() is a pejorative French term to describe someone who claims to be a socialist while living in a way that contradicts socialist values. The expression is a political neologism dating from the 1980s and implies a degree of hypocrisy. The dictionary Petit Larousse defines as a pejorative expression for a "Progressivism combined with a taste for society life and its accoutrements". One description referred to it as "the free-thinking, authority-hating, individualistic, tolerant, socialist position⦠which shaded into a bohemian, existential, communitarian, fairly depressed" worldview espoused by people with money and good clothes.
The concept is broadly similar to British English champagne socialist, American English limousine liberal or latte liberal, German Salonkommunist or Champagnersozialist, Dutch salonsocialist, Italian radical chic, Polish kawiorowa lewica, Portuguese esquerda caviar (both in Brazil and Portugal), Peruvian Spanish izquierda caviar, Castilian Spanish pijoprogre ("posh progressive"), Chilean Spanish cuico or red set (a play on words with jet set), Argentinian Spanish zurdo con osde ("leftist with ", that is, Argentina's leading private health insurance network), and Danish Kystbanesocialist (referring to Kystbanen, a train line servicing the wealthy coastal neighborhoods north of Copenhagen). Other similar terms in English include Hampstead liberal, liberal elite, chardonnay socialist, smoked salmon socialist, and Bollinger Bolshevik.
The term was once prevalent in Parisian circles, applied deprecatingly to those who professed allegiance to the Socialist Party (PS), but who maintained a far from proletarian lifestyle that distinguished them from the working-class base of the PS. A more explicit reference identified this group as left-wingers who speak with great passion about the plight of the poor while eating caviar in their spectacular Parisian duplex apartment.
The label was also employed by detractors to describe François Mitterrand. This was further reinforced by the fact that several members of his administration were identified as part of the gauche caviar such as Jack Lang, who was the culture minister.
In early 2007, Ségolène Royal became identified with the when it was revealed that she had been avoiding paying taxes. The description damaged her campaign for the French presidency. Similarly French politician Bernard Kouchner and his wife Christine Ockrent have been labelled with the term. However, his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs was not hampered by the label. Other supposed members of this include Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF managing director, and his wife, the journalist Anne Sinclair, heiress to much of the fortune of her maternal grandfather, the art dealer Paul Rosenberg. It is said that around 2015, the gauche caviar also supported the Greek government of SYRIZA and PM Tsipras, "desperate for a new 'anti-imperialist hero' after Hugo Chavez's death".
The weekly news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, has been described as the "quasi-official organ of France's ".
Regardless of whether is accepted by those given such a label, politicians who fit this classification wield power in the French polity. For instance, during the administration of Mitterrand, a number of policies were adopted to avoid offending this group, which included the ().