After 2016 Liberals lost their fucking shit and dropped any modicum of rationality. Trump broke their brains and now they support anything and everything that limits speech or any views they deem déclassé. They can't take it - the fact that they lost, fairly I may add, to Donald Trump. Cue the misinformation campaigns, and Democracy Dying In Darkness, and you can't say that all because they cannot accept the failure of losing to a fast food addict with a spray on tan.
It started way before 2016. Trump just picked up the shattered pieces of the Tea Party, various libertarian movements, people who voted for 'change' and got none and other fringe groups.
The 'birth' of the modern left in the west is probably Occupy Wall Street following the big anti-war protests. When the anti war protests didn't achieve anything the left mostly retreated from traditional politics and poured more money and effort into NGO's and activism. When the big "occupy wall street" day came they realized that the government could not meet their demands because they had very few ideas beyond concepts like inclusivity and equality. At the same time corporations were drinking the 'purpose' kool Aid. The idea that your business does not just exist to make money but should have higher aims thus they donated heavily to these NGO's and activist groups to show that they were doing 'the right thing'. The NGO's obviously hired corporate consultants to expand and run their operation. For NGO's the purpose was no longer to achieve their aims but to grow their influence and keep their operation running.
By the time the 'left' or rather centrists returned to power they realized that government resources were depleted by austerity, privatization, brain drains and cuts. At the same time they needed more and more help from outside corporate consultants to turn political activism into a product people could consume. While corporations turned to those same consulants to give brands 'purpose'. It was inevitable that the two sides would meet and government would decide to use the corporations to achieve their aims as opposed to rebuilding the depleted public sector (as Obama originally intended). The NGO's set the goals, the government creates the policies to support those goals and the corporations create the solutions and implement the policies.
This system only works if the NGO stays funded, the politician can pass legislation (although they're starting to circumvent this by public pressure fueled by the activist press) and the corporations are able to provide and implement the solutions.
The corporations are the weakest link because they can deal with the other side as well and they can drop or change 'purpose' with little to no backlash after all they own the press. Not to mention the right will protest against the government and the NGO's (George Soros, Bill Gates, GreenPeace etc.) while the left will protest against the right wing politicians. Neither will target the corporations.
The goal of the left is to transform the corporations in line with their values, much as they had done with universities and they are pretty succesful in doing so.
On the right the idea is that the NGO's have abandoned small donations and grass roots activism for corporate donations and government subsidies (which is 100% true). So Flynn, Bannon and others are creating right wing grass roots movements so the NGO's lose their public support. Once Trump, DeSantis or someone else turns the screws on the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates their public support will have evaporated.
