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
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).
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
