Anti-progressive gamers. Closely related to the above, these trolls were radicalized over the course of the #GamerGate hate movement. They really like video games, and they really hate social-justice warriors, gay people, and feminists, all of whom they’re pretty sure major movie and game studios are “pandering” to with things like all-female screenings of Wonder Woman. You’re likely to see them talking about the trans community a lot (and repeating the words “there are only two genders” constantly). Elsewhere on Reddit, you’ll find them in gaming subreddits, or /r/KotakuinAction, which was the home of GamerGate.

Men’s rights activists. This group consists of those who explicitly campaign for men’s rights (custody battles and workplace deaths are their favorite talking points) and also includes anti-feminists and misogynists of all stripes. You’ll find them at /r/Incels (short for “involuntary celibates,” who want to have sex or find a partner but can’t—and blame women for this), /r/MGTOW (“Men Going Their Own Way,” who believe that they can only find true liberation in a female-dominated world by refusing to interact with women completely), the infamous /r/TheRedPill, and a few less popular “Manosphere” subreddits as well as misogynistic sites like “Return of Kings. You’ll find them referring to women as “females,” and men they perceive as weak as “cucks” (more on that later).

Anti-globalists. These people like Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, and conspiracy theories—and they talk about them an awful lot. They are far less enamored (yet still mildly obsessed) with George Soros, who funds everyone they hate, as well as Emmanuel Macron, John McCain, and Paul Ryan. Elsewhere, they can be seen on /r/uncensorednews (primarily news about bad things perpetrated by members of minority groups and left-wing people), and /r/conspiracy. Their hyperbolic conspiratorial language might sound absurd, but it’s become an increasingly coherent and important part of The_Donald since the subreddit began.

White supremacists. It might seem surprising, but the language of white supremacy is actually quite uncommon in The_Donald. That’s because explicit racism is banned. Implicit or coded racism is very common, for example displaying Islamophobic sentiment and passing it off as criticizing Islamism, or claiming “Islam is not compatible with Western culture.” They also populate other subreddits like the now-banned /r/CoonTown and /r/GreatApes, as well as sites like Stormfront and the now defunct The Daily Stormer.

For a long time, these people would have very limited reason to interact with one another. There wasn’t much in common between meme aficionados, gamers, sexists, conspiracy theorists, and racists. Because the very nature of Reddit is to subdivide and find your own specific corner of the internet, these communities didn’t tend to run into each other all that much. But that’s now changed.

The_Donald’s identity 

Over the last year and a half, these types of trolls have formed a central identity around Trumpism and have started to coalesce. Bored teenagers and gamers are becoming indoctrinated into hard-line anti-globalism, conspiracy theories, and Islamophobia, and it’s happening right before our eyes, on a publicly accessible forum.

The_Donald contains all of these different groups, marked out by their overlapping community memberships and the words that they (and only they) use. They’ve created an in-group language consisting of words like “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) and “based,” a word appropriated from rap culture. The latter is taken to mean “being yourself” and originated in the crack era. Then there is “centipede” (usually shortened to “pede”), a self-referential term originating from the viral video series “Can’t Stump the Trump,” which was popularized when the linked video was tweeted by Trump himself.

But the keystone of this vernacular is “cuck.” A shortening of “cuckold,” an old word used to refer to men who allow their partners to sleep with other men (and often find sexual gratification in the humiliation of it), its use has become the sine qua non of alt-right group membership.

You’ll find cuck used in multiple senses. First, there’s “cuckservative,” used against conservatives who are seen as being too soft and allowing their countries (primarily European) to be “invaded” by Islam and Muslims. The racial connotations of the word were attached during a period when the word was incredibly popular in the now-banned /r/CoonTown, an explicitly racist subreddit.

Then, there’s the use of “cuck” in a more patriarchal sense. The GamerGate movement popularized the word on Reddit when they were banned from 4chan and migrated over to /r/KotakuInAction. They used it first to describe the jilted ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, a games developer they ran a hate campaign against, before turning it against Christopher “moot” Poole, the administrator of 4chan, when he kicked them off his site.

Thirdly, you have what might now be the most standard usage of the word, which is to refer to those seen as liberal. You can see this in the popularization of words like “libcuck,” “cuckbook,” “starcucks,” and “cuck Schumer” in The_Donald. In the wider digital world, you might see it in below-the-line comments of articles on Facebook.

This leads us to the final type of usage, which is when anyone who isn’t the alt-right uses it to mock those who do use it, flipping its meaning entirely. As a result, it’s everywhere, and its story can tell us a lot about the different groups described above.

Frequency of “cuck” across different subreddits, 2014 to 2015.
Frequency of “cuck” across different subreddits, 2014 to 2015.
Image: Tim Squirrell
Frequency of “cuck” across different subreddits, January 2016 to May 2017.
Frequency of “cuck” across different subreddits, January 2016 to May 2017.
Image: Tim Squirrell

The_Donald and other alt-right spaces are acting as meeting places for disaffected white men from all walks of life to share a communal hatred. They start out in different corners of the internet with different interests and different lexicons. They remain separate when they’re outside of The_Donald, but the more time they spend in there, the more pernicious views of the world they are likely to pick up by osmosis. They are forming a coherent group identity, represented in the language they have begun to speak, which coalesces around their common hatred of liberalism and their love of Donald Trump.

We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes. In order to see it, all you need to do is look at the words coming out of their mouths. The alt-right isn’t yet united, but it soon will be.

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