[scarmig]

It's somewhat odd to represent a community as being right wing when the worst thing to come from it was a trans vegan murder cult. Most "rationalists" vote Democrat, and if the franchise were limited to them, Harris would have won in a 50 state landslide.

The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic.

[Unit327]

"trans vegan murder cult" is the best band name ever

[Aurornis]

> It's somewhat odd to represent a community as being right wing when the worst thing to come from it was a trans vegan murder cult

I was referring to "The Motte", which emerged after the SlateStarCodex subreddit finally banned "culture war" topics. Scott announced it in this post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

The Ziz cult did not emerge from The Motte. I don't know why you came to that conclusion.

> Most "rationalists" vote Democrat,

Scott Alexander (of SlateStarCodex) did surveys of his audience. Interestingly, the culture war thread participants were split almost 50:50 between those identifying as left-wing and those identifying as right-wing.

Following the ban on discussion of culture war topics, many of the right-wing participants left for The Motte, which encouraged these conversations.

That's how there came to be a right-wing offshoot of the rationalist community.

The history is all out there. I'm surprised how many people are doubting me about this. You can read the origin story right on Scott's blog, and the Reddit post where they discuss their problems with running afoul of Reddit's content policies (necessitating a move off-platform) is still accessible: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/uaoyng/meta_like_...

> The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic.

No, you're putting words in my mouth. I'm not complaining about a refusal to "progressive pieties as axiomatic". I'm relaying history of rationalist communities. It's surprising to see all of the denial about the topic.

[saagarjha]

Being a trans vegan doesn't automatically make you left wing. Nor does voting Democrat. Being progressive is a complex set of ideals, just as conservatism is a lot more than whatever the Republican party is doing today.

[llm_trw]

>The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic.

A trans vegan gang murdering police officers is what's come out of this milieu.

I don't see how anyone can say they aren't taking "progressive pieties as axiomatic".

The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. Up next: Stalin actually a Nazi.

[watwut]

> The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion.

Historically, good 90% of times I have seen what you say, the person or group in question turned out to actually be fascists later on. They just packed their fascism to nicer words at the time of the accusation. It kind of happened that those saying "everything I don't like is fascist" either a.) assumed the claim can not be true without bothering to think about what they read or b.) actually liked fascist arguments and not wanted to have them called what they are.

There is long history of "no one is fascist until they actually nazi salute and literally pay extremists" and "no one is sexist even after they literally stated their opinions on female inferiority again and again" and "no one is racist even as they literally just said that".

[immibis]

It's very worrying about society that people only think Elon is a Nazi because he did the Nazi salute, when everyone was saying he was well before then. What if someone is a Nazi and is smart enough to never do a salute? We might put them in charge of the country?

[Aurornis]

> The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion.

The right-wing rationalist community (The Motte) arose when Slate Star Codex finally banned culture war topics. Scott Alexander wrote about it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

There's also a long history of neoreactionary factions of the rationalist community as well as a fascination with fascist ideals from the likes of Curtis Yarvin.

There's some major retconning going on in this thread where people try to write all of this out of the history of rationalist communities. Either that or people weren't aware, but are resistant to the notion that it could have happened.

[kragen]

Yarvin is authoritarian but very far from fascism, arguably farther than Stalin was.

[Muromec]

>The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. Up next: Stalin actually a Nazi.

That's terminologically wrong, yet practically sensible conclusion. Some European countries in fact ban both communist and nazi ideologies and public display of their symbols as their authoritarian and genocidal tendencies are incompatible with democratic principles in said countries constitution.

[llm_trw]

Countries like Hungary.

Not a place I think anyone should try and emulate.

[esperent]

This is what arguing in bad faith looks like.

The list of European countries that ban Nazi symbols includes Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Sweden.

When people talk about EU countries banning of Nazi symbols, they are always referring primarily to Germany. It is the archetypical example of "countries that ban Nazi symbols".

If you want to focus on one country from that list, which is a valid thing to do, you either need to pick the archetype, or acknowledge it and then say why you're focusing on another example from the list instead.

If instead, you immediately pick the one example from that list that suits your narrative, while not acknowledging that every single other example doesn't suit your narrative, that is a bad faith argument.

In any case, recent politics aside, Hungary is an amazing country. I'm not sure about emigrating there, but I definitely recommend visiting.

[Muromec]

The point was about banning both soviet and nazi symbols as equally evil

[card_zero]

Goulash, tokay wine, vizsla dogs, Franz Liszt. A terrible people.

Edit: Ervin Laszlo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Lorre, Harry Houdini, a wide selection of pastries. :) Also Viktor Orban, but what can you do.