Dictionary

fever swamp en · 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.

Meanings

1. An area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease vectors such as mosquitos.
   • 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. 2012, Jennifer McVeigh, The Fever Tree, →ISBN:
   • Into the fever swamps, they marched us . . . And they set us to work draining the swampland and toiling in the sun . . . . . . They set us to toiling . . . They took the white fleece of the cotton and the sweetness of the sugarcane and made them bitter and bloody with our toil . . . 2016, Ralph Ellison, John Callahan, Juneteenth, →ISBN:
   • Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in the morning sun. 1901, Winston Churchill, The Crisis:
   • 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. 2013, W.A.L. Elmslie, Among the Wild Ngoni, →ISBN:
2. (derogatory) A group of political extremists or an area that is dominated by them.
   • 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. 2012, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, →ISBN:
   • Only a few years earlier, the neocons had been denouncing them as coming from "the fever swamps", in the words of Decter. 2010, Nathan Abrams, Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine, →ISBN:
   • 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. 2013, Michael Lind, Up from Conservatism, →ISBN, page 98:
3. (derogatory) A set of extreme and crazy political positions.
   • 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. 2013, John Heilemann, Mark Halperin, Double Down, →ISBN, page 12:
   • 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. 2012, William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom', →ISBN:
   • 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. 2008, Arianna Huffington, Right is Wrong, →ISBN, page 236:

Forms

wikipedia: Midge Decter