Liberal to Left Pipeline
AI generated image of dinner party with blindfolded guests.
In the aftermath of Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections, liberal rancor toward leftists in America reached a fever pitch. Statements such as “We’ll never forgive you”, “Voting has consequences”, and “Enjoy Trump!” flooded social media. Groups who overwhelmingly share humane values became entrenched in their divisions in the face of a radical conservative takeover. The aim of this piece is to illuminate the origin of the rift from the perspective of many leftists who were once liberals, and to dissect stereotypes of the left with the same lens.
Who Is The American Left?
The leftist is a caricature in the liberal mind: a scruffy armchair activist derailing sensible strategy with purity politics and pie-in-the-sky demands from politicians and society. They are unserious individuals with minimal life experience. They obstruct educated, serious professionals who have rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work inside the system to forge a better reality for themselves and others. To liberals, leftists are at best background noise. At worst, they are propagandists who mislead voters in critical elections.
Republicans love to smear Democrats as “The Left”, because from their point of view, everything to the left of them is indistinguishable. Democrats may call themselves “The Left” or liberals, upholding the hegemony of the neoliberal order. But compared to the political spectrum of western and northern European counterparts, America's two major parties are both conservative. For our purposes here, the American Left is characterized as a broad tent of people who remain unrepresented by a major political party, especially as Democrats have become the Republicans of bygone years.
Broadly, the unaligned Left includes anarchists and communists, but also jaded Democrats and citizens who want taxpayer funds to cover universal healthcare, sensible gun laws, public transportation, free college, and strong unions, much like other developed nations. They include teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, civil servants, blue collar workers, veterans, artists, academics and so on. Contrary to the stereotype of “dirty hippies” or radicals or unserious people, they are part of the fabric of American society.
Below is a reprise of liberal assumptions about “The Left”, along with comparisons to the framework of the liberal worldview. Ultimately, the intent is to glean a minimal core narrative in order to enable groups with a humane vision of the future to join forces against groups who revel in cruelty and regression.
Limitations of the American Liberal Framework
1. Shared Financial Interests with Conservatives
Liberals read the New York Times, contribute to their 401Ks, and lock into their careers to achieve a suitable life for their families. They remain oblivious to their own ideological framework, as well as their power in a liberal hegemony. After all, they inhabit the ranks of the institutions that reinforce the status quo. Economics in academia assumes capitalism as the only standard. Corporate growth driven, STEM-centric paychecks incentivize historical amnesia, and render the past and present into mere entertainment. Isolated in ivory towers, board rooms, and dinner parties, liberals dismiss any challenge to what they deem obvious in their echo chamber.
Liberals have financial interests similar to conservatives. They value compromise with influential conservative players who do not operate in good faith, promote supremacist agendas, and who leave working class conservatives’ grievances to be manipulated by demagogues. The liberal fixation on optics and decorum routinely abandons and even mocks working class conservatives who lack the tools to palatably articulate their real problems, especially if their lived experience does not align with an ideologically reinforced liberal analysis (e.g. “the economy is fine, because the stock market is up”).
Personally comfortable, many liberals believe individual financial successes will eventually erase broadscale social inequality. They abdicate any responsibility toward uplifting public education or media literacy in the belief that electoral politics and incrementalism will deliver in the long-term. Rose-colored glasses and a narrative of optimism renders liberals passive in the face of conservative strategists who take miles from every inch of good will.
2. Billionaire Co-Opted Liberal Media
All owners of America’s major news outlets, whether Republican or Democrat, share capitalist interests. The Overton Window presented never challenges the power structure. Viewers are left to believe that the narrative of our shared truth is very narrow. The rise of for-profit news, the 24-hour news cycle, and media consolidation has transformed journalism into entertainment. Substantive contextualization is rare. Uncritical platforming of meritless voices in the guise of unbiased journalism strips the profession of its investigative drive.
The current media landscape amounts to “bread and circuses” for Americans, where people have increasingly less bread, and only the top 5% can afford to go to the circus. Even liberal media’s obsession with Trump is a toothless distraction. Rife with gotcha moments toward an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon who has never been held accountable by the highest courts of the land, liberal media imagines some new act will finally be his undoing. These liberal outlets, bankrolled by the same companies as conservative channels, "fact-check" Trump with hours of programming, show after show. They allow a madman to literally dictate the news with a daily word salad quote. making America's journalism as much a form of brainrot as any AI-generated social media video. Meanwhile, they abdicate leadership by avoiding analyses of how we arrived at this point and holding enablers accountable.
