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As a lifelong liberal, I've sunk into despair at the firehose of hatred coming from the left these days. And I talk to far fewer of my old lefty friends anymor

As a lifelong liberal, I've sunk into despair at the firehose of hatred coming from the left these days. And I talk to far fewer of my old lefty friends anymore--if they've made themselves awful, I just don't want to know. I'd prefer to remember them as they were. Maybe this is just a phase, but it feels like we're going to a place from which we won't return.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I graduated with a degree in art, which means all my old college friends are more left-leaning than is usual. I still keep in touch with many of them on Facebook, and the amount of absolute insanity coming from them is staggering and depressing.
- vidar 8y ago
  Can you give some specific examples? (Live in Europe, curious to hear)
_bxg1 8y ago
I support most of the liberal platform, but in recent years a large portion of the party's base has turned into a cesspool of hatred, cynicism, and thoughtless reactionism. We used to be the party of idealism and belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened?
- ip26 8y ago
  We used to be the party of [...] belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened? It's difficult to believe in the basic goodness of the people that make up the current president's base. The loss in 2016 was a wake up call for Democrats in many ways. Including that maybe a lot of things they held to be true, weren't actually.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  It became more important to hate white people and what they stood for than participate in Enlightenment culture, so they happily regressed to the cultural norms of, say, the Middle East or South America. Multiculturalism and post-truth thinking was always insane nonsense, and the leftists have been drinking that koolaid for two decades, at least. To hold up cultures that cut off clitorises in the bush and burn witches, or cultures which stone people and attack women with acid, or cultures which participate in unusual amounts of violence as co-equal to the culture which put us on the moon has consequences — but is a core part of a deeply racist leftist platform, that identifies racial groups with an essentialist culture, eg “black culture”, and views the co-existence of those “racially essential cultures” as the only means of racial co-existence. As part of that, they formed alliances with questionable groups, such as the “black caucus”, which has long had links to black supremicists and have advocated for racist policies, and similarly sexist feminist groups, eg ones which advocate for female privilege in education even though men have trailed in college degrees since the 1980s. So, basically, in the 1980s Democrats decided to build a party of racism and sexism to capitalize on social change, and we’re seeing the consequences a generation later. People warned that this would be the outcome, but people were “right” and knew better.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Aaand this is why we can't have nice things.
  - moh_maya 8y ago
    The argument you appear to be making (as I interpret it) is equivalent to saying some members of the Freedom caucus support neo-Nazis / "alt-right", therefore all conservatives are now proponents of eugenics & "white nationalism" or some equivalently loaded term. I mean, democrats are still white, by large majorities..so they "hate themselves"? Such simplistic analysis of something so complicated seems.. trivialization to the point of no meaning. This just appears to be trolling for effect's sake..or venting. I know HN's guidelines suggest not attributing motive..but this appears to be such a rancorous post..
    - FakeComments 8y ago
- unclebucknasty 8y ago
  This comment, the parent, and many others on this thread sound eerily alike and similar to those propagated by trolls and bots during the failed WalkAway campaign.
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    You can view my comment history to see that I'm not a troll or a bot. This is a criticism of the left by a liberal who fears for his own party's soul.
rlt 8y ago
I’ve always been slightly left-leaning, but in recent years have found myself identifying more and more with the (libertarian) right.
rjf72 8y ago
I'm also in the same boat, I imagine with countless others. Trump didn't win in 2016, Clinton managed to receive 4.5 million votes fewer than Obama 2008 did. And she did that at the same time that the pool of voting age population grew by more than 20 million. [1] Quite a remarkable feat! The party has left its base far behind. Or perhaps it's the other way. Same result in either case. In thinking about this though I realized something. Almost like clockwork there is a shifting of the zeitgeist of the nation on 20 year intervals: - Roaring 20s - Warring 40s - Social movement 60s - Huge growth 80s - Identity politics 2000s - ?? 2020s You can't explain these shifts in era by a new generation alone, as would be implied by the 20 year intervals. It has to be in large part substantial chunks of the existing population also shifting their views. I'm not sure if this is a product of people changing, perhaps as they age, or maybe it's some organic factor of political competition that results in the parties changing. Again, going back to the top - I guess it doesn't really matter. It's the exact same effect and result in either case. The point being is that I think this is 'normal', but we're the first generation to get to share and experience this sort of shift, and in such a public way, due to the internet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...
taneq 8y ago
Same here, I used to see myself as liberal but nowadays I can't stomach the identity politics, oppression olympics and witch hunts.
troyatlarge 8y ago
I agree with you on that point 100% - its really sick whats been going on in that way and i feel much like you do about it as i stand sickened by so much of the hate i see pouring so freely out of what had been my side.
claudiawerner 8y ago
I'll give you a perspective from the other side of the fence: I used to be a liberal (and by this I do not mean as the "opposite" of conservative, I mean in the sense of "classical liberalism", the system of rights etc.) but now after reading critiques of its theory and practice and doing more investigation into the historical left movement (19th century figures who are unnameable on HN) I have turned much more to the left. I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action), for example, and I am against the private ownership of capital. I've seen a significant number of posts like yours, all with the same gist, but they always make me smile; by describing yourself as a "liberal" as something akin to "left of center", i.e opposite of a "conservative", such people actually often really are liberals (in the political philosophy sense) themselves, the exact position that the left has been critiquing since the turn of the 19th century and what continued to be fashionable until about 1970. The left has never been on the side of property rights, the system of rights in general (which they decry as bourgeois rights), the current form of the state, the existence of capital, income inequality, neoliberalism etc. and the appearance of the Left in the US as "liberal" as manifested in the Democratic Party for instance is in stark contrast to some leftist parties in Europe to whom "liberal" always meant center or center-right. So you were always a liberal, and you still are, just not in the sense you thought.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  > I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action) I'm confused here - what rights do you view free speech as being privileged over?
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    In some cases, the right to freedom from discrimination (or right to equal treatment), for instance Catherine MacKinnon and Langton have argued that pornography does this to women, and they're waiting on empirical confirmation of that[0]. Indeed, in some cases the law has even conceded the point and still favored freedom of speech[1] simply because it is speech. To me that seems like dogmatism. There are of course other issues here such as hate speech in the U.S. and those parties that argue for unequal treatment. Speech often makes people feel unsafe, for instance a Jewish neighborhood in which neo-Nazis are marching. Susan Brison has a good overview of the case against free speech[2]. To put it another way, why is it that we have a right to free speech but not a right to swing our arms? What exactly differentiates speech from other actions? Brison finds nothing there. [0] http://web.mit.edu/sgrp/2008/no2/EatonSAPF.pdf http://web.mit.edu/sgrp/2008/no2/EatonSAPF.pdf [1] Easterbrook's judgement in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut (1985) [2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Brison-Free-Speech-Skepticism-Nov.-11-2018-copy.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...
urspx 8y ago
It's bizarre to see so many (allegedly former 'liberals' or 'lefties', itself a conflation) talking of / agreeing with a "firehose of hatred" supposedly coming from the left. What do these people think of the language and ideas coming from the right? My suspicion is that they consider the right these days the calm voice of reason – not in spite of the racism, the misogyny, homophobia, or hatred of the poor, but because of these things, because maybe their sympathies simply lie with maintaining the comfortable order that they are used to, not with any of the ideals that they actually claim/ed to uphold.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

