I
don’t know if I’ll ever be able to definitively answer that, since illustrative
examples are include too much gray area for any person of any ideology to feel
fully comfortable with.
Hating
already-marginalized groups is certainly more likely to lead somebody to do
terrible things. As I’ve said before, beliefs don’t exist independently of
consequences. They profoundly affect the way you treat everyone around you.
People of all belief structures will often say their worldview has brought them
peace, but inner peace counts for nothing if it doesn’t also entail bringing
that peace to the outside. By “peace,” I don’t mean complacency or avoidance of
conflict if those conflicts are needed to bring about positive change. I mean
making an active effort to comfort people, to encourage them, to expose abuse and
to do our best to end injustice. I mean motivating others toward goals that
will instill social peace in the long run and right the wrongs in society.
If
someone claims to have “inner peace” on account of their political or religious
perspective but then only uses that perspective to make people feel hopeless or
bring agitation for no reason, then their “peace” is not productive. I’m
thinking of Christians who tell non-Christians they’re going to hell. I’m
thinking of atheists who troll internet prayer groups and tell someone whose
mother has cancer that there’s no use praying for her because heaven is a fairy
tale and she’ll only end up as worm food. I’m thinking of conservatives who proudly
embrace bigotry because they think it makes them brave and unique, free from
the “politically correct” masses. I’m thinking of far-leftists who tell more
mainstream liberals that all of their views and causes are worthless unless
they become radicalized and embrace Leninism. I have met people who fit every
single one of those descriptions.
I
used to say you can tell you’ve become an extremist if you think it’s impossible
to go too far within your own belief structure, and if you think anyone who
disagrees with you is extreme. I still maintain that for the most part,
although I don’t think it’s possible to go “too far” with the belief in
equality, because equality by definition is fair. Most people will say they champion
equality, but will differ in their ideas on how to achieve it—as well as in
their perspective of who is actually being persecuted. We all believe we root
for the underdog, but we’re largely defined by who we believe the underdog to
be.
Even
white supremacists think they are defenders of equality. They’re convinced that
the way to achieve it is to restrict the rights and freedoms of non-white
people, because they are genuinely certain that racial minorities are privileged
and that whites are being oppressed by said minorities, as well as by self-hating
white liberals. You see it in their propaganda all the time. “Anti-racist is
really code for anti-white.” “Diversity=white genocide.” Of course their
beliefs are not deserving of equal consideration or respect. They’re wrong,
plain and simple. Wrong in a way that’s empirically and statistically provable,
as well as morally bankrupt. They have a long-standing history of doing
horrendous things in defense of their beliefs.
But
I think it’s important for everyone to remind ourselves that even if we believe
the right thing, we’re also capable of taking it in negative directions.
In
recent years, I have been called an extreme ultraliberal. Maybe I am—although
I have only been called that by people who are far-right conservatives, rather
than those I would consider mainstream. Maybe the fact that I see them as radical
means I am radical, or maybe they
really are extreme. But I do know there are people who are further left than
myself, and further left than I’d strive to be. For example, I’m not a
socialist. I have socialist friends whom I highly respect, but it’s not a camp
I fall into. I was raised intensely conservative. My father used to say that
most Democrats are closet socialists, and that socialism will lead to communism
in the same way that HIV often leads to AIDS. He said that communism is
socialism perfected. I grew up fully believing that, but then I met plenty of
liberals who don’t identify as socialists or communists. I met socialists who
say that communism goes too far. Eventually I became liberal, and I recognize
the difference. Liberalism is by no means a monolith.
To
my dad’s credit, he never discouraged me from making friends with leftists.
Some of his closest friends are liberal, and he once told me that sometimes it’s
not worth it to argue with people you like. The lessons I’ve chosen to retain from
my upbringing are scarce, but that’s one I still carry.
One
of the problems with believing liberalism=socialism is the assumption that all
socialists are socially progressive. The Nazis are solid proof that it’s not
true. Many conservatives like to hold up Nazi Germany as a socialist boogeyman,
but their beliefs and practices were heavily socially conservative. They
restricted abortions and birth control for the Aryan women they encouraged to reproduce,
while forcing eugenics on those they deemed “undesirable”—the non-white,
non-Christian, mentally ill, LGBT, poor, and disabled populations, all of whom
are still popular scapegoats for social conservatives today. They used fundamentalist
Christianity and an entirely literal interpretation of the Bible to drum up
hatred of Jews and other non-Christians, which is still a common tactic among
the religious right. I am not going to make the same sweeping assumptions about
All Conservatives that I used to make about All Liberals. There are
conservatives who don’t espouse bigotry, but most of these types of bigotry do
seem to be espoused by those of a conservative bend.
At
the same time, it’s definitely possible for a left-leaning person to behave
terribly and think it’s excusable because they hold progressive beliefs. I’ve known
my share of liberal activists who treated others with complete inconsideration
and rudeness on an individual level, but thought that was justifiable because
they cared about humanity in an abstract sense and because they were fighting
for the correct political causes. I had one former friend who stands out
particularly in that sense. She thought she’d become a better person because
she had honed her Marxist philosophy, but she was still just as narcissistic
and manipulative as ever. She didn’t become a better person, just a better communist. Some might say that meant she wasn’t
a “true” communist; that real communism would have resulted
in the improvement of her character. But whether or not that’s true, it falls
too close to the No True Scotsman territory.
Some
beliefs may justify or excuse someone’s preexisting negative traits, but it’s
hard for me to believe those views are entirely responsible for creating them. Unkind
people tend to be drawn to unkind ideologies. A good person may be brainwashed
into a terrible worldview, and they may say and do awful things as a result, but
I have faith that their natural drive toward decency will save them in the end.
And a cruel, vindictive person can adopt a benevolent belief system but refuse
to practice it properly, using it to rationalize their abusive tendencies instead.
It’s
hard to tell for certain where beliefs start and identities end. I just think they
form circles which often overlap one another and sometimes even eclipse.
