Quillette Face IDW Backlash For Critiquing Online Partisanship
By: Bailey, The Libtardtarian
Tags: Idw, Free Speech, Debate, Censorship, Politics

There’s trouble in centrist paradise as Quillette and The Rubin Report, two of the largest online platforms for reactionary politics, wage their own internalised culture war. Over the past few weeks, Quillette has faced the firing line of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), an emerging movement of seemingly marginalised moderates, after it posted three constructive articles criticising members for being bad faith actors with poorly caricatured arguments of the opposition and partisan loyalism to reactionary orthodoxy.

The IDW’s response only cemented these observations as proven reality.

In early April, the popular author and podcaster Sam Harris tweeted out a graph showcasing the IDW’s political positions, taking seven of the most prominent members — Harris, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and both Eric and Bret Weinstein — to compare each other on a select handful of issues on a liberal vs conservative spectrum. By these results, with exception to Shapiro, the group mostly frames itself as “a collection of disillusioned liberals looking for a place to have an honest conversation”, according to the graph’s author Daniel Miessler.

Miessler’s framing, however, was immediately called out by Uri Harris, a contributing journalist for Quillette, who stepped off the magazine’s obvious IDW-sychophant reservation by offering legitimate scepticism. “This is misleading,” Harris outright tweeted. “Just take a look at @RubinReport’s timeline; he relentlessly attacks Democrats, retweets Trump Jr., and hangs out with Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk. The proof is in the pudding. Some of the other people are debatable, but clearly, the chart is missing something.”

This ‘something’ is the comparison between belief and behaviour.

Generally, it makes sense that anyone on the political spectrum can show their thinking matches their own record. This is the case whether it’s leftists arguing for universal healthcare, conservatives arguing for border security or centrists flip-flopping across the aisle. For radical neo-conservatives like Shapiro, this standard holds when his social media, publications and events are overwhelmingly embraced by rightwing voices who endlessly push rightwing positions. It’s a simple matter of whether they’re both talking the talk and walking the walk.

The same can’t be said Rubin and Peterson, so-called “classical liberals”, who are so often embraced by the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens and Donald Trump Jr. through Turning Point USA, the Koch brothers through the IHS subsidiary Learn Liberty, the objectivist think-tank The Ayn Rand Institute and Dennis Prager’s own propaganda YouTube channel Prager University. It’s important to ask how can a liberal be embraced by conservatives by approval through their own standards?

The relationships aren’t exactly adversarial. Scan their Twitter feed or watch their interviews and the positions often taken by Rubin and Peterson are also those embraced by their opposition, from conservative victimhood culture perpetrated by big tech platforms, climate change scepticism, opposition to sexual liberties to attacks on centre-leftist politicians for civility. Sure, their disagreements on specific social issues are discussed, such as abortion and the death penalty, but how do these compare when they also claim there is a “much bigger threat to western civilisation” such as the “regressive left” and “social justice warriors”?

Harris asks is some “mass delusion”? Are liberals and conservatives suddenly singing kumbaya despite their disagreements to reach across-the-aisle? We’re hardly living in this bipartisan utopia if there’s also a divisive culture war over whether western civilisation and its institutions deserve to exist. Has society achieved peak civic harmony where the issues are discussed to find common ground? Or is it a simple case of building a reactionary alliance, joining forces with the enemy of your enemy in order to secure some united better tomorrow? Use Occam’s razor however you see fit.

“A significant selling-point for the IDW has been that it fosters both political bridge-building and across-the-aisle debate,” Harris writes. “If one accepts Miessler’s claim that issues such as abortion and gay marriage are the main points of contention between liberals and conservatives today, then it does indeed seem that this is what the IDW is doing. If, however, one accepts that the main point of contention between the left and right… is rather acceptance or rejection of the new left and its focus on identity and structural oppression (i.e., modern “social justice”), then it’s pretty clear that this is not what the IDW is doing… Either [Miessler]’s wrong about their positions on the most important political issues, or he’s wrong about which issues truly divide liberals and conservatives.”

