Wingnuts are go!

[gordonzola]

OK folks, it’s definition time. Who would like to posit a definition for "wingnut" as it applies to a certain type of politico?

Here’s mine:

Wingnut: A person who has their mental health issues so intertwined with their "politics" that to them there is no difference. Paranoia, conspiracy theory, and poor social skills are necessary traits. In addition, ineffectiveness and failure are usually treated as signs that the Revolution is somehow coming closer to happening. The term originated in People’s Park, Berkeley, California and is usually used by slightly embarrassed anarchists and anti-authoritarians to distance themselves from "wingnut’ politics and activists who may also identify with those terms.

Sample sentence: Did you see the wingnuts protesting the "execution" of Rosebud Denovo when the cops shot her for breaking into the chancellor’s home with a machete?

Please feel free to add your own definitions or ask if someone you know fits the definition.

Comments

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think the Berkeley reference dates/locates you.

But honestly, I think the definition is anyone four steps further to the left (or, I suppose, right if one is firmly right-wing) of oneself. Alas, it is that relative.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

do you not think it originated in Berkeley? or do you just mean the Rosebud thing?

and I don't think it's that relative. I wouldn't call a party Trot a wingnut, generally, because their politics, however misguided, come with a certain context based on movement history. Not like, "You know the government is is sending electro-magnetic waves into the air to make people docile. That's what it's all about man, freedom..."

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

No, seriously, I grew up (I think) with the term "wingnut". And it was in England, too, in the 1980s.

And see, I think Trots are just a little too close to you. You do think the RCPers are insane with their, "Brother, all couples will wither away after the revolution," right?

english wing nuts

[raptis.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - I don't think 'wing-nut' has peculated (down/up/over) into British english. I remember it being used to describe kids with big ears when I was at school, but that is a different story.

I didn't 'get' the precise meaning of wing nut until I read this thread. I was going to tell the story of the woman who wanted to stop the gulf war (before last...) by getting activists to wrap tape round TV ariels and stop the rays from Bush Senior and John Major corrupting us all. The problem with that was that none of the (mostly Brit Trots) knew what to do and so stared at their feet.

The nearest Britishism I have heard for lefties who are just so vociferously on-their-line that they are almost a parody of themselves is 'hack' or 'head banger' but none of these quite point derision as wing-nut seems to.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

I don't remember "wingnut" ever being used over here, either, and I've been around long enough to remember the origin of the term "politically correct" as a joke among UK lefties in the late 70s & early 80s.

The RCP are/were just scary (didn't they morph into a business think-tank after the demise of their stupid magazine?)...

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Two different RCPs are being referenced here.

RCP(US): Acolytes of Chairman Bob. Most visible Maoist group in North America. Originators of the t-shirt slogan "Mao More Than Ever".

RCP(GB): Quasi-Trotskyists turned eclecto-Marxists turned corporate media gurus. Led by Frank Furedi (Richards).

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Aha.

Is Furedi not his real name, then?

I've encountered Ann Furedi many times through the pro-choice campaigns I've been involved in.

Unfortunately.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Furedi is his real name, Richards was nom de bolchevisme.

[odelenu.livejournal.com]

Ann and Frank are husband and wife. I ran into them a few years ago at SFO airport, when I was picking up a friend of mine who also used to be involved in the RCP. It was a really tripy moment.
I don't know Ann really well, though I met her first about 22 years ago. She was very opinionated then and I always appreciated her for that. She stood up in a room full of politically heavy weight guys and gave them hell AND she was right on the money. I know she has not always been popular, but I have been a fan even when I a disagreed.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

she was right on the money

Yes, she knows her onions. She has been prominent in pro-choice campaigns & is often asked for a quote by the national press, and she always gives the right quote, makes the right point.

But I have never trusted her. I remember, for example, going to a talk by a veteran pro-choice campaigner and watching her carefully but forcefully take it over, as if it was her everyone had come to listen to.

It's this that defines the RCP for me - they've always been one of those groups that's more interested in winning arguments than in genuine discourse (contrary to their late adoption of the 'ban nothing, question everything' slogan). It's an authoritarian impulse which is what I feel destroyed the British left in the 80s.

It's good that Ann knows what she's talking about when the media contact her, but there are people much more deserving of being in that position.

[odelenu.livejournal.com]

Ha! I know the RCP rather too well, I was a member back in the 80s. Not to be confused with the especially scary american version of the RCP.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Now that is interesting.

