If someone hates furries, that’s a sure sign that they’re reactionary

Bring up homeless people, transgender people, immigrants, any of the people they regard as subhuman, and look for cracks.

IME transphobia really outs them. I'm not trans or anything but basically any new troll showing up to ruin a community just can't keep resist parroting one of the far right talking points or has truckloads of them in their history. Another I've noticed is a user whose kind of sus but their post history is almost 100% sports subreddits.

-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.

It's proved by science that if you're rich your brain is bigger because you're blessed by god but you loony leftists hate science.

Homeless people. Even demsocs/socdems ostensibly progressive pretty much everywhere else will sometimes with almost no prompting (other than being with you when they see a homeless person) just make disparaging comments about homeless people without a second thought. Their reactionariness usually extends well beyond that too, but they keep it better camouflaged and them being anti-homeless will often be a first sign

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.

As someone who works in "STEM" (don't like the term but using for clarity): Ask their opinion on subjects that are not STEM. If someone is cool, the worst thing they'll say is along the lines of "I'm bad at geopolitics" or "I hated studying history in high school". Reactionaries however are filled with blind rage for humanities classes and will go on a rant about how they are useles useless and a waste of govermnent money to teach art at public universities and other shit.

-Like that thread earlier, if they're from Europe ask them about Roma people. 0 to Klan member real quick usually.

-Thin X line: there is never a good one for this. It's also really funny when people put the red for firefighters when the thin red line was literally an army formation in . I'm waiting to see a paramedic one but I don't think they've figured out what colour to make it yet. (I also don't live in a country with horizontal lines in the flag so it stands out extra bad lol)

-did they enjoy the movie sound of freedom: if they did they're a reactionary

-kinda related conspiracy theory "enjoyers:" all you have to do is ask who "they" are or why "they" would do anything like what they suggest. These guys operate on advanced antisemitism

It doesn’t help suss out reactionaries, but my favorite question is “If you had one thing to share with humanity in your dying breath, what would it be”? If they say anything about religion it’s basically a “Thank you, next…” from me.

The worst answer I got was probably “something from Tony Robbins”, like verbatim, not anything specific just “Check out this 80’s era con artist” would be the most important thing he could tell someone.

One of the best answers I got was “All you have is Love and time, and only one of those has to be limited”, that was from a Veteran who was dying of untreatable Brain Cancer.

Complaining about "Politics" in their video games/ media is usually a bad sign

"I wish they would stop forcing all of this POLITICAL stuff into my video games" - definite reactionary

American flag apparel/stickers.

Sometimes old people who are progressive(ish?) will have American flags on their house, but only serious chuds buy American flag shirts.

One of the most immediate and easy ones to spot is .eth suffixes or NFT avatars. Yes some exceptions exist, the same way that one of the coolest posters still on Twitter has a skull with sunglasses and skulls are often reactionary chuds.

When it comes to takes, the moment someone says "everything is so political these days," you've just read a take from a reactionary because pretty much everything is political by definition and being upset about noticing it is inherently a reactionary take in favor of the "nonpolitical" status quo that they so miss.

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.

So glad you note this. Every time I hear someone start on this horseshit, I see it as a massive red flag. Blood, calipers, and aristocratic ideology are never far behind.