Why the Intellectual Dark Web Exists
dailywire.com
dailywire.com
It seems primarily to be a chicken and egg problem: The IDW insists that identity politics requires people to identify themselves as a group rather than free-thinking individuals. I think the point this misses is that these groups did not start by self-identifying as groups, they were identified as these groups. The black community, LGBTQ, women, religious minorities - they were first treated as a single group of lock-step individuals by those looking to oppress them. Is it crazy that to respond, they respond as a group?
This idea that they are beating down the discussion by applying ideals to an entire group of disparate individuals I really think is backwards. It is a response to being grouped by outside forces in the first place, where these groups do have a single shared problem now - that they are not viewed as individuals and treated as a single bloc.
I don't believe that's the issue here. I believe the concern is their response is more valid because of the group they're in, not that they're responding as a group or as a member of the group.
Just look at any minority who doesn't buy into identity politics. They're labeled as traitors, haters of their own race, or trying to play cool with the other side ("cool girl" within feminism).
This is the problem with identity politics. Because you look a certain way, you must think a certain way.
I really don't think they are. Look at Kanye West. People aren't objecting to him because he "doesn't buy into identity politics", they object to him because he says stupid, ignorant things like "sounds like slavery was a choice".
Black conservatives, even if they're barely conservative, are called Uncle Toms. This really isn't that uncommon.
Edit: Oh look, this thread was flagged. What a surprise.
This is the thing I don't get about this argument. You're implying that Denzel Washington should be free to say whatever he wants, but that no one should be free to criticise what he says. I don't understand how those two things are supposed to go together.
> You're implying that Denzel Washington should be free to say whatever he wants, but that no one should be free to criticise what he says.
Not at all.
Fair enough, but what's wrong with criticism? That's an essential part of intellectual debate, and it doesn't exist in an environment where all participants agree on every issue. It's not as if the entirety of criticism against black conservatives amounts to name calling and "identity politics" as TFA identifies it.
Nothing, that's exactly what I want. I want criticism rather than blind outrage that leads to event organizers, colleges, etc caving to their demands.
Alternatives include individualism/bootstrapping, family oriented politics, skill/job oriented (labor used to be a massive political influencer), etc.
I think it plays into the propaganda of the oppressive regime by not asserting individuality. "See, they identify as the group we claimed they were the whole time," the regime would say.
That being said, there is acting as a member of a group and identifying as a member of that group. The former need not entail the latter. For instance, donating money to the ACLU doesn't change your identity to ACLU-er (et simis). No, you are just helping that cause.
I wonder how much of the modern identity politics framework has been influenced by the rise of modern marketing, which has an explicit focus on identity-based advertising ("I'm a toys-r-us kid!")
The kind of tribalism to which such advertising appeals is both millennia older than modern commercial advertising and has been a regular part of religious and political propaganda for millenia, which is where modern commercial advertising got it, not vice versa.
Add in the fact that it comes from complete strangers, and I think even if it's roots are way back in history, the modern environment is very different.
On what evidence did you reach that conclusion, ropans808? And assuming it's true, how is that reaction -- "I resent that you have treated me, not as an individual but as part of a single bloc, and therefore, I am going to espouse certain positions simply because I belong to that bloc" -- a logical reaction?
Not initially, but when it comes to the point where they actively fight against egalitarianism and equality in order to ensure some integrity of separate identity, it is counter-productive and, in my opinion, wrongheaded. It doesn't matter what group you're talking about, equality is the only option apart from warring factions of supremascist organizations.
Isn't the entire thesis of this article questioning the morality and wisdom of the mainstream left? Accusing somebody of refusing to have honest conversations and forcing their views on others is an accusation of immorality.
Is this quote that "hits the nail on the head", at least according to the article, not a way of deflecting from the actual question being asked ("Identity politics is just simply questions of justice, right?") and shutting down discussion?
Sounds like instead of acknowledging any honest disagreement about what "identity politics" means, the author just goes ahead and matter-of-factly gives his definition and implies that anybody who disagrees is a racist who can't consider a member of any ethnic group as a "free-thinking individual".
Calling your opponents closed-minded, refusing to take certain kinds of disagreement as "honest disagreement", and then labeling yourself as "free thinking" and "intellectually honest" smells like horseshit and doublethink. Ben Shapiro and his "Intellectual Dark Web" (lol) seems exhausting.
