The Cuck Metaphor and the Alt-Right

“Cuck” is a favorite insult of the alt-right. It is used to refer to anyone who puts other races ahead of their own, personally or politically. For example, a family that adopts a black child would be described as “cucked”. More importantly to the alt-right, social policies are “cucked” if they put the interests of non-whites ahead of whites. The immigration policies of most Western countries are extremely cucked: they import large numbers of non-whites into white countries.

The “cuck” insult is based on two metaphors. One is the metaphor of the cuckoo: a bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. The host bird is deceived into raising the offspring of the cuckoo instead of its own. The term “cuckold” was commonly used to refer to a man whose wife has the child of another man. The other metaphor is conceptualizing the collective as an individual. An individual has reproductive interests, and (via the metaphor) a collective has them too. A collective that reproduces the genes of another collective is analogous to the host bird of the cuckoo. European civilization is a nest created by whites, and other races are laying their eggs in it.

The “cuck” metaphor is somewhat useful, but also somewhat misleading. It is useful in that it points out the self-destructive nature of current policies and attitudes in the West. A society or civilization that does not reproduce its own genes is doomed to fail. However, the metaphor is misleading in its equivalence between a collective and an individual. Also, the alt-right tends to view everything through the lens of race, and there is a lot more to both biology and society than race. Race is real, but it isn’t what the alt-right thinks it is.

Let’s unpack the metaphor of being “cucked”.

“Cucked” can be defined as “reproductively altruistic”. Reproductive altruism is doing uncompensated work to help others reproduce. For example, you are cucked if you adopt a child instead of having a child of your own. That would be true even if you already had three children of your own. The additional child would compete with your existing children for resources, and it might also prevent you from having another child of your own.

The concept can be generalized further, to include doing anything that isn’t reproductively selfish. A woman who pursues a career instead of a family, for example, is “career-cucked”. She may not be directly helping anyone else to reproduce, but she isn’t reproducing herself. Metaphorically, her career has displaced her potential offspring.

Cucking always involves deception of some kind. Life forms are selected to be selfish reproducers, so if a life form doesn’t try to reproduce, it must have been deceived in some way. The cuckoo tricks the host bird into raising the cuckoo’s offspring by laying an egg in the host bird’s nest, and taking advantage of the host bird’s parental instincts. A woman who puts career ahead of family has been deceived by her culture into rejecting her biological purpose of reproduction. In the case of the cucked bird, a parasite invaded the nest, posing as the host bird’s real offspring. In the case of the career woman, a parasitic meme invaded her brain, posing as a correct value-model.

Ironically, considering their use of the term, alt-righters are cucks themselves.

Alt-righters believe in racial or ethnic tribalism/collectivism. They view individuals as belonging to “groups” (they conflate racial or ethnic categories with social groups), and they believe in altruism within these groups. A white person should work to benefit white people, a Jew should work to benefit Jews, a black person should work to benefit black people, etc. They aren’t really clear on what these groups should be (English, British or white?), but they agree that the groups should be based on shared genes, not on shared culture or citizenship. They believe that you are born into a genetic tribe, and you should work together with people of your tribe to reproduce the genes of your tribe. This often involves working against people of other tribes.

This view involves two big misconceptions. One is the conflation of a descriptive category, such as a race, with a social group, such as a country. Those are very different things, although they are often correlated. The other misconception is viewing evolution as a competition between groups, rather than a competition between individuals to reproduce and/or a competition between genes to exist.

Humans form organized groups (societies) and those groups fight one another. War is a natural consequence of human nature. But it is almost unique to human nature. Complex social organization is very rare in nature, because it is hard to create an organized group out of selfish individuals. Nature is more individualistic than it is collectivistic. For groups to compete, selfish individuals must be organized into societies that can act as units. That requires mechanisms of coordination that are hard to create and maintain.

So, although group conflict is a big deal for humans, it is very rare in nature, and it certainly isn’t how evolution works. Evolution is not a struggle between races. It is a struggle between individuals to reproduce. There is also a type of “competition” between genes, but it is very different from the competition between individuals or societies.

For the sake of argument, suppose that eye color is determined by a single gene that has two alleles: a “blue” allele and a “brown” allele. If an individual has two blue alleles, then he has blue eyes. If he has two brown alleles, then he has brown eyes. If he has one blue allele and one brown allele, then his eyes will be green or hazel. (How genes actually affect eye color is more complicated.)

We can think of these two alleles as “competing”, but that is only a metaphor. The alleles are not punching each other. They can exist in the same person. They compete only in the sense that they are differentially selected in a way that depends on the environment.

Suppose that blue eyes are better at seeing in the dark, and so they are beneficial for people who spend a lot of time in dimly lit houses in the winter. In that environment, people with blue eyes might have a slight advantage over people with brown eyes. They can get more work done in the winter, and so they have slightly better clothing, houses, etc. Over many generations, this slight advantage selects for blue eyes to be more common. The competition need not involve a “blue-eye tribe” fighting against a “brown-eye tribe”.

Of course, it is possible that people with blue eyes conquer an area and spread that allele, or vice versa. Group conflict plays an important role in human evolution, because it affects survival and reproduction. But it doesn’t follow that evolution, even for humans, is a group conflict between genetic tribes. It is a competition between genetic variants, and they compete by affecting the reproduction of individuals.

It’s worth pointing out (because people sometimes forget this) that genes aren’t agents that act in the world. Genes are just nucleotide sequences. They have no will or awareness, and no ability to act in the world. A gene is “expressed” in an organism, which means that it has some effect on the physical form of the organism. Genes are selected based on their effects on the reproduction of individual organisms.

See Does Evolutionary Theory Imply Genetic Tribalism?.

It is reproductively altruistic to work for the good of one’s race, rather than for one’s own offspring. It is investing in the offspring of others. Thus, racial or ethnic altruism is cucked. The alt-righter who adopts his race as his raison d’etre is a cuck, like the childless career woman or the Christian who adopts a child from Angola. They are all deceived into working for something other than their own reproduction.

So, alt-righters are race-cucks, in the sense of being cucked by their race. Or at least they would be if they were actually working to help white people. However, I don’t think that the alt-right actually benefits white people in general.

The alt-right is dedicated to an ideal — ethnic or racial nationalism — that is completely unrealistic and unpragmatic in the modern West, especially in the US and Canada. Take the US for example. Roughly 40% of the US population is non-white, depending on how “white” is defined. That’s more than 100 million people. Roughly half the babies born in the US are non-white. Being a white nationalist today is like trying to change the course of the Titanic after it has already hit the iceberg. There is no practical way to segregate the US population by racial categories. Immigration reform could have maintained the overwhelming white majority 30 or even 20 years ago. Now it is too late.

As an aside, this shows that issues often seem important only after it is too late to do anything about them. Acting into history requires foresight. The alt-right is reacting to history after the fact, not acting into history.

So, if the goal of the alt-right is to preserve the nest for white people and their genes, it is too late. The genes that are unique to white people won’t disappear, but they will be in the same “nest” (country, civilization) and gene-pool as the genes of non-whites.

Although I can’t fully assess the impact of the alt-right on culture and politics, I don’t think it is working to save Western civilization or the white race. By associating practical immigration reforms with racial nationalism and race hatred, the alt-right might be working against such reforms. I don’t think the alt-right helped to elect Trump. If anything, they might have made it more difficult to elect him. Remember, it was Hillary Clinton who raised the alt-right out of obscurity, not Donald Trump.

If alt-righters aren’t working for the good of their race, then what are they working for? Or, to put it another way, what are they cucked by?

Memes. They are cucked by memes.

To understand what someone is cucked by, look at what they are reproducing. The alt-right is a movement that propagates memes, mostly on the internet. Alt-righters are meme reproducers rather than gene reproducers. They aren’t working toward practical political goals. They are working to propagate memes.

We live in a strange time, a time when things are changing in ways that few people can understand. New communication media have allowed culture to take on a life of its own. Culture is becoming increasingly parasitic on biology. Parasitic memes are reproducing themselves at the expense of their hosts.

Ideologies are parasitic memes that propagate from host to host by plugging into social instincts. An ideology gives the host a feeling of purpose, a group identity, a claim to virtue, a claim to intellectual superiority, and something to do. Just as the cuckoo egg and baby plug into the host bird’s parental instincts, an ideology plugs into the host person’s social instincts. The ideology causes its host to act in a way (mainly virtue-signaling) that propagates the ideology. Gradually, the host incorporates the ideology into his identity. He starts to identify the meme’s interests as his own interests.

That is what alt-righters are doing, mostly. They are not acting into history to benefit white people or Western civilization. They are propagating memes on the internet, to benefit memes. They are meme-cucks.

Comments

  1. I agree that working to assist others in reproducing if you don’t reproduce yourself (he calls it reproductive altruism) is cuckoldry. Natural selection works at the level of groups and at the level of individuals. If you get cucked by people genetically closer to you (by whites instead of non-whites) it’s less bad, but you’re still getting cucked. This is only arguably not the case when it comes to your brother/sister’s children.

    The point of his that I kind of agree with is that alt-right focuses too much on producing memes, sometimes to the point it becomes an end in and of itself, instead of being treated as a means of accomplishing other goals (spreading propaganda and increasing awareness).

    Now to the things I disagree with - Prefering your own race does not necessarily mean being reproductively altruistic. One can have selfish (non cucked) reasons for preferring their own race.
    Namely, that one wants to live in the kind of society which only their race has produced and can produce, and that one wants to live around those similar to them.

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    1. Thanks for reading and thinking about the topic.

      Natural selection doesn't apply at the level of "groups" (race, subspecies or species) because the "group" is not a reproducing unit.

      You can have non-cucked reasons for preferring people of your own race, but those would be reducible to other terms, such as the preference for living among people who create the kind of society you want. You could also prefer people of a different race. For example, a black person might prefer to live in a white society (many do). Or, a white person today might prefer to live in Japan, given the expectation that white people will destroy the West. Either way, race would be a heuristic for traits that individuals and/or societies possess.

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    2. "the group is not a reproducing unit" fair point, but what I meant is that the proportion of groups in the world does not stay the same - some groups thrive and grow bigger, others grow smaller and even die out. And a group that shares a blood tie is almost like a superorganism, and individuals are sort of like cells, and institutions like organs/limbs - there are certain shared memes automatically arising from the shared genes/blood, manifesting in particular cultures/ideologies and ways of life, from religious rituals to architecture to clothing and so on.

      Trying to take individuals from radically different groups and force them to co-exist in a same society is kind of like trying to patch together body parts from different people. There will likely be incompatibility and therefore more internal conflict and therefore dysfunction/weakness, which makes it vulnerable before an external foe.

      But I doubt this idea is new to you.

      Some of the traits I consider a prerequisite for people being in the same society with me are exclusive to my race.

      The reason your criticism of the Alt-Right is good is that it criticizes it from an arguably even more right-wing position, in a certain sense (if we take leftism to be more inclusive and rightism to be exclusive). But still, it only does away with the idea of "reproductive altruism", pointing it out as hypocritical for the Alt-Right (since it is a form of cuckoldry) and irrational (since altruism is an inferior evolutionary reproductive strategy). But it's not an argument against the main goal of the Alt-Right: A white ethnostate.

      It's only an argument against a reproductively altruistic kind of organizing the white ethnostate.

      I think there are 2 simple and hopefully incontrovertible points that we can agree on:
      1. Individuals are overall better off living in a society (with all the costs and benefits this entails) than surviving alone in the woods. This necessitates them to accept a certain number of people in their in-group and cooperate with them.
      2. All other factors equal, genetically homogeneous societies tend to be significantly more functional.

      These are the basis for blood (race/nationality) being one of the fundamental determining factors of who gets to be treated as an in-group member.

      The only question is where you draw the line.

      White nationalists draw the line at race. This to me is the most reasonable cut off point given the current state of affairs in the world.

