I’m not a chud
We have to stop using the slang of the far-right
I’m not a chud. I do not lead a “stupid chud” life. I’m not “chopped,” “busted” or “cooked.”
But if you’ve ever talked to me, that wouldn’t be clear. Every single day, every time I face a minor inconvenience, I call myself a chud. I just can’t stop — I call my friends chuds, I call strangers chuds, I call my doctor a chud. I can’t understand my lecture notes because every time they bring up a historical figure, I write down “that chud” instead of their name. I am, down to my core, a chud.
Something is deeply wrong with me, but it also appears to be wrong with many other people. There’s a new wave of young people slang, almost all of which is derived from far-right online groups.
Words like gooner, mogging, chopped, foid and suffixes like -pilled, -slop and -cel are now common young person vernacular, and all largely originate from alt-right communities on 4chan, an anonymous online messaging forum.
In a generation of internet slang, few terms in the current zeitgeist are without ties to far-right groups, but one stands out: my beloved chud. Chud comes from the 1984 horror film C.H.U.D., where it stands for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.” It was taken up by leftist podcast Chapo Trap House as a pejorative term for right-wingers, before disseminating into my daily speech.
Unfortunately, even chud isn’t safe from the right-wingification of youth culture. Influencers like neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes are reclaiming the word, with the streamer proclaiming, “I am a rizzless, unfuckable chud. That’s how it is, that’s how I was born. I’m an incel.”
It’s not normal for language to be shaped by the alt-right. Culture and its slang have traditionally been shaped by marginalized groups, not the straight white men who have come to represent the alt-right community. But these men, in their own perceived marginalization, have created much of the slang that defines current culture.
Language cannot be divorced from ideology. Every time right-wing slang is used, it popularizes and normalizes the politics behind it. Many of the left-leaning youth who use this type of language, like me, try to justify it as ironic, mocking people like Fuentes — but really we’re doing the same thing as him, normalizing the language, and inherently its ideologies.
It doesn’t matter if someone’s intention when using the language is ironic or mocking. Satirizing an idea still involves upholding it to some extent. To make fun of something in its own language acknowledges that language is true enough to be mocked, which is far more than these ideologies deserve.
Even if you’re convinced you’re using this slang derisively, not at all upholding its origins, you can’t be sure that’s how it’s being received. Using this slang means spreading the extremist ideologies tied to it, intentionally or not.
In my heart, I know I’m a chud. But I know that this internal chudness is entirely ironic, only using its right-wing connotations to mock that ideology and juxtapose it against myself. But the second I verbalize this chudness, it’s at least in some small part, genuine — and helping to normalize and popularize a disgusting brand of right-wing politics.
The far-right already has a horrifying grasp on our culture, and I won’t give them another foothold in my own speech.
From this point on, I’m not a chud. Neither genuinely nor ironically will I be mogging, jestermaxxing, rizzing, aurafarming or chopped. I’m not sure how I will refer to myself if not as a chud, but I know the replacement noun won’t incite the rise of fascism, and that’s all that matters.
