Elon Musk's Hitler Problem

 Another great one from Some More News. Also mentioned in this video: Jordan Peterson and Andy Ngo.

Jordan Peterson and Steve Sailer and Some More News - and Steven Pinker and the right-wing Harvard coup

I've provided a link to this excellent Some More News video about crackpot Jordan Peterson previously, but I hadn't watched it all the way through until yesterday. In my defense it is a really long video, which Cody lampshades several times throughout.

So I hadn't realized that racist filth Steve Sailer got a shout-out in the video. Jordan Peterson tweeted an article by Sailer that distorted the findings of a study about diversity. Some More News points out, accurately, that Sailer is a white supremacist.

The video also mentions Stefan Molyneux, Bari Weiss, Linda Gottfredson and Andy Ngo. 

Remember, billionaire techno-fascist Marc Andreessen admires Peterson.

Now Steven Pinker's alliance with Steve Sailer - from using him as his data guy to including a piece of crap that Sailer wrote in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing" - is a prime reason for the existence of this blog. I am motivated to point out that while Pinker was playing a mild-mannered liberal college professor, an image aided and abetted by a compliant, lazy, stupid media, he has a history of over twenty years of promoting white supremacists and racists.

And Pinker has not only never denounced Steve Sailer and has never expressed regret for promoting his career, Steven Pinker is now chummy with Richard Hanania, yet another white supremacist.

Here is Steven Pinker's only subscription on Twitter - to Richard Hanania.

And now Pinker has teamed up with Christopher Rufo, Bari Weiss and all the IDW/Quillette/right-wing, plutocrat-funded ghouls and the GOP in the GOP war on colleges, starting with destroying Harvard's first Black woman president, Claudine Gay.

In the New York Times, Gay rightly notes this is not only about her, it's a campaign to "unravel public faith in pillars of American society."

On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.

My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.

As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

Pinker & friends claim to be so concerned about anti-Semitism, yet I haven't heard a peep out of them about the fact that Substack promotes Nazis. Maybe because some of those Nazis are their friends.

UPDATE: Pinker makes it clear he and his rightwing ghoul mob are gunning for all American education institutions:

Pinker has proposed adopting a clear policy on academic freedom, promoting a wide range of viewpoints and embracing institutional neutrality by avoiding pronouncements on events of the day.

"It’s not just about Harvard, but about higher education and institutions in general,” Pinker said.

YouTube vs Andy Ngo

I've written about sleazy far-right "journalist" Andy Ngo many times on this blog, from his connection to Free Speech Grifters and Quillette to his connection via his sleazy lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon to Trump's ratfucking campaign - which of course culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Ngo was very sympathetic to the insurrectionists. 

But it was still good to see "Some More News" provide the video evidence of Ngo's friendly relationship with fascists and hear him do his fake British accent. Superb.

But wait, there's more!

Andy Ngo: The Next Generation of News Grifter | BEHIND THE BASTARDS.

The "Behind the Bastards" guy knows Cody Johnston from "Some More News" - they did a podcast together about Jordan Peterson. 

This is great and mentions Ngo's pioneering of stochastic terrorism (after Gamergate which was promoted by Ngo's pal Christina Hoff Sommers.)

Not so fast, Quillette

 Quillette was seen today in that cesspool T itter, trying to whitewash its reputation, in spite of its far-right positions and its support for race pseudoscience, via ChatGPT.

So I went over to ChatGPT and had a little talk with it and by the end we agreed:

Yes indeed, ChatGPT, since Quillette does publish articles that promote race pseudoscience and since Quillette employs individuals who promote race pseudoscience, this raises questions about the publication's values and standards.

And yes, any claims or ideas that promote race pseudoscience should be challenged and debunked with evidence and reason. I will continue to do that. Thank you for your support.

As far as I can tell, the current Quillette Editorial Board is Jon Kay, Jamie Palmer, Claire Lehmann and Bo Winegard.

As I told ChatGPT, Bo Winegard is a notorious promoter of race pseudoscience and even a neo-Nazi, and I have been compiling evidence about Winegard for years.

