Armchair revolutionary

Armchair revolutionary is a pejorative term, generally used within the Radical Left and other left-revolutionary movements, to describe a person who endlessly criticizes the thoughts, ideology or practice of social movements or armed groups from a metaphorical "armchair" — i.e., from a mostly or totally inactive, theoretical position. When someone is referred to as, or accused of, being an "armchair revolutionary," it is always a term of abuse, intended to invoke a defensive reaction on the part of the accused, or to discredit the political ideas and/or practices that person subscribes to, or both.

Inherent in the meaning of "armchair revolutionary" is the idea that the person knows that their ideas require them to be physically involved in political struggles, but that instead the person chooses to be intentionally ignorant or dismissive of real-world issues and problems, in an attempt to continue believing in the false reality their views create. In this way the armchair revolutionary is often regarded to see the world in at least a quasi-idealist manner, i.e., one relative solely to his or her own perceptions, rather than bothering with what s/he should really do — to absorb the physical and practical reality s/he would be compelled to see around him/her if s/he stopped the alleged "political posturing" and became an activist in actual political causes.

A variation on this term is the pejorative epithet "Keyboard Commando". See also the related term "chickenhawk".