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Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page for anyone who really wants to know. I think NYT and other media are keeping him "anonymous" by way of asking. They could easily publish his name if they wanted. Unlike SSC, Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing along.

The only truly anonymous public figure I'm aware of is Satoshi Nakamoto and I'm pretty sure that the only reason he stayed anonymous is that he died before he could be definitively found out.

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> Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page

Maybe, but it's not confirmed.

"Banksy's name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy#Personal_life_and_dis...

> Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing along.

Genuinely curious of your basis for this. As far as I can tell SSC and most rationalist adjacents are basically neo-libs which the NYT has been a bastion of for decades.

> and most rationalist adjacents are basically neo-libs which the NYT has been a bastion of for decades.

That New York Times no longer exists and hasn't for well over a decade.

I do not follow. The paper seems to be basically the same as it has been for almost a century, an institution which essentially does the work of the news from the perspectives and prejudices of its North Eastern upper middle class constituency and which gives wide deference to institutions which it deems qualified such as the military, civil service and certain NGOs.

But I am open to the idea that my interpretation is missing something.

SSC has been critical of the way the news media works in the past. Just because they might fit in the same ideological bucket in your schema doesn't mean that the NYT would see SSC as a friend. I'm not saying that's why we're at this impasse, just that your argument is flawed.

I did not assert that the NYT and SSC should be friends because they have similar political alignment. Whether they are friends or not is irrelevant to my question. The OP indicated that the NYT might be more inclined towards the politics of Banksy than to the politics of SSC. I am simply asking the basis of that assertion. As a casual reader of both they appear pretty aligned with one another politically.

There are a multitude of reasons the NYT might be biased in favor of Banksy and against SSC. But so far as I can tell political alignment is probably not the issue. Though I could be wrong. That is why I asked for clarity.

If you weren't making an argument then I'm sorry for assuming you were.

I'd suggest that you are probably dismissing political alignment too quickly, however. Even if they seem similar to you, the difference might seem important to them. Late Roman Christians fought literal wars over the presence of a letter 'i' in a single word, denoting a difference that probably wouldn't seem all that important to someone who wasn't a Christian, for instance.

Precisely. I am curious as to what the proverbial 'i's might be in this case.

One belongs to the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912, and the other to 1897 [1].

It’s the narcissism of small differences, and the treatment of heretics versus pagans.

They- the NYT and SSC- do have, probably, 99% overlap politically, but that’s not too far off from the difference between humans and chimps either. It’s that last 1% that really generates a lot of friction between them.

As the article says, Scott would tolerate conversations with vile people and egregious ideas. The NYT would rather dox them.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio...

As a lapsed Baptist and former theology student this has been a favorite joke of mine for years. It has even been a great proverb for demonstrating to friends not familiar with church history the banal origins of the many schisms that has spanned the tree of Christianity. I had no idea it had such a recent or conspicuous origin. Thanks for sharing.

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