Word.ws English Dictionary

diagonalism

diagonalism noun: the coming together of antagonistic groups around one issue on which they find common ground, for instance the rejection of vaccination.

Noun

diagonalism (uncountable)

  1. (uncommon) The coming together of antagonistic groups around one issue on which they find common ground, for instance the rejection of vaccination.
    • Diagonalism reminds us that universal Internet access, the attention-absorbing power of social media platforms, and the dynamics of “incitement capitalism” have left the state’s official script ragged with perforations and made space for hostile counterpublics, agents of “disinfotainment,” social...2021 January 12, William Callison, Quinn Slobodian, “Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol”, in Boston Review
    • Just as this book takes on the more general topic of the rise in political polarization and far-right populism in online communication, and therefore is not just about diagonalism, Chapter 4 also has a more general application beyond the analysis of diagonalist discourse.2026, David Block, chapter 1, in Diagonalism in Online Populist Discourse: Left Moving Right, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN

Origin of diagonalism

From diagonal + -ism, based on German Querdenken (literally “diagonal thinking”). Coined by Canadian historian and professor Quinn Slobodian and political scientist William Callison in the context of the German Querdenker (“anti-vaxx”) movement during the COVID-19 pandemic, see quotations.

Questions about diagonalism

What does diagonalism mean?
Diagonalism means the coming together of antagonistic groups around one issue on which they find common ground, for instance the rejection of vaccination.
What part of speech is diagonalism?
Diagonalism is a noun.

Words near diagonalism in the dictionary

  1. diagonalisations
  2. diagonalise
  3. diagonalised
  4. diagonalises
  5. diagonalising
  6. diagonalism
  7. diagonalist
  8. diagonalities
  9. diagonality
  10. diagonalizability
  11. diagonalizable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: diagonalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “diagonalism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/diagonalism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.