I don't like Yarvin's ideas that I've heard, but GP has a point. There's almost no point to posting something that will just get downvoted quickly (which any defense of Yarvin certainly would), regardless of whether it makes any interesting points. Once it's dead it won't get much if any interaction. It's not about being afraid of people criticizing, it's about expending the effort to write a quality comment that won't be viewed or engaged by anyone.

I do think we on HN have gotten way too reflexively downvoting of opinions we disagree with. IMHO downvoting should be used like a moderation tool to downrank low effort/spammy or factually/objectively incorrect posts that don't contribute anything interesting to the discussion, not as a lazy way of expressing our disagreement.

> This is consistent with my expectation of the future of fascism. The appearance of seriousness but once you have a gun pointed in my face the presence of discussion will be dropped in favor of a bullet in my skull.

You could dismiss almost any political ideology with this. Certainly there's a lot of people who experienced this in the USSR, North Korea, China, and more, and those are/were hardly fascist governments.