      By this I mean that while I agree that different white groups have fought each other during history, and if in some white nationalist dream future scenario they manage to defeat all other races and the earth becomes 100% white, there would likely be division along the lines of nationality. And frankly, I'd rather lose the future to other whites than non-whites, so this is the lesser evil to me. But for now it makes sense for whites to group up.

      I'd also like to join the discussion on Discord and post this same argument, but I'm not sure if I'll make it time-wise, so I'll just post it here.

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    3. We covered some of this on discord, but since this is on my blog I will respond here as well.

      Societies are not super-organisms. An individual can switch societies, survive the collapse of his society, be on one side of a split in his society, etc. The reproduction of an individual is not tied to the success of his society, although it might be affected by it in various ways. Your cells can't reproduce outside the body, they can't switch bodies, and they only reproduce if your body reproduces via your sex cells. A body is completely different from a society. So, no, a multi-racial society is nothing like a patchwork of body parts or cells from different organisms. Societies are based on cooperation, and people from different races can cooperate, so there is no theoretical biological obstacle to people of different races being part of the same society. Race could become a divisive issue, because of human psychology, but not because there is some fundamental biological problem with inter-racial cooperation.

      I don't agree with your 2 points as you state them. I mostly agree with (1), and mostly disagree with (2):

      1) Yes, individuals are better off living in societies. Yes, this involves them cooperating with others. However, this does not require that the psychological mechanism of in-group affiliation be involved. Citizenship, laws and money are sufficient for cooperation in a modern state.

      2) There is no such thing as "genetically homogeneous". Maybe you mean racially homogeneous? Genetic differences exist within any population of people, unless they are exact clones. As for racial homogeneity making a society significantly more functional, I don't think that is necessarily true. It could make it more functional, but the key thing is to have cooperative, intelligent people in a society. I don't believe there would be any significant downside to a mixed Japanese/Nordic society, for example.

      Where do you draw the line at membership in a society? Well, the standard answer is you draw the line at birth, and then you only let a small number of people in for various reasons. The boundaries of societies are typically determined by geography and history. Drawing the line at race is not the most reasonable way to decide membership in a society, given the current state of affairs. It would be extremely costly. In the US, for example, it would require moving around over 100 million people.

      The best way to draw the line is pragmatic. Here's what I would do. We allow people already here to stay. We stop the mass influx of new people. We limit reproduction eugenically. We promote assimilation.

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    4. Yes, I agree, it's not a perfect comparison between an individual as an organism and a society as a super-organism, but I do think it has some validity to it.

      Race is an issue to the extent that different races (or otherwise biological groups) have different physical and mental traits - the more different, the bigger the issue, since everybody instinctively prefers those similar to them. That's why some races are more problematic for whites to co-exist with than others.

      Human psychology is the manifestation of biology.

      1) It seems to me you are intentionally ignoring and being blind to obvious race-preference expressed by most people, which IS a factor in how functional societies are, as you admit yourself, it's human psychology. It's just a fact that homogeneity is an important factor when designing a powerful society.

      2)I just mean a society based on biological similarities between people.

      "I don't believe there would be any significant downside to a mixed Japanese/Nordic society"

      Except for the erasure of the unique Nordic (and Japanese, for that matter) peoples. People might want to preserve that for its own sake, it's a subjective preference. Not everything is only about intelligence and objectively measurable traits that any race can possess.

      Some traits, like the aesthetics and spirituality of whites, are exclusive to whites. Other races may possess other traits, like strength, speed, intelligence, etc. to an extent comparable to or even exceeding whites in some instances, but not that.

      It's kind of like if you're given a choice between two cookies, both of which equally nutritious in all aspects, but one tastes like shit, and the other one tastes like vanilla (or whatever you like). Though they're objectively the same, the subjective preference would still lead you to pick one over the other.

      In fact, I'd bet that even if the vanilla cookie was, say, 1% less nutritious, you'd still pick it, even if the shit-tasting one is a bit healthier.

      Humans are not about propagating objective traits, like intelligence. If we were, then those less intelligent would willingly be childless and serve to aid those more intelligent in procreating. If we were, it would mean you'd rather save a stranger with an IQ of 101 than your own child with an IQ of 100 if you had to choose.

