# Why do conservatives (in the US) hate the left so much **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 28, 2026, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251 "2026-06-28T19:14:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/141 "2026-07-11T12:10:05Z")
This is true. The Democratic Party is conservative. Virtually all Republicans in federal office are radical at best and batshit insane at worst. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/142 "2026-07-11T15:18:34Z")
They hate Commies, though, right? Please tell me they still hate the actual left! Or is it only the Democratic Party that hates the left? ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/143 "2026-07-11T15:55:43Z")
> [@survinga](#): > > The right-wing thinks the left wants to have more of these out-groups in order to push White Christian America out of power. Which is odd, because most immigrants are hard-working, religious, many want to own their own small business, and fervently oppose the governments of the counties they came from, and wanting to be part of America. In other words (in a rhetorical sense, at least) tailor-made Republicans, But for some reason, the Republican Party can’t quit the racist vote. If they could embrace immigrants instead of demonizing them, easing the way to citizenship, they’d be the majority party for a generation or more, and the U.S would be way better off. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/144 "2026-07-11T16:28:17Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > But for some reason, the Republican Party can’t quit the racist vote. If they could embrace immigrants instead of demonizing them, easing the way to citizenship, they’d be the majority party for a generation or more, and the U.S would be way better off. I don’t disagree, but… (a) It’s very difficult for a major party to walk away from a significant part of its base. (b) Immigrants can’t vote until they become naturalized citizens. Such a strategy would probably mean that the GOP would lose votes and elections for a long time, until they built back up a base of naturalized immigrants. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/145 "2026-07-11T17:44:58Z")
> [@survinga](#): > > I see today’s right-wing as radicals. Reactionary. Radicals want to remake society in a new image - Ayatollah Khomeini in many ways was a radical. The American right mostly doesn’t want that. They ideally want to turn back to an imaginary and heavily sanitized cultural past circa 1960, roughly mid-period Leave it to Beaver. It’s why radicals are generally associated with the left and reactionaries with the right. They needn’t be - despite some early pragmatic mouth service the aforementioned Khomeini wasn’t much of a leftist, especially once he started purging them from the government. And you can find isolated examples of left-wing reactionaries that think they are trying to recapture some fantasy of a past utopia, i.e. some of the extreme back-to-nature crowd. But the American right as a whole is very, very reactionary. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/146 "2026-07-11T21:17:02Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > The number of people walking away from the GOP after 1/6 was lost in the noise. Very good point. What outraged nearly everyone on the day itself (see the prominent Republicans criticizing Trump for letting it happen), became something easily rationalized by many on the right as time went on. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/147 "2026-07-12T02:27:03Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > But for some reason, the Republican Party can’t quit the racist vote. Because at this point, that is who they _are._ It’s not a matter of cynical calculation to win elections, when they decided on the Southern Strategy to appeal to the racist reactionary vote, the reactionaries ate the party from the inside out and now are the Republicans. They don’t _want_ the non-white vote, because it’s non-white and they are genuinely racist enough that matters to them. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/148 "2026-07-12T02:45:28Z")
I was reading a social media post a few days ago from a horribly racist Korean-American friend of my horribly racist (self loathing, white identifying, very brown) brother. He was complaining about some white politician attacking the Korean American community in Burke, Virginia. He’s complaining that white racists are taking their Asian racist brethren for granted! ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/149 "2026-07-12T03:24:53Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Some of it is immersion in the right-wing information bubble, but I think most of it is personality. Conservatism doesn’t make people hateful, being hateful makes people conservative. Being MAGA doesn’t make a person terrible, being a terrible person makes a person MAGA. This. My hypothesis is that what made MAGA successful / put them over the top in terms of having enough numbers to win elections, is that they convinced asshole Democrats to become Republicans. The flip side being that the reason we didn’t have MAGA before 2016 is that the assholes weren’t united under one banner like they are now. ---
**Author:** ![survinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/150 "2026-07-12T12:49:52Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Reactionary. Radicals want to remake society in a new image - Ayatollah Khomeini in many ways was a radical. The American right mostly doesn’t want that. They ideally want to turn back to an imaginary and heavily sanitized cultural past circa 1960, roughly mid-period Leave it to Beaver. I can see some reactionary component to MAGA. But to me, it’s more radical in terms of their actual policies. They want massive change from the current political order. They want to blow up world trade deals. They want to end our international alliances. They want to be friends with our enemies (Putin) and enemies with our friends (Spain, Canada). They want to basically end and/or blow up most of our federal agencies in charge of carrying out congressional law. They want to police our streets with military and a masked unaccountable police. They want optional wars, where we decapitate sovereign governments at a whim. They want to de-fund scientific research and turn Americans against vaccines. They want a KING instead of a President. Maybe they would like a “leave it to beaver” world again in terms of race and family structure. But when you look at what they’re doing, it goes in a very radical direction that we’ve really never gone to for at least 100 years… ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/151 "2026-07-12T13:12:51Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > They don’t _want_ the non-white vote, because it’s non-white and they are genuinely racist enough that matters to them Yeah. They don’t see blacks and most browns as fully human, they don’t want their vote and don’t think they should even have a vote. They hate the left because they’re a bunch of N-Words and N-Word lovers. In fact, they hate whites in the left more than anyone else because we’re traitors to our race. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/152 "2026-07-12T13:22:12Z")
“Radical reactionaries” works for me. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/153 "2026-07-12T15:39:14Z")
This Reactionaries often want radical change. As for what they actually _want,_ as far as I can tell it’s basically “The Confederacy if it had concentration camps, a King and an Inquisition”. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/154 "2026-07-12T21:25:45Z")
They want a return to an ethnonationalist state where the right race, religion, gender and belief system gives you an inside track to status, wealth and mates and where everyone else is physically and psychologically locked out of power. They also think the world is extremely dangerous, and want a ‘strong’ military and police to suppress all the scary out-groups (non-christians, POC, feminists, immigrants, etc). ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2026, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251/155 "2026-07-13T11:22:36Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > They want a return to an ethnonationalist state where the right race, religion, gender and belief system gives you an inside track to status, wealth and mates and where everyone else is physically and psychologically locked out of power. Which is the (choose one: God-given/evolutionarily-natural) rightful moral order, and that society moved away from that can ONLY have been the result of a malicious, hostile action on our part to destroy and erase that righteousness to take away their birthright. _So we must PAY!!!_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-in-the-us-hate-the-left-so-much/1031251.md?page=7)