Best litmus tests for detecting reactionaries?
Best litmus tests for detecting reactionaries?
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.
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.
Bring up homeless people, transgender people, immigrants, any of the people they regard as subhuman, and look for cracks.
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One of the most immediate and easy ones to spot is .eth suffixes or NFT avatars. Yes some exceptions exist, the same way that one of the coolest posters still on Twitter has a skull with sunglasses and skulls are often reactionary chuds.
When it comes to takes, the moment someone says "everything is so political these days," you've just read a take from a reactionary because pretty much everything is political by definition and being upset about noticing it is inherently a reactionary take in favor of the "nonpolitical" status quo that they so miss.
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.
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."
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.
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.
It's kind of impressive how reliable this one is.
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
No politics whatsoever for a grizzled white father figure avenging his dead wife and maybe rescuing/defending a daughter figure from them
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
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.
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
race based reparations weeds them out quick.
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.
The Union literally wanted to do this after the civil war, but I guess its not enough money or something.
yeah but then this kerfuffle happened at a play
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.
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.
Justin Roiland level chuds will say not only are the humanities useless but that the humanities can be fully automated with bazinga tech (unlike geniuses like themselves!).
-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
"Are you a fan of Pikmin?"
Yes = Comrade (Probably)
Anything other than yes = Reactionary
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When it comes down to it, reactionaries are going to be repulsed by systemic change.
Have them acknowledge a problem then ask them if they would be willing to uproot a major component of the system and change it to solve the problem. Provide a detailed and serious solution. You will quickly see how they suddenly become disinterested in solving the problem. You will also likely be disappointed in realizing how many reactionaries there actually are.
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.
TBH, being really into WW2 books helped me to go all out communist.
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
