6 ms·

Why the Intellectual Dark Web Exists

39 points by rhapsodic 8y ago

rhapsodic 8y ago
This story resonated with me. I've been very dismayed by the direction political discourse has taken in the past few years. There is relatively little persuasion attempted. Instead, it's mostly personal attacks, shaming, namecalling, internet rage-mobbing and censorship.
- wilsonnb 8y ago
  It's not like these members of the inaccurately titled "Intellectual Dark Web" are actually interested in changing anyone's mind. The people on the left that they argue "refuse to acknowledge good-natured disagreement" also have no interest in this. They are both the evolution of the talking heads on cable news 24/7 and have a vested interest in controversy and uncompromising views so they can sell more books and podcasts. Each side feeds the other, victimizing themselves and vilifying the others to their base. 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.
  - rhapsodic 8y ago
    >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.
    - wilsonnb 8y ago
      The names of some of Ben Shapiros books are good evidence that he is a provocateur. 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/975941537619107840?lang=en 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.
  - cosmiccartel 8y ago
    > It's not like these members of the inaccurately titled "Intellectual Dark Web" are actually interested in changing anyone's mind. 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.
    - wilsonnb 8y ago
      I browse conservative forums regularly and the only former liberals I see are rather obviously so young that they only reason they were liberals before is because they hadn't given it much thought. The number of actual liberal to actual conservative conversions, and vice versa, is incredibly small. 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.
      - cosmiccartel 8y ago
        To your first point, all I can say is that I doubt it. I see a lot of moderate liberals becoming more conservative. It's anecdotal, of course, but it's everywhere. > 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.
        wilsonnb 8y ago
        You're right, radicalization isn't the right word. Indoctrination is a better word choice for how I feel about it.
    - ropeadopepope 8y ago
      > Peterson's book sales are skyrocketing, and not among convinced rightists. 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.
ropans808 8y ago
I listen to discussions on the "Intellectual Dark Web" regularly and am generally a big fan of the free flow of ideas - but this view of identity politics, as much as I try, I cannot get my head around. 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.
- atom-morgan 8y ago
  > Is it crazy that to respond, they respond as a group? 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.
  - untog 8y ago
    > Just look at any minority who doesn't buy into identity politics. They're labeled as traitors, haters of their own race 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".
    - atom-morgan 8y ago
mpweiher 8y ago
How did that go? "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.
njharman 8y ago
Boo, I assumed the IDW was going to be about people fighting for access to academic papers. I guess that would be ADW.
timdavila 8y ago
I read the article, but still confused as to what/where the IDW is.
- rhapsodic 8y ago
  > I read the article, but still confused as to what/where the IDW is. 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.
OmarIsmail 8y ago
Here's a fantastic article that covers the absurdity of the "Intellectual Dark Web". I highly recommend anybody that's interested in this topic to read it. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenced https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being...
- mpweiher 8y ago
  What an incredibly disingenuous/malicious hit piece, and proof of exactly what they are saying, because just about every MSM piece on any one of them is a hit piece. 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.
allemagne 8y ago
>The entire purpose of the exercise is to have honest conversations with people, and to not question their morality, or their wisdom just because they don't view the world exactly the same way that you do. 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.
- rhapsodic 8y ago
  >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. 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.
- otakucode 8y ago
  >Accusing somebody of refusing to have honest conversations and forcing their views on others is an accusation of immorality. 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.
micimize 8y ago
A bit of a sidebar, but it really bothers me that the term "Intellectual Dark Web" has stuck. It makes them sound like a group that includes Cody Wilson, Amir Taaki, and a league of pseudonymous thinkers, instead of podcast hosts and professors.
- rhapsodic 8y ago
  > A bit of a sidebar, but it really bothers me that the term "Intellectual Dark Web" has stuck. It makes them sound like a group that includes Cody Wilson, Amir Taaki, and a league of pseudonymous thinkers, instead of podcast hosts and professors. 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.
rhapsodic 8y ago
> [flagged] Why the Intellectual Dark Web Exists This is an example of censoring ideas and opinions, rather than refuting them with logic and reason. It basically illustrates the point of the article. If anyone wants this thread to continue much longer, they'd better click the vouch link.
- ropeadopepope 8y ago
  Not every political discussion belongs on HN. There are other, more appropriate venues on the internet for that.
  - rhapsodic 8y ago
    > Not every political discussion belongs on HN. There are other, more appropriate venues on the internet for that. Could you give me a rule of thumb to follow for determining whether or not a political discussion is appropriate for HN?
    - ropeadopepope 8y ago
      The community decides by flagging stories they think don't belong.
      - rhapsodic 8y ago
        >The community decides by flagging stories they think don't belong. 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.
        ropeadopepope 8y ago
        I don't think it's a secret that the majority of readers on HN are left wing. It does make me curious what a 'based HN' would look like.
krapp 8y ago
An "an agglomeration of thinkers from all sides of the political aisle" who eschew "identity politics" but somehow all agree that "many on the Left refuse to acknowledge good-natured disagreement; instead, all disagreement must be due to nefarious evil on the part of those who disagree." 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?
- cosmiccartel 8y ago
  In other words, several diverse groups of people, engaging in respectful disagreement, are complaining about another group for being disrespectful in its disagreement. It sounds like your Model-T reference is being applied in the wrong direction.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >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.
    - cosmiccartel 8y ago
      > 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.
      - krapp 8y ago

