Left or right, stupid or evil? Even friendships founder in the politics of hate

May 10, 2026 — 3:00am

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There’s a popular saying with which people on “the right” wryly explain to themselves why their opposites are the way they are: “The right think the left are stupid,” it goes, “while the left think the right are evil.”

The statement is obviously too broad to be universally true. And yet it feels pretty accurate at times. Questions over whether progressive policies are on the right track are often met with accusations of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, or nasty neoliberalism. Ideas that are unpalatable to progressives are labelled “problematic”. Not challenging, nor disruptive, counterintuitive or uncomfortable. But somehow problematised by the unseen forces of social rectitude which watch over the virtue of the post-Christian West like a neo-pagan Elf On The Shelf. The implication is clear: evil lurks in the hearts and minds of the enemies of Progress.

The adage sprang to mind the other day as I read through reader comments. There it was, perfectly illustrated. “I have never been a fly on the wall in either an LNP or ALP cabinet meeting or party room meeting,” the reader noted, “but if I were, I wonder where I might most likely hear phrases like, ‘how do we improve the health outcomes of our hospital system?’, ‘how do we raise educational standards?’, ‘what are our infrastructure priorities?’, ‘how can we reduce poverty?’, ‘how do we best allocate taxpayer money to do so?’.”

The valued reader thought those questions would only be tackled in the cabinets of left-wing politics. Right-wingers, it seems, sit........

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