I graduated with a degree in art, which means all my old college friends are more left-leaning than is usual. I still keep in touch with many of them on Facebook, and the amount of absolute insanity coming from them is staggering and depressing.

vidar 8y ago
Can you give some specific examples? (Live in Europe, curious to hear)

_bxg1 8y ago

I support most of the liberal platform, but in recent years a large portion of the party's base has turned into a cesspool of hatred, cynicism, and thoughtless reactionism. We used to be the party of idealism and belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened?

ip26 8y ago
We used to be the party of [...] belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened? It's difficult to believe in the basic goodness of the people that make up the current president's base. The loss in 2016 was a wake up call for Democrats in many ways. Including that maybe a lot of things they held to be true, weren't actually.
FakeComments 8y ago
It became more important to hate white people and what they stood for than participate in Enlightenment culture, so they happily regressed to the cultural norms of, say, the Middle East or South America. Multiculturalism and post-truth thinking was always insane nonsense, and the leftists have been drinking that koolaid for two decades, at least. To hold up cultures that cut off clitorises in the bush and burn witches, or cultures which stone people and attack women with acid, or cultures which participate in unusual amounts of violence as co-equal to the culture which put us on the moon has consequences — but is a core part of a deeply racist leftist platform, that identifies racial groups with an essentialist culture, eg “black culture”, and views the co-existence of those “racially essential cultures” as the only means of racial co-existence. As part of that, they formed alliances with questionable groups, such as the “black caucus”, which has long had links to black supremicists and have advocated for racist policies, and similarly sexist feminist groups, eg ones which advocate for female privilege in education even though men have trailed in college degrees since the 1980s. So, basically, in the 1980s Democrats decided to build a party of racism and sexism to capitalize on social change, and we’re seeing the consequences a generation later. People warned that this would be the outcome, but people were “right” and knew better.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Aaand this is why we can't have nice things.
- moh_maya 8y ago
  The argument you appear to be making (as I interpret it) is equivalent to saying some members of the Freedom caucus support neo-Nazis / "alt-right", therefore all conservatives are now proponents of eugenics & "white nationalism" or some equivalently loaded term. I mean, democrats are still white, by large majorities..so they "hate themselves"? Such simplistic analysis of something so complicated seems.. trivialization to the point of no meaning. This just appears to be trolling for effect's sake..or venting. I know HN's guidelines suggest not attributing motive..but this appears to be such a rancorous post..
  - FakeComments 8y ago
unclebucknasty 8y ago
This comment, the parent, and many others on this thread sound eerily alike and similar to those propagated by trolls and bots during the failed WalkAway campaign.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  You can view my comment history to see that I'm not a troll or a bot. This is a criticism of the left by a liberal who fears for his own party's soul.

