Maggie's Farm

“Radical chic” is a term coined by journalist Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s” to describe the adoption and promotion of radical political causes by celebrities, socialites, and high society. In languages such as American English, French and Italian the term has become widely used to indicate people identifying themselves as socialists or radical leftists while conducting upper-class lifestyles.

Unlike dedicated activists, revolutionaries, or dissenters, those who engage in “radical chic” remain frivolous political agitators—ideologically invested in their cause of choice only so far as it advances their social standing.

The concept has been described as “an exercise in double-tracking one’s public image: on the one hand, defining oneself through committed allegiance to a radical cause, but on the other, vitally, demonstrating this allegiance because it is the fashionable, au courant way to be seen in moneyed, name-conscious Society.”


We can’t understand because of some defect in our spiritual condition.

This comes closer to expressing the true nature of radical chic than as a mere fashion accessory. It is a genuine search for absolution by people guilt-ridden by a prosperous condition they are unwilling to leave. Instead, they resort to proxy methods and if they must renounce their baptism to obtain forgiveness, they’ll do it.