red-baiter
A US political term for someone who practises red-baiting — the tactic of accusing political opponents of being communists, communist sympathisers, or subversives.
Etymology timeline
Born ~1950 · no dated citations yetDefinitions
A US political term for someone who practises red-baiting — the tactic of accusing political opponents of being communists, communist sympathisers, or subversives. Red-baiting was a key feature of McCarthyism in the 1940s-1950s. The term is used to criticise the tactic as demagogic or dishonest.
His opponents dismissed him as a red-baiter using Cold War scare tactics to deflect from real issues.
Comments
(US) A person who practices red-baiting.
Comments
Have a better definition?
Add your own interpretation of "red-baiter".
⚡About Tech, Dev & AI slang
The vocabulary of software engineers, AI researchers, and anyone living in a terminal or on GitHub — from LLM to MCP, CORS to vibe coding, agentic to enshittification.
See all Tech, Dev & AI slang on Slangora.
Tags
Other words near "red-baiter" (R)
Browse all slang words starting with R.
Related terms
People also read
Semantically related
- red-baiting88%
(US, sometimes, _, Philippines) The (ad hominem) practice of accusing someone of being a communist, socialist or anarchist with the intention of discrediting their political views.
- redbait78%
(US, transitive) To attack by denouncing as a Communist.
- redbait59%
, an ascidian often used as bait by anglers.
- baiter mode58%
A state of deliberate provocation where someone is actively crafting content or arguments designed purely to get a rise out of others, with no genuine intent to debate or inform. When someone flips into baiter mode, every post is engineered for maximum outrage or clout through controversy.