Why Leftists Are So Uniquely Annoying

Or, the subtle art of alienating everyone

It’s never been easier to despise the political right. It turns out that a Republican president dooming millions to death by feeding life-saving aid programs into a “wood chipper” while enriching his family through cryptocurrency bribery schemes and mafia-like self-dealing payoff shakedowns isn’t great for public relations. Voters also don’t much appreciate having their neighbors and their kids snatched into vans by masked goons, or deported without due process.¹ They don’t like seeing their cities occupied by fascistic paramilitaries who gun down citizens in the streets. Add to that an unpopular foreign war launched out of the blue that has led to soaring fuel prices, and it’s no surprise why so many are fed up with the right. Yet even while Trump’s approval numbers sink deeper into the toilet and his party coasts toward pulverizing midterm losses this November, there is one thing the American public still loathes more than Republicans: Democrats.

As the Real Clear Politics polling average has consistently shown, even while voters plan to cast their ballots for the Democrats in the 2026 midterms, they still rate the Democratic Party as less favorable and more unfavorable than the GOP. A 2025 poll conducted by CNN found that 58 percent of Americans believe the Democratic Party has gone too far left, an “all-time high” figure, according to data analyst Harry Enten. Perhaps the public is just mistaken? Another CNN poll found that 33 percent of Democrats — and 42 percent of those under 35 — think of themselves as democratic socialists. What’s more, a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll from February found that while 62 percent of US adults believed Trump was “out of touch” with the concerns of everyday people, that figure was 65 percent for Democrats in Congress. Folks know that Trump has been a singular disaster, and they’re willing to vote against his party to provide a check on his abuses and blunders, but why hasn’t that also translated into better numbers for the Dems? Why is the left still more disliked than the right? A lot of it comes down to the way Americans experience leftists as people. And an incontrovertible truth at the heart of modern politics is that leftists are uniquely annoying. Insufferably, infuriatingly, blood-boilingly annoying.

This is something I have often felt myself. I consider myself an environmentalist. I support universal healthcare, criminal justice reform, LGBT rights, a woman’s right to choose, and much higher levels of social spending, including universal basic income. I have voted Democratic almost down-the-line for 18 years. I am fully aware of just how dangerous the populist right is, and have published extensively on the topic. I know that the right’s attacks on American cities, the democratic system, immigrants, higher education, science, economic stability, international relations, and political norms far outstrip the excesses of the left in sheer material damage. Not to mention their egregious prosecution of culture-war hobby horses backed by the full might of the federal government. And yet I too find leftists interpersonally nauseating in a way right wingers can never even approach.

Spend any amount of time actively engaged in political discourse as a non-leftist — or even as a heterodox leftist — and you will encounter droves of progressives who, almost to an individual, behave in a manner that can only produce hatred in their interlocutors. They often interact in bad faith, rush to make outlandish accusations, employ a host of derailing tactics, knowingly misrepresent others’ points, and pepper them with unhinged attacks that frequently veer into the same bigotries they claim to oppose, all drenched in their characteristic catty smugness and snark. In the worst cases, which, in years past, were all too common, online leftists would go much further, whipping up massive pile-ons designed to publicly shame and destroy the livelihoods of those they disagreed with. Then there are the many violent and sexualized threats one can expect — a common feature of lefty-dominated spaces such as Bluesky, or Twitter from around 2018 to 2022.

To move among online leftists is to be immersed in a sea of what appears to be viciously sadistic and deeply disordered neurotics. These tortured souls habitually call for, glorify, and celebrate violence and suffering — so long as this venomous ire is directed at the right kind of people. You know, conservatives, centrists, liberals, moderates, apolitical people, capitalists, healthcare CEOs, Zionists, the wealthy (presumably excluding their parents), white people, straight people, Western societies in general, and of course other leftists whose opinions slightly diverge from their own, or whose professional success or talent make them jealous. No one is spared, including would-be allies and fellow comrades. The most common experience many Americans have had with leftists — whether online or in the many institutional and professional spaces in which they’ve held sway — is one of being relentlessly attacked, bullied, and slandered, or witnessing this happen to others. The impression most are left with is that these arch progressives despise nearly everyone in the country, often including themselves. Is it any wonder that society returns the favor?