Jon Kay has been associated with sleazy Quillette for years and is a huge hypocrite, moaning about a writer being "mobbed" then going on to participate in the exact same kind of behavior a couple of years later, as I documented here. Aided by Trump's vicious little rat-fucker Andy Ngo.

Jamie Palmer was the Quillette editor who was duped by the Archie Carter hoax. There's no such thing as shame at Quillette. Or standards. But then, Palmer apparently goes back to the earliest days of Quillette, which is maybe why he can only fail up. 

Claire Lehmann is an execrable human being, the founder of race pseudoscience-promoting Quillette and probably took money from nutty Peter Thiel to do it. She's a long-time supporter of Winegard, attacking me for daring to discuss Winegard's love of "human biodiversity" theories, and made an international name for herself as a racist idiot a couple of years ago.

Speaking of Peter Thiel, I couldn't help asking ChatGPT about the Thiel-Quillette connection.

Lehmann denied that Thiel funded Quillette. But clearly "Quillette" puts a lot of faith in ChatGPT - which is not known for its factual reliability.

I 💗 Some More News

I recently discovered Some More News, hosted by Cody Johnston and it's taken me too long to do it - these guys have discussed many of the members of the Intellectual Dark Web and its most powerful funders and supporters:

Peter Thiel And His Dorky Little Goons

A Brief Look at Jordan Peterson

The Talented Mr. Musk Part 1: Free Speech

The Talented Mr. Musk, Part 2: The Elon Files

Elon Musk is Not Your Friend

Musk's War on Journalism, Unions, and Safety & MORE (This is from 4 years ago!)

Elon Musk "Versus" Twitter

Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything

Candace Owens, Congress, and How They Helped Each Other Lie

What and Why is "Cancel Culture"? - mentions Andy Ngo, Bill Maher and Bari Weiss

Cancel Culture Isn't a Thing, You Snowflakes

The GOP Sure Hates Queer People - mentions Libs of TikTok

Why is Critical Race Theory?

And How To Pretend Systemic Racism Doesn't Exist 

So I became a Patreon supporter of their project.

That sleazy Harper's Letter, almost three years later, let's review

Basically, anywhere there is an obscenely wealthy plutocrat funding right-wing/Libertarian political causes, there you will likely find Bari Weiss

How bad was the infamous Harper's Letter?

Consider first, that it was created by Thomas Chatterton Williams who, I don't believe coincidentally, was put on wingnut welfare via the Koch-funded AEI a few months later.

I once admired Williams, but by the time of his embarrassing chateau incident (he declared on Twitter that he kicked a friend out of his home in France for criticizing Bari Weiss) I had realized he was in deep with the right-wing Libertarian ghouls in and around the Intellectual Dark Web. 

That was bad enough, and then the New Yorker's Ian Chotiner interviewed Williams and revealed what an extreme intellectual lightweight he is. 

Williams' friendship with Bari Weiss is key. She is a central figure in the Intellectual Dark Web, a member of the far-right leaning FAIR, an organization based on the cynical, sleazy right-wing campaign against "critical race theory" and more recently a supporter and defender of far-right homophobic treasonous, stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, funded by Babylon Bee's Seth Dillon, while aiding and abetting far-right goon Elon Musk.

Here is Weiss in June 2020, promoting her people: Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill); another Koch employee Kmele Foster (@kmele) a devotee of Ayn Rand; stochastic terrorist James Lindsay (@ConceptualJames), a Trump supporter and partner of far-right religious extremist Michael O'Fallon, Lindsay was banned from the old Twitter for being a neo-Nazi; and IDW founder and crackpot Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein), employee of scary weirdo Peter Thiel. 

Basically, anywhere there is an obscenely wealthy plutocrat funding right-wing/Libertarian political causes, there you will likely find Bari Weiss.

At the time of the Harper's Letter, Tom Scocca in Slate discussed how sleazy the stunt was:

What were the Harper’s signatories trying to accomplish? For a document announcing an emergency, their letter (addressed, as the writer Luppe Luppen pointed out, to no one) was studiously vague about exactly what it meant to warn the reader against. It presented a nonspecific and mostly pluralized litany of complaints:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.

