A Profile of Claire Lehmann of Quillette
politico.com
politico.com
Does the word 'white' in the headline of this piece make you nervous: https://quillette.com/2018/08/17/a-closer-look-at-anti-white... ? Will you skim the headline, downvote this and fail to read the part that talks heavily about the new NYT editor and hundreds of her tweets, combines other examples and advances a thesis that there's a new type of religious ideology that's taken hold in the U.S., while traditional religion waned? If so, then you're precisely what the conversation is about: people who sit idly by as a new dogmatism takes hold under the guise of righteousness.
As a traditionally Left person myself, I'm deeply troubled by the discourse in the U.S., where the Left and the extreme Right use the same phraseology and attitude, while the former feels vindicated and justified (because they are on the correct side). And throwing away due process in the interest of the Greater Good? If you're not reminded of the Salem Witch Trials, you should be reminded of Stalin's purges just the same.
Stepping out of right-versus-left politics, the idea is to remain skeptical of all group-think, regardless of where it comes from.
edit: grammar
I mean, yeah, but Quillette is still a rag. It exists to exhaust people with the time, energy, and knowledge to debunk it so people without that will be duped by its arguments that only seem reasonable on the surface and one or two layers below, right above the trash.
Quillette is like a knowledge slot machine to people who want to be well-informed but don't have the resources to do it without leaning on others who do. It lures you in with surface plausibility.
The article I linked above is very rational and supported with references.
Someone elsewhere likened it to Galileo. Quillette is more like the Church. It says "the Earth is flat!" How many times do you walk someone through the math of proving the Earth is roundish before you realize it's futile? Unchecked confirmation bias always wins. The best treatment is to starve it of air.
It doesn't need profiles in mostly credible outlets. It needs a faulty backup and restoration plan and a power surge.
Who sounds like the church?
I don't think this is a healthy view for the long term success of a culture built around social justice (the combination of how-often-do-I-have-to-repeat-this with it's-not-my-job-to-educate-you). It's been less than two decades since swinging popular opinion over onto the side of broader rights and already the people who should be the stanchest advocates seem tired of trying to persuade people.
This is a fundamental part of human culture, you have to keep explaining the so-called basics again and again, rather than being exasperated whenever people want it explained for the umpteenth time. Learn from religions, and see how even when Christianity was the absolute dominant Western culture, that they were happy to explain it again and again to anyone that wanted to listen. That is what you need to do if you want to keep your gains and keep everyone on the same page.
I might persuade one person in the time they convince or reinforce 10 beliefs in 1000 people. What hope does good information have against that kind of persuasion engine? There's a reason religion's decline started with the rise of mass media. It had competition.
Another alternative is there is some more value in Quillete than you have evaluated.
Quillette is like a knowledge slot machine to people who want to be well-informed but don't have the resources to do it without leaning on others who do. It lures you in with surface plausibility.
I think you edited after my response below, so:
If your words are true, the entire thing is discredited. It feels hand-wavy, so do you have any examples or references? The article I linked above has supported references and links, and it's quite long. You're saying it's a complete fraud?
I've been down this road. It goes nowhere at best, and turns into demon threads (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BZtAavpsy9WtMYgEL/demon-thre...) in the average case.
Note the correction:
> An earlier version mistakenly identified the public context of a sign that declared “Alcohol-restricted zone.” Such signs refer to a prohibition on public drinking and appear in many English neighborhoods, irrespective of Muslim population.
That's what you get when islamophobic idiots write articles about a country they don't understand. These signs really are common across England. There's one outside my house. (Muslim population in my street = 0, and in this part of town = < 2%). But the article is full of this kind of horseshit: "no one makes eye contact" - yep, this happens, but it happens between everyone regardless of religion: we don't talk to each other in the south. About the only thing that's true is that some mosques distribute unpleasant material. I'd ban it, but then I'd also ban this shitty article. Mr Ngo is a hypocrite for calling out these pamphlets while writing material as objectionable himself.
Uh, isn't that absolutely everyone?
All your comments on this page are very ugly, and remind me of the SJWs in the movie The Red Pill - so certain they're right that they have no need to think about, engage with, consider the matter/group/publication in question. They are good, the other is bad, by definition.
