I genuinely think a lot of the defensiveness in these comments is actually understandable - people here probably were active online back in the Gamergate era around 2016ish, where “liberals pwned” compilations were popular. I think that people internalized the idea that anti-liberal means anti-progressive.

It was probably partly intentional from the far-right, to secure progressive politics from shifting further left, by making everyone believe that they’re liberals, even when most of them actually are not.