Wingnut (politics)
"Wingnut", wing nut or wing-nut, is a pejorative American political term referring to a person who holds extreme, and often irrational, political views.
Definitions and etymology[edit]
According to Merriam-Webster, a "wingnut" is "a mentally deranged person" or "one who advocates extreme measures or changes: radical".[1] Lexico, an online dictionary whose content comes from Oxford University Press, gives the political definition of "wing nut" as "A person with extreme, typically right-wing, views."[2]
When William Safire – who described himself as a "language maven"[3] and wrote the "On Language" column for The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until 2009[4] – first wrote about "wing nut" in 2004, he said "In current political parlance ... the word is now beginning its bid to replace the tiring extremist. ... The true believers of each side consider those similarly inclined on the other to be nuts and kooks, a satisfying arrangement of derangement. ... The attack word catching on with political nonwingers and by mainstreaming media is wing nut. It is applied with supposed fine impartiality to both left-wing kooks and right-wing nuts",[5] but by 2006, Safire would say "The prevailing put-down of right-wing bloggers is wingnuts; this has recently been countered by the vilification of left-wing partisans who use the Web as moonbats..."[6] Later that year, Safire provided an example of the usage of "wingnut" in a Time magazine column by Joe Klein, in which Klein referred to "conservative wingnuts" (as opposed to "left-wing blognuts"), called Vice President Dick Cheney "the nation’s wingnut in chief", and said of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal that it was "quasi-wingnut".[7]
Two years later, in his book Safire's Political Dictionary, Safire was more definitive about the meaning and etymology of the word:
...[T]he political wingnut is an abbreviation of a longer term, in this case right-wing nut where nut, as slang for the head, has long been used to refer to a person who is silly, stupid, crazy, or simply nutty. ... The original right-wing nut is of considerable antiquity, dating at least to the 1960s...Today, the long and the short forms co-exist amicably in print.[8]
David M. Herszenhorn of The New York Times has defined a "wing nut" as "a loud darling of cable television and talk radio whose remarks are outrageous but often serious enough not to be dismissed entirely."[9]
In his book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, author and columnist John Avlon defined a wingnut as "someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum – the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us".[10] Avlon also writes "I believe that the far left and the far right can be equally insane – but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far right has been a lot crazier." The examples Avlon gives of this "craziness" include the Oath Keepers and the Tea Party.[11]
"Wingnut welfare"[edit]
In 2015, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in his The New York Times column about "wingnut welfare". Krugman did not claim to have come up with the term, and did not know who did,[notes 1] but he explained it as describing "the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available." Krugman wrote that "anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak."[12] The phrase has subsequently been used elsewhere, including in 2017 in the Washington Monthly by Martin Longman[13] and in an opinion column in The Washington Post by political commentator Paul Waldman in 2018.[14]
In 2021, writer Charles P. Pierce, the author of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free described the career of one Texas political lawyer by saying "His CV reads like a road map through the wingnut-welfare legal terrarium".[15] Pierce had also use the phrase in earlier columns in 2018[16] and 2020[17] in describing the actions and backgrounds of those on the political right.
See also[edit]
Other articles of the topic Politics : Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, Social Activist, Incumbent, Ewald Max Hoyer, Frank Blackburn
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References[edit]
Informational notes
- ↑ An early reference to "wingnut welfare" can be found on "Political Animal", an unsigned feature published by CBS News on August 21, 2008. See "Wingnut Welfare"
Citations
- ↑ "wing nut" Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- ↑ "Wing nut" Lexico
- ↑ Zimmer, Ben (October 5, 2009) "The Maven, Nevermore" The New York Times Magazine
- ↑ McFadden, Robert D. (September 27, 2009). "William Safire, Nixon Speechwriter and Times Columnist, Is Dead at 79". The New York Times. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
- ↑ Safire, William (April 11, 2004) "Wing Nut" The New York Times Magazine
- ↑ Safire, William {February 19, 2006) "Blargon" The New York Times Magazine
- ↑ Safire, William (September 3, 2006) "Moon Bats & Wing Nuts" The New York Times Magazine
- ↑ Safire, William (2008) Safire's Political Dictionary New York: Oxford University Press. p.435. ISBN 9780195340617 Search this book on
.
- ↑ Herszenhorn, David M. (October 31, 2009) "Alan Grayson, the Liberals’ Problem Child" The New York Times
- ↑ R.M. (May 16, 2010) "Six questions for John Avlon" The Economist
- ↑ Avlon, John (2010) Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America New York: Beast Books. pp.3-6. ISBN 978-0-99124-760-8 Search this book on .
- ↑ Krugman, Paul (April 25, 2015) "Wingnut Welfare and Work Incentives" The New York Times
- ↑ Longman, Martin (December 22, 2017) "The Left Has No Answer to Wingnut Welfare" Washington Monthly
- ↑ Waldman, Paul (November 21, 2018) "How Matthew Whitaker’s ‘wingnut welfare’ stint made him perfect for Trump" The Washington Post
- ↑ Pierce, Charles P. (September 20, 2021) "This Supreme Court Brief Gives Away the Whole Conservative Game on Abortion" Esquire
- ↑ Pierce, Charles P. (June 13, 2018) "Scott Pruitt Is a Monument to Wingnut Welfare" Esquire via Yahoo! Life
- ↑ Pierce, Charles P. (October 13, 2020) "Sheldon Whitehouse Made the Case That Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination Is a Bag Job" Esquire via the website of Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator for Rhode Island
External links[edit]
The dictionary definition of wingnut at Wiktionary
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