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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMeet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.htmlI was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting The Apprentice, none of these observations would have been considered taboo.
. . . .
Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.
. . . .
Long form article, interesting read. Reminds me a lot of DU!
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Better headline:
Meet the renegades of the Simpleminded Rightwing Dark Web
None of these alleged thinkers are very intelligent.
Look for example at how Ezra Klein (a real intellectual) recently completely intellectually eviscerated Sam Harris for his views on race genetics.
The right has no brainpower. Almost all the smart young thinkers today are liberals. Because smart people realize that the rights ideas are really lies and propaganda.
JustAnotherGen
(31,798 posts)sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Bari Weiss is in a class with Kim Strassel as Republican op ed writers who do nothing but parrot right wing talking points. Ive never seen her write anything that is at all insightful. Its almost like all smart people these days are liberals, because anyone with half a brain can see conservatives stand only for lies and propaganda.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,316 posts)From @gin_and_tacos:
And from @jbouie:
JustAnotherGen
(31,798 posts)These folks can say whatever they want - and folks have the right to disregard it.
They are in a dark web of their own making. In particular - Mr. Harris.
Sam Harris, Charles Murray, and the allure of race science
This is not forbidden knowledge. It is Americas most ancient justification for bigotry and racial inequality.
By Ezra Klein@ezraklein Mar 27, 2018, 1:00pm EDT
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve
Klein
In his book Stamped From the Beginning, which won the 2016 National Book Award for nonfiction, Ibram X. Kendi traces the history of arguments about black inferiority to before the founding of the republic. Even before Thomas Jefferson and the other founders declared independence, Americans were engaging in a polarizing debate over racial disparities, over why they exist and persist, and over why White Americans as a group were prospering more than Black Americans as a group, he writes. Those explanations typically revolved around ever more baroque claims of biological difference.
Here Klein quotes this:
The central question that emerges is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over negro, but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.
That was just 60 years ago. It was within my mothers lifetime. Are we so sure our generations version of this argument will look so much better 60 years from now?
Not you OP - but to Mr. Harris. WHY should I listen to someone whose entire body of work proves he is inherently inferior to me? Why can't he just be happy I refer to him as a 'he' or a 'him' i.e. assigning humanity to him . . .
When I refer to 45/140 as an it?
He (Mr. Harris) has an 'It' problem. All of this nonsense about labels and wypipo and everything else at DU doesn't dismiss the fact that there are other minorities like me in America, we do LITERALLY belong dark web groups - and we have completely dehumanized It and it's It's that voted for him and WE are the ones blocked/locked out of the American conversation?
Are we frightening?
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)The irony of that passage just hit me: its not race today that sorts groups, its choice of media and views.
We actually do have an advanced group today, because all the gullible and fools have been sorted into the conservative group, by their own choice. Liberals are today what Buckley proposed- the intellectually superior group. Its simple selection: conservative media appeals mostly to the simpleminded so all the simpleminded end up conservatives.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Psychologists have found two motivators for believing in conspiracy-theories:
* If you are powerless, imagining an evil conspiracy gives you the illusion that you could do something about it.
* Various psychological trials have revealed that people more readily believe a statement if believing it paints them as unique freethinkers.
That's just people declaring themselves edgy.
Yavin4
(35,432 posts)That's all this really is. The world is rapidly changing around them. Their power is being directly challenged, and they cannot stand it.
Solly Mack
(90,762 posts)Lipster: your mouth moves so you must be saying something new, original, and profound.
enough
(13,256 posts)Tarc
(10,476 posts)For a group of white males who decry "identity politics" and such, they seem to trot out a new label per month or so.
tenderfoot
(8,425 posts)eom
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,500 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)blogslut
(37,997 posts)SharonClark
(10,014 posts)The anti-intellectual Joe ranted about the liberal media and liberal campuses and then posed a question "if a guy catholic guy from texas opposes gay marriage does that make him a homophobe?".
Eddie Glaude's (chair of the Center for African-American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University) response was a perfect "not neccesarily". Perfect because he didn't fall into Joe's anti-liberal trap.
kcr
(15,315 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Last edited Tue May 8, 2018, 04:57 PM - Edit history (1)
so all this hype about how much they're supposedly influencing things is just that...
I did like the "wealthy white folks can't get their fringe viewpoints in the media" -angle... Very original.
Link to tweet
bullwinkle428
(20,629 posts)cyber-packaging?