      The subjective preferences of people have objectively existing consequences. It's therefore foolish to ignore them and pretend they don't exist when speaking of creating a functional society.

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    5. Rather than going over this in text, how about a real-time discussion I can post? (On skype, so I can record it.)

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    6. I'm not too good at speaking English and I also don't want to dox myself.

      I actually prefer to discuss in text format. It gives me time to think, it conveys more information in the same time frame, and the content to address is written down so I can't forget what's been said and we can get all our points across without interrupting each other.

      If you really want to post it, you can read our discussion out-loud.

      "The best way to draw the line is pragmatic. Here's what I would do. We allow people already here to stay. We stop the mass influx of new people. We limit reproduction eugenically. We promote assimilation."

      But how do you limit immigration, impose eugenics and promote assimilation when the increasing population in America are non-whites who tend to vote heavily against these kinds of things?

      Non-whites may be of lower IQ, but at least they know on some intuitive level what limiting immigration, promoting assimilation, and imposing eugenics would mean for them. You'd be basically trying to trick them into accepting a set of political principles which would result in their slow extermination through low reproductive rates. The same thing that has been done to whites, but only differently accomplished.

      Basically I'd agree with you if I thought it possible to do all those other things without first deporting a significant number of non-whites.

      I also think accepting non-whites as legitimate citizens inevitably opens the door for liberalism/cuckservatism in the minds of most white people, leading to the present state of multicultural white countries.

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    7. "But how do you limit immigration, impose eugenics and promote assimilation when the increasing population in America are non-whites who tend to vote heavily against these kinds of things?"

      How do you promote an ethnostate under those conditions? It would be much harder to create an ethnostate.

      Whites agree to a system that is slowly eliminating them. In fact, they choose to have low fertility. Why couldn't people of other races accept limits on reproduction? It wouldn't exterminate non-whites. Some would be selected for, others against. Non-whites aren't necessarily lower IQ (E. Asians are higher) and I didn't suggest we select for IQ. The key is not framing the problem as tribal warfare (like you guys do) but framing it as pro civilization and pro individual responsibility.

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  2. "The key is not framing the problem as tribal warfare (like you guys do) but framing it as pro civilization and pro individual responsibility."

    So basically you're trying to do something like Sargon is doing, but of course in a more reasonable manner. You're trying to sell individualism to non-whites so that they ignore their race too just like whites have been taught to.

    I don't think that can work. Pro civilization and pro individual responsibility basically means anti-people of dark skin color for the most part.

    You also seem to believe in creating a sort of a globalist superstate based on these principles so that all conflict occurs within this system and according to its rules, am I right?

    If so, then that is another fundamental difference in our worldview.

    I believe conflict should mainly occur between different groups according to natural rules, not between individuals according to human-constructed rules.

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    1. Am I trying to sell individualism to non-whites? No, I'm just telling people the truth and how to solve problems. I doubt anyone will listen, but given that we are headed for disaster, I have to try.

      But that's just your attempt to assign my views to a bucket ("like Sargon") so you can dismiss them without making rational arguments against them. Does Sargon propose eugenic reproduction control? Is Sargon a moral nihlist? Is Sargon a race realist? I'm sure Sargon and I would agree on some things and disagree on others, but we have very different views.

      How does pro individual responsibility lead to more dark-skinned people? I don't care much about skin color, but aren't whites subsidizing non-whites in Western societies at the moment? The welfare state subsidizes Hispanics and blacks in the US and Muslims and blacks in Europe. It also subsidizes non-white populations globally. Removing the subsidies for unproductive people to reproduce would reduce the population of dark-skinned people in the West and globally, or at least reduce the population that negatively affects whites. But, no it isn't race war, which is what you want obviously.

      Yes, in the long run we need a global government to deal with global problems. I have explained why. Do you have any rational argument against that?

      "I believe conflict should mainly occur between different groups according to natural rules"

      Lol, what are "natural rules"? Does that include nuclear weapons? You want a future of endless war fought with nuclear, chemical, biological and psychological weapons? How do you envision this natural warfare playing out? What is so wonderful about death and destruction?

