What are the go-to subjects for revealing the true, regressive beliefs of reactionaries who don't consider themselves reactionary? Off the top of my head:
-Trans people in sports: Major gateway to transphobia and misogyny. Complaints about trans athletes inevitably lead to sexism towards literally any woman with muscles. Pretty sure this is how Joe Rogan and a ton of his supporters became so unhinged.
-Affirmative action: So, so many liberals and "leftists" will complain about how they would've totally gotten into Harvard and Yale if not for The Blackstm. Love to bring up SAT scores even though they've been proven to be racist and classist and a shit metric for intellectual value.
-Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don't think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn't rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.
If someone hates furries, that’s a sure sign that they’re reactionary
True. I feel like furry hate made the word "de-gen-er-ate" more popular online. "Autist" as well as ableism in general.
edit: The word is banned here, so I spelled it out weird.
That's a good pick, and I'd like to add that anything involving "Chris-Chan" is another massive red flag that it's not just a chud, but one of the especially lowly super-internet-poisoned chuds. Like the chuds that other chuds are like "get the fuck away from me."
Omg, yes! It boggles my mind how casually people on the internet will bring the fact that a big part of their childhoods was stalking and bullying a severely mentally ill person. So weird. The saga's more mainstream than other chan-related things. There're hours-long documentaries this person's life and a subreddit with thousands of members—and everyone just acts like it's completely normal even now.
My hot take: the level of hatred for just that one individual did more damage to the public's perception of autistic people than Autism Speaks.
That's something I find especially insufferable about the people who love "lolcows", is that actually e-stalking people for more than a decade makes you the freak if you do it, you aren't so above your subject when you act like a fucking chanlet.
I've given up on those sites ever being taken down. Silver lining is that a lot of right-wingers (i.e. Red Scare, Yarvin, etc.) are targets now. Fingers crossed that internet trash chokes to death on its own fumes.
Yeah, looking back... this was probably a large part of why it took me so long to accept my autism diagnosis.
Full disclosure, I was into the whole picking on Christine Chandler thing for a while during my edgier years. I eventually grew out of it as I actually came around to being an empathetic person and my foray into leftism. The recent news about her and what she did to her mom and subsequent jailing is so sad, this is a person who was so failed by society and absolutely preyed upon by horrible people. Really hate how self-righteous a lot of these stalkers are, they hold her up as an example of why it's okay actually to stalk and harass mentally ill people. Mind you, I don't condone what she did, but I wasn't surprised in the least.
i watched a long youtube video about her a years ago (pre-transition, i believe) and seeing the way people treated her... like, how could that not destroy someone? the Internet tortured her and made her declining mental state a spectator sport
i don't remember the full context/details, but there was one event described where someone (a woman i think?) pretended to be her friend/fan, and then destroyed her yellow sonic necklace (which she was always wearing and clearly meant a lot to her). it genuinely made me cry
i don't remember the full context/details, but there was one event described where someone (a woman i think?) pretended to be her friend/fan, and then destroyed her yellow sonic necklace (which she was always wearing and clearly meant a lot to her). it genuinely made me cry
they tortured the fuck out of her. The most notable I can remember was a young kid pretending to be a girl and coming on to him/leading him on, which lead to him leaking a sex tape. Can't even begin to imagine the mental state of her trolls sitting back and being like "oh hell yeah, I just tricked an autistic person into doing a sex tape!"
Bring up homeless people, transgender people, immigrants, any of the people they regard as subhuman, and look for cracks.
IME transphobia really outs them. I'm not trans or anything but basically any new troll showing up to ruin a community just can't keep resist parroting one of the far right talking points or has truckloads of them in their history. Another I've noticed is a user whose kind of sus but their post history is almost 100% sports subreddits.
The sports thing is real. If somebody makes supporting a football team the most prominent part of their identity they're almost always aggressive chuds.
That's not really true, there are plenty of gay footfall/soccer fans
plenty of reactionary LGBT and LGBT-appropriating individuals, too
or porn. if they've commented on porn even once 100% chance they're reactionary.
