The Atlantic's Stale-Ass Juggalo Slander

Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit!

A few days back The Atlantic published an article about how we should treat Trump supporters in a post-Trump era that is utterly unremarkable and instantly forgettable except for the snide, dismissive insults to Insane Clown Posse and Juggalos in its first paragraph. 

Staff writer Graeme Wood has apparently not paid attention to pop culture over the past fifteen years, and clearly did not get the memo that, actually, classism is not funny or cool or hip but actually pretty gross because the very worst, “funniest” insult he can come up with for a man personally responsible for the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people due to COVID 19 is to compare him to fans of a misunderstood hip hop duo. 

In words positively dripping with oily, condescending disdain, Wood writes, “At noon tomorrow, our four-year experiment in being governed by the political equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse will finally end. It is ending in Juggalo style (some have called it “Trumpalo”), violently and pointlessly, with a handful of deaths, the smearing of various bodily fluids, and a riot on the way out. After any bacchanal of this magnitude, the sober dawn is almost as disorienting as the hysteria itself—and the most urgent task, after wiping the shit from the Capitol hallways, is to prevent a repeat performance.”

Having sufficiently blown readers away with his hip dismissal of 2002’s hottest laughingstock, Wood more or less drops the Trump-as-Juggalo metaphor shtick but returns to it twice more, once while referring to Trump’s “Juggalo-in-exile post-presidency” and finally in the final paragraph, where he ties it all together with a big, smug, prep school bow when he sneers, “Trump won an election; one generation of political Juggalos was punishment enough.”

Wood does not seem to know anything about Insane Clown Posse except that he has heard that they are gross, and dumb, and smear shit everywhere like a goddamn pack of animals.

Here’s the thing: when you have a reputation as the rowdiest, worst-behaved and most obnoxious fanbase in all of pop music and you throw a massive protest march in D.C that is peaceful and lovely and utterly without incident, as the Juggalos did back in 2017 with their Juggalo March on Washington (which, full disclosure, I had the honor of speaking at) then you have officially earned the right to NOT be compared to people who came to the Capitol to protest and instead terrorized lawmakers and incited a deadly riot that humiliated our country on the international stage. 

But it goes beyond that. Despite their reputation, Insane Clown Posse is most assuredly not nihilistic or pointless in their ideology. On the contrary, their mythology stresses the importance of being a good person and a force for good in the universe. Insane Clown Posse’s mythology is, if anything, overly moralistic, to the point of being more than a little heavy-handed.

That’s why ICP has fought the F.B.I designation of Juggalos as a gang on their fans behalf and when it became clear just how dangerous and serious COVID 19 was, ICP almost instantly cancelled the Gathering, their big annual festival of arts and culture, rather than risk endangering their fans. 

Needless to say, that is not how Trump responded to COVID 19. He kept having huge, largely mask-less gatherings of true believers, some of whom undoubtedly died unnecessarily due to their hero’s narcissism and irresponsibility. 

Insane Clown Posse have changed over time. They’ve grown the fuck up. I like to think that my 2013 book on Juggalos and Phish fans, You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, played at least some role in changing how Juggalos are perceived. I like to think I helped humanized a group and a fanbase all too easy to dismiss as a cheap punchline, as shorthand for the worst, tackiest, stupidest people in the world. 

How could people with such good taste in literature possibly be bad?

Wood’s article betrays that there are still plenty of circles where it’s still perfectly acceptable to use Juggalos as a cheap punchline coated in a thick layer of disdain for the ostensibly unwashed and uneducated. 

Thankfully a counter-narrative for Insane Clown Posse and Juggalos exists as well that posits them not as shorthand for vulgar, scatological rednecks but as human beings with dignity who find community and identity in being part of a welcoming group of supportive outsiders. 

Now when someone like Wood decides to spice up his forgettable treatise on the aftermath of the Trump era with ugly, snide jabs at Juggalos and ICP there’s serious pushback on social media from people who have read You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me or interacted with real Juggalos, rather than the disgusting cartoons of Wood’s imagination.

There will probably always be people making cheap jokes at Juggalos’ expense like Wood. I used to be one of those people. But now at least there is a spirited cultural conversation about Juggalos with both sides represented rather than a seemingly universal perception of ICP’s fans as borderline sub-human. 

If nothing else I have proven conclusively that Juggalos are, at the very least, human. But I’m guessing You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me is not on Wood’s bookshelf or he wouldn’t be so brazen about slandering a group of people who have already put up with so much mockery and misunderstanding. 

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