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[janrinok] For those of you who do not want to read about the 'extremes' of US politics (alt-right or left-wing) I suggest that you skip this story and wait for the next one. If you feel that we shouldn't publish any story that does not accord with your own, probably less extreme, views then perhaps you should remind yourself that we try to give everyone in our community the benefit of free speech and we do not intentionally censor or promote any particular view or political leaning. Of course, you are welcome to contribute your own comments in the subsequent discussion that will follow.
This MSNBC Guest Just Showed Why The Intellectual Dark Web Exists
On Tuesday, The New York Times’ Bari Weiss appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss her new in-depth piece on the so-called Intellectual Dark Web – an agglomeration of thinkers from all sides of the political aisle who have been cast out by political correctness and now converse with one another regularly and publicly (full disclosure: I’m a charter member, along with friends including Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, and others). The entire premise of the IDW is that many on the Left refuse to acknowledge good-natured disagreement; instead, all disagreement must be due to nefarious evil on the part of those who disagree.
Proving the point on MSNBC was guest Eddie Glaude Jr., chair at the Center for African-American Studies at Princeton. When Weiss cited the discussions between me and Sam as evidence for the diversity of the movement, Glaude responded, “What allows you to describe these folks as intellectuals of sort? Let me say it differently. They’re connected intellectually by what common commitments? So you might have different ideological spaces, but when you talk about Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro in one sentence, I can see the connection between those two.” Weiss responded, logically enough, “Which is?” And Glaude explained:
Having something to do with how they think about race, having something to do with how they think about diversity in the country and the ways in which diversity is talked about, right? The way in which they think about political correctness. Weiss responded, “Yeah, they’re anti-identity politics, for sure.”
To which Glaude launched into a full defense of identity politics: “Identity politics is a phrase that kind of is a red herring. Identity politics is just simply questions of justice, right?”
At this point, Joe Scarborough jumped in and hit the nail directly on the head:
Eddie, you have just made Bari Weiss's point, that you disagree with the way Bari Weiss views the world, so you're going to help her view the world more the way you view the world. The entire purpose of the exercise is to have honest conversations with people, and to not question their morality, or their wisdom just because they don't view the world exactly the same way that you do.
The "Intellectual Dark Web," Explained: What Jordan Peterson has in Common with the Alt-Right
Bari Weiss, an opinion writer and editor at the New York Times, created a stir this week with a long article on a group that calls itself the "Intellectual Dark Web." The coinage referred to a loose collective of intellectuals and media personalities who believe they are "locked out" of mainstream media, in Weiss's words, and who are building their own ways to communicate with readers.
The thinkers profiled included the neuroscientist and prominent atheist writer Sam Harris, the podcaster Dave Rubin, and University of Toronto psychologist and Chaos Dragon maven Jordan Peterson.
Some assertions in the piece deserved the ridicule. But Weiss accurately captured a genuine perception among the people she is writing about (and, perhaps, for). They do feel isolated and marginalized, and with some justification. However, the reasons are quite different from those suggested by Weiss. She asserts that they have been marginalized because of their willingness to take on all topics and their determination not to "[parrot] what's politically convenient."
The truth is rather that dark web intellectuals, like Donald Trump supporters and the online alt-right, have experienced a sharp decline in their relative status over time. This is leading them to frustration and resentment.
[janrinok] And another contribution from Ari reviews Amanda Marcotte's new book:
Birth of a "Troll Nation": Amanda Marcotte on How and Why Conservatives Embraced the Dark Side
Interview at Salon with author Amanda Marcotte:
I had no role in editing Amanda Marcotte's new book, which bears the amusing and highly appropriate title, "Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set on Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." None of it previously appeared in Salon, to be clear;
But "Troll Nation" is not about the election of Donald Trump. Amanda and I have certain areas of cheerfully-expressed political disagreement, but I think we share the view that Trump was the culmination of a long process, or is the most visible symptom of a widespread infection. Amanda's analysis is, as always, calm, sharp-witted and clearly focused on available evidence. American conservatives, she says, used to make rational arguments and used to present a positive social vision. Did those arguments make sense, in the end? Did that "Morning in America" vision of the Reagan years conceal a vibrant undercurrent of bigotry?
[...] How we got from the supercilious, upper-crust conservatism of William F. Buckley Jr., the dictionary definition of an elitist -- the dude could read and write Latin, for God's sake -- to the delusional ignorance of Alex Jones and #Pizzagate, the small-minded hatred of Charlottesville and the unquenchable thirst for "liberal tears" is one of the darkest mysteries of our time. It's also the story of "Troll Nation."
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 4, Insightful) by idiot_king on Sunday May 13 2018, @03:50AM (15 children)
This thread is going to get really bad really quick.
I just want to point out a few things first:
1. The "Intellectual Dark Web" was a joke term coined by Eric Weinstein, one of the head cronies of Thiel Capital to distinguish between his loose-knit cabal of "intellectuals" that were essentially anti-PC, i.e., anti-progressivism.
2. It is often times, and probably rightfully so, conflated with Alt-Right thinkers and the now-forgotten "Dark Enlightenment" thinkers of yore, and for good reason as most of them belong together for pretending to be provocative thinkers but really just being provocative.
3. They are not really breaking any new ground as much as repackaging ideas and serving them via a capitalist-force-fed tube via high publicity talks a la Jordan Peterson/Dave Rubin and various YouTube/Patreon moneygrabs.
