"Conservative" has been the polite term for "Right-winger" for decades, maybe a century or more.

[JHB]

Sometimes "archconservative" makes an appearance, but such phrasing is always intended to soften the impression of extreme views and deflect implied criticism.

It's come to the fore due to recent events, with Charlie Kirk being incessantly described -- even by nonconsevative media -- as a "conservative activist", not at the right-wing agitator that he was.

Objectively, there are distinctions that could be made between "conservative" and "right-wing", but not in everyday language and current common usage. There's no boundary that reliably sorts views into different categories; all RW points of view are welcome under the "conservative" umbrella. After all, it made recruiting much easier, facilitated bringing all these factions to the current Republican coalition.

I don't bring this up to save the word "conservative". The people who'd most like to do that, the NeverTrumpers who spent their careers building an extreme voter base who would just swallow whatever their favorite people told them. Not only were they part of the problem, they've repeatedly shown themselves to be absolutely useless in shifting any of their former audience off the wingnut reservation.

I just want the rest of us to not sugar-coat open, blatant extremism. Soft-peddling hasn't worked before, and it won't do anything now.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Conservatives resist change, especially too abrupt change; Extremists advocate abrupt and violent change.

Turnips followers, the MAGAt base, and opportunistic Uglicans in Congress are all extremists.

And please don't use the term "radical", that term is widely misused and misunderstood to mean the same as "extremist". It does not. It refers to getting to "root (Latin radix*) causes" of things, and RWNJ have completely delusional views of root causes -- which makes the label "radical" a lie in their case(s).



*as a noun, anyway

[Metaphorical]

2. Legitimacy

Any militant group - one that advocates violence, subjegation and control as a means of causing political change - seeks first and foremost to gain the stamp of legitimacy, not only to end the status quo, but to become the status quo. This is why these groups so frequently clothe themselves in patriotic symbols as well as symbols of stability: "conservative" being one of the most obvious, but religious fundamentalism works in very similar ways.

BTW, thanks on the origin of radical from radix - I hadn't made that association, but the jump from the Latin radix to the Germanic root now seems obvious, with both of them likely from an indo-Iranian rhud or something similar.

[JHB]

5. Well, I did note that first part, didn't I?

"Objectively, there are distinctions that could be made between "conservative" and "right-wing", but not in everyday language and current common usage." There has been such an effort to get as wide a range of people as possible to identify as "conservative" that the word itself has lost effective meaning.

As for my use of the word "radical," I'm not going to be honoring your request, as I am not wrong in using the word as I do. In the context of US politics, "radical" has a decades-long history of being a pejorative signifying extremism. Words can and often do have several meanings or shades of meanings, and I will continue to use the meanings that I think best convey my intent.

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. I prefer the term

REICH-WINGER for those in power now and their supporters.

[JHB]

6. I've started leaning more into the other side of the horseshoe, and equate them with the Soviets.

It annoys them more because it turns their own favorite rhetoric about us back at them.

There has always been part of the Conservative Movement that has held a sneaking admiration for the Bolsheviks, for the way a small faction could play others against each other then, in a few ruthless moves, take total power. Several clusters of these have been riding Trump to push their agendas: The Conservo-Bolsheviks, the Theo-Bolsheviks, the Pluto-Bolsheviks, the Techno-Bolsheviks, etc.

They all end up being equivalent to the classic Red Menace: a small faction of radicals take power, upend our way of life, take away our freedoms and our property, and will leave us a weakened and diminished nation. Every single one of them point us into that downward spiral.

[Rebl2]

4. May be

time to call conservatives the extremist right or radical right.