At least one item—”a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed study”—did seem to have an identifiable antecedent: David Shor, a researcher at the consulting company Civis Analytics, tweeted out a study concluding that voter backlash against violent protest in 1968 had tipped the presidential election to Richard Nixon and was fired after people denounced the tweet. There seems to be fairly broad agreement, among people who would even know about this incident, that Civis was wrong to fire him, and the incident does look like a classic example of a company sacrificing an innocent for “panicked damage control.” But this pattern of targeted pressure and overreaction is not a new crisis. It has been established for years by now, in right-wing and left-wing outrage campaigns alike, and the fault lies with the institutions that still haven’t figured out how it works, not with the generalized, newly ascendant cultural revolution that the Harper’s letter or Trump wishes to raise the alarm about.   

Yet, rather than defending Shor and criticizing Civis by name, the letter anonymized his case and stuck it next to a complaint about powerful people losing their jobs “for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes”—a rickety construction that leaves the reader wondering if it’s supposed to cover the times that aren’t just clumsy mistakes, or how one is to decide which mistakes are more than just clumsy. Also, which “journalists are barred from writing on certain topics”? In June, two Black journalists were prohibited from covering the Black Lives Matter protests by the owner of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but the letter admonishes the reader that “resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion,” while the Post-Gazette is in the hands of a passionate Trumpist.

But it wasn't only sleazy in its hypocrisy, but also in the sense of using phony bipartisanship, a favorite Koch tactic, by recruiting well-known people on the left who should have known better: Katha Pollitt, Dahlia Lithwick, Jeet Heer and Gloria Steinem.

Here is a list of all the signers of the Harper's letter: the Quillette contributors, the transphobes, right-wingers, Koch employees and the feckless dummies of the center and left.

