For most people, there’s no “coherent” ideology. They don’t subscribe to a grand vision of liberalism wholesale, but agree with some bits and pieces here and there, letting the socioeconomic environment fill in the gaps. And the existing culture fosters hate to various groups, as it is not actively fought as it’s both profitable and directs the anger of proletarians away from their masters and towards one another. And frankly, in a twisted way, having an enemy is enjoyable. On top of that, liberalism gives you a feeling of supremacy over conservatives who demand prisons and wars and those authoritarian stalinists who want gulags and revolutions.

Furthermore, liberalism fosters a certain braindead form of idealism where people seem to believe that as long as you believe your intentions are good, the road you’re paving will lead straight to heaven. Sometimes it makes people into useful tool - I’ve talked to several people who participated or support Euromaidan and they believe it was good and they gained some sort of freedom from that, and while there have been some radicals, the whole coup was righteous will of the people, whereas Eastern Ukraine was all taken over by Russian forces somehow. Now, those people loudly denounce Russia for starting a war the actual instigators of Euromaidan have seen coming in advance back then, though the supporters would still claim it was a righteous act of the people and ignore the causality.

Other times it just makes people do dumb shit. Like, all the virtue signaling and performance activism come from this exact mindset - a bad thing needs fixing, so people do something to show their beliefs instead of doing something that leads to the solution.

Mass media is another aspect, since the society we live in is barely comprehensible for a regular person. Here in Belarus “Eastern Liberals” that I know believe that a change of leadership and extensive market reforms including removing/reducing free healthcare will reasonably quickly make country prosper because look at the Poland or Sweden (depends on how “fake left” are you), ignoring the historical and material factors and contemporary state of the world capitalism that are at least worth considering. They don’t hate Belarus per se but the state apparatus, which they personify as Lukashenko because it’s obviously just 1 man that needs to be replaced with a better person for positive change to happen.

I would actually argue that liberalism has long been intertwined with racism.

Early forms of liberalism were enamoured with the “advancement of civilization”. Naturally, liberal opinions merged these concepts with pre-existing colonialist aims.

This merger led to leaders claiming that colonization was a mission to bring “civilization” to the “savages”. This really is exemplified in Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”.

While it was written many decades after these ideas started forming, it shows that even by the late 19th century, as slavery was deemed immoral, despite the continued exploitation of colonized people, the idea of the “civilizing mission” was still alive and well.

This continues to this day, albeit covered in different terms. Gone are the times of “bringing civilization to the savages”, replaced with “liberating those poor people from their evil rulers, who are innately evil, and need guidance from the Western liberal democracies, because clearly they are incapable of governing themselves”.

As for eastern liberals, “You are not immune from propaganda” remains true. The US and its allies have spent billions of dollars, all in order to engineer one of the greatest propaganda campaigns in history. Remember! If anything bad happens, it’s because you were communist! If anything good happens, it’s because of the west’s mercy, and the wonderul capitalism it has brought you.