Contextualizebeta

fever swamp

noun

Etymology

The original term sprang from the belief that the swamp itself caused illnesses such as malaria and cholera, before the role of disease vectors was understood. The political use of the term is generally attributed to the neoconservative journalist Midge Decter, as a metaphor for right-wing political extremists as breeding ground for crazy ideas.

Definitions

  1. An area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease…

    An area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease vectors such as mosquitos.

    • Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in the morning sun.
    • In the evenings he sat on deck with a lantern, and men and women gathered round to listen to him telling tales about fever swamps, elephant hunts and mountains infested with leopard.
    • Explorers from Bruce to Speke, Thomson and Grant, nought to penetrate its secrets, but the malarial climate, the fever swamps and tangled forests, not to speak of wild beasts and savage men, barred the way.

  2. A group of political extremists or an area that is dominated by them.

    • Only a few years earlier, the neocons had been denouncing them as coming from "the fever swamps", in the words of Decter.
    • Rafferty was a florid public speaker and aspiring demagogue who emerged from what even a conservative like William Rusher described as “the fever swamp of rightist kookery in southern California.
    • The neoconservatives, who only a few years before had been denouncing the far-right conservatism of "the fever swamps" (Midge Decter's term), had caught a bad case of far-right fever themselves.

  3. A set of extreme and crazy political positions.

    • The Right's ever-vigilant Slogan Division focus-grouped a winner on immigration: "No amnesty for lawbreakers." No "shamnesty." And that is where the Right made its stand, right in the middle of the Minutemen fever swamps.
    • It is worth it, before making a final comment on the grander points involved, to climb out of the polemical fever swamps and look with a little detachment on the purely economic question.
    • But Obama's plunge into the fever swamp of birtherism was just the latest detour on what had already been a long, strange trip—with many miles still to go.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for fever swamp. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA