The “fascist” and the “potato beetle”

Abstract

AbstractHuman‐to‐insect comparisons turn the stomachs of scholars of language and discrimination, but do they incite violence? In the spring of 2014, some Ukrainians referred to people they suspected of separatist sympathies as kolorady, or Colorado potato beetles, a notorious invasive pest. But kolorad was also a response to a pro‐Russian epithet for Ukrainians: fashist (fascist). This article traces the relationship between kolorad and fashist in the earliest days of the conflict, finding that this kind of language—which sorts people into producers and parasites, heroes and villains, human and not—is multilayered, interreferencing, and strikingly persistent. Along with dehumanizing language, “patriotic chronotopes” help explain how people perceive threats and why some people come to feel it their responsibility, even destiny, to take violent action.