Comment by iamnothere

> The left/"socialists", generally, these days, seem to believe pretty strongly in individuals liberty.

The “left” as a whole, whether you mean left ultras or left-liberals, generally do not respect individual freedoms in my experience. They redefine liberty to exclude rights they don’t believe in (the right does as well).

Polls have shown that the public as a whole, including the left, is becoming more hostile towards many individual liberties, especially freedom of speech. Even more concerning, support for political violence is gradually climbing.

Socialists are a mixed bag. In my experience, the more educated they are, the more they publicly espouse support for individual liberties, at least during academic discussions. But there’s a disturbing trend of “joking” about rights violations in casual conversation, mirroring the same trend on the right. Still, the DSA (for instance) seems to be gradually improving its official stances, although there is still work to do.

Everyone knows that the right is terrible on civil liberties, but that’s no reason to excuse the left.