Regarding the left-wing people that seem to be stuck in an anti-Trump discourse, I think too that it is not all black and white. I suppose that a lot comes from political correctness, especially among the common people who are usually in their everyday lives and are part of an organization of a movement. They don't want to oppose their peers because it wouldn't be "nice", so to say.
I was discussing this with a leftist friend the other day, and he told me that there is a lot of fragmentation among left movements that tend to focus on just one aspect of a few aspects of all the social issues. So, for example, women's organizations focus on women's rights, equality, gender identity and so on, but they fail to see the big picture because they're focused on that. Same with environmentalists, etc... So there is a tendency for each movement to simplify issues towards one thing and come to even claim (sometimes) that the issue in which they are focusing is the most important one. I haven't been around these movements for a while now, but from my past experience, I can say that this is mostly true. People from one group ignore the issues raised by another group, and they even fight each other because each considers that their view is more important or correct.
This fragmentation diminishes their ability to try to see different aspects of the reality they are supposedly trying to change. And, another thing is that many of them dedicate little time to actually research, read, think deeply about things. Many of them rely on their usual spokespeople and sources of information (i.e. alt-media with a marked leftist view). I don't mean to say that they are fools by saying that they don't dedicate time to research, what I mean is that many of them are normal people like many of you and me, with jobs and families and lives to take care of, who sometimes use some of their free time to help and participate in their organization's activities. So, normally, they aren't thinking a lot about these issues but they rather trust in what their organization of choice has decided to fight for. You know, sometimes it takes effort and time to think about things and many are just so saturated that they rather let others do the job of thinking and they will just chime in to support the people they decided to trust. And here comes the role of the organization's leaders who pass down the information and decide the posture they're going to take on things. Which, in its turn, leads to the people who are financing the organization. So I think that, in this case, there are many layers of knowledge and responsibility, so to say.
For the ones who do research a bit more and think more deeply about these things, I think that they have embedded an ideology in their thinking instrument and we know it's not easy to break one perspective once we came to believe in that perspective. With this whole idea of identity, and "building and expressing your identity", I think that many adopt one identity of left-wingers liberal and progressive and it becomes a hard-nut to crack. Maybe some of them will change their minds in a while, maybe some of them won't. It reminds of the time when Maidan started in Ukraine, or the Arab Spring. Many leftists at the time started supporting the Arab Spring and then the Maidan, saying that these where people fighting against oppressive regimens and all that. The feeling they had was genuine for the most part but they were taking in the disinformation that was being brought to them. After a while, many of them changed their minds, some others didn't.
I think this also has a flavour that is similar to the New Age movement and COINTELPRO. Many of the initial ideas that concerned the people who began these social movements where genuine and important things to consider, but then many of them were co-opted and became trapped in an ideology that was simplified and distorted.
So yes, it's shocking to see some of the things that are happening, it's also sad, but it also has many layers and nuances that are important to consider instead of having a black and white thinking. I think that the activity in Twitter and Facebook is important in one more sense. Some of these people who support an ideology without even knowing it's an ideology can see what other people think, maybe a friend or an acquaintance, and they can suddenly wonder why this person thinks differently, and then they can ask questions which can eventually open their minds to new information and ideas. People tend to be more open when they see their friends saying something different, they are more likely to consider a friend's view, OSIT. Of course, in some cases it's better to be strategically quiet about some things. But I think that sharing, keeping the signal on, can make some difference in some people who aren't so stuck in one ideology or another.
