Flavius Stilicho
The Right Stuff
March 10, 2016
The greatest alt-right meme of 2015 was the term “cuck”. Derived from the word “cuckold”, it brilliantly captures the sense of a person naïvely advocating for the cause of a people other than his own, with the added zinger of insinuating the person is less than a man—someone who shamefully lets other men have their way with his woman.
At its core, the way of the cuck is to internalize the Other’s perspective of reality as more compelling than his own people’s perspective. This is not only naïve, as the pejorative term suggests, but is a morally unsound way for any human being to live. Here is why.
In almost no instance is the cuck anything other than a self-appointed representative of the group that he is cucking for. He is shilling for another group as their agent. However, people innately understand that the principal-agent relationship is one of mutuality: the employee acting as agent for his company in dealing with customers, the real estate agent acting on behalf of a home buyer to submit an offer, or the wife negotiating with her and her husband’s friends as to which couple will host the next house party. In all such instances, the agent is appointed by, and stands in a direct relationship of accountability with, a principal, and so can rightly advocate for the principal.
With cucks, there is no organic relationship between them and the people they have appointed themselves to act on behalf of. How have they been appointed by the group they are shilling for? In their own mind. That’s all. As such, they are committing an act of gross misrepresentation every time they shill for their self-appointed group of principals.
“Ah, but I am a man of the world! I read widely, converse with different people, and have an open mind. From my perspective of privilege, I am just being a sympathetic conduit for other, less fortunate groups’ concerns. How is that a bad thing?”
When we assert a truth claim, we are often making a claim about how something works. The car is not working because the battery is drained. This Allen key is the right size for that bolt. These truth claims can be immediately verified by any participant to the conversation and so require no independent viewpoints to ensure the participants have captured all relevant truth claims. At other times, we assert generalized truth claims that invite debate precisely because they are not immediately verifiable based on a single testable truth claim. Thimerosal in vaccines is safe, or it is not. Teaching sex education to 12-year-olds empowers them in matters of sexuality, or it increases the likelihood of early sexual behavior. Police are not statistically prejudiced in dealing with minorities as opposed to Whites, or they are. Free trade is better for our society overall, or it is not. There are a myriad of truth claims we make that must be debated because we can never be certain we have captured all of the relevant accompanying truth claims. We may tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but have we told the whole truth in our debate?
In terms of truth claims that pertain uniquely to a particular group, how can we trust the advocate for that viewpoint? By ensuring he has some real relationship to that group.
By contrast, the way of the cuck is to make truth claims that he believes represent the lived experience of the Other. When a White college student joins a local Black Lives Matter demonstration, when a local Church lady petitions her congregation to support a Syrian refugee family, when a schoolteacher describes the “cultural genocide” experienced by Indians—they often make truth claims on behalf of their chosen group. But in so doing they are misrepresenting their status. They repeat derivative truths from a position unmoored from reality. They have no vested interest from which to claim on behalf of their chosen principals.
True, no single member of a particular group embodies the complete perspective of his people and so he too can be considered an incomplete agent for them. But there is a groundedness to his identity as a member of that group—he lives their experience to some degree, he can be called out by his fellow group-members, he can be held accountable. That isn’t the case with a cuck. He is a free agent choosing how to represent his chosen principals without that group’s consent and, often, without their knowledge.
This is an immoral way to live one’s life because it represents one’s truth claims as those of a genuine advocate. Every leftie knows something of this concept—they will accuse you of cultural misappropriation the moment you suggest donning Native Indian garb for Hallowe’en, because you are, ostensibly, claiming that group’s lived experience as your own for a selfish purpose. However, purity of purpose does not change a cuck’s status vis-à-vis their chosen group. They are unpaid lawyers peddling cases for clients they have not met. They are knights on missions for maidens whose troth has not been given.
The next time you encounter a friend or co-worker shilling for the Other, don’t just challenge them for being naïve and misguided. Challenge them for their immoral misrepresentation of status. Challenge them for living a lie. Then ask them to find you a real representative of the group for whom they are so passionately shilling so that you can have a real debate.