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
It’s because being hateful has become part of the conservative identity. To be accepted as a right wing conservative you have to spew hateful garbage about something pretty much constantly. If you don’t then they think your weak, or start calling you a RINO
Okay but my point is why aren’t there nearly as many hateful liberals
It’s really difficult to want everyone to be able to access food, shelter, education, and healthcare and also be hateful.
Because being inherently hateful isn’t part of the liberal identity? The terms “liberal” and “progressive” imply acceptance and inclusivity by definition?
Conservatives approach things very differently. They tend to blame and make excuses whereas liberals tend to treat the problem and look for solutions in models of success. For example, little Suzie gets her hand caught in the car door. A conservatives would typically blame her or her little brother. A liberal would likely treat the injury and try to set rules to prevent it from happening again.
Another example, Donald Von ShitzInPantz wears diapers. The right hates it when they can’t weasel out of a fact so they defend it, embrace it as normal even desirable instead of accepting there is a problem. If that was Biden he would be hatefully ridiculed, (blamed) to no end by conservatives.
Conservatives assume blame, (hate) is the solution. Liberals fit a solution to the problem. There is conflict because of the way they approach a problem and blame, (hate) is the conservative solution.If little Suzie got her hand caught in a car door today’s modern Republican would claim it was part of a conspiracy by foreign auto makers to destabilize the US education system.
Then someone would find out that little Suzie’s parents are Jewish and claim the whole thing is part of a satanic pedophile ring trying to undermine the good Christian values this country was founded on.
Then once any sane person in the room points out that this is all clearly bullshit they would turn on Suzie and file a lawsuit claiming that she is somehow responsible for the downfall of the US automotive industry.
Several years later after Suzie has had to move 8 times because of death threats against her family the GOP would deny any wrongdoing, claim they’ve never heard of anyone name Suzie, and call the whole thing a woke liberal conspiracy.
The right wing has a long history of real repression. Think slavery, segregation, Jim Crow (simply saying it doesn’t do it justice), voter suppression, KKK, mob violence, etc. As much as I hate to realize it, they were fundamentally built on violence and hate. It’s never left them. Especially the mentality, which is “my way or violence”.
This is also why they project the left is violent. Because they are, so they assume everyone else is too. So they try to portray left groups as violent. Same with having an agenda. They have one, so they assume everyone else has one too. It’s all projection.
They do hate them, but generally conservatives believe in personal failings so do direct action against individuals, liberals believe in systemic failings so direct their effort towards changing the system, not the individuals.
This. Conservatives tend to themselves be the victims of a failed system, hating them for failing to address it in a useful manner is hardly constructive. I reserve my hatred for billionaires.
That’s a big part of it. I don’t hate conservatives.
They are actively trying to make the world worse, so I’m not going to be sad if/when the ideology disappears, but as a whole, they aren’t bad people. They are my family and coworkers. They are decent people who have been taught to fear the enemy.
I don’t hate them, I pity them.
Although, I might also be a little jealous of their ignorance fueled bliss.
but as a whole, they aren’t bad people
I don’t know if that’s true. They have been misled, but they still perpetuate this hate. If they didn’t hate people, a lot of the problems in modern America wouldn’t be nearly as bad. I think making the lives of minorities and even majorities worse in every way-- harrassment, policymaking, etc.-- makes you a bad person.
And someone who’s part of a cult, or a significant other who is abused, will try to recruit people to their cause or downplay the violence or dig in deeper with their abusers.
Don’t get me wrong, those who perpetuate the hate on the conservative side are rat bastards who have no place in society. However, those on the consumption end have been programmed to think this way. Deprogramming takes a lot of time and requires the cult member to want to learn more and get out. However, forcefully removing a cult member will usually just push them back to the cult harder.
Either these Republican rubes die or start investigating other sources of info. Either way, we have a long fight ahead of us, and that’s only if we can cut off the head of the snake and stop the cult at the top.
It’s true that it’s not effective to try to remove these people from their cult, but again, that doesn’t mean that they’re good. Good people have the strength of moral character to recognize they’re in a cult and leave one, with or without encouragement or intervention. Good people don’t say things that they know are wrong, just to feel like they belong. We can help, and provide a space for them to belong without needing to say those things-- but if they were lead to say them so consistently for so long, they didn’t disbelieve them strongly enough to be considered good imo. Neutral maybe, and that’s acceptable, but they become bad when they are convinced to do bad things. If I’m convinced to kill, or dehumanize, or otherwise significantly harm someone over, and over, and over again, how could you possibly say that I’m good?
