how sadistic are liberals?

Are Liberals Crazy? part VI: visceral sadism.

Jordan Peterson claims that liberals are higher in psychopathic traits than conservatives, and this is why liberals want to control everything and sadistically “cancel” people. Dutton and Kierkegaard echo this claim:

Extreme liberals are also elevated in Dark Triad traits… such as Machiavellianism and Narcissism, in a way that is not true of extreme conservatives… Influence and praise may be accrued by adopting left-wing views in a broadly liberal society, explaining the association with Narcissism and Machiavellianism.¹

This an inversion of Adorno’s “authoritarian personality,” which pathologized right-wingers as satisfying the need for control via political ideology.

There are some problems with the claim that liberals are more generally sadistic, or tolerant of sadism, than conservatives.

Conservative sadism on display.

• Conservatives may have fantasies which are equally sadistic, but less political.

• Conservatives have less power, and they are less able to actualize these fantasies. For instance, they might scream “mass deportations now!” “lock her up!” and “death penalty for illegals!” but they lack the power to effectively push these policies forward.

Conservatives fantasize about the collapse of society, so that they can be put in a “self-defense situation” against the liberals.

• Liberals, on the other hand, are very effective. When they want to shut down the country and force everyone to wear masks, their will is done. Because liberals get more things done, and they also get more sadistic things done. However, that doesn’t tell us anything about the internal psychology of liberals and conservatives. Similarly, a prisoner in solitary confinement might be more psychologically sadistic than average, but less able to actualize their sadism.

Upending the lives of 30 million people seeking economic opportunity is sadistic.

sports as tribal sadism.

Conservative sadistic fantasies focus more on personal or physical conflict (rival sports teams) rather than abstract moral or civilizational conflict (political enemies). Conservatives are more likely to fantasize about killing rapists and burglars than canceling their political enemies. This is because conservatives are more anecdotal and visceral and less ideologically oriented.

JD Vance in his interview with Theo Von (4:00) displays a love for petty sports-based sadism:

“One of my dear friends, and he’s like otherwise a nice guy, but [with the rivalry between] Ohio State [and] Michigan just turns into a total animal… This is a buddy I’ve known since I was like 5 years old… We're leaving [the game] and there's this family and this kid... It's a family of Michigan fans. And this kid is crying… My buddy goes up to him… and my buddy goes, “oh are you sad that Michigan lost?” And this little boy goes “yeah,” and he says, “well maybe next time you won't root for a team that sucks,” and walks [away]… That’s why Ohio State and Michigan hate each other… That kid was probably 9 years old, so this is 2006… he's… close to 25 now… He probably still remembers that from Ohio State, when he was crying after a game.”

I’m not attempting to equate forced masking and stay-at-home orders or shutting down small businesses with taunting a child at a football game. One of these made a kid sad, and the other resulted in the loss of billions of dollars. But making fun of a crying child to their face, being belligerent, and screaming are examples of sadism. Conservatives can call this “healthy sadism,” but on a psychological level, it is no less sadistic than supporting an authoritarian political policy, and it is certainly more viscerally sadistic, without any moral veneer.

Liberals tend to be more comfortable with abstract or passive-aggressive forms of sadism, and less comfortable with active, physical, visceral forms of sadism. This is why liberals tend to be less interested in violent sports, like football, MMA, or even hunting, and more interested in less violent sports, like tennis and basketball.²

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/politics-sports-you-like-2013-3

Liberal sadism is channeled into effective political activism, which makes liberal sadism more visible and powerful than conservative sadism. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that liberals have higher levels of overall sadism.

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Conservatives are more likely to engage in viscerally sadistic activities, like killing and dismembering animals. They are also more than twice as likely to support the death penalty, and nearly three times as likely to “strongly favor” the death penalty.

Conservatives are much more likely to support torturing people than liberals.

White conservatives are much more likely than white liberals to support spanking a child. This was reflected in Tucker Carlson’s fantasy about spanking liberals. Specifically, Carlson wanted to spank a 15 year old girl. The crowd went wild.

Conservatives are more likely to glorify and defend the violence of the police and military, whereas liberals are more likely to empathize with the victims of violence.

In the case of rape, a 2023 study found that “those who scored higher on the Conservatism/RMA scale attributed less responsibility to the perpetrator and more responsibility to the victim across all conditions.”

Conservatives are more sadistic on both ends: they are more likely to empathize with men accused of rape (like Trump or Pete Hegseth), but they are also more likely to advocate for the death penalty for rapists. Conservatives, in general, are more quick to embrace violence.

Leftists joke about violence, but liberals don’t train MMA or own guns.

In the case of Gaza, liberals are much more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians as victims of violence than conservatives. In the case of Ukraine, liberals are much more likely to sympathize with Ukrainians, the victims, while conservatives are more likely to cheer on the aggressors, the Russians. This is in keeping with Haidt’s Moral Foundations theory that liberals are more interested in care/harm than conservatives.

Wanting to spank children, or kill and torture someone who is already in a cage and presents no further danger to society, is clearly a vengeful and sadistic fantasy, even if conservatives label it “healthy” or “necessary.” Our moral norms of what is healthy or unhealthy have little bearing on the psychological origins of sadism. Medieval Aztec may have considered their human sacrifices to be “moral,” but we can see in retrospect that these were mass sadistic rituals.

A certain level of sadism is psychologically normative. However, to pathologize liberal forms of sadism, but not conservatives ones, is a partisan abuse of psychology. “Canceling people is evil sadism, but killing animals and the death penalty is healthy sadism! It’s not sadism when we do it, it’s healthy masculinity!”

Contrary to Peterson’s claim that liberals are more sadistic, a 2020 study found that “a strong connection exists between empathy and liberal political views.”³ Conservatives claims that liberals are “more sadistic” fail to distinguish between quantity and quality. Liberals are less sadistic overall, but their forms of sadism are more politically effective, because they target ideological opponents rather than pursuing personal grudges or sports team rivalries.

Summary:

• Conservatives are more apathetic toward victims of rape; but they also engage in more violent fantasies against rapists;

• Conservatives are more supportive of the death penalty;

• Conservatives are more supportive of mass deportations, destroying the lives of peaceful berry pickers and construction workers;

• Conservatives are more apathetic toward Palestinians and Ukrainians, and more supportive of Russians and Israelis;

• Conservatives care less about the abuse of animals;

• Conservatives are more likely to enjoy hunting and cutting up dead animal bodies;

• Conservatives prefer more violent contact sports, while liberals prefer more peaceful sports;

• Conservatives are more likely to engage in violence in defense of their sports team;

• White conservatives are more likely to support spanking than white liberals;

• Conservatives are more likely to support the use of force by cops and military members.

When liberals engage in sadism, it is less visceral, and more passive-aggressive. Liberals prefer safetyist policing of speech and control over people’s lives. Liberals are more controlling, but not more sadistic.

1. 2024, Do conservatives really have an advantage in mental health? An examination of measurement invariance: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383420384_Do_conservatives_really_have_an_advantage_in_mental_health_An_examination_of_measurement_invariance

2. The data on political affiliation and sports is skewed because it’s not accounting for the fact that blacks vote tribally, not necessarily ideologically. A black person can more easily hold ideologically contradictory positions like “feminists are crazy” and then vote Democrat, whereas this is less common among heterosexual white men, who vote more purely on ideology. This is what explains some of the Democratic voting in areas you wouldn’t expect, like among UFC fans.

3. 2020, Empathy and the Liberal-Conservative Political Divide in the U.S.: https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/5209