I had a friend who'd been a member. She left and was hounded for it by her former friends in the party. It was very like a cult. I always found their recruitment techniques very cult-like, too.

Later on I was in a pro-choice group with a bunch of RCPers who, interestingly, initially made out they weren't in the party. They behaved towards me in exactly the same way as the Christian group which recruited me for a while when I was 11 or 12.

[odelenu.livejournal.com]

That is terrible behaviour. That kind of shit gave them a bad name. Who was your friend, was she a member in the 80s, or later? The party was small and everyone pretty much knew everyone else.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

She was just a teenager at the time. This would be around 1989, probably. She won't talk about it now - it was a really traumatic experience for her.

[odelenu.livejournal.com]

Yeah I had already left at that point. The thug element was really high at the end of the 80s. I too was traumatised by the actions of some of the members and was very mistrustful of the general membership for a long time.

pc wing nuts

[raptis.livejournal.com]

Hey andypopI am old enough to remember that too. In fact in 1983 a young maeve66, who I had met that summer on a 100s of miles Youth CND march around US bases, sent me a badge which said 'Politically Correct'. It was a prized possession displayed from time to time for taking the piss. It makes me feel weak to hear the Daily Mail style rants against it now --- it was always a fucking joke - except among a few, er, wingnuts.

Re: pc wing nuts

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that bit of evidence - a friend of mine who's a year older than me insists the phrase was invented by the right wing!

There's also the Poison Girls song from 1979, 'Ideologically Unsound' - different phrase, same sentiment...

Re: pc wing nuts

[odelenu.livejournal.com]

Oh god I miss the Poison Girls. Thanks for reminding me of them :-)

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

of course they're crazy. but I wouldn't use organizationally crazy to mean wingnut, I'd use sectarian. Wingnuts may develop followers, but I think of them as more the Lone Wolf type.

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

Oh but they love the public library!

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Ahem. You were the one who brought up the Trots--an organized level of extreme. And see, I disagree. One need not be a lone wolf to be a wingnut. In fact, it is much more difficult to deal with the more organized wingnuts (oh god, memories of the Sparts counter-protesting our US out of El Salvador marches are flooding back--there was some precise thing we protesters were missing about it, that it wasn't quite imperialism, and I just took one look at them and thought, Wingnuts!) than with the individual variety who can be asked to formulate a question or shut up.

But I stand corrected on the British. Or else my friends were quickly picking up my lingo and I didn't realize it.

See, but this was my exact question...

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

which actually sort of began this definitional frenzy -- would a Spart be a wingnut, or would only a wacky ardently individual anarchist (or the tee-shirt despising/christian/antiDMV dude) count as such? This all just makes me more wildly curious than ever. There is an anarchist household which (I think) functions more or less as an affinity group and calls itself for DASW purposes, the wingnuts -- affectionately, I have thought.

Oh, and this has no place in this comment, but I'm too lazy to go back, so I must get in my sectarian digs HERE -- the completely Trot bound nature of the British far left was ASTONISHING to me when I lived there in '86. Even though I had been carefully inoculated agaist Maoism as a child, at least I KNEW that there were other tendencies than Trotskyism, growing up in the States (let's not get into how odd it is to grow up knowing there is a tendency called Trotskyism, and knowing exactly which micro variant of it is RIGHT, goddamnit). In Britain -- nothing. Nothing but Trots and the CP as far as the eye could see... except a handful of Albanians, I think. Who at least sang the right version of the Internationale -- sorry, raptis, darling.

Re: See, but this was my exact question...

[lapsed.livejournal.com]

Be careful what you say about my house!

Some of them even fit Gzola's definition above, or at least the first bit of it. The self-identification is intentionally ironic, even if true, based on the perception of how most of the world views their politics. But even they recognize this whole class of other 'real wingnuts' who have gone so far as to be socially non-functional.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I think this is right. It's someone who is over your level of "extreme," whatever that level happens to be. It's no more definable than the distinction between porn and erotica.

[lapsed.livejournal.com]

Are the politics even all that relevant? Granted, you find more Wingnuts on the extremes but I think that has more to do with how 'accommodating' (read desperate for fellow travelers) the extremes can be. The strong leader Party groups probably expel most of their wingnuts but I'm sure they have their share of 'followers' they'd rather not acknowledge.