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.
this is honestly the one that makes me sad in lots of friendships with people (including not well off and working class people) who rarely think about politics, because like you said it’s super-normalized to the point where having basic compassion for homeless people honestly feels like a niche opinion even among relatively tolerant and open minded people.
and liberals love feigning a sort of patronizing empathy and perform feeling bad about the situation while at the same time implying or saying “but what can we do for those sorts of people when they don’t even want to get better” and it boils my blood every time