I'm talking about well-known phenomena that can readily be observed in online debate culture and social spaces over the past decade:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-int...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing

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 so on) to refer to "the truth about gender roles" (sexual market value, female promiscuity, but also "true facts" like male suicide rates but always presented as part of a misogynist narrative yearning for some imagined patriarchic past based on 1950s advertisements). The idea has since been refined to the point that "red pilling" has moved from simple "truth bombing" (i.e. plainly citing factoids supposedly supporting the narrative) to "just asking questions" (see above) and "it's just a joke" (hence the phrase particularly popular among online antisemitic white ethnonationalists: "when the joke really lands", i.e. when you no longer see it as an edgy joke but as the truth).

Your use of the term is an interesting reversal of the accusation of "conspiracy thinking" by the way. The term is usually used to describe "anti-establishment" accusations of "powerful elites" (Rothschilds, WHO, George Soros, Bill Gates, whatever) conspiring to control the world. Even the actual Nazis spread conspiracy theories about "international bankers" (or simply "the Jews" when civility was not required) being "in control" and blaming the economic collapse and the loss of WW1 on them.

What I'm claiming is far more mundane:

1. Far-right extremists and right-wing fringe people exist.

2. At least some of them are online and hang around in the same spaces as normal people do.

3. At least some of them understand that if they just open their mouths and plainly state their views they'll be banned from those spaces.

4. At least some of those still want to either state or advertise their politics in those spaces in ways that won't get them immediately banned.

5. At least some of those succeed in doing that.

Of course this requires acknowledging that ideologies exist and people can hold genuine political views rather than simply looking out for their own financial gain. And historically liberals (and libertarians) have a track record of not being able to comprehend this or to believe "bad politics" (i.e. ideological opposition) is just a matter of not having access to enough information (e.g. "white supremacists only hate brown people because they don't understand how immigrants benefit the economy").

This post by the way is a perfect example of why these tactics work:

1. You replied with a single short sentence that probably took you no time.

2. You broadly dismissed everything I said without pointing out any specific claim as wrong or giving any actual argument I could respond to, making it hard to falsify without "rambling".

3. You didn't directly attack me or what I said (e.g. "That's conspiracy thinking!") but instead merely implied a statement by asking a rhetorical question, thus appearing more civil without changing what you actually wanted to say.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXv...