Members Of The Alt-Right Are Claiming John McCain's Cancer Is "Justice"

On Wednesday night, the office of Arizona Sen. John McCain revealed that the 80-year-old Republican and longtime politician is suffering from a malignant brain tumor. While many expressed their condolences, some members of the alt-right are saying McCain's cancer is "godly justice."

Mike Cernovich, a 39-year-old alt-right media personality who regularly appears on The Alex Jones Show made his disapproval of McCain very clear on Twitter. "I'm all for wishing cancer patients well but am not going to pretend McCain is anything but who he is. This is called being an adult," wrote Cernovich.

While Cernovich himself didn't condemn McCain's cancer diagnosis as justice, several members of the far-right community drew the connection. "He's a traitor and a psychopath. His interests are of the globalists. They all need to die, faster the better. Then we straighten things out," wrote Twitter user Howard Green in response to Cernovich.

In response to a tweet from CNN that listed ways McCain is not like other politicians, the alt-right Twitter account Red Pill Philosophy wrote, "Politically, John McCain is a cuck, and liberals are using his ideological weakness as proof of his decency over Trump. Politicizing him."

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the word cuck is often used by members of the alt-right to disparage Democrats, or cuckservatives — which combines the words cuckold and conservative. According to a report written by the Southern Poverty Law Center about far-right terminology, the term cuckservative "aims to depict conservatives who don’t kowtow to ultra-right political views as inept traitors to the conservative base that elected them."

The far-right backlash is largely linked to McCain's sustained criticism of president Donald Trump. In February, during an interview on NBC News, the former POW told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, "When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I'm not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I'm just saying we need to learn the lessons of history."

The Arizona statesman was responding to a tweet from Trump that not only claimed major media outlets were fake news, but also, that they were enemies of America. "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!," wrote Trump.

While it's largely been avid Trump supporters who have claimed McCain's diagnosis as an act of justice, the president himself hasn't encouraged these messages. "Senator John McCain has always been a fighter,” Trump wrote in a White House statement. “Melania and I send our thoughts and prayers to Senator McCain, Cindy, and their entire family. Get well soon."