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

intensely_human,

But they do? All the conservatives I listen to or hang out with don’t say a word of hate about liberals. But all the liberals I hang out with hate (as in actively, as in take time out of conversations to spend words and energy and time doing this), they actively hate conservatives.

They complain about conservatives. They say they’re evil and inhuman and ascribe all sorts of evil intent. They express the desire to purge them from the neighborhood, to disenfranchise them. I’ve seen calls for blood, many times.

When I hang out with conservatives, we don’t even talk politics. We talk about cars or whatever. There’s no time spent on hating anyone or anything. We talk about problems facing us, how the week went, etc.

Maybe the liberals I know just happen to be extremists, I don’t know. But that’s my experience. Liberals sit around and talk politics and how bad conservatives are. Conservatives sit around and talk about all sorts of stuff, and almost never mention liberals.

spikespaz,

Thank you my unbiased friend

Illuminostro,

Fuck Putin. Fuck Trump.

spikespaz,

Yes, indeed, and fuck you too.

Illuminostro,

Your opinion is very important to me. Cunt.

angrystego,

I think it depends on the particular people. I know a conservative whom it is impossible to talk to without them turning the conversation into politics full of hate in the shortest possible time. I’d love to know, whether there’s any statistics about this, because obviously the experience from our social bubbles is not enough.

Illuminostro,

Fuck Putin. Fuck Trump.

RBWells,

Maybe it’s just your friends? I know my ex and his brother cannot stop talking about politics when they come over, they are extreme as heck though. It’s all conspiracies, voter fraud, everyone out to get them because they are white guys, but they should be in charge because they are white guys, they made it all the way to thinking women ought not be allowed to vote, not kidding. I wish they didn’t talk politics because what they say does make me want to hate whoever is profiting from this radicalization.

Or maybe they don’t have to care about politics because it’s going their way, all sunshine and rainbows (well maybe not rainbows) as far as the eye can see? They don’t have to care that abortion is getting outlawed or that the state is gerrymandered to make the legislature more conservative than the state, they don’t have to care because they are winning? But would talk about politics if it wasn’t going their way?

I do believe you, just not sure your friends are typical. Also hopefully mine aren’t.

orcrist,

Liberals are not leftists. You can choose your own definitions, but I would say that many so-called liberals are actually pro-capitalist anti-worker centrists. And the center is not so far from the center-right. So many liberals don’t hate conservatives. On the other hand, many conservatives bundle liberals and leftists together, because complexity is so irritating, making it easy to hate the entire group (even though it’s actually at least two groups).

And quite obviously, many liberals and leftists hate some conservatives. You aren’t alone. That being said, hate is an emotion, and however you feel is totally fine because it’s your life. At the same time, hate itself is not constructive. Many people read and write about politics online because we want to learn about or change our world. If the content you’re creating doesn’t help with either of those goals, some people are going to ignore or down vote it.

Anyway, your community is surely out there, if you keep looking.

spikespaz,

Everyone is misrepresented in the two-party system.

antlion,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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.

Silentiea,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Heck, I just have to exist to send some of them into a fit.

Mango,

ROFL!!! Spend another ten minutes on Lemmy before asking this question.

daltotron,

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.

yogurt,

The opposite of woke is random shit boomers happened to grow up with. If your politics are based on some principle you can justify, then if you lose you try again later. If your politics are based on a random collection of historical accidents you can’t justify, and you don’t even like most of them except for a couple, but you think the only way to keep the couple you do like is to defend all of them, then losing is the end. You have to fight to the death, and once you do lose you can’t cope by doing better next time, all you have is revenge.

Sometimes liberals also want to defend historical accidents that they think fit their idea of liberalism, and then they adopt the same kind of aggressive deterrence strategy, like pro-Israel liberals with college protests or the English with trans people.

Donebrach,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

Because conservatism is fundamentally based on fear.

myrrh,

fear leads to anger.
anger leads to hate.
hate leads to fascism, i guess.

Donebrach,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

“We’re cancelling the woke Dagobah agenda!”

JasonDJ,

Conservatives on Degobah: there’s probably oil here that must be liberated.

sudo42,

I’m going to take a somewhat different tack to describing this.