I hadn't heard of Lehmann or Quillette. Reading most of the comments on this page, I expected some ranting far-right lunatic website. But a couple of comments made me think it might be worth checking out.. And what a surprise. It seems full of interesting articles. Has supportive blurbs from quite a lot of writers I like. I was expecting at best an intelligent site from the right[0]. It's actually nothing like that, just seems full of good articles from good writers. Why the hate and fear on this page, I have no idea. So I bookmarked quillette.com and will be reading their stuff. Thanks HN.
[0] I like to sometimes read "conservative" stuff, to counterbalance my natural far-left inclinations. e.g. I love the books of Roger Kimball and David Stove, and have learnt a lot from them. Plus they're excellent writers, and can be very funny. (Although I read one of Kimball's purely political pieces online once, OMG it was embarrassingly bad. But in matters of general art/culture/philosophy I don't often disagree with him.)
1 is a simple statistical note. 1 is admitting I might be wrong.
1 is a bit harsh. 1 is a bit mean. I shouldn't have called it a rag. They at least seem pro-a lot of things I care about and don't seem malicious.
1 is a tame assessment based on several articles I read that became popular here on HN.
I plan to give it another look based on /u/natalyarostova's comment. Maybe you should do the same with the comments you find so ugly.
I did a search for "Quillette Alt-Right" and I got a ton of articles from them against the Alt-Right, and comparing the extreme Left to the alt-Right.
It's Patreon-supported, is that alt-right too?
I don’t personally consider it alt-right, but i think someone viewing it that way is totally reasonable given her media background.
It's pretty simple: there is a burgeoning Reactionary Left in the US. For the last few generations 'left' essentially meant 'progressive' so there's some lag in updating people's mental schema and naming it what it is. As a foreigner, I am less worried by its existence (it's not unique with regards to other countries, and it's relatively small) than by the willingness of the more mainstream left to either downplay or appease it... But the US also have a very opportunistic political culture, so they're probably used to foster some narrative (it reminds me of the Republicans in 2009 wondering how they can take advantage of this Tea Party thing. Same thing here, with the Dems trying to find a way to use these identitarians to their benefit -- what could possibly go wrong?).
Indeed. Most of the rhetoric seems to have a tit-for-tat feel to it. I don't know how the rest of the right wing feel, but things like the Russia conspiracy theories are a lot more palatable in light of older, even more insane conspiracy theories like Obama instituting Sharia law or being born in Kenya.
The concerning parts of the dialog are the innocuous elements where due process starts to break down. Slogans like "Resist" and "Not My President" are more scary than most of the rest to me - the health of the system are more important than political ideology. Hopefully they don't mean what they are literally saying, but it'll be scary if that language breaks out of America and starts to spread across the rest of the Anglosphere.
this is basically the rallying cry of the radical left. it's ok if not all of their reaction is good as long as it's possible: good ideas should rise to the top.
Forget about tit for tat. Let's talk about principles. Innocent until proven guilty. Rule of law. The right of free speech. As per usual, the side holding power wishes to dispense with those principles, so they can proceed to get their way, "for the greater good." The other side, knocked onto its back foot, is the one talking about principles. In the 60's, it was the other way around, at least at first.
(Then, as now, there are opportunists on the far extremes, hoping to gain power by fanning the flames of outrage.)
Now, power is not only embodied in television and print media, it's also mediated by the viral potential of social media. There is one side which seeks to reserve the power of virality to itself, all the while holding onto the declining power of traditional media. It's precisely for situations like this, that the principles were created. It's precisely this kind of imbalance that the principles are supposed to help bring back towards the center.
the health of the system are more important than political ideology
Hear hear.
(Center-left person here.)
It's not that bad. The people who say these things are neither so dangerous that they really mean something terrible, nor so silly that they don't mean what they say.
They mean what they say, but they mean it according to a pretty benign interpretation. They wish "resist" the government using the tools of democratic action. Trump is "not my president" for all those who find his stances repugnant to their ideals -- i.e. those whom he does not represent.
That's all fine; in a free country it is good and proper for people to stoutly oppose the supreme executive. But you are right to be concerned there is a fashion for stating that opposition in language that has darker meanings too. And the danger is that when this language becomes standard, people will slide into really meaning those darker things.
From where I sit, it appears that many "alt-right" types espousing views on racial or gender superiority fervently believe these concepts.
That's not the case for most on the left. Instead, the hostility from the left is more directed towards those that hold these prejudicial views.
Better yet, do an analysis of subjects, verbs, and objects. If you diagram the sentences and analyze the rhetoric, what you'll see is that certain groupings of people based on hard to change outward characteristics are characterized as harmful, while certain others are characterized as inherently good. The further towards the extremes of both ends of the political spectrum you go, the more of this you find.