That's the meta-argument. But if there are any implied accusations of immorality, the immorality is associated with actions (e.g. "forcing their views on") rather than opinions held or ideas expressed.
>Sounds like instead of acknowledging any honest disagreement about what "identity politics" means, the author just goes ahead and matter-of-factly gives his definition and implies that anybody who disagrees is a racist who can't consider a member of any ethnic group as a "free-thinking individual".
I think that's a fair observation, to a point. But if you watch the video, Joe Scarborough was reacting to when the guy said "let me help you think about it then." The woman was trying to respond to his point about identity politics, and that's how he cut her off. Then Scarborough jumped in.
What specific passage of the article led you to that conclusion? I don't see how it's supportable, but I could be wrong.
No accusation need to be made. From how I understand it, the IDW was created because when there are attempts made to have honest conversations in other venues, they are actively destroyed. The point is to be able to have the conversations, not to condemn those who shut the conversations down elsewhere. If you see censorship and shutting down conversations instead of engaging rationally as immoral, that's a bit separate (although obviously closely related) issue from someone trying to create a place where such conversations can exist.
Precisely so. And it's unfortunate that HN is one of those venues where many honest conversations, such as this one, are destroyed through flagging. The person(s) who flagged this article are actually illustrating one of its points.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being...
Let's see:
Jordan Peterson was threatened by his university, and there have been petitions to get the university to fire him. What he predicted would happen happened pretty much exactly as he predicted it to Lindsay Shepard at Laurier University.
Bret Weinstein and his wife were accosted by students wielding baseball bats, with the University refusing to protect them (the campus police was told to stand down against their will).
Groups regularly try (and frequently succeed) to shut them down.
For most of them, associating them with the alt-right or worse is ludicrous, but that is exactly the tactic used. Every. Single. Time. Never engagement with the ideas, always the personal hit piece and guilt by alleged association. The Wilfried Laurier faculty unironically said that playing a clip from the Canadian public broadcaster featuring JBP was the same as approvingly playing a Hitler clip.
And yes, the tactic is backfiring, because we now have alternative media and alternative funding sources. That doesn't mean that it's not being attempted.
I think it's a nod to the fact that institutions that were once viewed as bastions of free debate and free inquiry, such as universities, are now largely hostile to it. In many places expressing the "wrong" opinion entails enormous risks to one's career. So this movement has to be in a sense, underground. But you're right, the people associated with it are mainstream people.
It's not a literal darknet like Tor. It's more of name given to an intellectual movement, probably because it has to fly under the radar of the censors and the name callers and the doxxers and the rage-mobbers. Watch the video of MSNBC's Morning Joe show embedded with the article to get a better idea.
You can have your Model-T in any color you like, as long as it's black, and I suppose you can have your anti-establishment intellectualism in any flavor you like, as long as it's anti-leftist, I guess. And that isn't itself a form of identity politics because... reasons?
Color me... unimpressed?
It sounds like your Model-T reference is being applied in the wrong direction.
Implying that there is a "right" and "wrong" direction to which it should apply? Does the article misrepresent this movement by describing it as defined by anti-leftist dogma? Because if not, then it isn't intellectually diverse, nor does it embrace free thought.
Identity politics flying the flag of "free thought, only so long as you reject the mainstream and the left" still seems to me to be identity politics.
The rebuke here is aimed at the left's hostility to dissenting political opinions, not against the left's political opinions as such. That's the distinction.
And yet that rebuke being aimed only at "the left" seems to imply that hostility is endemic to leftist political opinion, intended or not. Otherwise why mention the left at all? There is plenty of hostility and intransigence among the right as well... and among "anti-establishment" thinkers.
Rejection of the mainstream as an ideology just leads to the acceptance of an alternative mainstream and alternative orthodoxy. There is no true "free" thought, everyone is bound to some framework of prejudice and bias.
> Rejection of the mainstream as an ideology just leads to the acceptance of an alternative mainstream and alternative orthodoxy. There is no true "free" thought, everyone is bound to some framework of prejudice and bias.
I agree, but that's not relevant.
Not all of "the left" is hostile in this particular way, but virtually all of those who are hostile in this way are of "the left".
If you disagree with that assessment, can you think of any examples of a left-wing speaker being prevented from speaking (and the audience being prevented from hearing them speak) by a violent unruly mob of right-wing protestors?
