The words "hard right" mean nothing other than "not reliably leftist." It's semantically void in informational content. Ask yourself why things are commonly referred to in the media as "far right" but you never see the term "far left" used to describe anything. Even those things that are demonstrably far left.

Hard right: "the extreme right wing of a political or social organization"

Libertarian: "According to common United States meanings of conservative and liberal, libertarianism in the United States has been described as conservative on economic issues (economic liberalism and fiscal conservatism) and liberal on personal freedom (civil libertarianism and cultural liberalism)."

I know a lot of investors who I would describe as "libertarian" as opposed to "hard right".

This crowd didn't "swing" to the hard right. They have been fiscally conservative forever, and now they are just tired of the push to restrict freedom of thought and speech.

In that sense, this group may appear to be moving right but by traditional standards, they have always been there--they have always thought that people should be free to speak and think the way they want. That was literally taught in schools and by parents.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."

If others don't like the speech they do not have to listen--which isolates the speaker and will solve the behavior.

First off, I don't think that SV swung hard right, and not every VC firm is inherently far-right. Now, some partners at specific funds are quite loud about their political leanings, but I don't think that's large enough a sample size to say that the entire sector is far right.

However, there's always been a libertarian streak amongst that crowd (but that's not left or right, it's a bastardization of a mix of both). Always has been always will be. A lot of people got wealthy quickly, and adopted the new-age version of "might makes right", which is now "obscene capital makes right". Amplified by social media (and adored by people with dreams of also making generational fuck-you money), some of these folks figured "hey, i'm probably pretty smart because i made a billion dollars, so perhaps my political beliefs have more legitimacy than those of others, so let me shout them from the rooftops".

Since some of these people have obscene amounts of money, they are naturally resistant to any and all forms of losing it, such as taxation (even though their own existence was massively subsidized - from tax credits, to university & public education subsidies, business tax exemptions, low taxes on capital gains, having a stable government, etc). The current right-wing political apparatus has found support amongst people that don't like to be taxed, so those who don't want to be taxed vote for the right.

We call those people hypocrites, not far right.

The only thing that seems to be happening is that people are snapping out a cult-like mentality that has mostly plagued the Left. I thought people would start to realize how we're in a form of social totalitarianism since the pandemic, but it took 10/7 for lots of people to really see what is going on.