Instead, the hostility from the left is more directed towards those that hold these prejudicial views.
Are you saying that no one on the left calls out particular racial groups and demonizes them? The truth is the opposite. The further left you go, the more identitarian the rhetoric becomes, until certain skin colors are called out as being inherently bad.
Again, that is why I mentioned phraseology versus intent.
> Are you saying that no one on the left calls out particular racial groups and demonizes them?
And this is my point. I don't entirely agree with this statement. I believe the situation is more subtle as the Jeong case illustrates.
Instead, it would be fairer to say that the further left you go (in the US), there is animosity towards conservatism and racism and some on the left believe that this conservatism is mainly supported by a certain segment of whites.
I agree that sometimes an unfortunate phraseology is used by those that muddies the meaning.
Go far enough left, and what you'll see is there's animosity towards one kind of racism, combined with energetic forwarding of another kind of racism, plus other identitarian tribalist ideas. The above is then combined with nonsensical linguistic games denying the bigotry, claiming that there's some directional arrow based on inherent characteristics.
I agree that sometimes an unfortunate phraseology is used by those that muddies the meaning.
Political extremists on both the far left and far right are demonizing entire groups of people based on ethnic subcultural markers, skin color, and other hard to change characteristics. We know what that is, historically. We already have words and definitions for that sort of thing. Those definitions are universal and orthogonal from any particular identity. It's only in recent years that people have tried to sell the public nonsensical "unfortunate phraseology."
"War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." It's the evil that disguises itself as good in the eyes of many that does the most damage.
Of course you would get the exact same pushback if you were wrong, or your ideas potentially harmful. So the two possibilities can't really be distinguished by the reaction alone, making this essay fall on the "unactionable" side of the Paul Graham obvious<->unactionable scale.
But when everyone disagrees with me, Bayesian logic tells me that I'm the only one who knows Bayesian logic and probably right.
If you go around saying the Holocaust didn't happen, people will tell you that you're wrong and will point to verifiable evidence in the historic record, and Holocaust denial is ten times as controversial as anything you'll read in Quillette.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Someone has to read it and respond to it, but I'm fine with being one of the 49.
* For the sake of illustration, I omit the fact that 1 or 2 of the 50 might promote your work.
P.S. This may read like I'm comparing Quillete to holocaust denial. This is not my intent.
Is there a reason people are talking about those things on Quillette?
So are internet comment sections. If you've seriously never seen anti-Semitic nonsense on the internet before, I'm going to assume you either never read the comments or are in a left-wing internet bubble (and, even then, you'll still likely run into a different style of anti-Semitic nonsense.)
A couple of commenters even went out of their way to write coherently-worded, but disgusting, multi-paragraph anti-semitic rants.
I've seen comments like that on Stormfront or, recently, the comments section on Fox News articles.
However the dozens of social media groups, mailing lists and forums I'm a member of don't seem to have a problem with anti-semitic conspiracy theories littering their pages. Most of them are academic, tech or humor related and are far from a 'left wing internet bubble' you want to pigeonhole me as being stuck in.
What is it about Quillette that attracts such anti-semitic commenters? Is it just something about the article?
[1] "A Closer Look at Anti-White Rhetoric" https://quillette.com/2018/08/17/a-closer-look-at-anti-white...
In theory, some good is done by having this discussion in broad daylight instead of on Gab, which might just be an echo chamber. In fact, when I see folks like that coming into a party on a Friday night, I head out -- because as one of these people who is getting uppity and above my station in life by doing things I'm not genetically supposed to be inclined to do, I've developed a little bit of sense about who to avoid if I don't want to get beat up, literally or metaphorically.
* https://quillette.com/2018/11/09/an-israeli-agent-on-campus/ * https://quillette.com/2018/10/28/fight-the-scourge-of-antise... * https://quillette.com/2018/03/15/alt-right-gets-wrong-jews/ * https://quillette.com/2016/04/28/labour-in-meltdown-but-what... * https://quillette.com/2018/04/03/labour-power-games-threaten... * https://quillette.com/2018/05/13/libel-jordan-peterson-forwa...
It’s disingenuous to tar one side for their comment threads while making excuses for political leaders on the left who condone and even court anti-Semitism, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Jesse Jackson, and Bill Clinton.
