The Intellectual Deep Web (IDW) Thread

[Hood Critic]

I have heard the term but admittedly I am not entirely familiar with the players or the movement - yet.

The recent Politico Magazine article about the movement's official mouth piece Quillette ( Home - Quillette ) and its creator Claire Lehmann re-sparked my interest ( The Voice of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ ).

I believe the above politico author did a decent job of categorizing who the hell the IDW is:

....a loose cadre of academics, journalists and tech entrepreneurs who view themselves as standing up to the knee-jerk left-leaning politics of academia and the media. Over the past year, the IDW has arisen as a puzzling political force, made up of thinkers who support “Enlightenment values” and accuse the left of setting dangerously illiberal limits on acceptable thought.....

Anyone else familiar or has been following their movement for a while?

 

[GnauzBookOfRhymes]

reads like right wing talking points masquerading as high brow literary pieces designed to appeal to jordan peterson types. similar to how many libertarians are actually right wingers too chickenshyt to admit who they are. this will appeal to those types but the good thing is that these kinds of people usually end up fighting each other and destroying themselves in the process.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[PoorAndDangerous]

sounds like a bunch of right wingers who believe in moral relativism so that they can engage in all types of demonic activity since the evil anti-fascist leftists wont accept it.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I think it's a bit too diverse to sum up in one statement. So far as I've seen, there are at least three different groups of "thinkers" in it:

1. Otherwise normal people who were willing to explore non-pc ideas and have found themselves out of the mainstream as a result

2. Otherwise normal people who got caught up in some dumb crusade which has now dominated everything they do/say

3. Full-blown idiots who are just carrying water for the alt-right and get condemned as a result



Some of them have legit criticisms of the left when the left goes too far on some weird track. LOTS of legit criticisms. But they then let others use those legit criticisms to pursue agendas of racism, misogyny, post-colonial power politics, etc.

To put them all in the same group seems unfair to the more reasonable ones (who typically happen to be the lesser-known ones), but then again, if you're willing to be named alongside those idiots maybe you deserve it.

It's sort of as if Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Alex Jones formed a Voltron. I mean, Michael Moore is a lot less crazy than Alex Jones, and Noam Chomsky actually has a lot of accurate, on-point ideas that are way too radical to be found mainstream acceptable. But if Chomsky started associating himself with Alex Jones or even Moore, I'd begin to question his commitment to truth even if he wasn't saying all the stupid stuff himself.

 

[Trill Evans]

Gateway drug to the alt right. Nothing more.

 

[hashmander]

intellectual

 

[acri1]

It's just typical reactionary right-wing politics dressed up in a nice suit and throwing a few big words around.

 

[DrBanneker]

Honestly, a lot of the IDW stuff I have seen is often touched up and resurrected articles on the cultural or biological limits to social equality that last were hard debated in the 70s and mid 90s. Maybe it is 'edgy' to the new generation but it is not some new intellectual realization.

The gist is basically that even with equal opportunity (which they seem sure exists) Blacks, or especially women, would have these same disparities to a large extent because of cultural failings/biases or possible genetic differences which almost any reputable population geneticist will tell you are poorly characterized or even wrong (hint: heritability tells you almost nothing in this regard). By keeping the conversation 'open' they can integrate these ideas into wider discussion even though, despite their citations and insistence, there is no clear immutable reductionist scientific basis behind a lot of social issues. The big problem that helps them is a lot of progressives try to oversimplify complex issues into slogans or movements and when the simple explanations don't work, this opens the door for the "nothing can be done crowd". Things can be changed but problems can be subtle and complex.

 

[Hood Critic]

......The big problem that helps them is a lot of progressives try to oversimplify complex issues into slogans or movements and when the simple explanations don't work, this opens the door for the "nothing can be done crowd". Things can be changed but problems can be subtle and complex.

That is a good point and why the right can effectively just lob the concept of socialism around to discredit progressives while not actively refuting any of their ideas or plans.

 

[DonKnock]

Honestly, a lot of the IDW stuff I have seen is often touched up and resurrected articles on the cultural or biological limits to social equality that last were hard debated in the 70s and mid 90s. Maybe it is 'edgy' to the new generation but it is not some new intellectual realization.

The gist is basically that even with equal opportunity (which they seem sure exists) Blacks, or especially women, would have these same disparities to a large extent because of cultural failings/biases or possible genetic differences which almost any reputable population geneticist will tell you are poorly characterized or even wrong (hint: heritability tells you almost nothing in this regard). By keeping the conversation 'open' they can integrate these ideas into wider discussion even though, despite their citations and insistence, there is no clear immutable reductionist scientific basis behind a lot of social issues. The big problem that helps them is a lot of progressives try to oversimplify complex issues into slogans or movements and when the simple explanations don't work, this opens the door for the "nothing can be done crowd". Things can be changed but problems can be subtle and complex.

They are cover fire for race realism, that IQ is the most important factor and it is extremely contingent on race specifically.

Also heavily anti Islam and anti trans, those seem to be the three defining factors.

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

Imagine smoking pot with Joe Rogan and calling yourself the "intellectual dark web" brehs

 

[BoBurnz]

Honestly, a lot of the IDW stuff I have seen is often touched up and resurrected articles on the cultural or biological limits to social equality that last were hard debated in the 70s and mid 90s. Maybe it is 'edgy' to the new generation but it is not some new intellectual realization.

The gist is basically that even with equal opportunity (which they seem sure exists) Blacks, or especially women, would have these same disparities to a large extent because of cultural failings/biases or possible genetic differences which almost any reputable population geneticist will tell you are poorly characterized or even wrong (hint: heritability tells you almost nothing in this regard). By keeping the conversation 'open' they can integrate these ideas into wider discussion even though, despite their citations and insistence, there is no clear immutable reductionist scientific basis behind a lot of social issues. The big problem that helps them is a lot of progressives try to oversimplify complex issues into slogans or movements and when the simple explanations don't work, this opens the door for the "nothing can be done crowd". Things can be changed but problems can be subtle and complex.

fukking Peterson literally pretends to his dipshyt audience of 18 year olds that he invented Jungian archetypes. This is all the same recycled culture war crap we've been fed for decades wrapped in the same faux intellectualism as always.

Tbh this problem would be much easier solved if we taught basic historical materialism in schools.

 

[ogc163]

Great convo that sums up the IDW pretty well. Eric Weinstein is the most interesting of the bunch, but then he starts overrating the impact and prevalence of critical race theory/SJW/wokeness and works himself into a tizzy. They always cried about the supposed anti-enlightenment values present on the left and then chopped it up with cats like Yoram Hazony to defend nationalism. But I do wish there was a solid set of critiques regarding wokeness coming from serious scholars, but the IDW is not it.

 

[BaggerofTea]

White Nationalism with a pseudo-intellectual veneer