There are many ways to motivate large groups of people. You’ve likely seen this a lot and not really noticed or paid attention to it. Some examples are tribalism (“Hey! They’re not one of us!”), nationalism (“Those dirty foreign people!”), religion (“Do what I say and go to heaven!”), money (“Do this and I’ll give you something valuable”), etc.

One of the best motivators is fear. (“Do this or I/they will do something you really don’t like”).

Political groups need something to motivate large groups of people. When done well, they appeal to the better sides of humanity. When done by the lazy, the dumb and the craven, they go with the simple one: fear.

That’s what Conservatism has been hammering for a while now. They don’t really have a way to appeal to people’s better sides, primarily because their platform isn’t to make humanity better off. They platform is to make a few people better off to the detriment of everyone else. So they try tribalism (“Those brown people are trying to take your money!”), nationalism (“Those foreigners are taking your jobs!”), religion (“Those non-Christians are trying to install sharia law!”), etc. The most effective one is still fear. So getting their followers scared and angry is the best way to motivate them, get them to stop thinking rationally and build moats that will isolate them from people that might talk them down.

This is used to motivate people to vote in certain ways, as well as motivate them to watch advertisements. In other words: power and money.

IzzyJ,

Why arent you afraid of them though, they really will do actual terrible things

undercrust,

Hating people never leads to logical outcomes. I’d rather accept that they’ve been somewhat brainwashed and battle against it, than hate my neighbour.

sin_free_for_00_days, (edited )

There have been a couple studies about the actual brain differences between people on the left and their less developed progress stopping conservative (my editorializing of the situation) people. scientificamerican.com/…/conservative-and-liberal…

jbrains,

Are you afraid of them or do you hate them? Those seem like two independent opinions to me, but I’m wondering if you’re conflating them.

I’m afraid of them and I don’t hate them.

IzzyJ,

I hate them because i have to constantly be afraid of them.

jbrains,

I can both understand and relate to being afraid of them. As you wrote, they do real damage and they seem intent on doing more and they seem to feel it’s their mission to do so. From what I can tell, they have been programmed to see the very concept of progressive thinking as evil. Fearing them seems sensible, because being aware of the threat makes it easier to defend against it or protect oneself from it.

But how exactly does it improve your life to hate them?

IzzyJ,

It doesn’t improve it. You could argue it makes it worse since I often face social rejection from the left for it…for some inexplicable reason. But I don’t simply choose to hate or not hate something, the same way one does not simply chose their sexuality or gender or race or emotions.

jbrains,

I relate to your position. You are wrong. You absolutely do choose to hate or not hate. This lies entirely within your control.

I used to have the impulse to hate them, but I don’t any more.

On the list you cite, emotions is the one thing you choose, even though it might not feel that way right now. I don’t expect you to believe me. I will cite Lisa Feldman Barrett and the book How Emotions are Made and you can decide whether you want to explore or not.

Either way, peace.

Adderbox76,

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.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d8ce582d-58bb-4e5b-98ac-7b8909c6336b.webp

Delusional,

Propaganda. For decades the conservative radio hosts have been vilifying democrats constantly and most of the time for no reason at all. It has slid into television as well but they started with radio a long long time before that.

Seasoned_Greetings, (edited )

most of the time for no reason at all

Not for no reason. It’s a form of control. If you genuinely believe that the opposing party is going to bring the country to ruin, you’re a lot less likely to consider their position in politics.

Look at the affordable care act. Conservatives hated/hate it because “obamacare” was portrayed as giving free health care to the lazy poor that you have to pay for as a hard working conservative. When asked if we should repeal Obamacare, conservatives poll something crazy like 95% yes, simply because it’s a bad word they learned.

Many of those conservatives have health care through the ACA and get mad when Republicans take it away because they need it. Those same conservatives mostly aren’t even aware that what they have is literally obamacare.

It’s control all the way down.

Seasoned_Greetings, (edited )

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.

Brutticus, (edited )

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.

yesman,

Liberals are conservatives, they hate leftists.

derf82,

Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh were largely responsible for turning politics into a team sport and convincing Conservatives that all Liberals are evil and that is a Liberal wants it, it must be bad.

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