Election coverage is no different. Liberal voices in legacy or social media obfuscate the electoral process, barely focus on swing state analyses that actually determine national outcomes, and focus on sensationalist topics to drive viewership. This approach suggests that the goal is to keep Americans arguing and entertained rather than to glean anything meaningful and constructive for the future.
3. Liberal Entitlement to Voter Loyalty
Often, many undecided Democrats ultimately vote blue. Despite a candidate’s failure to win these voters over, they will still hold their nose and vote blue to prevent a worse situation. “Vote Blue No Matter Who” Democrats take that for granted to the point of an entitlement, snubbing policy asks from that segment of the base, while making concessions to fascists. It’s no wonder an erosion of trust has occurred and voter confidence is abysmal.
The Democratic Party has acted like it was entitled to votes for its appointed candidate since Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. An approach like that is similar to the authoritarian right that liberals supposedly oppose, and it is bad strategy for a democratic base. A working class strapped for time and money, who does not get election days off, is not going to spend their limited agency to go kiss the boots of a declared sovereign that gaslights them about their deteriorating material reality.
4. Liberal Blindness to Power Differentials
Liberal power is embodied in well-funded institutions from government, academia, and finance to mainstream media. Neoliberalism is a standard ideology in all of these spaces. The coffers of the Democratic Party are at its disposal. Meanwhile, the same CIA that brought us Operation Chaos, COINTELPRO, and the classic CIA sabotage field manual has joked that infiltration into leftist spaces requires too much reading and, regardless, the make up of the people is too poor.
Politically, there is no major party representing the left.
At the same time, liberal power loves to co-opt the groundwork of the left. Cultural revolutionary protests of the 60s and 70s, for example, were largely neutralized of their political messaging while the music and aesthetics remain as if the work is done. Feel good MLK quotes convenient to white moderates are promoted, but his takes on racial justice through the redistribution of wealth and critiques of US militarism, which branded him the “most dangerous Negro in America” by the US government, are ignored.
Once the hard work requiring social stigma and personal sacrifice is done by everyday people, liberal power structures paint themselves as having always been on the side of justice, and moralize to others about how things should be done. In reality, when it mattered, they offered critiques about civility, complied with the status quo, provided no support to achieve milestones toward justice, then branded the heroism as a collective effort in which they participated.
Democratic lawmakers today continue in that performative, co-optive legacy, while offering no fight against conservatives and only milquetoast policies for the docket list of problems we face. More than that, they punch down at the human-rights affirming left with whom they share values, rather than punching up at sociopathic billionaires, special interest groups with deep pockets, and corporations who buy politicians and the media. It is in this context of the liberal ecosystem that stereotypes of American leftists are formed.
Liberal Misconceptions of American Leftists
1. Leftists Are With Us (Liberals) or For Trump
Too often, any criticism of the Democratic Party is met with the liberal response, “enjoy Trump”, as if liberals never criticize Republicans’ “with us or against us” and “if you don’t like it, leave” false dichotomy. Some liberals will exclaim, “Stop dealing in absolutes, you purists!” but then only engage in two options on a spectrum of what is achievable by the standards of other developed nations. They cannot conceive of existing systems like ranked choice voting. The liberals who engage in these thought terminating clichés are often dubbed by the left as Blue MAGA. Blue MAGA liberals speak to leftists as if they embody the caricature described earlier. They do not imagine colleagues or people in leadership positions, or genuinely concerned neighbors and experienced community organizers. They imagine uncritical, fact-averse voters like MAGA followers.
2. Leftists Vote Third Party or Are Too Lazy to Vote
Ideological entrenchment blinds liberals to the fact that our electoral system has been designed to disenfranchise and divide. It scapegoats potential allies on the left, leaving actual abuse of power unchallenged.
Democrats did not contest the possibility of tech billionaire-backed election tampering in the 2024 presidential elections because that would require them to punch in the right direction. Instead, they deployed the usual script to blame third party voters. Data shows that third parties didn’t get enough votes in most swing states to sway election results, yet much of liberal rhetoric continues to blame leftists. When the data became clear that it was not third party voters but registered Democrats opting out of voting entirely that cost the election, the criticism became about lazy voters rather than a massive campaign failure.
To be clear, activists on the left who have been through multiple election cycles may advocate these different approaches:
1) Elections are a chance to pick one’s opponents. Vote Democrat in swing states; protest vote in blue states to send a message.