But there's anti-Semitism all over the quillette comment section.
Plenty of "human biodiversity" (neo-race science) nonsense like this floating around. The back half of the article amounts to the authors taking the premise that blacks are cognitively inferior to whites as a given, and then throwing up their hands and saying "Look, we examined the evidence, and the only explanation that makes sense is that they're genetically inferior!", complete with laments for poor social science researchers who have been unfairly persecuted for their objective, scientifically-minded investigations into the reasons why black people are just so damn stupid.
If you think few IQ points difference (whether it is or it is not so) is enough to denigrate the entire race as stupid or worthless, you are a part of the problem.
Hi dang, can we please get bans for people trying to mainstream racist pseudoscience on HN?
More importantly, as pointed out in an article by Kevin Mitchell [3], a professor of genetics and neuroscience in Dublin, we do not really know of any plausible mechanism by which such differences could have evolved. In the end, if you want to do science, you have to propose a theory by which an effect can be explained and then test that theory. What Murray & Co. have never done is to provide a testable theory that explains how cause and effect are supposed to be related.
[1] http://www.poverty.org.uk/low-income-and-ethnicity/
[2] http://www.unz.com/jthompson/intelligence-of-5-year-olds-in-... (not keen on citing James Thompson here, but I didn't find an open access source for the data)
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/may/02/why-gen...
> This constant churn of genetic variation works against any long-term rise or fall in intelligence.
How did humans evolve then?!
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To what extent do poor spending habits explain the persistence of the wealth gap? Economists at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania asked this question after analyzing 16 years of nationally representative data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Consistent with the Nielsen data, they found that blacks with comparable incomes to whites spent 17 percent less on education, and 32 percent more (an extra $2300 per year in 2005 dollars) on ‘visible goods’—defined as cars, jewelry, and clothes. What’s more, “after controlling for visible spending,” they concluded that the “wealth gap between Blacks and Whites, conditional on permanent income, declines by 50 percent.” To be clear, that 50 percent figure doesn’t pertain to the total wealth gap, but to the proportion of the gap that remains after income is taken into account—which was 40 percent. The upshot: the fact that blacks spent more on cars, jewelry, and clothes explained fully 20 percent of the total racial wealth gap.
[1] https://quillette.com/2018/07/19/black-american-culture-and-...
Here's a technique employed in this article and in many other Quillette articles: Person X said A and B; A is wrong because of [some citations], therefore B is wrong, and we conclude that C is completely wrong because science, QED. However, A is a peripheral argument while B is the central one, which in any event does not depend on A, and C is an argument which no one has made and is usually a gross straw-man generalization of B. Another technique, employed here and elsewhere, is: X said S; T is wrong because of [some citations]; but S rests on T therefore S is wrong because science, QED. But, of course, "science" does not show that S rests on T. Even if T => S, the conclusion that S rests on T (i.e. ~T => ~S, which is equivalent to S => T) is wrong. Yet another technique is: A => B according to [some citations] and C => D according to [some citations], therefore A => D because B => C, QED. But B => C is not established.
These are all things that give a cursory reader the illusion of rigor, as they may come to believe that if rigor is used anywhere in the argument, then the argument is rigorous (while, in fact, an argument is rigorous iff rigor is used everywhere). Of course, some of the texts Quillette's articles respond to are not rigorous either, but Quillette's core technique relies on the illusion of rigor, hence pseudoscience or scientism.
In short: There is an implication in the Coleman essay that African Americans have less wealth because they spend more.
Problem with that:
1. While black people spend more on these items than white people, white people spend correspondingly more on other luxury goods.
2. Quote: "[...] once income is controlled, if anything, black families actually have a slightly higher savings rate than their white counterparts. [...] If anything, it appears that blacks generally live more frugal lives than whites; a study conducted by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy using the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances found that, at comparable levels of income, whites spend 1.3 times more than blacks (Traub et al.)"
So, yeah, the entire argument depends on a cherry-picked metric (we're leaving aside the question to what extent cars and clothing are necessarily Veblen goods and to what extent differences in types of spending are the result of different social constraints and incentives [2]) that does not reflect actual spending and saving habits well.
What Quillette essentially is: a Gish Gallop [3] in webzine form. Debunking all this takes time and effort and few people have the spare time to keep up with their output, and even then the debunking is often not seen by the original readers.
[1] https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21121635...
[2] For example, the problem that it can be more important for a black person to appear well-dressed to compensate for racial bias than for a white person.
