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.
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).
You need to cross post this or something, and keep researching as your an asset to humanity!
Would love to hear more of what you’ve found.
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):
You make your point well. I just wanted to point out I believe at least one of them is anti-conservative (The devolution of humans into the GOP)
And one is possibly unintentionally anti-conservative: If Liberal Perspective is actually a liberal’s perspective the subject is a conservative with their head up their own ass. I don’t believe that’s the shirt’s actual intention though. It would be hard to depict the interior of the rectum on a T-shirt
Tons of anti-republican shirts… don’t know what you searched for but they’re easy to find.
It’s worth noting that you’re looking at conservatives from a USA perspective, which is valid and very informative, it’s just that OP didn’t specify a country, so it might also be worth discussing conservative vs liberal culture in places like Europe too, or perhaps prefacing your wonderfully detailed response with something to clarify that when you’re talking about conservatives, you mean a very specific subset of them (as opposed to, say, the conservatives of the UK, where their political party is itself called the Conservative Party).
Rock on! :-D
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.
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.
Yeah, you aren’t wrong. There’s definitely a greater than average amount of assholes and shitheads in that group. You don’t become the party of racism without any racist members.
I’ll call the assholes out for being assholes, but I won’t assume that someone’s evil because they vote GOP. I’ll assume that they are fragile and ignorant, of course, but they need to go a bit further for me to call an individual an evil 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.
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.
yeah they did not really outright embrace it till trump. what he says is terrifying.
Do you have any preferred sources for learning more about Umberto eco’s 14 points of fascism?
Well, the essay is a pretty breezy read, it’s only 10 pages. It’s called Ur-Fascism, here’s the full text. If you’re looking for something lighter (and lighter is an extremely relative term here), Cody Johnston is a comedian and video essayist that delves into right-wing extremism on his show Some More News. These two videos are older, but they do a great job putting Trump and conservatives in context using Eco’s definition of fascism.
Edit: Whoops, forgot the video links: https://youtu.be/CcklYVR5I-I?feature=shared https://youtu.be/fIN8oxnw__I?feature=shared
USA here. They’d likely consider this to be extremely patronizing, but I consider most conservative voters to be unaware of what it is they are actually preaching. It’s crazy but the more extreme their views get, the more I’m convinced they’re misinformed and misled. Some folks at the top of their pyramid I legitimately hate - I have no doubt they know exactly what they are doing.
So many of conservative beliefs just fly in the face of reality. I hate that they’re perpetuating the harm that the beliefs and resulting policies cause, but seeing as how they are mostly based on clear and obvious lies, I have to assume that most of the supporters just don’t realize they are being lied to and have invested emotionally in an identity that actively harms their own interests.
This is pretty much where I’m at too. I don’t hate conservative voters, but I have such distain for conservative politicians for all the hate and pain they foment.
For most people I believe “no one is the villain of their own story” they believe they’re doing the right thing with what information they are presented. For politicians, they’re the fucking scum of the earth and I wish hell was real so those fuckers could rot in it.
This is my take also. I try not to think they’re all idiots but more and more I’m just agog at the stupidity required to be conservative.
Conservatives seem to perpetually vote against their own interests.
Like my parents are pensioners, but will always vote for conservatives who will never increase their pension. They’ve been on this trajectory their entire lives.
I like the phrase “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. As in they think of themselves as wealthy and vote that way because it makes them feel like part of the club.
Saw a cartoon years ago. Panel 1 = “How Democrats See The World.” It’s a globe with the USA divided into Red States and Blue States. The rest of the countries are pink/green/orange except for a few black spots with a skull and crossbones marked ‘Terrorists.’
Panel 2 = “How the GOP Sees the World…” Same globe, except there are only two colors; the Red States and everything else is “Terrorists.”
In Germany, there is a conservative/far-right party that actually sees things that way. The AfD, the self-proclaimed “Alternative for Germany” (literally the spiritual successor to the NSDAP, the party of Adolf Hitler) once posted this picture on Facebook:
It shows a map of Germany, divided in two parts. The east, where the AfD has many supporters labeled as the Federal Republic of Germany, and the West where the AfD has been losing many elections labeled as an islamic Caliphate. These Nazis actually think that half of Germany is controlled by migrants and islamists. This insane view of the world is so fucked up, I can’t really describe it. Fun fact: An AfD member of the German parliament has been caught accepting large sums of money from Russia. Their MPs repeatedly traveled to Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, including the illegally annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. They also think that Russian elections are totally legit and Putin the war criminal has been legitimately elected by the Russian people. Their MPs also work for the Chinese intelligence service btw: https://lemmy.world/post/15121591
the West where the AfD has been losing many elections labeled as an islamic Caliphate
Real “stay mad” energy.
