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.
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.
yep, totally fair. I mostly ignore those types as well.