Last year Quillette promoted a project in which three individuals of dubious intellectual worth, Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay hoaxed some low-subscription academic publications and declared it a victory against the academic left.
What goes around comes around, as they say.
Pinkerite was skeptical of "Archie Carter" from the jump.
What goes around comes around, as they say.
Construction worker and avowed Leninist Archie Carter has plenty of gripes with the Democratic Socialists of America, the left-wing group that’s enjoyed a new wave of popularity during the Trump era.
In an essay published Thursday on the conservative op-ed website Quillette, Carter declared that DSA had been overrun with overeducated, oversensitive college graduates, blinding itself to the true needs of the working class.
“DSA is doomed,” Carter wrote.
Carter’s piece seemed like exactly the kind of argument that’s turned Quillette, a self-described “platform for free thought,” into a hotbed for the right-wing online “Intellectual Dark Web” movement. Carter had impeccable blue-collar bona fides, with his Quillette bio describing him as a committed union member who’s always “watching the Mets blow a lead.”
But there’s one problem with Carter’s story: He doesn’t exist.
The Beast later on...
The hoaxer said he was inspired to trick Quillette by 2018’s “Sokal Squared” hoax, in which academics placed fake, obviously ridiculous research papers in journals in an attempt to prove that the humanities had been overrun by identity politics. The hoax had been well-received at Quillette, with Lehmann declaring that the Sokal Squared hoax was proof that the fooled academic disciplines aren’t legitimate fields.
There was of course great rejoicing in the world of Quillette critics after retraction.