2) Politicians should earn votes. Vote third party if they earn it. End the hostage situation of the two party system.
3) Swap your vote. Blue state voters cast a protest vote in a safe state on behalf of a swing state voter. The swing state voter votes Democrat as harm reduction, but still has their voice heard nationally.
Leftists who do not vote believe there is no change coming to the electoral system, gerrymandering, or campaign finance anytime soon, and redirect their mutual care elsewhere. Particularly in the 2024 election, many of these voters resonated with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ conclusion when he said, “People who can’t draw the line at genocide can’t save democracy,” referencing Democrats’ support for Israel. Instead of coming from a place of ignorance, many non-voters based their choice on deep care and attention. Voting only prolongs the tortured demise of empire, they’ll argue, while ignoring its victims and diverting energy from parallel institutions that need to be built.
Rather than guilt, shame or lecture people who are well aware of society’s stagnation, liberals would get farther with this segment of leftists if they got curious about how people navigate a failed system without betraying themselves. This approach might at least move people to adopt strategy #1, and subvert the “greater evil” in good faith.
But more often, leftists find that liberals are not aware that the system is broken, nor do they think about certain voters, except as a horde to be fear-mongered into obedience. Leftists note that, much like conservatives, liberals love to punch down at disenfranchised voters rather than punch up at wealthy and influential strategists.
3. Leftists Are Hippies
Finland solved homelessness. Socialized healthcare is common in developed nations. Many European countries provide three months to over a year of paid maternity leave, plus the month of August off. Yet, in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, many practical demands instituted elsewhere are deemed pie-in-the-sky, unattainable ideals.
We live in a world where the cost to feed and house everyone has a finite, attainable number in the US and globally. The human race can survive on 30% of its current production levels. It is a material fact that infinite growth is unsustainable in a finite world. Much of the work humans do is not necessary but optics driven, and many of those will be replaced by AI. The modern phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs attests to this reality. Billionaires can fund multiple lifetimes for millions of people, but dream of doomsday bunkers or Mars rather than the most obvious solutions to prevent mass extinction, because that would make them less wealthy or require less exploitation.
Considering the above, are leftists hippies, or are liberals ill-attuned to the era we are living in, unable to discern substance over the aesthetics of conformity, and needlessly loyal to current processes?
Is a scruffy white guy in dreadlocks who yells about war crimes abroad wrong about the war crimes? Nevermind his fashion sense or opinion about shadow governments. Is he wrong about the war crimes? Why are the war crimes unserious because of the messenger, while the people committing them are deemed credible because they wear suits, earn six figures, and write paychecks?
Too often, liberals confuse systemically disenfranchised people and under-financed initiatives as insubstantial, while many abhorrent people thrive and trivial things get funded. Our world is financed by short-sighted, profit-driven, visionless people in a system that routinely elevates sociopaths.
People who criticize the madness of our systems the most suffer loss in status and pay. It causes moral injury to those with their humanity intact to participate in a damaging system, so they opt out and take the financial losses. The oblivious or apathetic reap the rewards of participation and perpetuate the systems. Inevitably, outspoken critics will often not look like boardroom executives, carry influential pocketbooks, or fund paradigm-spreading glamorous social opportunities.
Liberals rarely examine how they allow their worldview to be shaped by people who are not invested in solutions but profits, while distancing themselves from people who are actually fighting for the values liberals seemingly believe in. Whether it’s a conservative with a southern drawl complaining about egg prices or a bohemian leftist protesting big oil, liberals struggle to take a point from people who don’t fit the aesthetics, presentation, and education level that they deem credible. At the same time, they’ll complain about leftist purity tests, completely unaware of their own unexamined purity tests.
4. Leftists Don’t Know How Electoral Strategy or Politics Work
One patronizing liberal phrase is, “Voting is not marriage, it’s strategy.” It signals entitlement to votes from the left. It is a marker of liberals’ reactive participation in a broken process they refuse to fix. By “strategy” they mean tribal loyalty without meaningful engagement, as if we have abdicated democracy.
The masquerading of loyalty for “strategy” becomes evident when noting the outrage specifically at the left. If votes are expendable and not necessary to one’s strategy, why is there outrage at not receiving them? If those votes are necessary, it is clearly of strategic importance to address those voters’ interests.
PART 2: STRATEGIES AND STAKES
Coming Soon