Many many liberals were raised by conservatives.
Many many conservatives raised eventual liberals and are aghast.
I don’t need to camp out and bully conservatives. I spent enough of my childhood immersed in their insanity. I’m just done.
Conservatism is the past and once you’re ahead u don’t want to go back.
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.
Do you have any preferred sources for learning more about Umberto eco’s 14 points of fascism?
I mean I would say it evolved from the thing starting in the 80’s. Especially that nothing mattered but lowering taxes on the wealthy (since sometimes they push for “flat” taxes and a lot of what they do just moves the tax burden lower down). Pre 80’s conservative ideology was not my cup of tea but had some merit. they used to be against deficits.
Yes, it certainly developed over time from Regan-era conservatism. Conservative family values are inherently a rejection of modernity (Eco’s second property of fascism), and the party was already othering people of color and the queer community. The Bush era also did a lot of work priming conservatives for fascism with war propaganda, xenophobia, and equating dissent with treason. Trump brought the party into full-fledged fascism, but it had been stewing for a while before he arrived.
Because liberals see “the world vs the ideal world” we see problems and we try to correct them.
Conservatives see “us vs them” and burning the world to the ground is fine as long as “The others” burn with it.
They’d eat a shit sandwich if they thought a liberal would have to smell it.
“their breath” is the traditional end of that phrase.
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.
Conservative Politics is about giving their base something/someone to be angry at.
LBJ summed it up the best:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Back then it was the african american population. Today it’s trans/lgbt/migrants/muslims/etc… Insert your group of choice here and that’s the Conservative political machine.
Disclaimer: I wondered the same, since 2014, and this is what I puzzled together for myself, read it with that in mind!
I believe a lot of it can be traced back to the wealthy and to conservative think tanks / media control by right wing moguls.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, conservatives were perceived as well-off business people trying to protect their own wealth (I’ve read that people used to say things like “I’m not rich enough to vote Republican” or children shouting “last one in the house is a dirty Republican”). You can even see old movies dunk on conservatives (i.e. take Stanley Kubrick’s “2010: The Year we Make Contact” (1984), at the beginning, with the satellite dish tower, the protagonist noses off about reactionaries being in control of congress, thus leading the country towards war).
This is the rather extreme election result from 1964:
Because liberals mostly were Democratic Party voters, Republicans and their wealthy donors tried to alter public perception of liberals (i.e. make it undesirable for their Republican indoctrinatees to be liberal). This included taking over the media (and Reagan conveniently cancelling the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which gave political bias in the media some guard rails), then painting liberals as all things undesirable: arrogant, weak, clueless, leeches, etc.
Having a “hate object” worked so well that they kept capitalizing on it. Much of it was/is just slinging sh*t against the wall and looking what sticks, but think tanks are indeed looking at what sticks, so successful patterns get repeated. Some of these successful patterns I can see are: installing a victim complex in conservatives (feeling their back against the wall, they lash out easier, ensuring anyone talking about conservatives is conditioned to use very soft gloves) and the two-year bogeyman, often trying to capture, redefine and vilify some prior existing concept (thus, when the campaign hits, indoctrinatees can find lots of “proof” online of this thing existing).
For example, social justice used to be universally agreed on as a good thing, woke used to mean remaining aware of systemic inequalities, now they make conservatives pop an artery. This has been going for a while (the “hate object” over time has been rock music, hippies, metal music, supposed satan worshippers, pen and paper games, paganism+atheism, video games, social justice activists, cancel culture, black lives matter, critical race theory, wokeness, …)
And I think, yes, your perception is spot on. This is, for example, what I get when I search for “anti-conservative t-shirts” (if it’s too tiny, try it yourself - they’re all anti-liberal):
TL;DR: conservatives are intentionally made and kept angry. It keeps them unified against a bigger enemy (see Genghis Gambit), drives them to go vote and prevents voters from switching sides even if they do not like some things the conservatives are doing. Add to that Russia amplifying this division like there’s no tomorrow. They’re installing this hate for liberals both in tankies and in far-right bigots (and, as far as I can tell, anti-liberal sentiment is pushed into Russian society, too).