      Call me crazy, but I would prefer a future of peace and prosperity based on global cooperation and human self-regulation.

      Setting aside your words, there is a fundamental contradiction in your actions. Supposedly you are fighting in a great heroic struggle to save the white race, and yet you are afraid to post your voice because you might get doxed. You talk big about group warfare, and yet you are very concerned about your individual safety and comfort.

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    2. Nevermind the Sargon comment. I only meant to compare you to him in a certain way, not in all ways. I'd be insulted if I was compared to him too now that I think about it.

      "How does pro individual responsibility lead to more dark-skinned people?" I said the exact opposite and by dark-skin I just mean races with darker skin, not that race is only about skin color, but that races with darker skin also tend to have lower ability to be pro individualist and pro civilization (but not BECAUSE of their skin color)

      I'm all for excluding Mexicans, Arabs, blacks, etc. but they're gonna notice your policies will exclude them disproportionately and won't be too happy about it, liberals will catch on too and write an article like "new pro individualism/civilization policy is just a racist attempt to exclude brown people" and so on.

      "Yes, in the long run we need a global government to deal with global problems. I have explained why." Where?

      By natural rules I simply mean that there is no external agent (like a state authority) that determines the outcome of a conflict.

      Human constructed systems are prone to corruption. A globalist system, if it gets corrupted, might plunge humans into a new dark age and nobody would be in a position to challenge it. This could mean thousands of years of hell on earth.

      As for my actions, the "great heroic struggle to save the white race" doesn't very accurately describe why I do things, and I'll leave it at that.

      I don't necessarily want a war, but I think it might be inevitable, and it is certainly a preferable alternative to whites going extinct in their own countries due to self-destructive rules.

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    3. I'm not insulted by being compared to Sargon. I'm just pointing out that Sargon and I have very different views.

      "I'm all for excluding Mexicans, Arabs, blacks, etc. but they're gonna notice your policies will exclude them disproportionately and won't be too happy about it, liberals will catch on too and write an article like "new pro individualism/civilization policy is just a racist attempt to exclude brown people" and so on."

      My policy doesn't exclude people based on race. It controls reproduction. People who are less productive and responsible (poor or criminal people of any race) would have fewer children. It gets around those criticisms much better than your policy, obviously.

      You ignored the point that it would be much harder to create an ethnostate in the modern US than do what I proposed, both politically and practically. My proposal requires nothing more difficult or complex than what we already do to control driving, drinking and various other activities. In fact, it would be simpler than what we currently do to control driving. By contrast, you would have to move around hundreds of millions of people to create a racial or ethnic society in the modern US.

      Even if you were able to create your ethnostate, you would still have to deal with dysgenics and population growth. Those problems are not unique to non-whites. There are subsets of the white population that are breeding out of control (e.g. the Amish) and the white gene pool will degenerate because of dysgenics with or without immigration and race-mixing. A racial state doesn't solve those problems.

      I explained why we need a global government in a video named "Pragmatopia", the book I published, and in other places as well. I assumed you had seen Pragmatopia since you mentioned a global government.

      "By natural rules I simply mean that there is no external agent (like a state authority) that determines the outcome of a conflict."

      But you said you want conflict between "groups". Societies act by creating institutions, such as the state, to coordinate the actions of individuals. Societies constrain individual action and regulate conflict between their members. If you want an ethnostate, then you want a state authority that prevents or regulates conflict between individuals.

      "Human constructed systems are prone to corruption. A globalist system, if it gets corrupted, might plunge humans into a new dark age and nobody would be in a position to challenge it. This could mean thousands of years of hell on earth."

      The absence of global government guarantees an eternity of hell on Earth. Hell is the normal condition of life. Global anarchy guarantees civilizational collapse followed by an eternal dark age. Ideally we avoid tyranny and anarchy. Regardless of scale, all governments are somewhat corrupt, and yet they are generally better than the alternative.

      "I don't necessarily want a war..."

      I'm not talking about *a* war. I'm talking about endless war, which is the normal condition of life. Human populations are normally controlled by war, disease and famine killing off children. There is only one way to prevent that: eugenic reproduction control.

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