Liberals Hate Socialists Because Socialists Are The Real Thing

Liberals Hate Socialists Because Socialists Are The Real Thing

Feb. 20, 2025

U.S. EMPIRE - FOLLOW THE MONEY

Caitlin Johnstone

Liberals know their favorite political party supports war, militarism, oligarchy and inequality and is rife with power-serving corruption, and socialists know it too, so they can critique these dynamics in ways that have the unpleasant sting of truth.

Liberals don't mind it when some dopey right winger criticizes their ideological faction, because the rightist has no idea what they're looking at and offers up the dumbest and least relevant criticisms imaginable. When a socialist critiques that same faction they do it in ways the liberal knows are true, and it causes the liberal to experience cognitive dissonance. If you love AOC it's not going to bother you when a rightist calls her a woke commie terrorist lover, but someone to the left of you pointing out the various ways she serves the ugliest aspects of the US empire will grate against some of your most deeply treasured belief systems.

Most liberals secretly hate socialists more than they hate rightists, because while rightists attack their political agendas, socialists attack their egos.

They expose core identity structures for the sham that they are. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and nobody enjoys feeling like they've been exposed as a phony.

That's what liberal left-punching is really about. It's not about "political pragmatism" or any of that nonsense. It's petty, vindictive egotistic meltdowns dressed up in reasonable-sounding words. It's never anything nobler than that.

The belief that capitalism will rescue us from the ecological disasters it creates assumes that the blind pursuit of profit for its own sake will somehow possess the wisdom necessary to preserve the delicate ecosystemic context upon which human life depends while also ensuring that we all have a decent quality of life (as long as we work hard enough, of course).

This is a religious belief. It's blind faith dogma, based on literally nothing other than one's desire to believe it. It ascribes a wisdom to the "invisible hand of the market" that is tantamount to claiming that capitalism is being steered by God. It's something people want to believe because the alternative is falling back on some form of socialist system to ensure our survival on this planet, which we in the west have been indoctrinated into reflexively dismissing.

Reading by Tim Foley

Article with supporting links: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/02/20/liberals-hate-socialists-because-socialists-are-the-real-thing

Original: https://youtu.be/fwB2BNd9YM4

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I write about the end of illusions. 100% reader-funded writer. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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