Sheeple
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sheeple is a term of disparagement, a portmanteau created by combining the words "sheep" and "people"; a reference to herd mentality. It is often used to denote persons who acquiesce to authority, and thus undermine their own human individuality. The implication of sheeple is that as a collective, people believe whatever they are told, without processing it to be sure that it is an accurate representation of the real world around them. The term is generally used in a political or religious sense.
The label seems to have originated among conspiracy theorists in the United States of a far right political persuasion. The Wall Street Journal first reported the label in print in 1984, where its reporter encountered the word used by the proprietor of an American Opinion bookstore affiliated with the John Birch Society.[1] In this usage, taxpayers were derided for their perceived blind conformity, as opposed to the conspiracy theorists and tax protesters who thought independently. "Sheeple" are people who pay their taxes and accept what the government and the mass media tell them. [2] A piece of folk poetry circulating among conspiracy theorists puts this usage in a nutshell:
- Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I am way too smart to believe in a conspiracy.[3]
Acceptance of government intrusion and regulation is another hallmark of the "sheeple" according to those who use the epithet. The Guardian reported that an Alaskan reacted to news of a survey that said that "four out of five Americans . . . would give up some freedoms for greater security" by labelling this majority as "sheeple".[4] In a column entitled A Nation of Sheeple, columnist Walter E. Williams writes that "Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation Security Administration nonsense. In the name of security, we've allowed fingernail clippers, eyeglass screwdrivers and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane."[5]
Common usage also applies the term to devoutly religious people, particularly Christians; however, it is also used to describe devout members of any religious persuasion, and perhaps its particular application to Christianity is a combination of the fact that Christians are the majority religion in the Americas and Europe where the term is commonly used, and the fact that Christians describe themselves as a "flock" and Christ as a "shepherd."
In political usage, it can be used to refer to a member of any political party, and is especially applied to those who take a hard party line stance or who are especially trusting of any politician.
However, the term is also used more broadly to describe any person who the speaker feels is exceedingly conformist, including members of consumer culture and popular culture at large.
The term has also come to be used to describe hoplophobes and other similar persons - people with an illogical fear of weapons, fire, cars, machinery etc, and certain other things such as men in camouflage or ethnic minorities. In this sense it is used particularly amongst gun and knife enthusiasts.
[edit] References
- ^ Bob Davis, "In New Hampshire, 'Live Free or Die' Is More Than a Motto," The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 1984, quoted online at Word Spy
- ^ "Word of the Day: Sheeple" at Macmillan Dictionary.
- ^ "Sheeple Poem" (accessed Sept. 22, 2006)
- ^ Duncan Campbell, "Goodbye to where America was", June 18, 2002.
- ^ "A Nation of Sheeple", Capitalism Magazine, October 19, 2005.