1. Elliot Ackerman |  journalist
2. Saladin Ambar |  academic
3. Martin Amis | Islamophobe novelist
4. Anne Applebaum | journalist and defender of Roman Polanski
5. Marie Arana | author
6. Margaret Atwood | sort-of-feminist novelist
7. John Banville | author
8. Mia Bay | historian
9. Louis Begley | novelist
10. Roger Berkowitz | Bard College and author at right-wing racist Quillette
11. Paul Berman, writer | author at Quillette
12. Sheri Berman | Barnard College
13. Reginald Dwayne Betts | poet
14. Neil Blair | agent of transphobic J.K. Rowling
15. David W. Blight | Yale University historian - should have known better
16. Jennifer Finney Boylan | transgender author - rescinded signature (although it's still listed at Harpers) when she realized what this stunt was really about, when she saw that J.K. Rowling had signed it. More recently she wrote a piece about Rowling.
17. David Bromwich | Yale University
18. David Brooks | annoying center-right columnist
19. Ian Buruma  | Bard College
20. Lea Carpenter | writer
21. Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus) - should have known better
22. Nicholas A. Christakis | Yale University, right-wing, defender of Razib Khan
23. Roger Cohen | center-right journalist
24. Ambassador Frances D. Cook | career politician
25. Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project | should have known better
26. Kamel Daoud | journalist
27. Meghan Daum, writer | former liberal, current member of the IDW/Quillette gang
28. Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis | should have known better
29. Jeffrey Eugenides | writer
30. Dexter Filkins | journalist
31. Federico Finchelstein | The New School
32. Caitlin Flanagan | anti-feminist
33. Richard T. Ford | Stanford Law School
34. Kmele Foster - Koch employee, Ayn Rand fan, promoted by Bari Weiss
35. David Frum | former Bush speechwriter
36. Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University | Quillette author, Reason Magazine contributor
37. Atul Gawande | Harvard University, Biden administration
38. Todd Gitlin | Columbia University
39. Kim Ghattas | journalist
40. Malcolm Gladwell | Koch funded-Reason Magazine contributor
41. Michelle Goldberg, columnist - should have known better
42. Rebecca Goldstein | married to Steven Pinker
43. Anthony Grafton | Princeton University
44. David Greenberg | Rutgers University
45. Linda Greenhouse - should have known better
46. Rinne B. Groff | playwright
47. Sarah Haider | Quillette cause
48. Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern - long-time promoter of race pseudoscience
49. Roya Hakakian | writer
50. Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution
51. Jeet Heer, The Nation - should have known better
52. Katie Herzog, podcast host |  defender of Andy Ngo, fan of Quillette, Reason Magazine
53. Susannah Heschel | Dartmouth College
54. Adam Hochschild | author
55. Arlie Russell Hochschild | author
56. Eva Hoffman | writer
57. Coleman Hughes | writer for (Koch-funded) Manhattan Institute, author at Quillette
58. Hussein Ibish | Arab Gulf States Institute
59. Michael Ignatieff | politician
60. Zaid Jilani, journalist | member of the IDW/Quillette gang including FAIRforall, Quillette author
61. Bill T. Jones | New York Live Arts
62. Wendy Kaminer | advisory council member of Koch-funded FIRE, Reason Magazine contributor
63. Matthew Karp, Princeton University | far-left
64. Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative | the chess guy
65. Daniel Kehlmann  | writer
66. Randall Kennedy | law professor
67. Khaled Khalifa | writer
68. Parag Khanna | author
69. Laura Kipnis | Northwestern University, Reason Magazine contributor
70. Frances Kissling | Catholics for a Free Choice
71. Enrique Krauze | historian
72. Anthony Kronman | Yale University
73. Joy Ladin | Yeshiva University
74. Nicholas Lemann | Columbia University
75. Mark Lilla | Columbia University
76. Susie Linfield | New York University
77. Damon Linker | works for Libertarian Niskanen center, dictator appeaser
78. Dahlia Lithwick, Slate - should have known better
79. Steven Lukes | New York University
80. John R. MacArthur | Harper's publisher
81. Susan Madrak | writer - should have known better
82. Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer for right-wing Unheard, friend of Quillette
83. Greil Marcus | music journalist
84. Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center - should have known better
85. Kati Marton | author
86. Debra Mashek worked for DonorsTrust -funded Heterodox Academy
87. Deirdre McCloskey | Libertarian, Reason Magazine contributor
88. John McWhorter | Reason Magazine contributor
89. Uday Mehta | City University of New York
90. Andrew Moravcsik | Princeton University
91. Yascha Mounk |  Persuasion - appears to be another media outlet for the IDW, with several Harper's Letter signers including McWhorter, Yoffe, Haidt and Pinker.
92. Samuel Moyn | Yale University
93. Meera Nanda | writer and teacher
94. Cary Nelson | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
95. Olivia Nuzzi | New York Magazine
96. Mark Oppenheimer | Yale University
97. Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer - should have known better
98. George Packer | writer
99. Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita) - should have known better
100. Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – should have known better
101. Orlando Patterson | Harvard University
102. Steven Pinker - ugh
103. Letty Cottin Pogrebin - should have known better
104. Katha Pollitt, writer - should have known better
105. Claire Bond Potter, The New School - should have known better
106. Taufiq Rahim | New America
107. Zia Haider Rahman | writer
108. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen | University of Wisconsin
109. Jonathan Rauch | Brookings Institution/The Atlantic, Reason Magazine contributor, Quillette contributor
110. Neil Roberts | political theorist
111. Melvin Rogers | Brown University
112. Kat Rosenfield | Reason Magazine contributor
113. Loretta J. Ross | Smith College
114. J.K. Rowling | children's book author, infamous transphobe
115. Salman Rushdie, New York University
116. Karim Sadjadpour | Carnegie Endowment
117. Daryl Michael Scott | Howard University
118. Diana Senechal | teacher and writer
119. Jennifer Senior | columnist
120. Judith Shulevitz | writer
121. Jesse Singal, journalist | infamous transphobe, Reason Magazine contributor
122. Anne-Marie Slaughter | lawyer
123. Andrew Solomon | writer
124. Deborah Solomon | critic and biographer
125. Allison Stanger, Middlebury College | became a political cause of the race pseudoscience right for her support for infamous race pseudoscience racist Charles Murray
126. Paul Starr | American Prospect/Princeton University
127. Wendell Steavenson | writer
128. Gloria Steinem - should have known better
129. Nadine Strossen | defender of race pseudoscience, Reason Magazine contributor
130. Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., | Harvard Law School
131. Kian Tajbakhsh | Columbia University
132. Zephyr Teachout | Fordham University
133. Cynthia Tucker | University of South Alabama
134. Adaner Usmani | Harvard University
135. Chloe Valdary - part of the Quillette/IDW world
136. Helen Vendler | Harvard University
137. Judy B. Walzer | academic
138. Michael Walzer | academic
139. Eric K. Washington | historian
140. Caroline Weber | historian
141. Randi Weingarten | American Federation of Teachers
142. Bari Weiss - I would bet she was one of the instigators of this stunt
143. Cornel West | public intellectual
144. Sean Wilentz | Princeton University
145. Garry Wills | historian
146. Thomas Chatterton Williams | Koch employee, creator of the Harper's Letter stunt
147. Robert F. Worth | journalist and author
148. Molly Worthen | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
149. Matthew Yglesias | political operative at Libertarian think tank, friend of Razib Khan
150. Emily Yoffe, journalist | right-leaning "cancel culture" hysteric, Reason Magazine contributor
151. Cathy Young, journalist | Koch-funded career, pioneer of stochastic terrorism IMO
152. Fareed Zakaria | political commentator