They’re installing this hate for liberals both in tankies…
Man I didn’t realize Phil Oches was a Russian agent. Leftist criticism of liberal hypocrisy is nothing new, just new to you.
Tons of anti-republican shirts… don’t know what you searched for but they’re easy to find.
It’s the classic good vs evil.
Evil hates everyone and good is displeased with evil.
Politics is fundamentally different for conservatives. They have to have someone to hate. It’s drilled into them by their media outlets.
The tactic is a form of fear based control that conservative media has been working on since Nixon, and made into effect with the birth of Fox News in 1996.
Seriously. Nixon’s think tank conceived the conservative media outlet as a catch-all, exclusive source of news that as a primary function would steer conservatives to not trust other news sources.
They did this because they did not want another Watergate, where conservatives turned against Nixon because of hard evidence laid out by popular unbiased news, which at the time conservatives still were informed by.
The Frankenstein’s monster of a party that that tactic has turned conservatives into requires manufactured rage to fuel the fire. If the outrage ever simmers, you begin to see smarter conservatives recognizing what their party has become and it begins to fall apart.
So there’s your answer. It’s because the hate is necessary to continue the control. If you don’t believe me, turn on Fox news. There’s always the manufactured rage-of-the-day filling the air time.
Because conservatism is fundamentally based on fear.
fear leads to anger.
anger leads to hate.
hate leads to fascism, i guess.
Well, well, well. Looks like we got ourselves a real thinker over here.
Let me grab my decoder ring and my degree in bullshit interpretation, ‘cause this shit needs unpackin’.
First off, ObliviousEnlightenment, huh? More like ObliviouslySpoutin’Nonsense.
Lemme tell ya, this whole liberal versus conservative hate thing is a load of horse shit.
Hate knows no political boundaries, kid.
It’s like ravioli—some folks love it, some folks hate it, but it don’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on, you still gotta respect the ravioli.
Now, as for this “us vs. them” mentality, that’s just human nature, plain and simple. We all got our gangs, our tribes, our little groups we run with.
But the problem ain’t the conservatives or the liberals, it’s the goddamn extremists on both sides stirrin’ the pot and throwin’ gasoline on the fire. They’re the ones spewing hate and takin’ things too damn far.
As for the whole muting and shamin’ thing, lemme break it down for ya: liberals tend to police their own when someone goes off the deep end, while the conservatives let their crazies run wild and pretend they don’t exist.
That’s why you see more visible hate from one side than the other. But make no mistake, there’s assholes on both teams. As for you feelin’ isolated, boohoo.
Welcome to the fuckin’ club. Life ain’t fair, and neither is politics. You wanna survive? Learn to navigate the crazy and find common ground.
Stop whinin’ and start thinkin’ for yourself. Don’t be another sheep bleatin’ out talking points.
That’s my two cents.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got a date with a meatball sub the size of my head.
A lot of the responses are correct, but there is one aspect being missed.
Liberals don’t NEED to hate conservatives. There are real problems in the world that the left is trying to remedy.
Conservatives NEED to hate the left. Modern conservatism (and some would argue all conservatism) doesn’t have any moral ideology. There is nothing they’re fighting to for. Conservative ideology is the idea that there is a group that the law should protect but not bind and a group that the law should bind but not protect. To push this, an out-group has to be created and hate is the only way to dehumanize someone enough to treat them the way conservatives treat women, minorities, LGBTQ+ etc…
Conservatives hate Liberals because conservatism doesn’t work without hate. They hate because they NEED to.
They are fighting for something: greed. All the other stuff is to distract you while they’re robbing you blind.
Conservatives make politics their identity, and hate everyone that doesn’t also identify as them. Most other people realize that’s stupid, they just want a better life.
Seems everyone these days makes politics their identity, left and right. And center.
“Enlightened” centrism is not the answer…
That’s because “centrist” is just what conservatives call themselves when they are too embarassed to admit they are conservatives.
Never has been, never will be.
The billionaire-owned media will continue to insist otherwise as long as we allow for billionaires to exist, though…
A table with 11 people, including a nazi, is a table with 11 nazis.
Don’t compare choosing to not sit at that table with the bullshit republicans do.
Definitely not.
How many Biden hats and flags have you seen?