rlt 8y ago

I’ve always been slightly left-leaning, but in recent years have found myself identifying more and more with the (libertarian) right.

rjf72 8y ago

I'm also in the same boat, I imagine with countless others. Trump didn't win in 2016, Clinton managed to receive 4.5 million votes fewer than Obama 2008 did. And she did that at the same time that the pool of voting age population grew by more than 20 million. [1] Quite a remarkable feat! The party has left its base far behind. Or perhaps it's the other way. Same result in either case. In thinking about this though I realized something. Almost like clockwork there is a shifting of the zeitgeist of the nation on 20 year intervals: - Roaring 20s - Warring 40s - Social movement 60s - Huge growth 80s - Identity politics 2000s - ?? 2020s You can't explain these shifts in era by a new generation alone, as would be implied by the 20 year intervals. It has to be in large part substantial chunks of the existing population also shifting their views. I'm not sure if this is a product of people changing, perhaps as they age, or maybe it's some organic factor of political competition that results in the parties changing. Again, going back to the top - I guess it doesn't really matter. It's the exact same effect and result in either case. The point being is that I think this is 'normal', but we're the first generation to get to share and experience this sort of shift, and in such a public way, due to the internet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

taneq 8y ago

Same here, I used to see myself as liberal but nowadays I can't stomach the identity politics, oppression olympics and witch hunts.

troyatlarge 8y ago

I agree with you on that point 100% - its really sick whats been going on in that way and i feel much like you do about it as i stand sickened by so much of the hate i see pouring so freely out of what had been my side.

claudiawerner 8y ago

I'll give you a perspective from the other side of the fence: I used to be a liberal (and by this I do not mean as the "opposite" of conservative, I mean in the sense of "classical liberalism", the system of rights etc.) but now after reading critiques of its theory and practice and doing more investigation into the historical left movement (19th century figures who are unnameable on HN) I have turned much more to the left. I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action), for example, and I am against the private ownership of capital. I've seen a significant number of posts like yours, all with the same gist, but they always make me smile; by describing yourself as a "liberal" as something akin to "left of center", i.e opposite of a "conservative", such people actually often really are liberals (in the political philosophy sense) themselves, the exact position that the left has been critiquing since the turn of the 19th century and what continued to be fashionable until about 1970. The left has never been on the side of property rights, the system of rights in general (which they decry as bourgeois rights), the current form of the state, the existence of capital, income inequality, neoliberalism etc. and the appearance of the Left in the US as "liberal" as manifested in the Democratic Party for instance is in stark contrast to some leftist parties in Europe to whom "liberal" always meant center or center-right. So you were always a liberal, and you still are, just not in the sense you thought.

DuskStar 8y ago
> I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action) I'm confused here - what rights do you view free speech as being privileged over?
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  In some cases, the right to freedom from discrimination (or right to equal treatment), for instance Catherine MacKinnon and Langton have argued that pornography does this to women, and they're waiting on empirical confirmation of that[0]. Indeed, in some cases the law has even conceded the point and still favored freedom of speech[1] simply because it is speech. To me that seems like dogmatism. There are of course other issues here such as hate speech in the U.S. and those parties that argue for unequal treatment. Speech often makes people feel unsafe, for instance a Jewish neighborhood in which neo-Nazis are marching. Susan Brison has a good overview of the case against free speech[2]. To put it another way, why is it that we have a right to free speech but not a right to swing our arms? What exactly differentiates speech from other actions? Brison finds nothing there. [0] http://web.mit.edu/sgrp/2008/no2/EatonSAPF.pdf http://web.mit.edu/sgrp/2008/no2/EatonSAPF.pdf [1] Easterbrook's judgement in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut (1985) [2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Brison-Free-Speech-Skepticism-Nov.-11-2018-copy.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...

urspx 8y ago

It's bizarre to see so many (allegedly former 'liberals' or 'lefties', itself a conflation) talking of / agreeing with a "firehose of hatred" supposedly coming from the left. What do these people think of the language and ideas coming from the right? My suspicion is that they consider the right these days the calm voice of reason – not in spite of the racism, the misogyny, homophobia, or hatred of the poor, but because of these things, because maybe their sympathies simply lie with maintaining the comfortable order that they are used to, not with any of the ideals that they actually claim/ed to uphold.