The leftist is ant individualistic, and pro-collectivist. He/she wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them,
satisfy everyone’s needs for them, and take care of them. They are not the sort of
persons who have an inner sense of confidence in their ability to solve one’s
own problems and satisfy one’s own needs. The liberal leftists are antagonistic
to the concept of competition because, deep inside, they feel like losers.
What one is trying to get at in discussing liberalism
is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a
collection of related types. Yet today the movement is fragmented, and it is
not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When speaking of liberal leftists,
one has in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types,
feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists, climate
activists, globalists, and the like.
Yet not everyone who is associated with one of
these movements is a leftist. Thus, what one means by “liberalism” is perhaps to
indicate roughly and approximately the two psychological tendencies that
are the main driving force of modern liberal leftism.
By no means can one group or movement claim
to be telling the whole truth about leftist psychology. Also, this is meant to
apply to modern liberal leftism only. The two psychological tendencies that
underlie modern liberal leftism are called “feelings of inferiority” and “over-socialization”.
Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of
modern liberal leftism, while over-socialization is characteristic only of a
certain segment of modern liberal leftism; but this segment is highly
influential.
By “feelings of inferiority” in the whole
spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness,
depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. When someone
interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him/her (or about
groups with whom she/he identifies) one can conclude that he/she has
inferiority feelings or low self-esteem.
This tendency is pronounced among minority
rights activists, whether they belong to the minority groups whose rights they
defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities
and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “black”,
“oriental”, “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled
person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick”
were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy”, “dude” or “fellow”. The negative
connotations have been Those who are most sensitive about “politically
incorrect” terminology is not the average person of colour, Asian immigrant,
abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do
not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of
society.
Political correctness has its stronghold among
university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries,
and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to
upper-middle-class families.
Many leftists have an intense identification
with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated
(American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior.
The leftist liberals themselves feel that
these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have
such feelings, but it is precisely because they see these groups as inferior
that they identify with their problems.
Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that
women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly, they are nagged by a fear
that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.
Liberal Leftists tend to hate anything that has
an image of being strong, good, and successful. They hate Canada; and America, they
hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality and the
view of others.
The reasons that liberal progressive leftists
give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real
motives. They say and claim they hate the West because it is warlike,
imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults
appear in socialist countries or in third-world cultures, the liberal leftist
finds excuses for them, or at best they GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist;
whereas they ENTHUSIASTICALLY point out (and more often than not greatly
exaggerate) these faults where they appear in Western civilization.
These faults are not the leftist’s real motive
for hating America and the West. They hate, Canada, America, and the West
because they are strong and successful.
Words like “self-confidence”, “self-reliance”, “initiative”,
“enterprise”, “optimism”, etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist
vocabulary.
Have you noticed that art forms that appeal to
modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat, and despair,
or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there
were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all
that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment?
Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss
reason, science, and objective reality and insist that everything is culturally
relative. One can indeed ask serious questions about the foundations
of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective
reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are
not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of
knowledge.
They are deeply involved emotionally in their
attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own
psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility,
and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power.
More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they
classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs
as false (i.e., failed, inferior).
The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so
deep that he/she cannot tolerate any classification of some things as
successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also
underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and
of the utility of IQ tests.
Leftists are antagonistic to genetic
explanations of human abilities or behaviour because such explanations tend to
make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to
give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it.
Thus, if a person is “inferior” it is not his/her
fault, but society's, because he/she has not been brought up properly. The
leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make
him/her a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, or a ruthless
competitor.
This kind of person has not wholly lost faith
in himself/herself but rather a deficit in his/her sense of power and self-worth,
but they can still conceive of themselves as having the capacity to be strong,
and his/her efforts to make himself/herself strong produce their unpleasant
behaviour.
But the leftist is too far gone for that. Their
feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that they cannot conceive of themselves
as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. They
can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement
with which they identify.
Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist
tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they
intentionally provoke police and others to abuse them, etc. These tactics may
often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
because they prefer masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.
Leftists may claim that their activism is
motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principles do play a
role for the leftists of the over-socialized type. But compassion and moral
principles cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
prominent a component of leftist behaviour; so is the drive for power.
Moreover, much leftist behaviour is not
rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to
be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good
for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
dogmatic terms? Obviously, it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and
conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions
to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them.
However leftist activists such as Black Lives Matter do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional
needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need
for power.
In doing so they actually harm black people,
because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to
intensify race hatred. If our society
had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to invent problems to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.
Let me stipulate and emphasize that the
foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might
be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of
leftism.
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