After tweeting out a call for Planned Parenthood donations earlier this week, 31-year-old attorney Maggie Prior was immediately called a “feminazi” by an actual, real-life Nazi.
Within minutes of sending out the tweet, Prior was met with an aggressive reply from twitter user @wh1t3_PRIDE, whose avatar is a bald eagle soaring in front of a swastika. The tweet read, “another FEMINAZI trying to EAT BABIES!!! Fuck u libtard!!!!”
Prior’s reaction to the tweet is mixed.
“Yes, I’m mad,” she says. “I don’t like being yelled at on Twitter, but the irony is almost good enough to make it worth the trouble?”
Prior, who self-identifies as a feminist (and not as a Nazi) feels @wh1t3_PRIDE’s message was muddled by his own public ideology. While the user claims to have marched with a Tiki torch at the white power rally in Charlottesville, VA earlier this month, he also published a 27-tweet thread detailing how Bradley Cooper is secretly Jewish and integral to a global banking conspiracy theory.
“He is an actual, avowed Nazi,” Prior says. “So from his perspective, is ‘Feminazi’ a good thing? I feel like it isn’t. But maybe…he just doesn’t realize he’s a Nazi? That having a swastika avatar is 100% a Nazi thing? Or maybe he thinks a “Feminazi” is just a lady Nazi and he’s like, complimenting me? Like…what?”
At press time, Prior had come to no conclusion.
After @wh1t3_PRIDE’s reply to Prior, a series of similar remarks came through from users including, @HILLARYISACUNT, @aryan_GOD420 and @RealDonaldTurmp, calling Prior a “Feminazi” in spite of their Twitter profiles being covered in racist and anti-Semitic slurs.
The term “Feminazi” was popularized by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh in the 90s and 2000s. Studies show that 90% of users of the portmanteau uphold racist, anti-Semitic ideologies of their own, which has confused statisticians and journalists as much as it’s confused Prior.
“The data speaks loud and clear,” says Dr. Rachel Plummer, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin. “But still…Like, what?”
“It’s very possible that @wh1t3_PRIDE knows that being called a Nazi is bad, but doesn’t know that he himself is a Nazi,” Dr. Plummer explains. “It’s also possible that he doesn’t realize Feminazi is a made-up word. He might just think that’s what feminists are actually called.”
For now, these are mere speculations. Maggie Prior’s encounter with these Nazis may have struck confusion in the hearts of many, but isn’t an isolated incident.