These are important questions to bring into the so-called “marketplace of ideas”, the term coined by Rubin to describe when society allows bipartisan criticism to be freely exchanged across the political divide. If you’re genuinely committed to this concept, the marketplace should allow criticism from the leftist opposition and those giving their grievances a fair hearing. Harris even cites Ezra Klein, the editor-in-chief of Vox, who used the debunked study from Data & Society to explain how the IDW alliance developed based on reactionary principles and emerging political issues.

Thankfully, the modern political division isn’t based on the merits of slavery, segregation, women’s suffrage or ethno-theocratic rule. Klein explains were the fundamental issues solved decades past. Things change, certain labels are no longer fit for purpose and new divisions are formed as a result. “The coalition Rubin is a part of, is best understood as a reactionary movement because, well, that’s what it is — a movement united by opposition to changes it loathes… whether you support legal pot has nothing to do with it.” As we move into new definitions of what it means to be a leftist vs a rightist, the classic blue dog liberals like Rubin are left wondering why screaming old values isn’t enough to gain new-school liberal cred.

Instead of taking these criticisms of the IDW like an across-the-aisle good sport, Rubin shutdown the marketplace by demanding Harris and editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann apologise for “garbage pieces” used to smear his name as a political partisan. Lehmann, also considered a friend of Rubin’s and an IDW member, responded by saying his outcry to “mild, rational criticism” made him an overly sensitive “big baby”.

The full exchange can be found across Rubin’s own subreddit (which happens to post similar critiques). This sudden rift within the IDW caused Rubin to post an elongated counter-defence, which amounts to saying he’s debated the right on that select handful of issues, therefore, don’t criticise the alliance or whether there are true across-the-aisle debates. When there are many leftists requesting Rubin for debate — whether it’s Sam Seder of the Majority Report, Natalie Winn of ContraPoints, Oliver Thorn of Philosophy Tube or even Ana Kasparian of Rubin’s former network The Young Turks — the marketplace starts to stink of rotten gatekeeping and stale partisanship on his behalf.

Personally, I find this all quite ironic considering both Rubin and Lehmann have blocked my own personal Twitter account for criticising whether they actually commit to free speech principles (which are questions I consider answered). If there are people who are less qualified to lay claim to the free exchange of ideas and bipartisanship, these two names would make the list. That said, Lehmann’s publication took a brave stance by examining whether Rubin and company are the reactionary right excesses of modern politics.

The IDW can offer some of these diverse discussions, evidenced in Peterson’s recent exchanges with Slavoj Zizek on Marxism, Harris debating Klein, Peterson and TYT’s Cenk Uygur on identity politics and religion, and even Shapiro who’s somehow DESTROYED every leftist under the sun on any given issue anywhere. Whether in good faith or bad, these members adhere to some these principles more than a discussion dodger like Rubin. Is Quillette the only member to cut the fat of their movement? Or will colleagues and followers demand better of their own if there’s a genuine interest in the free exchange of ideas? The grift of striking down caricatured arguments about how “math is a patriarchial construct” and “all white people are racist” can only work for so long.

“The IDW needs to make a choice,” Harris concludes. “Does it want to be a partisan organisation, where its members get together in front of an audience to iron out their differences and strategise on how to defeat the new left, or does it want to be genuinely non-partisan? If the latter, it needs to open itself up to new left people and ideas. The new left isn’t going anywhere, and issues of identity, structural oppression, privilege, critiques of classical liberal notions of free speech and assembly, and similar topics will probably play an important role in the cultural and political discourse in the future. The question is whether the IDW will take a leading role in these discussions or will it allow itself to be pigeonholed?”

Thanks for reading! This article was originally published for TrigTent.com, a bipartisan media platform for political and social commentary, truly diverse viewpoints and facts that don’t kowtow to political correctness.

Bailey Steen is a journalist, graphic designer and film critic residing in the heart of Australia. You can also find his work right here on Medium and publications such as Janks Reviews.

For updates, feel free to follow @atheist_cvnt on his various social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Gab. You can also contact through bsteen85@gmail.com for personal or business reasons.

Stay honest and radical. Cheers, darlings. 💋