I mean certainly those who defend it but people who are critically of it may or may not be (ethical reasons vs religious etc etc)
not "porn debate" subs, but subs of porn content. I forgot to mention this in addition to sports, but less common I've noticed people using their horny account to troll. Their entire post history is comments on pics of naked ladies or naked Japanese cartoon characters.
Ah, I see. It makes sense as perverts generally aren’t great people and great people generally aren’t reactionaries
Ah, you mean those who look at it from the perspective of the viewer and the effects on them and ignore the exploited workers in it?
no no, that's why it attracts a reactionary crowd. the dehumanization and commoditization of human bodies is the perk for them. the people posting about it online are just telling on themselves.
-Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don't think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn't rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.
It's proved by science that if you're rich your brain is bigger because you're blessed by god but you loony leftists hate science.
Somehow I think they won't like the logical conclusion that the smartest man in history was Mansa Musa.
these are the same people who claim that movies are being ruined because only "coastal elite" can make it in hollywood
Homeless people. Even demsocs/socdems ostensibly progressive pretty much everywhere else will sometimes with almost no prompting (other than being with you when they see a homeless person) just make disparaging comments about homeless people without a second thought. Their reactionariness usually extends well beyond that too, but they keep it better camouflaged and them being anti-homeless will often be a first sign
really good observation tbh, i think this is one of the most sure-fire ways to do it unless you can build a real
a lot of people are willing to "tolerate" shit that they don't have to see but homelessness is omnipresent throughout capitalist society; it's basically impossible to have never had an interaction with a homeless person. people who feel that homeless people (rather than the existence of homelessness itself) are repulsive are almost inevitably just waiting to be scratched on a variety of subjects before they go full
100%. Liberals' hatred for homeless people is pretty much genocidal. They just lack the spine to say what they want to be done to them, but are more than happy to complain about how they smell like piss or how homeless camps are vectors for disease, comparing homeless people to vermin that must be exterminated.
Once I was talking in a playground for a long time with another parent I thought was a liberal, but when he dropped the phrase "equality of outcome" I knew instantly that he had been imbibing a shitload of Jordan Peterson content either directly or indirectly.
People having no knowledge at all about the differences between Maoism, Marxism-Lenininsm, and Trotskyism—people looking confused when you even bring up the fact that these different tendencies exist—is a very strong hint that they have never bothered to investigate any of this for themselves and are in fact just liberals.
I was also thinking of a guy who seemed friendly at first but he just kept dropping hint after hint that he was reactionary. He said he was really into WW2 movies and books and recommended this series called Generation War. I checked it out recently and it starts with a bunch of Nazis having a party with their Jewish friend before they get shipped off to murder communists on the eastern front. This guy also told me that he was against antifa. He rents his house and is basically a house painter/janitor. His wife is Asian, his kids are mixed-race, he is white and expects to inherit a house in maybe fifty years.
“Yeah, but those aren't my children." When I mentioned to a parent (years ago in my liberal days) that the police were caging kids. Strong hint of psychopathology right there!
Displaying an American flag.
“Then what's the point?" I.e., what’s the point of having any kind of education system at all if you have to first ensure that every student has all necessities before they even begin going to school. This was the response after I told a liberal teacher that there's no point in having school when kids are hungry and don't have basic necessities at home. Nice lady I'd known since childhood.
Edit: I want to add yoga and organic food. Really obsessing over these things is not a good sign.
All of these people present themselves as normal, rational, moderate, etc. They are not ravening chuds on the outside. But on the inside, I have to wonder.
He said he was really into WW2 movies and books
Wehraboos: not even once.
Lol I think my Wehraboo phase ended when I watched that Stalingrad movie where the nazis all freeze to death while the air force drops them medals instead of food
TBH, being really into WW2 books helped me to go all out communist.
As someone who works in "STEM" (don't like the term but using for clarity): Ask their opinion on subjects that are not STEM. If someone is cool, the worst thing they'll say is along the lines of "I'm bad at geopolitics" or "I hated studying history in high school". Reactionaries however are filled with blind rage for humanities classes and will go on a rant about how they are useles useless and a waste of govermnent money to teach art at public universities and other shit.
