curious usage note

[victor steinbok]

I suspect, this might have been true only a few months ago--perhaps
one needs to go as far back as mid-2009. But with the election season
approaching in 2010, "jihadist" was also being used on the *Left*
(along with "teahadist") to represent aggressive and often religious
right-wing activists. This had led to such superficially paradoxical
phrases as "anti-mosque jihadists", so, in at least some instances,
there must have been a degree of irony added to the term. The term
remains to be popular with anti-Islam and anti-Arab activists,
however, so IMO the description is still largely--but no longer
exclusively--true. More importantly, FNC and other right-wing talking
heads have also adopted the term for other groups they don't like,
e.g., animal-rights activists, opponents of particular platform goals
or people (e.g., "anti-Walker jihadists"). The transfer appears to
have dual purpose--it lumps all sorts of opposition groups under one
catch-all term /and/, at the same lime, tags them as radical-Islam
fellow-travelers. I will look for specific instances in print, but my
observations have largely been made from TV and radio.

Some samples (I decided to find a few before sending):

http://goo.gl/JFG6m
Fiscal Jihadist, Free Spending Republicans Punked the Tea Party
[01.22.11]

http://goo.gl/QdXOD
Texas Senate Honors Stealth Jihadist
[02.15.11]

http://goo.gl/Ly554
American Taxpayer, Financial Jihadist
[08.14.10]

http://goo.gl/IzHLK
American Taliban — The Republican Party Looks More Jihadist by the Day
[02.05.10]  [note adjectival usage]

http://goo.gl/z6d4n
Jerkoff Jihadist Christine O’Donnell Beats Off Challenger Mike Castle
to Win Delaware Senate GOP Nomination
[09.14.10]


Note that the last two are clearly aimed /at/
conservatives/Tea-partiers/Republicans, the first is somewhat
ambiguous (at least from the headline) and the rest are all written
from the right-wing perspective. While this is not entirely
representative of the distribution, it does reflect the range fairly
accurately.
VS-)

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> But what of this?:
>
> "..._Jihadist_, however, is the preferred form for all writers who are
> vehemently anti-Arab or anti-Islam."
>
> Is this true? Do I even detect sarcasm? Doesn't the note imply that the use
> of "jihadist" is an identifying mark of the racist and/or religious bigot?
>
> On what basis specifically?

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