Elon Musk is a stochastic terrorist

KRIS GOLDSMITH

Per CNN:

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.

Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. On Monday, Weiss posted a series of screenshots purported to show internal Twitter documents where Roth and others discussed whether to ban Trump’s account, with some employees questioning if the former president’s tweets violated the platform’s policies.

While Musk had initially been publicly supportive of Roth, that soon changed after he left the company.

Roth has since been the subject of criticism and threats following the release of the Twitter Files. However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia — a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online.

A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory. 

This is the second time Musk has falsely accused someone of pedophilia. It's insane he didn't lose the first case. Clearly he has no qualms about using false accusations to smear people. He needs to be sued into bankruptcy.

The American far-right loves stochastic terrorism. And by far-right I am very much including the Intellectual Dark Web. 

Elon Musk is clearly a member in good standing of that crowd of ghouls. 

It's curious, that the far-right and the Intellectual Dark Web pretend to hate pedophilia when, as I have documented, they love blatant pro-pedophilia Camille Paglia.

Although for the last four years, this blog has focused on criticizing the race pseudoscience promoted by the Intellectual Dark Web, which has been aided and abetted by mainstream "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker, I have also ended up writing about the various stochastic terrorism projects connected to members of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• Maybe one of the earliest examples of social media-delivered stochastic terrorism was Gamergate, in 2014, with its connection to three members of the Intellectual Dark Web: named members Christina Hoff Sommers and Milos Yiannopoulus, and Cathy Young. The guy who attacked Paul Pelosi was a fan of Gamergate.

• Pizzagate in 2016 promoted by Mike Cernovich, a named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• The entire career of former Quillette staff member Andy Ngo, who lent his free speech grift to the Trump campaign, which hoped to use ANTIFA-panic as an excuse to declare martial law.

Oh how the Intellectual Dark Web loved Andy Ngo. Sommers calls for backup from members and fans of the IDW in this tweet.

• The career of James Lindsay, a beloved "intellectual" of the Intellectual Dark Web and influencer of the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi. Bari Weiss was a big fan of "Conceptual James."

I recently wrote about Libs of TikTok, the account created by self-proclaimed stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik. LOTT is funded by Seth Dillon. LOTT is defended by Bari Weiss. 

Is there any stochastic terrorist who Bari Weiss DOES NOT LOVE?

Libs of TikTok goes far beyond expressing political opinions about transgender issues. That would certainly be allowed under Twitter’s policies, which exist to curb harassment, violence, and hate speech, not opinions. In fact, Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism. Those targeted include doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for youth, teachers and schools with inclusive policies, and all-ages or youth-focused drag events.

