Rush Limbaugh and “feminazis”
By 
The news that the son of federal judge Esther Salas was apparently murdered by a “men’s rights activist” and Fox News guest obsessed with “feminazis” inspired me to do a bit of research regarding the term.
As a practical matter the term was invented by Rush Limbaugh. A Lexis search reveals no uses of the term in the ALLNEWS data base prior to 1992. Then Hillary Clinton’s husband became the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, and Limbaugh began to use it regularly on his national radio show, which had come into existence four years earlier, and was now the dominant program in right wing talk radio, which itself had exploded onto the scene with the elimination of the fairness doctrine in 1987.
Uses of “feminazi” in ALLNEWS by decade:
1980s: Zero
1990s: 393
2000s: 517
2010s: 3,623
Rush Limbaugh has played a critical role in the degradation of contemporary American politics and culture, and the day he dies will be one to celebrate.
This latest incident merely highlights how misogyny is at the core of Limbaugh’s mass appeal, because misogyny is at the core of reactionary politics in America. It may in fact be even more central than racism to that movement, which has placed Donald Trump in the White House and the nation’s highest civilian honor around the neck of America’s version of Julius Streicher.