Champagne socialist

From Free net encyclopedia

A "champagne socialist" is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe a politician, or other self-proclaimed advocate of the poor or working classes (eg a journalist, blogger or public speaker), who claims to support a form of socialist ideology, but who appears to disregard socialist ideals in their daily life. The term generally is used as an attack by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical.

The label arose from the perceived activity of proposing toasts to famous socialists with champagne. A similar concept, with aristocratic privilege in place of the benefits of capitalism, comes from the 19th-century philosopher Alexander Herzen, who in From the Other Shore (1855) wrote "It is they, none other, who are dying of cold and hunger...while you and I in our rooms on the first floor are chatting about socialism 'over pastry and champagne.'" Readers of the Daily Mirror, a tabloid newspaper whose left-leaning views have been criticised as somewhat half-hearted, are sometimes referred to as 'cava socialists' or 'asti socialists'. A comparable term in the first half of the 20th century was "parlor pink".

Those who have been labeled as "champagne socialists" include Geoffrey Robinson, (ex-Paymaster General and chairman of Coventry City Football Club), Gavyn Davies (former Labour Party donor, Goldman Sachs banker and BBC chairman), Vanessa Redgrave (actress and prominent socialist), Julie Burchill (columnist for the Times and Guardian) and John Prescott (current Deputy Prime Minister). In the film The Aviator, Howard Hughes labels the whole of middle class left-wing Americans as Champagne socialists.

The same concept has different names throughout the world:


See also: left-wing politics, liberal elite, limousine liberalsv:Champagnesocialist

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Champagne_socialist"