[ivraatiems]

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm not sure I agree, but something to think about.

I think it might be more accurate to say the negative descriptions accurately describe the bad-faith actors, and the positive ones describe the good-faith actors.

[tomp]

Unfortunately the "bad-faith actors" have all the media attention, and at least on the left, also a lot political power (i.e. they can get people fired/banned from Unis) (at least the media and academia seem completely left-dominated; maybe the opposite when it comes to the current US administration, although I don't see the far-right making any big progress, except maybe "the wall" and "Muslim ban"). Basically this is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

[ivraatiems]

I'd say in the US, the right has a lot more power-in-fact than the left, but the left may have more of the popular will. The fact that the two aren't aligned is the result of our relatively shitty system, frankly. (And even so, the right is having such an identity crisis right now, it's hard to say it has total power.)

As far as "no true Scotsman" - we can't prevent people from associating with groups, but we can call them out when their ideals don't match those of the group, and we can hold them to account if they behave in ways that contradict the group's values or are a bad-faith application of those values. I think the left is... okay... at doing that, and the right is often pretty bad, but neither is exactly great. We're also bad at doing it proportionally, and at seeing people as sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes agreeing with us, sometimes not. But that's another problem.