The Alt-Right Playbook: Introduction

I'm talking about well-known phenomena that can readily be observed in online debate culture and social spaces over the past decade: [link] [link] [link] [link] [link] [link] I'm not sure what you think this has to do with "conspiracy thinking". I'm not saying this is an organized effort. While particularly rowdy online communities do organize via places like 4chan (and its various even less palatable siblings) and KiwiFarms, the shift on HN can much more easily be described by looking at how fringe politics generally spread in online spaces. Innuendo Studios' video series "The Alt-Right Playbook"[0] is worth a watch if you are new to this concept. Heck, Jordan B Peterson wildly holds celebrity status at this point and for the longest time his interview strategy consisted of making general statements implying political positions and then accusing the interviewer of putting words in his mouth when those positions were challenged. Literally "just asking questions" and "stating facts" (which even with proper context were not always actually true, e.g. the entire lobster thing was based on the assumption that lobsters and humans react the same way to the same biochemical reactions). Right-wing fringe groups have been talking about various flavors of "red pilling" since before "alt-right" even became a thing. Even before "GamerGate" (which shifted a lot of young male gamers towards extremely far right views) you'd hear the concept in the "Manosphere" (i.e. MGTOWs, PUAs, MRAs and s