Attempting to downplay a person or idea'
s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public. This is often
done by claiming that the radicals are taken out of context,
don'
t truly represent the movement, or that opponents' arguments about its severity are wrong. Oftentimes, the person doing the sanewashing isn'
t radical themselves—they may be doing so because they genuinely
don'
t believe the movement to be radical, or are trying to justify to themselves how they can support a radical movement.
A portmanteau of "sane" + "whitewashing" (portraying something as better than it is). Coined on the /r/neoliberal subreddit in late
2020 to describe progressives who misrepresent radical stances.
"/r/antiwork isn'
t about not wanting to
work at all, it's about wanting to reform wage labor to make it less exploitative."
"Stop sanewashing it, I found a video of the head moderator who says
20 hours of dog-walking is too labor-intensive."