From a 1994 episode of The Simpsons

Part of the dynamic at play here is driven by the partisan double standard I have written about in which the political left is generally held to higher moral standards than the right, and consequently penalized more for their shortcomings. The reason this double standard is so impactful is that it is almost entirely self-created. Leftists posture as our moral superiors, whereas right-wing populists proudly own being cynical scoundrels and egocentric edgelords. The right does not pretend to be inclusive while discriminating against disfavored groups. They don’t pretend to be anti-racist while promoting racial essentialism. They don’t pretend to value diversity while rejecting viewpoint diversity. They don’t pretend to care about the downtrodden while championing luxury-belief policies that make their communities objectively more dangerous. They don’t pretend to care about “the science” while politicizing medicine and torching public trust. They don’t pretend to want a fairer society while nakedly pursuing their own advancement.² They don’t wax poetical about ethics, integrity, or intellectual honesty only to side with dictators, theocrats, terrorists, and jihadists.

The hard right doesn’t aspire to any high-minded ideals beyond a notional simulacrum of Christianity watered down to homeopathic dilution and sold at full price. Right-wing populists don’t merely set their moral bar low, they openly disdain the very idea of a moral bar as lame, gay, retarded, and cucked. Morality is for suckers and losers. As Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s advisor and deputy chief of staff for policy, said in January, “We live in a world [...] that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The right wears its cartoonish villainy like a badge of honor. There can be no lofty moral or intellectual expectations for ride-or-die Trump supporters, because there is every reason to expect that any proud member of the American right in the 2020s — and certainly post-January 6, 2021 — is, at the very least, utterly unencumbered by commitments to philosophical principles or even a coherent concept of truth. Leftists are no different, except they pretend to be saints, which makes abhorring them almost irresistible.

It’s also rather difficult to ignore all of the madness that has flowed out of the left and deranged society over the past decade and a half. To name just a few: cancel culture and the attacks on free expression, far-left radicalism in universities and K-12 education, the countless instances of workplace meltdowns and leftist institutional capture, the incredible oversteps of trans activism, and the racial hysteria and violent chaos of 2020. Perhaps most consequential for the public perception of leftists was the injection of far-left politics into every other facet of American life to create a totalizing sense of inescapability.

The economist and writer Noah Smith encapsulated the general attitude in a pair of recent tweets:

Source: Twitter

You can think whatever you want about Smith, or people like him. You can demand substantiation for his claims and then, as is nearly always the case with leftists, dismiss all evidence provided out of hand. The fact remains that the past 15 years happened, and the percentage of society that witnessed what they believe were outrageous, illiberal, and systematic overreaches carried out and enabled by cultural progressives has steadily grown. Whether that portion of society has reached a critical mass is difficult to say. But it has become, at the very least, a majority.

Americans overwhelmingly don’t use social justice language, say that left-wing cancel culture is a serious problem (84 percent), and reject left-wing identity politics. A November 2024 YouGov poll found that 57 percent of US adults considered “political correctness or being ‘woke’” important to the outcome of the 2024 election. A 2025 Pew survey found that 87 percent of Americans think left-wing extremism is a problem, including 53 percent who said it was a “major problem”, compared to 85 and 52 percent who said the same of right-wing extremism, respectively. Democratic Party insiders are well aware of these issues. Internal party polling found in 2025 that fully 69 percent of voters believe Dems are “too focused on being politically correct.” A 21-state research project from a nonprofit aligned with a major Dem super PAC found that “working-class voters perceive Democrats to be woke, weak, and out-of-touch, too focused on social issues.”

Society’s message to leftists has been unambiguous: they don’t like you. I don’t like you, either. I have the death sentence on 12 systems!

Jokes aside, the fact that I fundamentally agree with, if not all the particulars, at least the general thrust of many left-wing causes doesn’t soften my frustration, but adds another layer onto it. The ways in which leftists have needlessly hamstrung every cause they purport to fight for by inspiring backlashes that fuel the right has been sickening to watch. And the fact that real material problems affecting millions of people have become the LARPing toys and fashion accessories of the rudderless children of privilege to be blithely gambled and sacrificed like pawns in a game is apoplectically infuriating. Even while I outline more effective and liberal ways to advocate for many of these causes, I have long, long ago given up hope that leftists themselves will change course or become part of the solution. The simple truth is, as a wise man once said, “There’s no cure for being a cunt.”

See also: “The Far Left Is the Far Right”

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1. For transparency, I edited this article.

2. For transparency, I edited this article.