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How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals

I constantly see angry mobs of people decrying "woke", "critical race theory", ""grooming"", and whatever other nonsense they made up this week. They march around with guns, constantly appending lib as a prefix to any word they can use to denigrate. They actively plot violence and spew hatred in the open.

You never see the inverse. There is no ConservativesofTiktok getting churches harassed into shutting down for the day or calling in threats. You don't see cringey boomer memes on the left. And whenever I openly express those feelings, try to create that sentiment; I get shut down. Noone agrees, I'm often shamed and muted. I just don't understand why that parity exists, it's extremely isolating to feel so alone in this

213 comments

  • Because conservatism is no longer a set of political beliefs. In the modern conservative movement (basically starting in the 80s, liberals and conservatives were much different before that) conservatives had social beliefs, like preserving cultural norms, promoting religion, and maintaining the nuclear family, as well as fiscal beliefs, like limited government, individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and a whole lot of other bullshit that basically boiled down to, "we don't want to pay taxes."

    Now, conservatism is really only about establishing an in-group and othering their opponents. Oppositions to trans rights may seem like an attempt to preserve cultural norms, but it's real goal is to create outrage and panic over trans, "groomers." Objections go CRT and DEI serve a similar role in othering people of color. "Wokeness," is just a meaningless catch-all for, "enemies." Similarly, fiscal policy is meaningless, and can be picked up and discarded whenever convenient; corporations can be deregulated and given tax breaks in service of the free market, but subsidized or bailed out whenever needed.

    This is because modern conservatism isn't a political ideology, it's a fascist movement. I mean that literally, and while the meaning fascism is notoriously hard to pin down, I use Umberto Eco's 14 properties of fascism. And, to bring this back around to your original question, fascists hate liberals because hating a group is very important to a fascist movement. The modern conservative hate for liberals is especially clear in Eco's 4th, 5th, and 7th properties of fascism (disagreement as treason, fear of differences, and obsession with plots, respectively).

    So, tl;dr: the one-sided hate that conservatives have for liberals is because conservatism is no longer a coherent political ideology, it's a fascist movement.

  • You have been hanging in the wrong places lol.

    There are absolutely identity politics driven US liberals (as opposed to the use of liberal by the rest of the world) that are ranting, raving assholes. Always have been.

    But, here's the thing. Those assholes are much more likely to be ostracized and/or shut down by the less batshit US liberals, progressives, socialists, etc that form the "left" writ large. But echo chambers for it do exist anyway. There's a few on lemmy, though they aren't federated with most of the rest.

    Here's the key difference. What conservatives want to conserve is their sense of power. It's mostly straight, cis white people here in the US. There's plenty of exceptions, but they tend to not be as loud and asinine as the ones you're talking about.

    That's where the anger comes from: fear. Fear of black/brown/yellow/red people. Fear of anything different. Fear of a non Christian based world leaving them behind.

    The ones at the top also want to stay rich and powerful in the political sense, and are perfectly willing to weaponize their voting base to do so.

    The ones at the top of the various non-conservative branches in the US also want to keep power and make money, and they'll use different fear to mobilize, but they don't usually weaponize it.

    Fwiw, if you're one of the ones that does want to play petty, childish games instead of doing something useful, it's good you're shamed and muted. Shit or get off the pot. Engage in real work for real change, and do it like you know how to pretend to be a civilized human being. I'm not even talking about peaceful efforts. If you really want to force change, step the fuck up and do something about it. Start the revolution you want to see. Just don't be some douche harassing churches and pretending it's anything other than self congratulatory masturbation.

  • Gunna take this as Liberal/Conservative as party brand names rather than strict social ideology and you're talking about "the left" more generally.

    I think the short answer is empathy. When you dig down to the bottom a lot of the discussion on the left talks about different forms of human needs. A need to feel accepted and loved, desires to exist publicly without fear... It is a radical form of empathy that asks you to put yourself in multiple pairs of shoes and see the world through perspectives you aren't naturally born into. The ultimate aim is to achieve a picture of humanity which is inclusive of the widest possible range of understanding.