"The Twitter Files" is Musk selectively releasing email exchanges in the hopes it will make old Twitter look bad. Musk has asked right-wingers Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss to help him.

When her access was granted, Bari Weiss tried to show that Libs of TikTok was treated unfairly. As Kevin Drum writes:

...Bari Weiss, a writer whose primary motivation in life seems to be her deep resentment of liberals, is the author of Part 2, and she provides the names of three political actors who were de-amplified:¹ 

• Charlie Kirk
• Dan Bongino
• Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)

And that's it. Weiss doesn't explain why she picked these three to highlight. She doesn't say why these three were de-amplified. Nor does she say if she also knows of any liberals who were de-amplified. And even though Musk has given her access to anything she wants to see, she provides no statistics about how many people were de-amplified; the reasons they were de-amplified; how long they were de-amplified; or anything else. She just provides three hand-picked names and that's the end of it.

Charlie Kirk is another named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Apparently Weiss failed to show Libs of TikTok was discriminated against, and in fact revealed it was given special consideration. 

The American far-right tries to discredit the concept of "stochastic terrorism" - at least as applied to its members, as seen recently in a piece by Koch employee and all-around soulless political operative Christopher Rufo a friend of James Lindsay and member of the IDW-loaded FAIRforall board of advisers. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger are, of course, also advisors of that organization.

But I'll end this post on a high note:

Elon Musk HUMILIATED When Crowd Turns On Him And Dave Chappelle

and:

Musk, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla, joined Chappelle onstage Sunday night at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where Chris Rock was also headlining. 

“It was more boos than I’d ever heard,” an attendee, Jason, said in a direct message. “Sustained jeering.” 

Two audience members said they booed Musk because of the widespread firings and layoffs at Twitter. A third person said he booed Musk because of his political agenda — before the midterm elections, Musk urged followers to vote for Republicans. The three people shared screenshots of their tickets to the show with NBC News and spoke on the condition that only their first names be used to protect their privacy and to avoid backlash from Musk’s fans.

Both cheers and boos can be heard in videos of the event, which were viewed millions of times on social media Monday. Later on Twitter, Musk attributed the mixed reception to his recent embrace of conservative politics.

“Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” Musk tweeted. 

He added, “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”

All three audience members said that Musk’s tweet was inaccurate and that the booing drowned out the cheering.

The incident and the audience members’ explanations represent a shifting tide for Musk, who has reached a new level of notoriety since he took over Twitter while vocally supporting conservative causes.

Christina Hoff Sommers, Cathy Young and the would-be assassin of Nancy Pelosi

Cathy Young was such a big
booster of Gamergate, she
became a Gamergate meme

 I discussed the influence that James Lindsay had on the would-be assassin of Nancy Pelosi.

Well today the NYTimes reports that the would-be assassin was also influenced by Gamergate - and Christina Hoff Sommers and Cathy Young were the two biggest cheerleaders of Gamergate:

According to his blog posts, the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate, which began in 2014 as a backlash against female critics of the gaming industry and included misogynistic attacks and death threats, became a catalyst of his growing interest in right-wing conspiracy theories and the many rants against women that he posted on his blog.

“How did I get into all this,” he wrote in one passage. “Gamer Gate it was gamer gate.” He described Gamergate as a “consumer led revolt against communism,” and railed against “wokism” and feminism — complaints that appeared to be precursors to his later embrace of the most virulent and bigoted of online conspiracy theories. It all came in an era in which such theories have spread among wider groups of Americans and have been promoted by far-right leaders.

Sommers and Young are paid by right-wing plutocrats, especially Charles Koch, to promote misogyny and Gamergate was a misogyny goldmine:

Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist cultural critic, has for months received death and rape threats from opponents of her recent work challenging the stereotypes of women in video games. Bomb threats for her public talks are now routine. One detractor created a game in which players can click their mouse to punch an image of her face.

Not until Tuesday, though, did Ms. Sarkeesian feel compelled to cancel a speech, planned at Utah State University. The day before, members of the university administration received an email warning that a shooting massacre would be carried out at the event. And under Utah law, she was told, the campus police could not prevent people with weapons from entering her talk.

