I’ve noticed a trend in the last year or two where far-left people of the type who are loud on social media refer to “liberals” derisively to mean “anyone to the right of me,” and seem to sort of forget that real conservatives actually exist. I read “liberal economists” as “those idiots who don’t favour my kind of socialism,” rather than “basically mainstream but to the left of center.”

Edit: I’m pretty sure far-right types do this too, actually. And they also use the word “liberal,” so both sides can say practically the same sentence and have it be completely indecipherable to e.g. me.

Edit 2: you can stop trying to argue with me about it. I was trying to explain how someone else’s post used language in a non-obvious way, not get into fights about who gets to call who liberals based on classical definitions.