    In that way "Conservatives" are also people. It is not impossible to empathize with their issues. It takes a lot cognitively to internalize this new data and a lot of the rejection from the right comes not from outright cruelty but a desire for things to be and remain simple and easy. They don't want to stretch themselves and are scared of a world where that is something they are forced to do. The issue is a lot of the people selling the pitchforks on that side are doing it because it benefits them. That desire to understand encompasses the motives of individual Conservatives and splits them apart. A lot of the issues Conservatives have is that the left is "preachy" that we act like we're better than them and that does come from somewhere. Some leftists do just want to be the smartest most correct person in the room but others are just waiting for the Conservatives they know to be more understanding of other people who they learned about so they stop being mean. The person who pitties the school bully is often their target because that empathy seems to the bully like condescension.

    • After a certain point, you have to realize your bully is either incapable or unwilling to engage in that empty. At which point, your option is beat or get beat

  • Hate comes from fear. All varieties of conservatives operate from a fundamental core of fear. They are often preyed upon in broken systems with limited education options and are often kept ignorant to so much of the world around them. Because they don't know, they fear. Further, they can be limited by a heavy blanket of religious fundamentalism, more systematic fear.

    "Liberals", on the other hand, are often educated and taught to understand things and ask questions about things they don't understand. As a result they are often aware of their surroundings, their neighbors and that exposure breeds empathy. That empathy is what kills fear which means they don't generally hate.

    The feeling towards conservatives for many "liberals" is likely more of a strong disappointment mixed with regret that, as individuals, they can't really do more to help them out of the predatory cycle that conservative politicians keep them treading water in.

    All this while the majority of both sides are actually struggling on the sane listing side in the same class war that has already taken the entire middle class as a casualty.

  • ConservativesofTikTok hehe.

    Okay first thing: there is no mainstream left in US politics. AOC and Bernie taper off at a hair left of center. I don't even dislike them. And normally that would be fine, but the right does include flamboyant, very loud fascists. So the right has no counter weight, and what there is are Centrist Libs, who long for days of "reaching across the isle", and "order," and "civility" While people talk about Fascists projecting, the Libs are too; they think everyone approaches politics in good faith. They don't realize the fascist uses their invitation to get in, and civility as a mask to play the game. The fascist uses any means they can to gain power, and then disposes of the libs when they don't need them anymore. The libs are left, like Eddard Stark holding a piece of paper, with their dicks in the breeze.

    This last piece of this is that there is an aspect of the left that matches what you say, the so called "dirt bag left," streamers like Vaush and Hassan Abi, and Chapo Trap House. They are in fact quite controversy prone, and I don't think they are good people, but I think they do match the general vibe of your statement.

  • I mean I'd probably change my answer depending on the phrasing of the question here.

    If you mean like, classical liberalism, which includes both laissez-faire capitalism and interventionism, you'd probably find quite a lot of conservatives at this point who would define their economic ideology (if they even have any) as belonging to that kind of realm of thought, at least with laissez-faire. That shit's pretty old, we've been through like multiple cycles of that, both globally, and domestically in america, and calling for a regression to a period when your specific breed of liberalism was in place is pretty possible. Which would be kind of lumped under conservative thought, despite the window dressing of like, wanting to just kind of, hedge your bets, maintain the status quo, and "conserve" things, and even the branding of "this is the way things really are, so we need to conserve the real reality", it's mostly actively regressive horseshit.

    So, that's to say, you could both be a liberal and a conservative at the same time, if you're going based on the like, actual political definitions of things. I get the sense you're more trying to use the term "liberal" to mean "progressive", or probably more accurately "socially progressive". If you want a reason why I'm making this kind of stupid semantic distinction, it's because I think it's important to distinguish liberalism, and neoliberalism, right, which refer to economic freedom, from other more actually socially progressive ideologies. I'll get to that later. In any case, it's pretty much part of the intrinsic nature of the ideology that, being okay with gay people, at the least, is going to be more chill than not wanting gay people to exist. The same for trans people, the homeless, racial minorities, neurodivergent people, whatever.

    Socially progressive values are also kind of default, I think, in a vacuum (which hardly anything is), whereas nutter conservative ideology is something you have to be more actively radicalized into. If you don't give a shit about gay people, you're probably also fine with them just like, going about life and existing. You might also be fine with their oppression, but you're not actively hindering things, necessarily. You have to be actively radicalized and convinced they're bad, though, in order to call for them to be like, killed, or barred from marriage, or whatever.