Cathy Young had an obsessive hatred for Anita Sarkeesian, because Young did not agree with Sarkeesian's commentary shared online via the Youtube channel Feminist Frequency.

Not only did Young hate young feminists like Sarkeesian, she did her best to lionize stalker sociopath Eron Gjoni, celebrating the anniversary of his public letter attacking Zoe Quinn, which kicked off Gamergate.

Young was still attacking Quinn in 2019, in this case using the right-wing extremist garbage rag The Post Millennial (currently edited by Trump's ratfucker Andy Ngo) as her source.

Christina Hoff Sommers did her part in promoting the misogynist shitstorm that was Gamergate. Here she can be seen in 2016, via her employer, the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute, defending Gamergate along with Camille Paglia, a defender of pedophilia.

Let me be clear - although I think Young and Sommers are prominent supporters of hate campaigns like Gamergate because they are paid by the likes of Koch to do so, I also think they enjoy their work because both of them - along with Paglia and Quillette founder Claire Lehmann are, by character, deeply misogynist.

These are horrible people. It should be no surprise that their hate campaign inspired nut jobs like the would-be assassin.

Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists

Peter Thiel was credibly accused of funding right-wing, race pseudoscience-loving Quillette in a book about him, published last year.

Well there's no doubt now that Peter Thiel is a leading promoter of race pseudoscience. This November there will be an "invitation-only" (i. e. safe space) "Academic Freedom Conference" probably funded directly or indirectly by Thiel, at Thiel's alma mater, Stanford University. Thiel will be the keynote speaker.

It is a far-right-leaning and motley collection of some of the biggest supporters of sociobiological racism, not to mention a blatant public racist, Amy Wax.

Considering the speakers line-up and Thiel's status as a Republican donor, this is going to be the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for racists. 

Apparently there was a version in the UK last year: PETER THIEL’S Free Speech for Race Science Crusade at Cambridge University REVEALED:

The parallels between Peter Thiel’s campaigning in the US and UK are revealing: Thiel’s chief of staff was involved in building up the UK ‘free speech’ network exactly while Thiel himself was ingratiating himself with the Trump administration and its white nationalist supporters.

This appears to suggest that the network’s ‘free speech’ agenda may be little more than a cover for deeper, partisan, anti-liberal political concerns. It is also consistent with Thiel’s broader interests in the US. While the context behind the Thiel connection to the Cambridge network is shrouded in mystery, the US equivalent is not.

Thiel has invested millions of dollars in support of Senate candidates campaigning on a free speech ticket. J D Vance, who reportedly received $10 million from Thiel to support his campaign, recently told a conference of the National Conservative movement that “professors are the enemy”, citing Richard Nixon. Vance has also promoted the racist Great Replacement theory which baselessly posits that white populations are being ‘replaced’ by people of colour due to immigration and integration. Another colleague of Thiel, Blake Masters, is running for the Senate in Arizona with, it is claimed, another $10 million from Thiel. His campaign is premised on the discredited conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 elections.

With Peter Thiel’s surrogates extending their influence in the UK through the fulcrum of Cambridge University, it seems that an alarming agenda is being smuggled in under cover of defending ‘free speech’.

Thiel has a long history of aligning with white supremacists.

My guess is that the general theme of Stanford's Thiel-a-thon will be the academic freedom to be a racist through taking money from Peter Thiel and Charles Koch.

This is not a comprehensive list of all the speakers, just the ones I am already at least somewhat familiar with:

Jonathan Haidt - long-time promoter of race pseudoscience,  including supporting the crackpot NHAI hypothesis, who doesn't understand what the term "heritability" means although he's sure those dastardly leftists are denying it. Like many promoters of race pseudoscience, Haidt likes to make predictions for the Triumph of Racist Claims:

I believe that the "Bell Curve" wars of the 1990s, over race differences in intelligence, will seem genteel and short-lived compared to the coming arguments over ethnic differences in moralized traits. I predict that this "war" will break out between 2012 and 2017.