Back in the day, the Soviets overtly backed Leftist positions across the world. They ended up empowering the Far Right by giving them a concrete enemy. Former KGB operative Putin reversed it; he’s been supporting the Right to undermine the West for years.
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.
Because conservatism is fundamentally based on fear.
fear leads to anger.
anger leads to hate.
hate leads to fascism, i guess.“We’re cancelling the woke Dagobah agenda!”
Conservatives on Degobah: there’s probably oil here that must be liberated.
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.
Liberals are dismissive of conservatives. You can only hate people so much when you infantilize them.
The right is too angry to listen, and the left is too arrogant to listen.
This is how democracy dies.
Hey we wouldn’t be nearly as smug if these fuckers weren’t throwing their votes at a known grifter and a dog murderer. Back when it was W in charge we could actually talk about issues - now these fuckers jumped the shark.
Arrogant, interesting.
See, the issue to me is that one side comes up with real tangible solutions to problems, while the other side is busy smearing shit on the walls, getting red in the face screaming about deep state this or jew lasers that, and then people like you tell me we should engage those people and treat their ideas with respect and equal levels of severity.
See the issue here?
The right is too angry to listen, and the left is too arrogant to listen.
To listen to what?
Not to the racism and idiocy but to the underlying issues that fuel that anger.
Those underlying issues are what left-wing people are trying to resolve already, though - wealth inequality, poor mental health, too much power in the hands of corporations and the mega-rich, removing outrage politics, etc.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, except maybe we should switch to show not tell. I understand that it’s not as easy as that but over the last let’s say 30 years, how much has the left really improved life for the rural population? And by comparison how much do we preach to them that they’re backwards and their world view is invalid?
It’s exactly as you say, the working class should be an easy win for us on policy, but it hasn’t turned out that way.
You can just say “well they’re stupid that’s what you get” or you can ask yourself why aren’t we getting these people on board while some greasy billionaire can?
You can just say “well they’re stupid that’s what you get” or you can ask yourself why aren’t we getting these people on board while some greasy billionaire can?
I don’t necessarily like to just dismiss people as stupid, but a lack of education and the ability to understand complex issues is both a big issue for these people and a reason why the greasy billionaires can get them on board. Convincing someone that them paying some of their money into a union will actually result in better working conditions and more money for them - rather than just being poorer - is a lot harder and takes more understanding on their part than someone convincing them there’s less money to go around because there are more immigrants, for instance.
On top of that, people like to be able to absolve themselves of personal responsibility if they are given the option to. That’s not exclusive to right-wing people, but when that’s coupled with people wanting simple “explanations” because they don’t understand more complex systems with all their consequences, knock-on effects, etc, it makes it easy for right-wing politicians and media to offer simple scapegoats and get people on board.
To use the immigrants example again: not only is it not your average right-wing voter’s fault in any way - it’s the immigrants’ fault - but also, they don’t personally need to do anything to fix the issue, they just need to let the right-wing politicians get into power and it’ll all be solved for them. It’s all very comforting for them - much more so than being told it’s going to take ten years and some work on their part to improve things.
The ACTUAL left (unlike the arrogant center right to right wing corporate stooges in control of the Dem party falsely claiming to be on the left) SHARE that same anger.
We just don’t blame minorities, secularism, the concept of objective knowledge and a lack of bigotry for what is clearly the fault of mainly rich and powerful white conservative and centrist people.
The underlying issues that fuel that anger
Fox News and AM Radio
To add to this, the opposite of love is not hate, but ignore.
Giving your energy and attention to hating something typically means that they occupy enough mental real estate in your day to day life that you feel the need to broadcast it on a regular basis.
The liberals I know tend to spend the majority of their free time focusing on improving themselves and the world around them rather than simply target blame somewhere else.
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.
How many Biden hats and flags have you seen?
Definitely not.
Bruh I’m tired, I gotta work. I don’t have time to be that angry.
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.
