Much illumination from readers here. Did you know, for example (I didn’t) that “Mormon” is an instance of owning the insult. See here. Religious sects seem, in fact to have been big on owning the insult: there are also the Quakers and the Shakers .
In politics it wasn’t just the Tories and Whigs. There were also the Know Nothings (though they were advertising not so much their ignorance as their solidarity). In revolutionary France, they had the Sans-culottes . And look at the domain name this environmentalist group has taken.
OK, enough on owning the insult. I have to prep for a meeting of my local Chickenhawk Party association. Later.