“If a man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.”
Immanuel Kant, quoted in the movie Cuck (2019)
The evolution of the ‘cuck’ trope
The comedies of Shakespeare and Chauser frequently featured the character trope of the ‘cuckold’ – a man whose wife is unfaithful, playing into popular Elizabethan themes of jealousy, insecurity, and social embarrassment. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Master Ford, obsessed with the idea that someone of a lower social class will steal his wife, becomes a classic comic cuckold – his anxiety drives much of the play’s humour.
While lexicographers believed that the medieval term had fallen out of usage, today a shortened form – ‘cuck’, has become one of the most widely used insults online, especially by white nationalist and alt-right movements. According to a popular definition in Urban Dictionary, cuck is defined as:
“(1) a man who lets his wife or girlfriend have sex with other men and (2) a man who is desperate for acceptance, approval, and affection from women [which] has led to the compromise of his beliefs and values, the desecration of his dignity and self-worth, and his inability to stand up for himself and what he deserves as a human being.” [1]
Cuck in far-right ideology
The insult ‘cuck’ came into widespread use in the US during the 2014 Gamergate controversy, an online harassment campaign targeted at women working in the video game industry that soon devolved into a wider culture war against ‘political’ games created by women and LGBTQ that threatened “gamer culture” [2]. Men that spoke out against the rape threats and doxing attempts were denounced as ‘cucks’ – weak, effeminate, and dominated by women.
Since then, white nationalists, incels, and others have adopted the term to insult white men they see as weak – whose supposed lack of strength has allowed their female partners, country, and race to be exploited by outsiders. Worse, in their perceived effeminacy, these men have surrendered to women, who choose non-white men instead – rejecting their identity. According to journalist Tim Squirrell:
“cuck is an all-purpose insult that is all things to all bigots: a racially-tinged term of abuse, a slur against men who trust women, a label for conservatives who aren’t conservative in the right ways, and an Islamophobic dog-whistle that propagates the narrative that Europe and America as a whole are being screwed by Muslims.” [3]
Far-right groups have linked the term to the conspiracy theory of “the great replacement”, claiming that a global Jewish cabal promotes relationships between white women and non-white men to undermine the genetic purity of white men. This belief has appeared in several terrorist manifestos, including those of the Christchurch shooter in March 2019 and the Buffalo shooter in May 2022.
Cultural and political impacts of ‘cuck’
A key to the team’s success is its seemingly innocuous nature, appearing to laymen as a ridiculous jibe about emasculated men while subtly reinforcing misogynistic and racist narratives. This allows apologists to downplay alt-right language as “just jokes”.
Fundamentally, the term relies on ‘heterosexist’ logic – the wife is the ‘property’ of the (white) man, who failing his role is worthy of pejoration. In this way, modern white nationalist movements have become more hypermasculine. While earlier European nationalisms celebrated men for their sacrifice and perseverance, today’s white nationalism reject any weakness and victimhood – injury is no longer associated with noble sacrifice but with failure and degeneracy, demanding stricter racial and gender hierarchies.
In the US, the provocative imagery of the ‘cuck’ (amplified by now-mainstream cuckold porn tropes) is further reinforced by centuries of anti-Black racism, including the stereotype of the “Mandingo” character: the Black man portrayed as a hypersexual ‘bull’ predisposed to rape. Alt-right groups use this imagery to rally white men, the “rightful owners of white women”, against outsiders who would “steal” them [4]. This is nothing new – fears of racial and sexual transgression run deep; in Othello, Iago inflames Desdemona’s father with stark imagery: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe.”
Paradoxically, the cuck narrative also grants women some agency – they are seen as capable of becoming “race traitors,” seducing their partners into weakness and choosing to miscegenate with non-white men. Thus, modern white nationalism enlists women to safeguard the purity of the white race by remaining loyal and embracing traditional subservience.
The term also serves to punish dissenting white opinions. ‘Cuckservative’ is a derogatory label for right-wing politicians that are not fully aligned with white nationalism. In alt-right logic, the straight, white man is intellectually, morally and racially superior to all others. However, this normative hierarchy of identities becomes most threatened by ‘the privileged traitor’ – fellow white men. As punishment, these men are branded ‘cucks’.
A prominent case of this is ‘Carl the Cuck’, a white male protestor briefly seen in a 2016 rally among a black anti-Trump crowd. His face circulated through right-wing forums, his identity was soon exposed, and he became the subject of a flurry of online memes, including an eight-minute animated video of him joining ISIS.
A collection of online posts and memes showcasing the far-right’s use of the term ‘cuck’
Using ‘cuck’ against other white men allows white nationalists to police their own ranks. This addresses contradictions within their ideology, such as the inclusion of gay white supremacists who are positioned as defenders of racial purity despite their non-heteronormative traits. Thus, today’s white nationalism is perhaps more unstable – requiring constant regulation of insiders (women and fellow men) as much as expelling outsiders (Muslims, blacks, etc.)
References
- Cuck term entry. (2017, August 17). Retrieved from Urban Dictionary: http://cuck.urbanup.com/11884077
- Salter, M. (2017). Crime, Justice and Social Media. New York: Routledge.
- Squirrell, T. (2017, August 3). The evolution of ‘cuck’ shows that far-right groups are learning the same language. Retrieved from New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2017/08/evolution-cuck-shows-different-far-right-groups-are-learning-same-language
- Richeson, M. (2009). Sex, drugs, and… race-to-castrate: a black box warning of chemical castration’s potential racial side effects. Harvard BlackLetter Law, 25, 95-131.
- Green, A. “.-8. (2019). Cucks, fags and useful idiots: The othering of dissenting white masculinities online. Online othering: Exploring digital violence and discrimination on the web, 65-89.
- Kosse, M. (2022). Ted Cruz cucks again. Gender and language, 16(2), 99-124.
- Lokke, G. (2019). Cuckolds, cucks, and their transgressions. Porn Studies, 6(2), 212-227.
- Pruden, M. L. (2022). Watching Awakening: Violent White Masculinity in Cuck. Routledge.
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