A Game: Funny Terms for Political Movements

~ Clarissa

Reader Rob F (whose own blog can be located here) acquainted me with a funny term for Libertarians – glibertarians.

I LOVE play on words so I have an idea. Let’s make a list of funny terms people use to refer to political and ideological groups.

Republicans – Repubenrons or Repugs

Anti-choicers – fetus lovers or the fetus people

My list is somewhat skewed because I have no idea how people of opposing systems of belief refer to Liberals and progressives. Other than “feminazi” nothing comes to mind. But feel free to share. I can absolutely guarantee that I will not be insulted. 🙂 Everything is getting too polarized in the months leading up to the election, so I think it’s a good idea to release some of the tension by laughing together.

Before we play, I want to say that this is not meant to offend anybody. Words only have as much power as we agree to give them. Of course, ethnic or racial slurs are not welcome because they are never inventive or interesting.

The winner will be the person who offers a term I find the most unexpected and funny. If there are several such terms, we can have a vote and decide collectively.

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Published by Clarissa

58 thoughts on “A Game: Funny Terms for Political Movements”

  2. Some pro-choice bloggers use the term “fetus fetishist(s)” for anti-choicers.

    Timothy Sandefur refers to certain types of libertarians (the ones who have no problem with state governments eliminating people’s rights [namely, those who think we live in some perverse zero-sum universe where the only way to prevent the federal government from oppressing you is to allow the state government to oppress you]) as “doughface libertarian(s)”. I have no idea if he originated the term or not.

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      1. ““Some pro-choice bloggers use the term “fetus fetishist(s)” for anti-choicers.”
        See, that can be tidied up a bit: I recommend “Fetushist.””

        – This is too good. 🙂 I am SO happy I started this thread because this is hilarious!

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    2. “Doughface” was a 19th Century slang term for “northern men with southern principles”–i.e., Yankee defenders of slavery and states’ rights. Doughface Libertarians are “libertarians” who defend slave states.

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    3. First came across the nomenclature “Fetus People” in Schrödinger’s Cat (pirated, ironically, at a Ukraine-based website). As an alternate timeline, it makes ours a real disappointment:

      He was a member of the True Roman Catholic Church, a splinter group formed after Vatican II had taken the main body of the Romish religion off into heresy and modernism. The members were survivors of the Irish-American fascism that had once rallied behind Father Coughlin, Father Feeney, and Senator Joe McCarthy. They regarded the English Mass as being almost as sacrilegious as abortion and Social Security as only one step from Stalinism.

      The Fetus People or the Right to Life Committee was an amalgamation of True Roman Catholics with the kind of Fundamentalists Protestants seldom seen north of Bad Ass, Texas. They were, like all primate ideologists and moralists, chiefly concerned with finding no-good shits and dumping on them.

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      1. Ugh… i know this is supposed to be a light-hearted thread but the soldier/terrorist dichotomoy is ridiculous. We did not generally call the soldiers in Saddam’s army terrorists (for the few days they fought… lol)… terrorists are those who use tactics to “terrorize”.. bombing innocent people, using civilianas as shields… w/e… just really repulsive in my mind to use this language…

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  14. In Canada, the Conservative Party was formed by the merger of the Reform and Progressive Conservative (Tory) parties. Therefore, some have taken to calling them the ReformaTories.

    Personally, since the new party pretty much jettisoned the socially progressive mores of the old PC party, but retained the named “Tory”, I like to call them “Supposed Tories”…or, if you say it fast, “SupposiTories.”

    For some reason this has not caught on.

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    3. OK, Canadians seem to be winning this game. The sense of humor is, of course, the basis of Canadian identity. “SupposiTories” is the term I will now be using to bug my relatives in Canada. Hee hee.

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    4. Continuing on the merge of the parties from the right in Canada:

      Reform Progressive Conservatives = Conform Regressive Preservatives

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      1. “Continuing on the merge of the parties from the right in Canada:

        Reform Progressive Conservatives = Conform Regressive Preservatives”

        – PHENOMENAL!!!!! How come I never heard this?

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    5. Yup, where I come from it’s the progressives versus the conservatives. If Canada ever has a “unite the left” moment, I sincerely hope the name of the resulting party will be “the Progressive Party,” although I will mourn the dawn of a !@#$%^&* Two Party System.

      Also, in Canada it seems the colors red and blue are role-reversed, and New Democrats are the Democrats who aren’t sold-out asswipes.

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      1. “If Canada ever has a “unite the left” moment, I sincerely hope the name of the resulting party will be “the Progressive Party,” although I will mourn the dawn of a !@#$%^&* Two Party System.”

        There was already a Progressive Party way back in the 1920s (it was the one that merged with the Conservatives in the 1940s to form the PC party in the first place). A two party system wouldn’t last; probably, the right wing of the Liberal Party of Canada would split-off and merge with the Greens in order to form a centrist, environmentalist party.

        “Also, in Canada it seems the colors red and blue are role-reversed”

        The political polarities of red and blue are inverted in the United States from pretty much every other country in the world. Although, the NDP is orange for some reason.

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        1. Not just red and blue. Today I had to spend 20 minutes explaining to the students how the Spanish Republicans are the exact opposite of the US Republicans. Of course, I would have preferred to say, “In Spain in the 30s, the Republicans were the good guys and here today it’s the opposite!” But we are a state university, so, of course, I didn’t. 🙂

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      2. @thevenerablecorvex: Duverger’s law predicts that, in general, FPTP causes (or favours, or causes trends towards) a two-party system. Hence it is more likely than not that anywhere with FPTP will have a two party system. I don’t really see Canada as much of an exception. In most ridings there is still a two-way race involving any two of the national parties. Furthermore, just because a smaller party wins seats, it does not follow that it has a realistic chance of actually forming government. Once regional parties are taken into account a two-party system generally emerges locally. For those reasons I disagree that “A two party system wouldn’t last.”

        The way to prevent this is to go with proportional representation. I prefer STV, which make candidates fight for votes rather than a spot on a party list, and ensures that the result is more proportional to vote totals (reducing wasted votes), while still making it less likely for extremist parties to get seats.

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  18. As a way to mock the American accent:

    American = ‘merkin

    It becomes funnier once you realize merkin is an actual word and you look it up in the dictionary.

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  19. I’m amazed no one has volunteered “fauxgressive” yet.

    (A fauxgressive, in case you haven’t heard this, is a person who says they’re progressive but don’t really have the courage of their convictions).

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  25. Repugnant: Audience members who cheer and yell “let him die” when Paul tells the story about an uninsured staffer of his who developed cancer and couldn’t pay for treatment – as a moralistic story about how foolish or poor people deserve to suffer.

    Paul-bot: Ron/Rand Paul fanboy (fangirls vanishingly rare) who derails every political discussion to proclaim the Wonders of Paul. These aren’t people just saying their piece in a single short comment. These Paul-bots trollishly dominate threadspace with large numbers of messages per Paul-bot, until their trollish IP addresses are banned.

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  26. Christocrat: Politician who mentions God in every sentence or clergyman who seizes every opportunity to hobnob with and possibly influence (promise votes to) one or more politicians. In general, any Christian who strongly opposes the separation of church and state. Examples: Huckabee, Santorum, Palin ; Cardinal Dolan, Lou Engle, Rick Warren, James Dobson, any number of obscure black pastors getting a ride from the Republican party by telling voters that Obama is eeeevil because he supports gay marriage, Samuel Rodriguez (the Hispanic head of a minor Hispanic ministers’ organization) providing the Republican convention with one of the token Real Live Minority speakers.

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