- "Black American Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap"
- "Cultural Appropriation Isn't Real"
- "Is It Wrong To Blame Islam?"
- "Why Women Don't Code"
- "How an Anonymous Accusation Derailed My Life"
None of these are even remotely taboo to a center-to-right-leaning audience. Hell, even liberal publications are perfectly willing to take on these topics; here's a New York Times article literally called "Three Cheers for Cultural Appropriation"! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/opinion/cultural-appropri...
There are people here in the Bay Area who would look at such topics, and will pattern-match anything which isn't the Far Left party line, and immediately try to tar you with the worst names they can think of. The mindlessness of it is indeed breathtaking. I can understand the motivation behind certain current memes.
I'm not making any claim about the people to whom you're referring. I'm just asserting that it's disingenuous to claim that the topics Quillette covers are "taboo", given the breadth and number of publications who promote the exact same viewpoints.
No disagreement. We should be living in an open society where even unpleasant questions can be asked. We shouldn't be living in a society where force and coercion is used against "wrongthinkers."
You could describe all the lies Trump tells and his employees and supporters defend against all evidence and logic as "PC", but no one does. Instead he attacks Climate Change or Free Trade or Ozone Protection as PC hoaxes. And notably Quillete avoid Trump despite several of their big name contributors being scathing about him in other venues.
I did a search on climate change, which is a reasonable bellwether for this kind of thing. I didn't find outright denial (which I guess I should celebrate, just like I celebrate the incoming head of the House Committee on Science not being a denier, even though it's the lowest of bars to meet) but I did find a rambling blog-like article about expertise that suggests we should believe climate change experts but also not do anything they recommend because they're not policy experts. And we should also believe a politician that says coal is good for humanity and believe coal experts that coal is better than renewables.
It was all a bit wishy-washy but clearly wishy-washy nonsense from within their own social conservative tribe is fine, despite their attempt to paint themselves as unbiased iconoclasts of exactly that kind of thing.
Politics is increasingly being wired up to tribal, emotional cues, where the first thing people do when confronting a new piece of information is establish which tribe it belongs to, so they can read it with the right frame of mind - confirmation bias both ways.
Precise writing backed by facts and some research is in short supply because it isn't as sticky and engaging, it doesn't get the blood flowing, whether it's raging one way or another.
An article challenging left orthodoxies is far more valuable when written from a rational standpoint than from an explicitly right-wing standpoint.
For example, I've never seen being against factory farming as a conservative platform.
https://quillette.com/2018/11/07/a-world-without-animal-farm...
When people reach the point that merely asking questions marks you as "the enemy," it's precisely those people who constitute the greatest danger. For one thing, it indicates that 1) they aren't interested in dissent, nuance, or their own fallibility and 2) they think they have enough power to behave in such an authoritarian fashion.
Also I agree with the OP: the vast majority of its takes wouldn’t be out of place in mainstream conservative political media, but they’re a bit more highbrow and less clickbaity, and have less of a “triggering the libs” vibe to have mainstream penetration.
(Disclaimer: I’m a lefty)
On Lehmann's personal politics, she says:
“I would identify with the left if they were a little more old-school in their advocacy for workers,”
“Sometimes there are misrepresentations, and people assume that my politics is far more right-wing than it actually is,” she says. “I think because I’m Australian, and I take so many things for granted like universal health care, access to abortion, and we don’t have guns everywhere.”
With the three academics who were behind the hoax articles in the feminist publications, Quillette had a three day heads up and played a much smaller role that she is implying in that article.
I also know someone that Claire contacted to write an article. After agreeing to write the article this person began to pen the article. Then, shortly they found out that two other people had been asked to Quillette to write the same article. Needless to say that didn't go over well, this person confronted Claire about it and decided to not continue with the article or to write for her.
It's a shame because while we really do need something that goes outside of the crazy mono-culture that tries to destroy all dissent, based on what I've seen Quillette, it runs the real risk of doing more harm than good for the cause.
Oh, it's a membership now? Where do you sign up?
> It's a shame because while we really do need something that goes outside of the crazy mono-culture that tries to destroy all dissent, based on what I've seen Quillette, it runs the real risk of doing more harm than good for the cause.
You draw that conclusion from the perception that Claire exaggerated something, that she commissioned an article from multiple sources and... the fact that an unspecified number of people had "run-ins" with her?
That's mono-think, dude.