    You would have to more actively want gay people to have rights, to care about them more in a positive way, and actively oppose their oppression more, in order to like, actually push for things. It's a more active position, basically, to be actually socially progressive, or actually progressive. It necessitates caring. I think despite it just being on the surface more nice as in ideology, which helps prevent people from being like, actively hateful, I think it's probably also sadly the case that a lot of people who would otherwise pretend to be socially progressive don't actually give two shits about what happens or doesn't happen, and are just mindlessly occupying what they see as kind of a default position at the time.

    If you go back to like the 2000's, lots of people who are otherwise pretty "progressive" nowadays would've been pretty turbo homophobic and transphobic. That's not really a slight against their character, right, we're all products of our environment, but they're just occupying kind of whatever position they think is acceptable to the mainstream.

    Put even more simply, they kind of, understand that one side is right and one is wrong, but since they don't really understand the underlying reasoning behind either side, they're just jumping onto whatever they get better vibes from. That used to be some more reactionary stuff, because we were kind of in both a more apathetic and callous cultural era where "not caring" was seen as cool and offering a better vibe, and we were seen as being kind of in a "post-history", "post-racial" world, where if you were offended by racism, that was your fault, because we ended racism, and now the only real racism is you thinking racism is real, man hits bong. Just sort of like, the idea of racism as existing in a purely cultural state, just as a remnant, a cultural artifact relic which we need to move past culturally, but doesn't affect the "real world" in any way. Those ideologies were kind of appealing to a mostly white mainstream cultural population, who could pretty easily just walk around, and make edgy jokes, and pretend still that everything's gonna be okay because they haven't encountered a housing market crash and the consolidation of all of the wealth in a fraction of the population and a once in a century pandemic partially accelerated by huge misinformation campaigns. Basically, because the mainstream cultural consciousness, mostly controlled by white people, was still insulated from the worst of the worst consequences, and because they were still getting treats.

    We still had a white suburban middle class, basically. We still do, but we used to, too.

    Now though, people see being socially progressive as having a better vibe. Probably this is because we're on the long end of the economy being shit, and everyone having realized that collectively burning your children's futures in order to further white supremacy isn't a sustainable thing long term and just fucks you over, probably it's also because the internet has made it easier for marginalized voices to occupy more space in the cultural consciousness, whereas before they would've been screened by industry gatekeepers. Probably it's also because conservative nutters collectively lost their fucking minds and kind of went mask off with trump and gamergate shit, partially as a reaction to obama just being like, black, but also those other factors I've named.

    Probably it's because the middle class that you used to see in all those 90's movies, like fight club and office space, got automated away, outsourced, or otherwise traded for a bunch of IT and internet developers, which can mostly take their place as part of the managerial class. We go from cubicles in high rises, to open floor plan offices in mid-rises, to work-share rental spaces in low-rises, to work-from-home setups, and the amount of people allowed treats from their overlords narrows in total population because you simply don't need as many. The amount of people who are actively fooled by corporate propaganda and bootstraps mentalities also narrows with the proliferation of the internet and with the lack of people who are now "in" on this middle class lifestyle, so your immediate social group is more likely to have people who you know are chilling but are also struggling a lot financially.

    yeah I think that's all I got as far as this one goes.

  • I hate racists and bigots, but there’s not much to be done about it. Stress and anger will take years off your own life - don’t let them harm you. On the other hand if you can troll them a bit, you may be sending some of them to an early grave, just with words. It’s not hard to do they’re triggered by anything gay, reparations, dominant women, intelligence and education, health foods, immigrants, solar power, and so on. So you don’t really have to send them any hate, you just need to be an example of the world you want to live in and they’ll rage about it.

  • I'm going to make a second comment, from the point of observation bias:

    OP obviously knows people who have been attacked by vicious, hateful people on the right. But OP is probably hanging around neither the people on the right being attacked by vicious, hateful people on the left, nor around the vicious, hateful minority of the left who are attacking people on the right.

    So she hasn't seen it. But I have. I've been attacked from the right for my progressive views and from the left for my conservative views, and from both by people who assume that if I think A I must also think B and C, no matter how benign A is and horrific C is.