Or any mention of reparations for Black people. Critics will go on and on about how infeasible they supposedly are. Basically, they think that Black people's hardships are less serious than every other groups' and that literally everyone would have to get reparations before they do, thus making the process too expensive.
fucking Italians have gotten more reparations than black people
What the fuck.... This can't be real
The Union literally wanted to do this after the civil war, but I guess its not enough money or something.
-Like that thread earlier, if they're from Europe ask them about Roma people. 0 to Klan member real quick usually.
-Thin X line: there is never a good one for this. It's also really funny when people put the red for firefighters when the thin red line was literally an army formation in
. I'm waiting to see a paramedic one but I don't think they've figured out what colour to make it yet. (I also don't live in a country with horizontal lines in the flag so it stands out extra bad lol)-did they enjoy the movie sound of freedom: if they did they're a reactionary
-kinda related conspiracy theory "enjoyers:" all you have to do is ask who "they" are or why "they" would do anything like what they suggest. These guys operate on advanced antisemitism
also don't live in a country with horizontal lines in the flag so it stands out extra bad lo
this was the first thing that jumped to my mind. i will not apologize for my sin
Show
-kinda related conspiracy theory "enjoyers:" all you have to do is ask who "they" are or why "they" would do anything like what they suggest. These guys operate on advanced antisemitism
Any time people bring up the Rothschild family, I bow out. Obvi, rich scions suck dick and should have all their money taken away, but it's super obvious why Alex Jones types focus on that particular group.
red for firefighters when the thin red line was literally an army formation
its cringey and very likely to be reactionary when people have the red (cops trying to rope-in/attach themselves to the socially valuable 'responders') but it doesn't have anything to do with british imperialism. simple word replacement.
and it's not a formation, just a figure of speech or trope for british soldiers being spread thin and being perceived as heroic & outnumbered. it was sensationalized by the crimean war press from a time a regiment lined up incorrectly according to doctrine and very 'bravely' confronted some russian cavalry in a skirmish. lots of stupid tropes like this came out of the Crimean war, the 'charge of the light brigade' was another dumb mistake the british press fawned over for being so 'brave'
I'm waiting to see a paramedic one but I don't think they've figured out what colour to make it yet.
They really shouldn't have, but they did anyways.
It doesn’t help suss out reactionaries, but my favorite question is “If you had one thing to share with humanity in your dying breath, what would it be”? If they say anything about religion it’s basically a “Thank you, next…” from me.
The worst answer I got was probably “something from Tony Robbins”, like verbatim, not anything specific just “Check out this 80’s era con artist” would be the most important thing he could tell someone.
One of the best answers I got was “All you have is Love and time, and only one of those has to be limited”, that was from a Veteran who was dying of untreatable Brain Cancer.
I give religious people a little bit of a chance because there are liberation theology types that are chill. also, a lot of minority groups got proselytized very hard by the British so religion is part of the family - so I give them a chance if they aren't white. so there's non-shitty ways and reasons to be religious. but yeah, white religious person who mentions it too quickly is on very thin ice.
My philosophy is if you live in a Christian majority country yet you assume everyone else who just so happens to be godless heathens just have to hear you say “Jesus is Lord” before you die to make them change their minds you probably don’t have anything worthwhile to learn from and are just too radical to give any real thought to the point of the question, or you are trying to perform as a “Good Christian” and won’t have a genuine answer for it.
No point trying to coax wisdom from someone like that, at least from my experience when I’ve tried.
American flag apparel/stickers.
Sometimes old people who are progressive(ish?) will have American flags on their house, but only serious chuds buy American flag shirts.
but only serious chuds buy American flag shirts.
Every racist brawl in the south has at least one chud in an American flag wife-beater.
Complaining about "Politics" in their video games/ media is usually a bad sign
"I wish they would stop forcing all of this POLITICAL stuff into my video games" - definite reactionary
Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don't think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn't rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.
So glad you note this. Every time I hear someone start on this horseshit, I see it as a massive red flag. Blood, calipers, and aristocratic ideology are never far behind.
