Well, isn't the point of this liberal direction the renouncing of group cohesion in favour of individual merit? So in that sense people are not turning on their own (or, conversely, working towards a collective good), but more so affecting the merit of the individual rather than shedding him from their own group (and indeed it seems to me that the accusations are done in such a way that suggest the offender has revealed himself part of a another group of people, almost as though belonging to a group were the offence itself).
At least that's my layman's interpretation of what's going on.
I'd say that this is not what is happening. Older progressive doctrine was more about that the idea that at the end of the day, common sense, inclusion justice will prevail in a open ended society. The collection of good ideas will superseed the bigotry, and for that reason we accept existence and expression of harmful groups.
That is why most cities across the world allow the existence of neo-nazi groups having sanctioned demonstrations in the name of hate.
It's the idea that small clusters of hate will not be able to penetrate a society, and as long as there is not a open escalation of violence, the existence of hate is permitted.
In the last couple of decades, that rhetoric has changed, and recently amplified with the emboldment of the right. The new rhetoric is now: the left is right, and we cannot any longer coexist with the right. Their ideas are not worth having and there is no compromise.
When someones ideas are not worth having, there is no incentive to listen or accept them. Everyone of them is part of a threatening hole. Hench the fetishization of being liberal being a sign of virtue or smiley sticky.
The change towards a more regressive path towards liberal values is understandable given how much hate the right harbors, but what is being lost (on the younger generation) is the idea that human beings cannot even agree on basic fundamentals about the values of life, punishment, birth, death.
They are creating a stallmate because they increasingly believe everything is black and white. If you like something or you have nuanced views that don't correlate unanimously with the lefts talking point you are co-signing on hate, part of the normalization of white supremacy or whatever other blanket term you want to apply.
When you are so caught up your own ass that you are right, and that you want to be understood before you want to understand others, you're not thinking about it deeply enough.
Everything you feel, people on the "other side" feel just as strongly. These polarizing opinions will not cancel each other out, nor will they go away.
If you have enough mental fortitude to look into the factors which accentuates hate, you'll see it's a lot of the same close mindedness.
Being progressive was about winning and overcoming stupidity through the capitalistic forum of good ideas. the idiots ruin their areas and causes, and the progressives win by example. Not by becoming this warped mirror image of the right whose main defense often seems to pathetically be reduced to "but they are worse" or "they started it".
Being progressive is not easy and can feel like a restrained idealism. You cannot have a free society if you at the same time want to have open season misguided fools, and that's what *we're* doing.
There are countless utter hypocritical fucking scumbags on the left. People whose ignorance and greed and hate is a total match for that on the right. That the left is infinitrally better than the right in the current configuration is not a good argument for betraying the values. It just makes the left seem more hypocritical. It doesn't want to practice what it preaches.