39 points by rhapsodic 8y ago

This story resonated with me. I've been very dismayed by the direction political discourse has taken in the past few years. There is relatively little persuasion attempted. Instead, it's mostly personal attacks, shaming, namecalling, internet rage-mobbing and censorship.

wilsonnb 8y ago
It's not like these members of the inaccurately titled "Intellectual Dark Web" are actually interested in changing anyone's mind. The people on the left that they argue "refuse to acknowledge good-natured disagreement" also have no interest in this. They are both the evolution of the talking heads on cable news 24/7 and have a vested interest in controversy and uncompromising views so they can sell more books and podcasts. Each side feeds the other, victimizing themselves and vilifying the others to their base. 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.
- rhapsodic 8y ago
  >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.
  - wilsonnb 8y ago
    The names of some of Ben Shapiros books are good evidence that he is a provocateur. 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/975941537619107840?lang=en 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.
- cosmiccartel 8y ago
  > It's not like these members of the inaccurately titled "Intellectual Dark Web" are actually interested in changing anyone's mind. 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.
  - wilsonnb 8y ago
    I browse conservative forums regularly and the only former liberals I see are rather obviously so young that they only reason they were liberals before is because they hadn't given it much thought. The number of actual liberal to actual conservative conversions, and vice versa, is incredibly small. 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.
    - cosmiccartel 8y ago
      To your first point, all I can say is that I doubt it. I see a lot of moderate liberals becoming more conservative. It's anecdotal, of course, but it's everywhere. > 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.
      - wilsonnb 8y ago
        You're right, radicalization isn't the right word. Indoctrination is a better word choice for how I feel about it.
  - ropeadopepope 8y ago
    > Peterson's book sales are skyrocketing, and not among convinced rightists. 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.

ropans808 8y ago

I listen to discussions on the "Intellectual Dark Web" regularly and am generally a big fan of the free flow of ideas - but this view of identity politics, as much as I try, I cannot get my head around. 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.

atom-morgan 8y ago
> Is it crazy that to respond, they respond as a group? 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.
- untog 8y ago
  > Just look at any minority who doesn't buy into identity politics. They're labeled as traitors, haters of their own race 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".
  - atom-morgan 8y ago

mpweiher 8y ago

How did that go? "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.

njharman 8y ago

Boo, I assumed the IDW was going to be about people fighting for access to academic papers. I guess that would be ADW.

timdavila 8y ago

I read the article, but still confused as to what/where the IDW is.

rhapsodic 8y ago
> I read the article, but still confused as to what/where the IDW is. 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.

OmarIsmail 8y ago

Here's a fantastic article that covers the absurdity of the "Intellectual Dark Web". I highly recommend anybody that's interested in this topic to read it. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenced https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being...

mpweiher 8y ago
What an incredibly disingenuous/malicious hit piece, and proof of exactly what they are saying, because just about every MSM piece on any one of them is a hit piece. 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.

allemagne 8y ago

>The entire purpose of the exercise is to have honest conversations with people, and to not question their morality, or their wisdom just because they don't view the world exactly the same way that you do. 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.

rhapsodic 8y ago
>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. 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.
otakucode 8y ago
>Accusing somebody of refusing to have honest conversations and forcing their views on others is an accusation of immorality. 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.

micimize 8y ago

A bit of a sidebar, but it really bothers me that the term "Intellectual Dark Web" has stuck. It makes them sound like a group that includes Cody Wilson, Amir Taaki, and a league of pseudonymous thinkers, instead of podcast hosts and professors.

rhapsodic 8y ago
> A bit of a sidebar, but it really bothers me that the term "Intellectual Dark Web" has stuck. It makes them sound like a group that includes Cody Wilson, Amir Taaki, and a league of pseudonymous thinkers, instead of podcast hosts and professors. 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.

rhapsodic 8y ago

> [flagged] Why the Intellectual Dark Web Exists This is an example of censoring ideas and opinions, rather than refuting them with logic and reason. It basically illustrates the point of the article. If anyone wants this thread to continue much longer, they'd better click the vouch link.

ropeadopepope 8y ago
Not every political discussion belongs on HN. There are other, more appropriate venues on the internet for that.
- rhapsodic 8y ago
  > Not every political discussion belongs on HN. There are other, more appropriate venues on the internet for that. Could you give me a rule of thumb to follow for determining whether or not a political discussion is appropriate for HN?
  - ropeadopepope 8y ago
    The community decides by flagging stories they think don't belong.
    - rhapsodic 8y ago
      >The community decides by flagging stories they think don't belong. 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.
      - ropeadopepope 8y ago
        I don't think it's a secret that the majority of readers on HN are left wing. It does make me curious what a 'based HN' would look like.

krapp 8y ago

An "an agglomeration of thinkers from all sides of the political aisle" who eschew "identity politics" but somehow all agree that "many on the Left refuse to acknowledge good-natured disagreement; instead, all disagreement must be due to nefarious evil on the part of those who disagree." 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?

cosmiccartel 8y ago
In other words, several diverse groups of people, engaging in respectful disagreement, are complaining about another group for being disrespectful in its disagreement. It sounds like your Model-T reference is being applied in the wrong direction.
- krapp 8y ago
  >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.
  - cosmiccartel 8y ago
    > 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.
    - krapp 8y ago