    • What conservative views do you hold?

    • I am shocked I had to scroll this far to find someone saying this stuff exists. Literally look around on Lemmy, check the comment section of the Washington Post, like half of TikTok, a huge portion of twitter, etc. All of it full of angry radical liberals, actual communists, people crying for guillotines, deriding uneducated hicks and rednecks. Mocking all christians instead of just the fundamentalists, constantly deriding white men for existing, even just dumb infantile names (e.g. Repug-licans). Literally last night at my local college, some portion of protestors started calling for lynching college administrators. Now I'm not saying pro-palestinian protests are full of those people, just like the average liberal would be pretty ok with universal healthcare but miiiight not favor seizing the means of production or banning landlords. But even though these people are a minority, they're just like the crazy right wingers - they are loud, and paint with the same wide brush that hardcore conservatives do, just using a different color.

      And I want to be clear, this isn't some enlightened centrism bullshit where I'm saying "both sides suck." I am actually very, very left wing (though on Lemmy sometimes it seems like that makes me a moderate because I'm not calling for guillotining the rich, but I digress), and I probably agree with 90% of the angry people's actual policy views. But at least anger and vitriol wise, and even a tiny portion of radical policy-wise, the fringe of "both sides" do kind of suck. Not everyone who is angry fits that profile (certainly I get angry thinking about climate change, but I'm not out there telling everyone who drives a truck they're evil). But many people like that absolutely exist, and OP not seeing them likely is a result of our fractured echo chamber world, certainly not because they aren't there and angry.

  • I mean plenty of lefty folks hate righties but they hate the ideology and not the people. They hate the people in so much as they hate the ideology they spout and its hate. There is a lot of hate inherent to right ideology but not so much in left ideology. At the end of the day I don't hate any particular person just them pushing things on me or the world that makes either worse. Take the old order anabaptist types like the amish. They are ultra conservative but keep to themselves. Is there bad things in the way their communities run. You betcha. But anyone can leave and sure they will be shunned but otherwise if they accept just not being part of it then they are free of it all. I am sorta losing where I am going with this but hope it helps in some way.

  • I’d have to spend time looking through conservative nonsense to make memes about it. I don’t care to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

  • My right wing uncle just yesterday posed this question in reverse oddly enough, it was a jarring conversation, soon ended when I pointed out the plentiful admittions of hateful rhetoric the right have spouted.

    His information comes from YouTube personality's and I take great pleasure in researching the shit he regurgitate and showing him my finding with carefully selected source as unbiased as possible. in a way I feel sorry for the working class right winger, misguided, fueled purely by escapism and negative emotions then peddlers with skin in the game wrap them up with crazy notions of patriotism and conspiracy

  • The conservative strategy has been to polarize politics in America in order to have a very aligned power. This means that if you aren't 100% behind them, then you are an enemy to them.

    It is only through this that the GOP can both say that they are protecting individual freedoms but limiting or taking them away (of course opponents to this will be quick to point out the one and only counter point which is fighting against restrictions of the 2nd Amendment and only that), say that they are for smaller government but yet want private companies to be regulated that attempt to censor hate and misinformation (which has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment when it comes to non-government entities) yet still say that they are for businesses to operate as unrestricted as possible. They are anti-union because they are corrupt and take away accountability yet strongly support the worst of the worst of unions -- the police unions. The GOP constantly cries that there's a nanny government, yet they push laws to restrict people's choices, censor libraries and try to tear down citizen protections. The GOP cries that this country's deficit is out of control but when they are in power, they over spend. They complain that public schools indoctrinate but at the local and state levels attempt to indoctrinate in public schools. They talk about needing to stay in power to turn America around, yet when empowered in all three federal branches fails to pass meaningful legislation and run the government that they are overseeing and yet blame the government because they will eat each other alive for their own individual gains.

    There so much more but the GOP is a party of hypocrites. Without polarization mixed with some fear mongering their party would likely cease to exist with any real power because they do not stand for the ideals that their own voting base supports.

    The GOP constantly tries to create an environment of being constantly under attack and spews hate. Their voter base is simply a product of that.

213 comments