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 Blacks^tm^. 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.
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.
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