Spartist

English

Etymology

From Dave Spart (“stereotypical left-winger”) +‎ -ist, itself a clipping of Spartacist (“member of the communist Spartacist League”).

Noun

Spartist (plural Spartists)

1. (humorous) A left-winger, particularly a revolutionary but bourgeois one.
   • 1982, Private Eye:

     ... At this party, some local Spartists differed on fundamental issues of principle, their collective consciousness heightened by quantities of drink.

   • 1996, New Statesman:

     [...] the Spartists in the new universities when they found that a non- white , a man whose tattoos could be seen so clearly , had been painted in the same classical manner as an English aristocrat.

   • 2000, Nick Cohen, Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous, Verso, →ISBN, page 102:

     [...] there is a hackneyed line of attack against their kind. They are Spartists, bleeding hearts , do-gooders , limousine liberals who probably live in Hampstead and care more about criminals than their victims.

   • 2002 January 4, David Hornbrook, Education and Dramatic Art, Routledge, →ISBN, page 91:

     Despite these very real differences, certain common themes can be traced in the writings of those – quietists and Spartists alike – promoting spontaneous improvisation and role-play during the 1980s and 1990s.

Synonyms

• champagne socialist

Adjective

Spartist (comparative more Spartist, superlative most Spartist)

1. (humorous) Far-left, particularly of a revolutionary but bourgeois nature.
   • 1983, The Listener:

     In between putting the finishing touches to the theory of 'permanent revolution', he even manages a flirtation with the wife of a fellow guest ... and not a spartist gesture in sight.

   • 1989, Tom Milne, The Time Out Film Guide:

     [...] and what a Spartist crew they are — all revolutionary clap-trap and middle class guilt.

   • 2007, The Spectator:

     The C of E primary school that my children go to is a lot better than most , but , no matter how hard it tries, it will always be shackled by the left-liberal orthodoxy imposed on it by the governments, the unions and Spartist educational theorists.

   • 2017 July 20, Stuart Maconie, Long Road from Jarrow: A journey through Britain then and now, Random House, →ISBN:

     He's a political animal most thought had become extinct, a Spartist dinosaur reeking of hummus and hemp and definitely not the smoky fires of industry.