tenaciousvoidcycle:

To reiterate: I am not saying that rationalists are far-right. I’m literally saying that there is a stronger overlap between rationalist and right-wing (and far-right) groups, which makes the rationalists more appreciative of far-right differences than left-wing differences, and that there is probably some underlying ideological similarity between neoreaction and rationalism. 

This seems probably true.  There are a lot of socialists in the rationalist world but relatively few communists, for instance.  The “hard left” seems under-represented relative to other intellectual groups.

However, I am still confused by how you’re defining these terms.  Earlier you say

Also, I should point out that a lot of what you are mentioning is not very leftist? Like, the basic income is a historically a right-wing idea; many libertarians support it as a replacement for the welfare state. Being pro-LGBT or pro-drug legalization isn’t necessarily left-wing either? Like, you had people like Buckley supporting drug legalization since the 60s? And you had people Pim who were openly gay and supported gay rights but worked with far-right and populist groups? I know plenty of libertarians who match your description (save for the basic income, ironically enough)? Would you say libertarians are left then? Or would it be the the basic income that makes them left?  Even the Clinton vs. Bernie discussion doesn’t sound particularly leftist? Like, Bernie is a pretty standard soc dem, which is at best center-left? Arguing about whether a soc dem is better than a centrist seems to suggest that the rationalist community is at the furthest somewhere in the centrist camp (with a lot of libertarians).

The left-right spectrum you’re using here might be appropriate on a global scale (where, yes, there are plenty of existing governments to the left of Bernie).  But if you talked like this in the mainstream American political conversation you would get a lot of blank stares.  In America we talk a lot about how, say, college students lean left, and by this we mean stuff like “supports Sanders, wants Scandinavian social democracy and open(er) borders, campaigns for LGBT rights and racial justice and drug legalization.”  If you called such a college student a “centrist” you would confuse a lot of people.

The hard left does exist in America, but is usually forgotten, except by themselves.

So there’s this semantic issue – when you say a group of Americans (most of the well-known rationalists are American) have “overlap with the right and far-right,” do you mean these terms as understood in America?  Because in that case that sounds like a description of, I dunno, David Brooks, or David Brooks if he’d had a bizarre early stint in the Constitution Party.

If you just mean “there aren’t many hard leftists in rationalism” then yeah – this is true, it is noteworthy, and I think it’s interesting.  But it’s worth calibrating the semantics here.  What I’m calling the “hard left” and what you’re calling the “left” is actually invisible in a lot of the mainstream political conversation I see, so not being able to make inter-left distinctions is unremarkable.  Likewise, in an atmosphere where Donald Trump is mainstream, it’s unremarkable to be capable of discerning the lines between (say) him, the BNP, and the NSDAP.

(via tenaciousvoidcycle-deactivated2)