A Glossary of Right-Wing Terms and Phrases*
*As used EVERY DAY FOR YEARS by right-wing politicians and political commentators, the right-wing press, right-wing YouTubers, the alt-right, the hard-right and the far-right, Spiked, the Spectator, a vast network of Libertarian billionaire-funded free-market ‘think-tanks’, lobbyists, institutions and ‘charities’, LBC, Times Radio, TalkRADIO, TalkTV and Britain’s very own Fox News: GB News.
Anti-racist: “race-baiter”
Antifa: “fascist”
Asset stripping: “wealth creation”
Asylum seekers: “illegals/invaders”
Being polite: “political correctness/woke”
Billionaire: “wealth creator”
Booing the England football team: “free speech”
Bribery: “lobbying”
Challenging bigotry: “woke”
Challenging inflammatory rhetoric: “anti-free speech”
Clapping #NHS workers: “not gesture politics”
Climate change: “woke hoax”
Collectivism: “Communism”
Concern about Britain: “anti-British”
Concern about populist nationalism: “anti-British”
Consumer, worker & environmental protections: “red tape”
Conspiracy theorist: “free-thinker”
Cost of living crisis: “short-term global hiccup”
Corporate lobbyist: ‘think tank’
Corruption: “legitimate political activity”
Corruption “fast-tracking”
Critical theory: “cultural Marxism”
Critical thinking “wokification”
Critiquing free-market capitalism: “Marxism”
Deliberately inflammatory rhetoric: “free speech”
Demonising Muslims, migrants, or minorities: “free speech”
Deregulation: “cutting red tape”
Disabled: “work-shy”
Disaster capitalist: “wealth creator”
Disinformation: “news”
Epidemiologist: “doomsday scientist”
Expert: “metropolitan elite”
Facemask: “face nappy/muzzle”
Far-right: “patriotic”
Far-right discourse: “marginalised voices”
Far-right rhetoric “free speech”
Fascism: “patriotism”
Feminism: “man-hating”
Food banks: “uplifting charitable support”
Free-market ideology: “common sense”
Fucking hopeless: “genius”
Good government: “nanny-state”
Government corruption: “doing your best”
Government law-breaking: “doing what’s best for Britain”
Greed: “good”
Health & safety: “bureaucracy”
Helping asylum seekers: “Lefty activism“
Historian: “anti-British”
Homeless: “lacking self-discipline”
Housing crisis: “housing boom”
Humanities academic: “woke anti-British cultural Marxist”
Identifying structural/institutional racism: “unpatriotic”
Ignoring problems: “making tough decisions”
Ignoring problems: “strategic priorities”
Impoverishing people in Labour constituencies: “Levelling up”
Inequality: “incentivising”
Institutional, structural, or systemic racism: “individual racism”
Isolationism: “freedom”
Journalism: “Leftist propaganda”
Low-paid insecure work: “flexible working”
Lying: “rhetoric”
Media literacy: “cultural Marxism”
Migrants: “illegals”
Migration: “invasion”
Minority: “non-indigenous population”
Ministerial Code: “optional guidance”
Misinformation “news”
MP’s consultancy work/second job: “Valuable relevant experience”
Nationalism: “patriotism”
Objecting to insults: “snowflake”
Opposing bigotry: “virtue-signalling”
Opposing Islamophobia: “terrorist-supporting”
Oxbridge Professors “second-rate dons”
Privatisation: “wealth creation”
Profiteering: “outsourcing”
Propaganda: “news”
Protections for workers, consumers, citizens and the environment: “red tape”
Protest: “hate march”
Public sector: “inefficient”
Questioning injustice: “virtue-signalling”
Racist: “patriot”
Recognising social problems are often connected to class, sex, sexuality, age or ethnicity: “identity politics”
Refugee: “invader”
Refugees: “illegals”
Refusing to help people: “common sense”
Removing pandemic safety measures: “freedom”
Researching the legacy of colonialism: “cultural Marxism”
Right-wing populist nationalism: “patriotism”
Seeking truth: “Undermining our way of life”
Selfish individualism: “freedom”
Self responsibility: “freedom”
Society: “families and individuals”
Strike: “holding country hostage”
Student: “woke consumer”
Supporting Palestine: “antisemitic“
Taking the knee: “gesture politics”
Tax-haven: “Offshore investment opportunity”
Tax-avoidance: “creative accountancy”
Threat to the powerful: “unelectable”
