Fact check: Leftists tend to argue against People, ( disagreement = personal hatred) conservatives seek to debate ideas, while valuing persons.

1. Why the simple left/right moralization collapses under scrutiny

Contemporary reporting demonstrates that abuse is bipartisan and situational, not inherently ideological: women councillors receive threats and pornographic photoshops regardless of policy positions, and mayoral campaigns see rival candidates accused of slurs and unfitness for office, even when those accusations are themselves contested ^{[1] [2]}. The examples compiled in September 2025 describe targeted harassment toward individuals rather than a uniform pattern of one side attacking persons and the other debating ideas. These incidents show that interpersonal vilification is a tactical choice in political conflict across contexts and actors, undermining the categorical original claim ^{[1] [2]}.

2. High-profile electoral abuse highlights cross-partisan vulnerability

The presidential-campaign reporting on Jim Gavin’s family being targeted with malicious smears in September 2025 underscores that public figures from varied political backgrounds face severe personal attacks ^[3]. Gavin’s remarks and the documented smear campaigns illustrate how abuse is mobilized as a tool to delegitimize opponents and intimidate associates, not as a trademark of a single ideology. The coverage frames social media and campaign-era dynamics as amplifiers of personal attacks, demonstrating the strategic use of harassment in competitive politics rather than a simple cultural difference between left and right ^[3].

3. Platform dynamics and moderation disagreements fuel cross-cutting hostility

A September 2025 analysis found that AI moderation systems disagree on what constitutes hate speech, producing inconsistent enforcement across platforms and groups ^[4]. That inconsistency magnifies perceptions of bias and can encourage retaliatory behavior; actors who feel censored on one platform migrate or employ coded abuse elsewhere. The moderation divergence makes it difficult to attribute observed abuse patterns to inherent ideological tendencies, because platform policy and algorithmic inconsistency materially shape whose speech is curtailed and whose attacks spread ^[4].

4. Voter motivation is shifting toward oppositional hatred, changing incentives

University of Lausanne research in September 2025 shows a shift in voter motivation toward opposition-driven voting—people mobilized by hatred of adversaries rather than support for policies ^[5]. This emotionalized dynamic creates incentives for political actors to personalize contests and use dehumanizing rhetoric to energize bases. The study indicates that strategic amplification of personal attacks can be electorally effective across parties, explaining why both left and right may resort to targeting individuals even when public norms claim to prize civil debate ^[5].

5. Platform-specific spikes in hate speech changed the playing field

A February 2025 study documented a persistent spike in hate speech on X after ownership changes, with weekly rates rising roughly 50% in the months following October 2022 ^[6]. That platform-specific surge illustrates how corporate decisions and moderation stances materially reshape the frequency and visibility of abusive content, benefiting tactics that weaponize personal attacks. Because these platform effects are not ideologically neutral — they alter incentives and reach for actors across the spectrum — observed increases in interpersonal hostility cannot be simply read as left-versus-right behavior differences ^[6].

6. Examples show mutual accusation of hypocrisy and reciprocal abuse

The mayoral media release criticizing a candidate for slurs while critics accused the complainant of similar conduct ^[2] reveals a common dynamic: public calls for civility are often met with counter-accusations of hypocrisy, weakening claims that one side uniquely defends persons while the other attacks them. This reciprocal pattern is visible in local politics reporting and national campaigns, and it demonstrates how moral claims about debate styles are weaponized competitively, making empirical attribution to ideology unreliable without finer-grained analysis ^{[2] [3]}.

7. What the evidence omits and why that matters for assessing blame

The assembled materials document incidents, platform effects, and voter psychology but omit systematic causal attribution by ideology, such as longitudinal comparisons of attack frequency by partisan identity controlling for platform and context ^{[1] [4] [5]}. Without such controlled analysis, claims that “leftists” or “conservatives” inherently prefer personal attacks remain unproven. The empirical gaps point to the importance of studying structural incentives—moderation, platform algorithms, and opposition-driven voting—rather than relying on anecdotal patterns to assign moral character to broad political groups ^{[4] [5]}.

8. Bottom line: hostility is systemic, not a simple ideological trait

The reporting and studies from September 2025 converge on a central fact: personal attacks in politics are amplified by platforms, voter affect, and strategic incentives, and they occur across ideological lines ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}. Assigning the behavior exclusively to “leftists” or crediting “conservatives” with superior civility misreads the evidence. Any accurate assessment requires attention to platform governance, electoral incentives, and empirical measures that control for context before making broad claims about which political camp attacks persons versus ideas ^{[5] [6]}.