Spartist

plural Spartists

1. humorousA left-winger, particularly a revolutionary but bourgeois one.

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

   1982, Private Eye

   3 more examples

   [...] 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.

   1996, New Statesman

   [...] 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.

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

   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.

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

   Synonyms: champagne socialist

comparative more Spartist · superlative most Spartist

1. humorousFar-left, particularly of a revolutionary but bourgeois nature.

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

   1989, Tom Milne, The Time Out Film Guide

   3 more examples

   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.

   1983, The Listener

   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.

   2007, The Spectator

   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.

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