trutherism?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If there is pervasive use of "Truther", why not its logical derivative
> "trutherism". "Truther" has already spawned "Birther"--and those who
> first adopted its use were initially very explicit that they were
> modeling the term after "Truther" (in part because there was a
> significant overlap in both membership and rhetoric). There are 56000+
> raw ghits for "Trutherism", including National Review, Little Green
> Footballs, Politico, RightWingNews,  IsraelForum, Free Republic. Two
> weeks ago, in a comment on Bob Novak's obits, Debbie Schlussel (whose
> mental state we should not discuss here) referred to Novak as "the
> Father of Trutherism". Although many conservative blog and publication
> "Trutherism" references are just derivatives of the Politico piece (and
> its intellectual ancestors), that only accounts for a few dozen hits.
> Many others refer to "Trig Trutherism"--labeling the conspiracy
> theorists who brood about the "real" mother of Sarah Palin's youngest
> child. And there are many others.

See this Michele Malkin piece for "trutherism" of the 9/11 and Trig varieties:

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/12/05/truthers-to-the-left-of-me-truthers-to-the-right/

A response to that contains the earliest mention I've found for "birtherism":

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/05/triggerism-trutherism-and-birtherism/


--Ben Zimmer

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