Loneliness in the Left-wing politics

There are moments when I wonder if the arrogance of the left has become one of the reasons for the rise of the right wing. It is a dangerous thought to entertain, especially for someone like me, someone raised not merely with progressive values but with the values of equality, liberty, fraternity, along with land rights, education and dignity. I was not born into a politically confused family floating somewhere in the middle. I was born into a family and community that believed injustice must be confronted. A community that believed the poor deserved land, the marginalised deserved education and human beings deserved dignity. The language of resistance was not something I discovered in books later in life. It existed in the air of my home.

And yet, despite carrying these values within me, I often find myself alienated by the very spaces that claim to uphold them.

Perhaps that is why this question keeps haunting me.

Not because I am attracted to the right wing. I have never wandered near it emotionally, intellectually or politically. I know too well what majoritarian politics does to minorities, to Dalits, to women, to Muslims, to Adivasis, to queer people to workers and to dissenters. I know too well how nationalism can become a weapon. I know too well how hate gets organised. There has never been a moment where I imagined myself becoming part of that machinery.

But I still wonder.

I wonder because loneliness inside the left feels like a peculiar kind of betrayal.

It is one thing to be attacked by your enemies. It is another thing to feel invisible among those who speak the language of justice.

Maybe this comes from my own working-class and marginalised-caste instincts. Maybe it comes from the way I was raised to trust people who spoke about hope. Hope itself becomes a kind of weakness after a point. You want to believe people who say they dream of equality. You want to believe those who quote Ambedkar, bell hooks, Marx, Phule or Fanon. You want to believe people who speak about revolution, solidarity and resistance. And sometimes, in that hope, you stop seeing clearly.

You begin to excuse humiliation because you think the larger politics matters more.

You begin to tolerate disrespect because you tell yourself the “greater good” is more important.

But greater good for whom?

That question has begun to disturb me more and more.

Because in my experiences with what Catherine Liu calls the “professional-managerial class” left, or “Brahmin left,” I have repeatedly encountered a startling absence of empathy. There is theory, there is language, there are slogans, there are panel discussions, there are conferences, there are performances of radicalism — but there is often very little emotional honesty. Very little humility. Very little capacity to listen.

And strangely, very little culture.

Not culture as sophistication or literature or cinema. I mean culture as human behaviour. The ability to make someone feel respected. The ability to make someone feel seen. The ability to share food, space, resources and credit without turning it into an invisible hierarchy.

Even money becomes humiliating in these spaces.

You work for people who speak endlessly about exploitation, yet you have to beg for your own payment. You send reminders carefully, politely, repeatedly, almost apologetically, as if asking for your earned labour itself is an act of inconvenience. There is something psychologically violent about that contradiction. The same people who can deliver lectures on capitalism and oppression suddenly become feudal when they have to treat workers, artists, designers, interns or collaborators with dignity.

And perhaps what hurts the most is not even the exploitation itself. Exploitation is familiar to marginalised people. We grow up understanding power.

What hurts is the hypocrisy.

Because the right wing rarely pretends to be ethical in the way the liberal or elite left does. The right wing often openly celebrates power, hierarchy, wealth, masculinity and dominance. But the elite left wraps itself in morality while reproducing many of the same hierarchies internally. Caste survives there too — only with better vocabulary.

The Brahmin left often knows how to discuss caste without surrendering caste privilege.

And that creates an unbearable psychological confusion for people like us.

You enter these spaces believing you are entering communities of solidarity. But eventually you realise many of these spaces are simply newer forms of social capital. The right schools, the right English, the right cultural references, the right aesthetics, the right institutions, the right performances of politics — these become currencies. Even suffering becomes curated. Marginalisation becomes something fashionable to discuss as long as it remains theoretical and distant.

But when actual working-class or caste-oppressed people arrive with anger, grief, exhaustion or material needs, the room suddenly becomes uncomfortable.

You are welcome as a symbol, not always as a human being.

And slowly, loneliness begins to grow.

A strange loneliness.

Lonesome with hope.

It is one of the most surreal feelings I have experienced — to continue hoping for a better world while simultaneously suspecting that this better world may never belong to you. You participate in movements, conversations, art spaces, academic spaces, activist circles and yet feel emotionally homeless within them. You begin to realise that even progressive spaces can reproduce emotional caste systems.

Some people are allowed complexity.

Others are only allowed gratitude.

The elite left often speaks about “the people” in abstract terms while remaining deeply detached from how people actually live. Their idea of the nation sometimes overpowers the feelings that make a nation possible. They speak of liberation while monopolising resources. They speak of representation while gatekeeping institutions. They speak of collective futures while remaining terrified of losing individual privilege.

And perhaps this arrogance has consequences.

Because ordinary people can sense contempt even when they cannot academically articulate it.

The rise of the right wing across the world cannot simply be explained through propaganda or ignorance alone. There is also widespread resentment toward elite classes that speak the language of morality while appearing disconnected from ordinary anxieties. When people feel mocked, invisible, economically abandoned, culturally alienated or emotionally dismissed, they become vulnerable to political forces that promise recognition.

The right wing understands recognition very well.

It tells people: “You matter. Your anger matters. Your humiliation matters. Your identity matters.”

Of course, it often redirects that anger toward minorities and vulnerable communities instead of structures of power. Of course, it weaponises insecurity instead of healing it. But emotionally, it offers something many people are desperately searching for: belonging.

And the left often underestimates the emotional dimension of politics.

Facts alone do not move people.

People move toward spaces where they feel dignity.

This is why arrogance becomes politically dangerous. Not because the left should abandon principles, but because principles without humanity become sterile. Nobody wants to join a movement where they constantly feel intellectually inferior, culturally unwelcome or morally policed.

Sometimes I wonder whether people on the right feel less lonely within their own ideological spaces. Whether they experience more emotional acceptance simply because those spaces are built around certainty and belonging. Whether they feel more dignified among people who at least pretend to value them.

And then I stop myself.

Because I know dignity built on exclusion is still violence.

I know fraternity that requires enemies is not fraternity at all.

I know nationalism without equality eventually becomes cruelty.

I know what happens when hatred becomes identity.

So no, I do not romanticise the right wing. I cannot. My politics, my history, my community, my experiences — none of them allow me to cross into that world emotionally. I was simply not raised to fit into the architecture of the right wing. I was raised by people who believed oppressed communities deserved justice, not domination.

But remaining on the left while feeling abandoned by sections of it creates its own exhaustion.

It is like living inside a house whose foundation you believe in, but whose rooms no longer welcome you.

And maybe that is the tragedy of many marginalised people within progressive spaces today. We continue to believe in the values of justice while increasingly distrusting the people who claim to represent those values. We remain committed to liberation while feeling emotionally alienated from liberation movements themselves.

Perhaps this is why so many working-class people drift away from progressive politics globally. Not always because they suddenly become hateful, but because they become tired of feeling invisible. Tired of being corrected but never heard. Tired of being theorised but never loved.

The left often speaks about structural violence while ignoring interpersonal violence.

But human beings experience politics personally before they experience it theoretically.

A worker remembers humiliation more vividly than ideology.

A student remembers exclusion more vividly than slogans.

An artist remembers disrespect more vividly than manifestos.

And if progressive spaces cannot offer dignity internally, how will people trust them to build a dignified society externally?

I still believe in equality, liberty and fraternity. I still believe caste must be annihilated. I still believe capitalism devours human beings. I still believe majoritarian politics is dangerous. I still believe art, resistance and collective struggle matter.

But belief itself is no longer enough for me.

I want movements that feel human.

I want politics with emotional honesty.

I want solidarity that does not feel performative.

I want spaces where working-class and marginalised people are not treated like raw material for someone else’s intellectual career.

I want people who speak of justice to practice dignity in small, everyday interactions too.

Maybe that sounds naive.

But perhaps naivety is necessary to continue believing in any future at all.

And so I remain here, still inside this uneasy left bubble, carrying both faith and disappointment together. Still unable to move toward the right. Still unable to fully belong within the elite left. Perhaps that is the real loneliness of our times.

Not the loneliness of being without ideology.

But the loneliness of believing deeply in justice while struggling to find people who can practice it with honesty.