Transfer of wealth from poor to rich: “austerity/neoliberalism”
Unemployed: “work-shy”
Union: “Marxist tyranny”
University: “Leftist anti-British institution”
Vaccine: “untested mRNA gene therapy”
Welfare: “disincentive to work”
Welfare state: “nanny state”
Wishes of minority of total electorate: “will of the people”
Young person: “snowflake”
Actor: “woke”
Anti-racism: “woke”
Art: “woke”
BBC: “woke”
Capitalism: “woke”
Channel 4: “woke”
Charities: “woke”
Civil servants: “woke”
Comedy: “woke”
Compassion: “woke”
Continental philosophy: “woke”
Drama: “woke”
Education: “woke”
Equality: “woke”
Empathy: “woke”
England football team: “woke”
Environmentalism: “woke”
Feminism: “woke”
Green party: “woke”
Human Resources: “woke”
Human rights: “woke”
Ikea: “woke”
Labour party: “woke”
Military industrial complex: “woke”
Museums: “woke”
National Trust: “woke”
Opposing homophobia: “woke”
Opposing Islamophobia: “woke”
Opposing racism: “woke”
Opposing sexism: “woke”
NHS: “woke”
Progressives: “woke”
Protest: “woke”
RNLI: “woke”
RSPB: “woke”
Supermarkets: “woke”
Theatre: “woke”
Universities: “woke”
Veganism: “woke”
This creative, divisive, and profoundly misleading use of language has evolved over the last forty years, emerging hand-in-hand with deregulated free-market capitalism.
The manufactured “war on woke” is a distraction from the power, wealth and greed of a tiny minority of grotesquely wealthy billionaies, and is designed to keep voters divided. Under cover of COVID, wealth has been transferred from poor to rich on an unprecedented & unimaginable scale, eroding democracy & resulting in hardship, conflict, mass death and environmental collapse.
Globally, the world’s richest 1% pocketed 66% of ALL new wealth ($26 TRILLION) created since the pandemic began.
This process of wealth transfer has been accelerating for more than forty years, brought about by the neoliberal economic revolution, which increased ‘economic growth’, but also resulted in low-paid, insecure work, grotesque inequalities, rising poverty, failing public services, polarisation, the near collapse of democratic institutions, and climate change.
The push to ‘deregulate’ in order for the “free market” to function more “effectively” has driven down worker, consumer, citizen, & environmental protections, while increasing exponentially the power of unelected & unaccountable corporations, opaquely funded ‘think tanks’, & grotesquely wealthy individuals.
These individuals, ‘think tanks’, & corporations have slowly infiltrated then ruthlessly taken over political parties & Governments across the world — including the Conservative Party in the UK & the US Republicans — who simply represent elite interests, at great cost to the masses & to the environment.
Perhaps the key mechanism by which they are enabled to continue exploiting human & environmental resources is by keeping a facade of democracy, while investing $BILLIONS in media outlets, ‘think tanks’, lobbyists, public relations, and other forms of sophisticated, increasingly online, divisive propaganda, using the language described above.
In the UK we can see this process playing out by the (largely unreported) FACT that since 2009, the collective wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 individuals has INCREASED by £480 BILLION, while millions have suffered hardship resulting from unnecessary & purely ideological austerity.
In the UK alone, the number of billionaires went from 15 in 1990, to 29 in 2010, and has now jumped to 171 In 2023.
The richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, and today, 60% more people strongly agree that there is “one law for the rich & one for the poor” than agreed in 1997.
Globally, at least $30 TRILLION is hoarded offshore by the elite — an almost unimaginable amount — & now that grotesque levels of inequality are resulting in a cost-of-living-crisis, industrial unrest, widespread protest, & civil unrest across the world, all they have left is to fall back on populist nationalist rhetoric reminiscent of 1930s Germany, & the scapegoating of anyone or anything but the grotesquely wealthy sociopathic libertarian elites, whose greed caused this mess.
