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'Silicon Valley' Stars Say They Were Taunted, Threatened By Trump Supporters At Silver Lake Bar
Kumail Nanjiani (left) and Thomas Middleditch. (Photo by Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)
In the wake of Trump's election win, there have been calls for the nation to unite and find common ground. This message was touched upon in Dave Chappelle's stirring monologue on this weekend's episode of "Saturday Night Live." After telling an account of how Frederick Douglass was denied at the gates of the White House (he'd been invited, and Lincoln later had to come out to let him in), Chappelle said, "I'm wishing Donald Trump luck and I'm going to give him a chance. And we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too."
Of course, there has also been, uh, evidence that this type of partnership won’t be happening in the immediate future. On Saturday, "Silicon Valley" stars Kumail Nanjiani and Thomas Middleditch said on Twitter that they were at an L.A. bar on Friday night when they were harassed by two Trump supporters. According to Nanjiani, the pair had approached the actors and, after saying they were "big fans," proceeded to explain how the stars were wrong about Trump (way to make an impression, guys). When Nanjiani and Middleditch said they didn't want to talk politics, the Trump supporters called the actors "cucks" (more about this later), and later asked the actors to step outside (presumably to trade some non-verbal punches).
Middleditch later specified that the bar was in Silver Lake:
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So what's a "cuck"? Apparently, it's short for "cuckservative," a derogatory term devised by the alt-right. It had first blown up on Twitter in the summer of 2015. According to the Washington Post, the word is a portmanteau of "conservative" and "cuckold," or a man whose wife is cheating on him. Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, explains that:
#Cuckservative” is a full-scale revolt, by Identitarians and what I’ve called the 'alt Right,' against the Republican Party and conservative movement," Spencer explained in an e-mail. "The 'cuck' slur is vulgar, yes, but then piercingly accurate. It is the cuckold who, whether knowingly or unknowingly, loses control of his future. This is an apt psychological portrait of white 'conservatives,' whose only identity is comprised of vague, abstract 'values,' and who are participating in the displacement of European Americans — their own children.
Major diss, dude.
Obviously, the term is meant to emasculate (and treat women as some sort of conquest to be won). And, obviously, it has come to be associated with Trump. As cited by the Post, Spencer says that, while the term isn't exclusively tied to Trump, it's associated with him because "Trump is attractive to Identitarians and the alt Right" since "a) he is a tougher, superior man than 'conservatives' (which isn't saying much), and b) he seems to grasp the demographic displacement of European-Americans on a visceral level."
So there you have it. Cuckservative.
While the term is meant to be derogatory, it doesn't seem like Middleditch is losing any sleep over it:
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