I'm looking for a polarity-reversed equivalent of the sort of reaction Charles Murray and his host got when he tries to talk on campus. Does that ever happen? (link: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middleb... )
"Every comment section on the Intellectual Dark Web is ample evidence for the necessity of the Intellectual Dark Web"
Except it isn't really the comment sections, it's the commentariat.
Sigh.
Like you, I also wish that more persuasion and compromise was attempted but these provocateurs have no interest in that and benefit from fanning the flames.
Is there a particular passage spoken by one of these people that led you to that conclusion? Because that's not my takeaway at all. But if I'm wrong, I want to know.
Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America
How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them
If there is no holy war between the left and right, Ben Shapiro sells less books.
Here's Jordan Petersons response to an article criticizing him.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/97594153761910784...
Again, no substance. Just aggression. Showboating to his base.
I've listened to Jordan Peterson interviews and 90% of what he says doesn't make any sense. He speaks like any other self help author because that's what he is. He has generic platitudes that he speaks as gospel. He simply uses the far right to make money because they respond to his message more than anyone else (although he himself is not alt-right).
Shapiro has an extremely aggressive debating style (as that book title should tell you) and his primary focus at all times is winning an argument, not persuasion. In my opinion, he is smarter than Peterson and supports his views better but that's a pretty low bar to cross.
These are the only two I am familiar enough with to talk about off the top of my head. I plan on looking into other members of this movement later to see if they have any more merit than these two.
This is incredibly disingenous. That is exactly what they're trying to do, and quite successfully. Peterson's book sales are skyrocketing, and not among convinced rightists. Browse any conservative forum and you'll find that the vast majority of the new wave of conservatives are former liberals who were convinced by these people.
In my opinion, the best way to describe what you call conversion of liberals is radicalization of the youth. This is happening both on the right and the left, to varyi g degrees, probably because the two sides are more divided at the moment than they have been in the past.
Anyways, Peterson's popular book doesn't really have anything to do with his political stances. It's a typical self help book.
> the best way to describe what you call conversion of liberals is radicalization of the youth
That might be accurate if Shapiro or Peterson were radical conservatives. Both fall squarely into the "social liberal" category.
Indoctrination is a better word choice for how I feel about it.
That's because Peterson is a leftist. He has contrarian viewpoints on exactly two topics: pronouns and communism. Other than that, he's as left wing as they come. He's a great example of how bad the political discourse has gotten. The left won't even allow dissenting opinions among their own people.
> [flagged] Why the Intellectual Dark Web Exists
If anyone wants this thread to continue much longer, they'd better click the vouch link.
Could you give me a rule of thumb to follow for determining whether or not a political discussion is appropriate for HN?
Submissions like this one are off topic here because they don't. They're too samey, and battle mode is incompatible with curiosity mode. We're going for something more parasympathetic.
Yeah, but that doesn't answer my question. But I think I know the answer. Politics-oriented posts that get flagged into oblivion tend to be the ones where the facts favor the political right, and/or expose the moral or logical flaws of leftist arguments or tactics. I'm sure there have been exceptions, but this applies to virtually all of the cases I've witnessed, including this particular one.
>But I think I know the answer.
Isn't this called confirmation bias?
Anyway, as a classical liberal who probably shares your beliefs, the topic is pure flame war territory, which is toxic for HN. I don't think there is any intentional persecution of ideas, and the use of political labels makes some of us older people's 'eyes bleed.'
Pattern recognition is confirmation bias now? He clearly refers to cases he's witnessed where he's observed that particular pattern.
> Anyway, as a classical liberal who probably shares your beliefs
What are his beliefs? He hasn't stated any yet. This sort of thing makes people less likely to trust what you're saying, not more.
> I don't think there is any intentional persecution of ideas
There is absolutely a subset of people both here and on the wider internet who are involved in the intentional persecution of ideas. Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't help make the situation better.
I have the feeling that the quiet majority of HN readers are politically moderate and are curious to read a variety of reasonable perspectives on either side of the political divide in order to help themselves form a rounded worldview.
It's a noisy minority further towards the extremes that might give the impression that HN is strongly biased, and the direction of the apparent bias differs depending on the topic.
If you have enough karma points to have access to it, it should be up there with the "hide | past | web" links.
I'm guessing the karma required to vouch is equal to the karma required to flag a story. I don't know what that is in either case.