bunker mentality

noun

: a state of mind especially among members of a group that is characterized by chauvinistic defensiveness and self-righteous intolerance of criticism

Examples of bunker mentality in a Sentence

Faced with the threat of scandal, the company adopted a bunker mentality and refused to talk with reporters.

Recent Examples on the Web

There's always going to be that bunker mentality that conservatives on campus will feel. —TIME, 17 Jan. 2024

Spota and Burke were gone, but the bunker mentality remained. —Robert Kolker, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2023

Keefe’s reporting on the Sacklers, a mammoth undertaking that draws on discovery documents, internal company memos, and emails displaying Succession-level bickering among Sackler family members, is a window into their bunker mentality, reinforced by impenetrable walls of denial. —Zachary Siegel, The New Republic, 23 Apr. 2021

It’s a breath of fresh air to the bunker mentality that nowadays pervades law enforcement. —Gustavo Arellanocolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 3 Dec. 2022

It might also be argued that the worst damage has been self-inflicted: The denizens of Broadcasting House remain beset by both institutional complacency and a bunker mentality. —Dominic Green, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2022

Fearmongering writ- ers sold over forty-five million books citing Y2K-disaster scenarios, from civil war and planes dropping out of the sky to the total collapse of the banking system, advocating food hoarding and a bunker mentality. —Steve Adelman, Rolling Stone, 18 Aug. 2022

Ultimately, the key to keeping houses of worship relatively accessible to newcomers may lie in dispelling a bunker mentality within the denomination. —Stephen Humphries, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Mar. 2022

His latest belligerence follows two years of pandemic isolation and eight years of Western sanctions that analysts say have fed the bunker mentality Putin has exhibited since his earliest years. —Paul Sonne and Robyn Dixon, Anchorage Daily News, 20 Feb. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1974, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bunker mentality

• bisexuality
• collegiality
• conditionality
• congeniality
• conventionality
• conviviality
• dimensionality
• directionality
• emotionality
• essentiality
• eventuality
• grammaticality