Europeans love eating insects — at least according to a Bloomberg news clip that’s been making the rounds on the US right this week. Perhaps you’re wondering why the right in particular would be interested in a clip about eating bugs. The short answer is that it’s given them the opportunity to use one of the right’s more popular catchphrases these days — “I will not eat the bugs” — which seems to have originated from one of the insane Infowars guys.
But that just brings us to a similar question: what is it about eating bugs in particular that has made this catchphrase so popular on the right? I’ve eaten a grasshopper before and I can understand why anyone would be grossed out by it; the texture is bizarre and unpleasant and nothing about the taste makes up for that. But if you are imagining some kind of dystopian future, is being forced to eat bugs really the most sensational thing you can come up with? Eating a cricket is the great danger of left politics that we must do everything in our power to avoid?
