#leftism is garbage

There's a lot of truth to this meme, especially with the modern cultural left stuff — the "woke" version that's big in universities, media, and big companies.

Basically, leftism pushes a ton of self-hatred and guilt. Like, telling white people their race is inherently problematic, boys that being a guy is "toxic," women that traditional femininity is oppressive, and Brits / Americans and other Westerners that their whole history and culture is mostly just colonialism and evil. It's this constant teardown of your own group while being way softer on everyone else's flaws. That feels pretty poisonous.

It also acts like a religion in a lot of ways — sacred beliefs you can't question, heretics who get canceled, original sin stuff (your privilege or "whiteness"), and this missionary zeal to spread it everywhere. A lot of smart people have pointed this out.

At the same time, it's not every single left-leaning person. Old-school liberals or working-class lefties often roll their eyes at the extremes, but even they are becoming rarer.

Now, don't get me wrong, normal self-criticism is healthy — but Western societies have fixed a bunch of real problems over time. The problem is when it becomes this one-sided, never-ending shame game that only applies to the West and makes people embarrassed of their own civilization as this ideology is constantly pushed out from the left.

This isn't fringe—it's mainstream in many universities, NGOs, corporate DEI, and outlets like the New York Times (1619 Project) or BBC discussions on "decolonizing." Self-described progressives often score higher on measures of "collective guilt" or lower national pride in surveys. Evolutionary psychology and social science make blanket "deconstruct your own" messaging anomalous and destabilizing for the host society. Leftist believe in this unhealthy dynamic and it's not great for the long-term confidence or survival of a culture --- but of course you'll never find the leftist leaving their cushy Western country to live in Libya, Pakistan, India, Somalia, Haiti or some other hell-hole of a country they cos-play and virtue-signal for.

Leftist think the West is always the root of evil — colonialism, capitalism, racism. Places like Somalia or Libya get a free pass because they're seen as victims of that history. Their own deep problems -- clan warfare, Islamist extremism, corruption, tribalism, low development -- get minimized or blamed on "the legacy of colonialism" even decades later. It's like a hierarchy of victim-hood where non-Western failures can't be primarily their own cultural or institutional fault.

Leftist will say, "no culture is better than another"—"who are we to judge?" This lets people defend or downplay stuff like widespread female genital mutilation in Somalia -- one of the highest rates in the world -- extreme restrictions on women, honor violence, or treating certain groups as second-class. If it was happening in a Western country, it'd be an outrage. Abroad, it's "their culture" or "we caused it somehow."

Praising or defending these places as well as immigrants from them, ( as we see what's going on in the UK) signals you're compassionate, anti-racist, and "on the right side." It costs nothing to post a flag or hashtag from your safe Western city. Harshly criticizing dysfunctional cultures risks being called Islamophobic, xenophobic, or bigoted. Meanwhile, actual conditions — Somalia consistently ranks near the bottom on freedom (like 8/100 on Freedom House scores), Libya with its militias, slave markets for migrants, and chaos — get continually ignored they won't DARE open their mouths about the mass slavery that's going on -- not one word.

The same voices / protesters that tear down Western history go quiet or make excuses on far worse ongoing stuff in parts of Africa, the Middle East, or elsewhere. It's not "universal compassion" as they want us to believe, — it's compassion filtered through an anti-Western lens.

"Classical liberals" or old-school leftists were often more universalist about criticizing bad practices everywhere. The 2026 current version is more tribal about identity and power.