Champagne socialist

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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, who claims to support a form of socialist ideology, but who might disregard socialist ideals in their daily life. The term is sometimes used as an attack by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical (see below).

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[edit] History and origin

The label arose from the perceived activity of proposing toasts to famous socialists with champagne. A similar concept, with aristocracy in place 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[citation needed] 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". The term Bollinger Bolshevik is used in the same way.

[edit] People labelled as champagne socialists

[edit] International

The same concept has different names throughout the world:

[edit] See also