4. They say they champion free speech but they are constantly playing the victim when it suits them. This is the most frustrating part as they can take a clip of an event where people are ACTUALLY fighting for equality and tar and feather them as caricatures and walking, breathing strawmen/ad hom arguments.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @04:09AM (1 child)
Everyone who disagrees with Me can just DIE.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Captival on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:20PM
Hillary,what are you doing here? I thought you were in Australia grifting money.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:01AM (4 children)
OK I'll play. I've watched a lot of Jordan Peterson's material and some of Sam Harris.
1. Even if this is true (i.e. the term was used by this person), who cares?
2. Similar to your first point this is just an attempt to smear by labelling, "naturally they get confused with neo-Nazis because they are!". Also "pretending to be provocative thinkers but really just being provocative" what is this supposed to mean LOL!
3. Not sure about Sam Harris but Jordan Peterson's work is very original. I'm somewhat familiar with the field and he takes a lot of contemporary psychology research and applies it to some of the more interesting psychology grand narratives, particularly Jungian psychology. I really like his model of the interaction of mythic storytelling with observed behaviour - it may not be wrong!
4. I've not really seen this is in the material I'm familiar with, perhaps you could provide some links? Who are these people that are "ACTUALLY" fighting for equality?
Frankly I don't think you have engaged with any of this material yourself and have simply formed a view based upon reporting in other media, but happy to be proven wrong.
Also editors - I think there is a missing link to the first aristarchus article which I would like to read - can you please fix (if it is actually missing and I'm not just being dense)?
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:38AM
Good catch. It was indeed missing and has been added. - fnord
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday May 13 2018, @08:31AM (2 children)
Woody Guthrie
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday May 13 2018, @10:07AM (1 child)
So when has Harris, Peterson, Rubin or Shapiro shown a video of Woody Guthrie so as to "tar and feather" him?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @07:19PM
You don't follow his logic.
He just pulled an older than most of us rabbit out of his hat.
So I will repeat his logic again.
Woodie Guthrie.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @10:53AM (5 children)
You've never actually sat and listened to any of the people you're shitting on, have you? There's nothing remotely alt-right about their views and they go into extreme detail on every position they hold and precisely why they hold it. They take it to the point of being boring as hell to listen to for more than a few minutes. Think about it a while and it should occur to you that this is far more in line with the definition of intellectualism than angrily condemning anyone who disagrees with them as being hatemongers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @01:19PM (4 children)
Does Jordan Peterson go into extreme detail on why he thinks fornication is destroying civilization? Why he thinks he's going to live happily every after in Neverland?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kktI8-lZw8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:46PM (3 children)
I expect so but he doesn't really need to. It's simple fact that being raised in a single parent home is an extremely strong indicator of future poverty. You though have obviously never listened to anything but other people reporting on him using out of context sound bytes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
Maybe the strong indicator is "single carousel riding urban poor women".
Single parents with access to insurance money and alimony show no particular indication to not give their kids at least an average launch.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @06:47PM
If you have studies backing this up, interesting. If you don't, well...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 14 2018, @06:42AM
Ah, if we could only had some contraceptives available, so that sex outside marriage doesn't necessary ends in children raised by a single parent.
I just can't wait 'til the 1960-ies and the sexual revolution, when those contraceptives will become cheap and available to the public.. I just can already for foresee it, there'll be 'Make love not war" all around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:47PM
Looks like we are both pleasantly surprised!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 13 2018, @11:42PM
Having been thru all this, you could summarize #1 thru #4 inclusive as pre-2010 small letter l libertarianism, where a large fraction of the population hemorrhaged out into somewhat diverse, newer viewpoints.
Find a "new right" old timer and scratch them and you'll find an old small l (or large L) libertarian, often enough. Lots of stagnant infighting, this hasn't worked for decades, this just isn't going to work any time soon, so what should we do instead?
Also all religions have a failure rate at indoctrination... plenty of former leftists who saw their indoctrination as BS and essentially some "new right" people are progressive atheists, in the sense of atheist from progressivism as a religious doctrine rather than the more popular legacy meaning of atheists from Christianity who merely coincidentally also happen to be progressives. There are no small number of new right people who have some kind of "I was a sinner then I came to Jesus" style of story where they were shitty rich with college kid antifa types and they finally stopped smoking pot long enough to realize it was BS so then ...
Finally another large sector of New Right comes from the short term takeover of the Republican party by the neocons. The problem with neoconservatism is its a single issue party, Israel First, regardless of how much window dressing and PR is applied it is in reality a single issue group, and single issue parties always sink, stink, and repel everyone. So a couple endless wars in the middle east later, and you end up with /pol/ electing Trump, kinda sorta. Republican in the sense of 70s or 80s doesn't exist anymore, there's new right, there's some RINO cucks no one listens to except dying legacy media, and the "Israel First-ers" in the neocon wing, and thats it. So if you're not a RINO or willing to destroy America to save Israel, there really isn't anything remaining but the new right.
I mean, what outcome would you expect other than the "new right" if you have a stagnant dying rebellion party, religious rebels against progressivism as a religion have no other place to go, and everyone vaguely Republican who wasn't a single issue "Israel First-er" got kicked out of the R party. These people are going to hang out and find a path of their own, which they've done a pretty good job of so far despite being heckled all the way.
Old left legacy media always goes clickbait on "who are the new right" type of stories. Hopefully the above is an interesting viewpoint from the inside that isn't mere clickbait.