Maybe you’ve heard of O’Sullivan’s First Law? This was an idea introduced by John O’Sullivan back in 1989.

All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don’t like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world.

O’Sullivan’s Law was about the behavior of groups and organizations but I thought of it today when I read this article from the left-wing magazine/website In These Times. It’s titled “Losing the Plot: The ‘Leftists’ Who Turn Right” and it examines a trend in which people who were once clearly on the left have drifted right over time.

How to name the rude currents eroding the Left, those which have claimed the hearts, minds and Substacks of so many former friends and fellow travelers? There are the journalist-provocateurs and the readers who have followed them rightward, the Trumpers-come-lately marching on to Glenn Greenwald’s Rumble or vanishing into Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone. There are those not quite yet there, such as Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks, currently mourning the leftism she now believes ​“gaslit” her about a ​“crime wave” it refuses to admit. ​“I’m going through something very real and very sincere,” she told a ​“disaffected Democrats” podcast in July, ​“and it’s uncomfortable.” It is, indeed.

…the present left-to-right acceleration began in earnest with the onset of the Trump years, in 2017.

There are the intellectuals-in-exile, the scholars whose once contained complaints about free speech or diversity initiatives metastasized into a broad contrarianism that found new patrons. There are the not-so-funny-anymore, the comedians once known for their left politics — Chappelle and Roseanne and Russell Brand — pulled rightward by ​“jokes” about trans people, pandemic panics and pedophiles. There’s the ​“new New Right’s” very own Kennedy — Robert F., Jr., of the bulging biceps. RFK Jr. may seem, with his campaign pushups, little more than a joke to young leftists, but his history as a champion of intersectional environmentalism is long: as a leader of activist organizations, a lawyer for poor communities of color and a host for the defunct progressive radio network Air America…

Pop feminist icon Naomi Wolf now conferences with hard-right student organizer Charlie Kirk over the prospect of ​“capital punishment” for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. YouTuber Jimmy Dore, another once-left comedian who lost hold of the joke, now marvels over his meeting of the minds with Tucker Carlson: ​“We should do a show together!” Call it The Horseshoe Hour.

As In These Times sees it, all of these defectors and more are motivated by a false belief that the woke left is gaining strength and taking over portions of the world.

Such is the illusion cast by, say, Libs of TikTok, which scours social media for foolish statements — they do exist — to decontextualize and amplify. If you silo yourself in that rabbit hole, it’s easy to believe the most caricatured expressions of ​“wokeness” are overrunning our schools. It is a ​“very online” thing.

This is the weak spot in their line of thinking. It has been the weak spot in the left’s thinking about the woke left for nearly a decade now. It started with downplaying and denying that this anti-liberal extremism was more than a handful of people on a few college campuses. Eventually, as it became clear it was everywhere those denials got harder to make. Then there were the denials that this extremism was having an impact on the Democratic Party’s appeal, an argument that seemed to end with the disaster of “defund the police.”

As usual, the left has confused the right’s response to the culture war for the start of the culture war. Libs of TikTok is a reaction not an instigation. The reality of the extremism she’s posting really is out there and even In These Times can’t defend all of it.

Ultimately the authors conclude that whatever motivates the political celebrities to move right, what matters is that they are likely taking lots of more ordinary people with them.

For every Wolf, for every Taibbi, there are so many everyday people following them rightward. Not selling out but breaking up, sometimes cracking up, giving into knowingness and the elation of ​“seeing through” the con— of Covid, or pronouns, or ​“the Russia hoax” or ​“Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

We, the authors of this article, each count such losses in our own lives, and maybe you do, too: friends you struggle to hold onto despite their growing allegiance to terrifying ideas, and friends you give up on, and friends who have given up on you and the hope you shared together.

Over at the NY Times, Michelle Goldberg has written about this article and has her own explanation for why some people find the left off-putting.

I think there’s a deeper problem, which stems from a crisis of faith in the possibility of progress. Liberals and leftists have lots of excellent policy ideas, but rarely articulate a plausible vision of the future. I sometimes hear leftists talk about “our collective liberation,” but outside a few specific contexts — the ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians comes to mind — I mostly have no idea what they’re talking about.

It’s easy to see what various parts of the left want to dismantle — capitalism, the carceral state, heteropatriarchy, the nuclear family — and much harder to find a realistic conception of what comes next.

Again, defund the police comes to mind as a recent example. The general idea was that police were the problem and we’d all be better off with fewer of them. Eventually we’d find some new solution to the old problems of crime and violence, or so we were told by the promoters of this idiocy. But we never did. What we got was a spike in shootings and violence until mayors and city councils who’d signaled approval for defunding (and disapproval of the police) quietly reversed course. Dismantling capitalism or the nuclear family would be the same only infinitely worse.

You can oversimplify changes like this but there is something to be said for the idea that the woke left is scaring people off. If progressives want to ignore that it’s fine with me, but it’s clearly a thread that runs through a lot of these defections. From the comments:

For me, it’s not that complicated. As a lifelong, till now, leftist, I’ve been pushed right by woke politics. In particular, by the left’s embrace of the delusion that is gender identity and its explicit denial of science and erosion of women’s rights. By the guilt-inducing way in which race is now discussed and prioritized. By the imposition of an oppressor-oppressed analysis of every human interaction. And by the suppression of free speech. What used to be called enlightenment values is too often rejected on the left and this is why I in return reject them.

And another:

I have always considered myself pretty far left, yet I’m repulsed by cancel culture and much of DEI ideology, so I have found myself drifting to the center on social issues and sometimes even nodding in agreement with the right.

And for fairness’ sake, a more moderate take:

I think most of us who have left the left have not joined the right, contrary to what this column implies. Most of us have simply become politically homeless. The right is of absolutely no appeal to me, as I am pro-choice, pro-immigration, in favor of a robust social safety net, in favor of environmental regulation, etc…..but I have come to detest the left’s obsession with race and gender identity, and I think it is seriously damaging American institutions and public discourse. Covid policies advocated by the left were also quite shocking to me. So I am nowhere. I know many others who feel the same.

All three of those have over 1,000 upvotes so these are not fringe voices I’ve cherry picked. A lot of people on the liberal left do not like the woke left and probably never will.