I dunno, politics in "liberal democracies" seems to be a whole lot of spectacle and aesthetics and if any good policy manages to happen its almost an afterthought. So I can't view what a liberal does as hypocrisy as what they're doing tends to be in support of "attracting attention to themselves and their pet causes" and "appearing to care about something".
I agree, politics in the west being largely a circus likely does play a big role here.
I don’t recommend dehumanizing anybody, not even our oppressors, but my interest in that is not so much for engaging their viewpoints as it is for seeing our oppressors realistically. The very same Axis personnel who committed horrific atrocities against thousands of innocents could also still give the impression of being well adjusted, polite, neighbourly people, at least when they were off‐duty. I remember reading somewhere about psychologists who tested surviving Axis war criminals but failed to find signs of insanity.
Dehumanization serves a purpose for anticommunists because it encourages them to shoot first and ask questions later (if ever). They’re less likely to feel pangs of conscience as long as they see their targets as inhuman, thereby continuing to do their jobs. There have been some exceptions in history, like Milovan Popović, but generally speaking anticommunists find it easier, faster, and less expensive to simply imprison or massacre us than address the root causes of our grievances.
This guy's a liberal, but I like this quote from a book:
Granny Weatherwax and a priest are in an argument.
"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
"It's a lot more complicated than that--"
"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"
"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."
You don't argue with Granny Weatherwax, if I'm remembering her correctly.
I don't think this has much to do with liberalism. howmany leftists, might be more politically correct for me to use neo-nazis as the example but whatever, have you talked to who say things like navalny is a nazi, all ukrainian troops are nazis, the free syrian army are isis, also isis is isis, israelis are nazis, kulaks were parasites, or the most classical one germans were nazis. just seems like people in general prefer to be against caricatures and comically evil people rather than humans
Tribalism isn't exclusive to liberals of course. However, my main point was that liberals love to collapse complex geopolitical issues into oversimplified tales of "us" versus "them" by creating infantile caricatures that are devoid of any meaningful analysis. Communists will consider ideas on their actual merits, and when we reject ideas we can give detailed explanation of why we consider a particular idea to be harmful.
from my personal experience the need to collapse as you describe it stems moreso from the geopolitical position the societies of these liberal countries find themselves in moreso than the nature of their political ideology. it is in order to convince themselves of the need to continually take actions to protect their own interests and preferential position. I imagine it was probably pretty similar within nazi germany toward their opponents or within the soviet union against nazi germany. this is something I feel a lot of americans don't exactly realize. anti-americanism is not as pervasive across the world as you may be led to believe and is definitely not at the same level of hate you'll see with americans regarding china or other examples. this was especially weird to me when I first heard the song Eve of Destruction with the lyric "And think of all the hate there is in Red China" because the chinese really do not hate americans they just want to work together with them for mutual benefit. same sentiment was heard when putin gave his now famous interview with tucker carlson
But do not forget liberals think Putin was lieing with every word of his interview
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