It's odd. I'm an anarchist. I'm socially progressive, yes, but more often than not I find myself outnumbered in conversations by people disagreeing with me or even diametrically opposed to me. This is even more so the case online and especially not exclusively here on HN where the cultural bias in any sense that it exists at all is in favor of a vague sense of Peter Thiel style right-libertarianism with streaks of ineffective liberalism - you're more likely to find someone referring to themselves as "Georgist" than "socialist". I consistently get downvoted in political threads on HN.
However I don't have any reason to use euphemisms and I don't need to use vaguery and colorful language and appeals to fringe scientists to express my opinion. In my experience this is because my ideology is very hard to object to on moral grounds: I want you (yes, you too) to have more control over your life and for us (yes, that also means you and me) to be allowed and able to support each other better. I want you (yes, you too) to be able to be able to express yourself and have your consent or lack thereof respected. I don't want us to be suppressed by a state, a religion or an arbitrary often hereditary elite who have amassed disproportionate claims to wealth they can enforce using the physical violence of others. This even applies when I criticize Israel or Zionism - because when I do that, I say what I mean and I don't use my words as proxies for some kind of anti-semitism.
I get laughed at sometimes, I get called names sometimes, I upset people sometimes. But never do I feel the need to obfuscate my ideals except if I were literally surrounded by a violent mob seeking to exterminate the people I'm arguing for the protection of.
But any time someone hides behind euphemisms and vaguery, if you chip away at it, it's never just conservatism or some modest but insufferable reactionary views - it almost always ends up being some blend of race realism or scientific racism, belief in conspiracy theories (which always turn out to be about Jews in the end, knowingly or not), deep hatred and disgust towards trans or queer people, hatred towards women, hatred towards foreign cultures in general, hatred and disgust towards people with disabilities or marginalized people "speaking out of turn" and deeply rooted, integral, vitriolic obsession with social hierarchies and their enforcement against the "undeservering" and "degenerates".
I just don't think that's true. As you say, you get called names sometimes - I think most people who hide behind euphemisms and vaguery just find it tedious or exhausting to get called names when discussing their views. There's multiple topics like education where I can be 100% confident that people are going to accuse me of something like "grievance farming culture war moral panic" if I share my views. I don't personally see the appeal of vagueposting, so I try to either engage and accept the insults or move on, but I understand why other people make different calls.
