The asymmetries between the illiberal left and the illiberal right result in people on each side failing to even see the threats from their own side.
Ross Douthat recently made a thought-provoking argument about why, even aside from simple tribalism and partisanship, the asymmetries between the illiberal left and the illiberal right result in people on each side failing to even see the threats from their own side:
In both the United States and Europe, the political right has plenty of popular support but considerably less influence inside the managerial systems through which elected officials actually exercise their power. By contrast, progressivism often starts with a weaker base of popular support — for decades, more Americans have identified as conservative than liberal — but its core believers enjoy an extraordinary advantage in the meritocratic institutions, private as well as public, that actually staff and shape the power structure. . . .
Progressivism in the last 10 years has pursued increasingly radical measures through complex, indirect and bureaucratic means, using state power subtly to reshape private institutions and creating systems that feel repressive without necessarily having an identifiable repressor in chief — McCarthyisms without McCarthy, you might say. Over the same period, populism has consistently rallied around charismatic outsider politicians who attack the existing political class as hopelessly compromised and claim to have a mandate to sweep away any rule or norm that impedes their agenda.
Of course, there is nothing inherent in left-wing politics that precludes having a charismatic frontman; quite the contrary. Barack Obama wasn’t that long ago. But even then, it was the case that Obama was smooth, credentialed, and apt to outsource a lot of his dirty work. Future progressive leaders might be more populist. Douthat’s core point is that people on the left see the demagogic leader as the problem without parallel on their own side, while people on the right see the illiberal institutions and their apparent immunity to popular accountability as the problem without parallel on their own side.