threatened online and off by - let's face it - Nazis.
It took very little time for those who were promoting the hashtag #cuckservative to zoom and and give me a piece of their mind:
Within a day, I received emails which read things like:
Go suck a dick, race traitor
To:
Go cry some tears, douchebag. Guess how many agree with us? More than you think.
By the end of the first day, I received what I found to be my first "ok, this is kind of terrifying" email. Attached to an email was a simple GIF (animated graphic) of my face, taken from I assume my DailyKos profile and appended on a male body engaging in gay porn. Receiving the email was the first moment I said to myself: this is what GamersGate felt like.
The instant rush of "who will see this graphic"? "how widespread is this?" despite it being faked, it still caused me to think about what level of hatred it would take on someone's part to go that extra mile. It was hours later when a twitter post went out with my face photoshopped on a fake magazine proclaiming my advocacy for someone to sleep with my spouse (or something similar).. this, it seemed, would be a trend.
And then, the responses started to come in.
With some implications in twitter and elsewhere about the parentage of my oldest child, and some implications that.. well, let's just say they weren't so pro-life.
I spent some time thinking about this, what really drives a group to behave in a way so vile, and who do they think this really convinces? And it took very short order for anyone to quickly realize that while those who promote the tag #cuckservative are surprisingly infested with nazis (see a promoted tweet below)
But despite conservative efforts to remove themselves from this hate show, they simply cannot get away.
Who was he responding to? Why, Ann Coulter.
Where did it grow from? Despite Erik Erickson's supposed Rebuke of Donald Trump, is there any doubt that he and those like him helped promote this state of affairs, a monster they can no longer tame?
You see, this is the monster they have created. From sexism to racism. Whether it is threatening people for their participation in "Jew Run Enterprises" as I was told in email, or if it just supports the idea that any efforts to address issues of racial inequality are the wrong step.. the #Cuckservative advocates have taken it to a new level. It isn't simply about being closet racists, instead it has morphed into a situation of attacking those who oppose them directly and in the most morally reprehensible ways possible.
Erick Erickson, who now supposedly stands up to Donald Trump because "you can't offend all women" seems to be making a b-line reverse from his prior stated stances on the issue... when he was praising Donald Trump for attacking Rosie O'Donnell.
Women aren't funny. Women belong in the kitchen. Feminism is like Lorena Bobbit. This is the Erick Erickson of the past... but he cannot escape the monster he has created, no how hard he tries. History instead speaks against his new found advocacy for women who were offended by Trump.
Today, Salon.Com ran an article discussing #cuckservative and cited my piece here at DailyKos. I'm always glad to get some more reach, but again, out came the hate mail.
Whenever I read people on DailyKos or elsewhere who tell me that they will sit home from a presidential election if their candidate does not prevail in the primaries, I ask you to look at what goes on in a conservative hate thread.
And then ask yourself: are these the people you want to set the tone of the next presidency?
Sun Aug 09, 2015 at 6:24 PM PT: Link to the piece @ Salon this weekend: http://www.salon.com/...
Link to the prior diary on this subject: http://www.dailykos.com/...