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The Intellectual Dark Web

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Sanguine:

--- Quote ---What Is the 'Intellectual Dark Web'?

"What we're really watching is a breakdown in society's capacity to reason with itself," former Evergreen State College evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein tells The Fifth Column.

Matt Welch|May. 3, 2018 12:30 pm

Kmele Foster, Heather Heying, Bret Weinstein, Matt Welch ||| Anthony L. FisherAnthony L. Fisher

What is the "Intellectual Dark Web"? The technical answer might be, "A phrase coined by mathematician and Thiel Capital Managing Director Eric Weinstein to describe a loose confederation of left-right intellectuals who share in common an open, occasionally career-altering defiance of the 'gated institutional narrative' enforced by media/academia/Hollywood, particularly as concerns identity politics."

Vanity Fair writer Tina Nguyen is getting criticized this week by IDW types for a piece connecting ideological traveler Kanye West to the movement, which she characterizes as being "comprised of right-wing pundits, agnostic comedian podcasters, self-help gurus, and disgruntled ex-liberals united by their desire to 'red pill' new adherents." More charitably, L.A. Times columnist Meghan Daum contends that dark-webbers "wish to foster a new discourse that can allow innovative thinkers to wrestle with the world's problems without having to tiptoe around subjects or questions deemed culturally or politically off-limits."

Whatever the adjectives, it's a group of people, many of them familiar to Reason readers, who are interested in free speech and free thought, sensitive to intellectual conformity, and adept at using new media to route around hostile gatekeepers. Their ranks are generally said to include Jonathan Haidt, Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Claire Lehmann, and James Damore.

One of the foundational members of the Intellectual Dark Web is Eric Weinstein's brother Bret, most famous for being at the center of the gobsmacking Evergreen State College controversy last fall. ...wide-ranging Fifth Column conversation about the IDW, campus free speech, identity politics, the race/IQ minefield, and Weinstein's (questionable!) ideas about regulation in academia and media....

https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/03/what-is-the-intellectual-dark-web
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This is one of the better explanations about what the IDW is.  Some publications, like the NYT or Vox, associate the IDW with the "alt-right", but I have not found this to be the case, except in that the "members" of the IDW are willing to ask politically incorrect questions.

@truth_seeker also posted this IDW interview a few days ago:  http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,325582.msg1749628.html#msg1749628

T_S and I had also discussed posting some of the better thought pieces here when we find something particularly good.  I agree with T_S - this is where it's at, and it's both frightening and exciting and very valuable. 

 

Sanguine:
This one is great: Men Cannot Fix Crazy Women

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I have great respect for both of these thinkers, and they present some very powerful stuff here.  "There's nothing more dangerous than a weak man."

I'm pinging a couple of TBRers who I think might find this interesting. 
@Cyber Liberty
@Bigun
@jmyrlefuller
@the_doc
@roamer_1
And, due to the topic: @corbe

Sanguine:
What a smart, refreshing young lady.

My Name is Josephine (Full Interview)

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Sanguine:
Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro: Frontline of Free Speech (LIVE)

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Sanguine:
"Its A Baby" Jordan Peterson DESTROYS Abortion Argument With Facts

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