this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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Welcome aboard!
And don't worry this is absolutely the right place to discuss things like this.
It's all about "image" for liberals, they want to be seen as a good person, so they adopt leftist aesthetics in order to seem like a good person without actually needing to do anything, at most they'll donate to charity. It's about making themselves feel good for being a "good person" without actually wanting to put in the effort to help others and actually be a good person.
This is one of the reasons they are so hostile against actual leftists and insist that they are as "left as they come" or "the real leftists." because if they claim to be a good person while doing nothing and there is someone over there, actively trying to make things better for everyone, then it makes them look bad by comparison, so they need to attack that person and find some excuse as to why they are actually "worse" than the liberal, and therefore the liberal is still a good person.
Thank you for the welcome
I think your points about image and moral signaling make a lot of sense.
Do you think part of this might also be structural, not just psychological? For example, their material position in the imperial core gives them a real incentive to avoid disrupting the system that benefits them. And combined with the way liberalism is taught and normalized, it almost becomes common sense, so many of these 白左 might not even fully realize the limits of their own worldview.
Could it be that their focus on image is reinforced not just by ego-protection, but by these broader systemic pressures?
we see that in our analysis but i don't think (and will probably never be convinced) that very many liberals know and understand geopolitics and economics enough to come to that conclusion.
I agree with that, there is certainly an element that the material abundance from superexploitation allows the liberal middle classes to be completely ignorant and incurious about the world and geopolitics, in a way that they treat it as an optional interest or almost a personality trait, unlike those suffering under the boot who have no choice but to be confronted by imperialism.
i think you're still going too far on it in both directions. all those times americans couldn't find whatever other country on a map aren't just well-off liberals. We aren't even taught the liberal myths about how the world works in school, much less the truth.
the minimum wage worker living in a one-bedroom apartment with two roommates doesn't know it either. When a whole population suffers the boot of imperialism some will manage to get an education despite their oppression and it will be more accurate than western highschools, but it's not everybody there either.