“Could say the same for Sephardim, Breslovers, Lubavitch and Telzers.”
For Sephardim, see my above post. In terms of the rest, I don’t see your point. Chareidim basically means Jews who are not Zionist. It is also possible to use the term to refer to Jews who are Zionist but choose to label themselves according to the fact that they are Chareidim as opposed to labeling themselves by their zionism.
Breslov and Lubavitchers usually don’t label themselves as Religious-Zionists, although I’m sure there are some who do. I think that most of them consider themselves to be Chareidi and the fact that they are Breslov or Lubavitch is a sub-category of being Chareidi. Joseph explained this very well. For the ones who label themselves as Religious-Zionists (if they exist), the fact that they are Lubavitch or Breslov is a subcategory of being a religious-zionist.
“Which was my original argument that “chareidi” is based on self-identification, not whether you follow the Torah or not.”
I don’t disagree with the first part of the sentence. I am not sure about the second. That’s part of a more general question of exactly what does a person have to keep in order to be considered Frum, and there is no clear-cut answer to that question. Different people will say different thngs. If someone keeps some halachos and not others, can they be considered Frum? What if they keep everything but hilchos tznius? What if someone is a murderer, lo aleinu – can they be considered Frum? Whatever your answer would be for “Frum”, I think it would probably be similar for “Chareidi”.
There are definitely people who consider themselves Chareidi who are “modern” in the sense of not dressing tzniusly, watching movies, etc. They call themselves Chareidi because they consider themselves to be Frum and they are not dati-leumi, and as Joseph put it, Chareidi is the default term for Frum people who are not dati-leumi.
“How about the Orthodox Meretz guy?”
I’m not sure what you mean – almost everyone in Israel is Orthodox. There is very little Conservative or Reform here, Boruch Hashem. What does that have to do with anything? You can be Orthodox without being Frum. Orthodox doesn’t have to do with what you do – it has to do with your beliefs and/or the type of shul you daven in when you go to shul.
I don’t know who this Orthodox Meretz guy is or what you are talking about – it needs more clarification.
“Finally, what do you mean by “do not follow Daas Torah”?”
Not following Gedolim.
I am not sure about this, but I think that I may have heard that the term Chareidim originated with people who were anti-Chareidi and it was a derogatory term. The Chareidim then turned things around by deciding to use the term as a source of pride. I think the same thing happened with the term “Frum” which had a negative connotation not so long ago.