Anna Krylov - who first offered a master class in how to invent panic about "cancellation" based on a badly curated collection of anecdotes including from Soviet Russia and the Catholic Church in the 17th century, combined with hysteria over renaming science prizes and existential anguish over the wording in advertisements. She then found her true home - right-wing racist Thiel-funded Quillette - where she admitted she was not cancelled for writing her seriously bullshit article about cancellation.

Jerry Coyne is not only Steven Pinker's #1 fanboy (you can witness him kvelling over Pinker's cowboy boots here if you have a strong stomach) he's an anti-Muslim bigot & misogynist and a huge fan of racists - like E. O. Wilson - and race pseudoscience.

Fun fact: I just discovered today that two of Coyne's anonymous cowardly followers attacked me on his blog, the first informing him of this blog's existence. Of course Coyne knows about this blog - it's critical of Coyne's bigotry and support for race pseudoscience, which is why Coyne won't let me write in the comments section of his blog posts (for example to defend myself) and why he blocks me on Twitter. Like all race pseudoscience promoters, Coyne prefers to remain inside the racist echo-chamber safe space and avoid all contrary opinions while, without any self-awareness or shame, accusing others of cowardice.

The post in question is Coyne's support for racist Emily Willoughby - like Steven Pinker, it seems that Coyne has never met a racist he didn't like. Naturally Coyne doesn't mention, while weeping over the "demonization" of the poor lil "behaviour geneticist," that she is currently on the board of the International Society for Intelligence Research, known for the many hard-core racists associated with it. Although to be fair, even racists have some standards and uninvited "weird paedophilia apologist" Emil O. W. Kirkegaard from this year's racist roundup.

And as if Coyne's odious "science" views aren't bad enough, he has a repulsive cranky-old-man persona on his blog, whining about new-fangled expressions of the kids these days like "tone-deaf" and "gig-workers."

Richard Lowery (not to be confused with right-wing Richard Lowry) can be found speaking to race pseudoscience-promoter Steve Hsu here promoting the GOP's favorite culture war talking points about "critical race theory."

Lee Jussim, Rutgers University psychologist and author at racist Quillette is a long-time hater of Pinkerite. I still can't figure out what the point of Jussim's career is besides being a supporter of race pseudoscience and muttering over and over "stereotypes are real."

Niall Ferguson is living proof that being a major creep will not get you kicked out of the right-wing plutocrat-supported wingnut welfare system. Ferguson is on the Hoover payroll and likes to spend his time plotting to destroy left-leaning college students. He's also married to IDW named member Ayaan Hirsi Ali and a fan of Trump's ratfucker Andy Ngo.

Tyler Cowen is a dedicated Koch-man. But just because he takes money from Koch doesn't mean he can't also take money from Peter Thiel.

Gad Saad is a right-wing clown who does oafish "satire" like this:

“Our African ancestors were the first to engage in breathing,” he muses on the topic of one of his recent online broadcasts. “By that logic I think by breathing today, we are engaging in cultural appropriation of the first Homo sapiens. And so the only way I will ask you to stop being racist is to suffocate — to stop breathing.”

In case you needed more evidence right-wingers can't do humor.

Douglas Murray, a named member of the Intellectual Dark Web, is a white supremacist. In the Current Affairs review of Murray's recent book "The War on the West:"

...there’s something refreshing about the way that Murray cuts away a lot of the bullshit and leans into an understanding of “the West” that just means white people. While different parts of the book occasionally run in the other direction, especially when Murray wants to mute critics of European imperialism by highlighting how many colonial subjects benefited by having their native cultures and practices transformed by European contact, he often can’t seem to help himself when it comes to giving into xenophobia and transparent ethno-chauvinism...

Greg Lukianoff is on the Koch payroll via the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. But again, there's no law against double-dipping from two right-wing plutocrats.

Nadine Strossen is another Koch employee, via CATO, and a defender of race pseudoscience.

Ilya Shapiro is also a Koch stooge via CATO and associated, of course, with the far-right Federalist Society.

Joshua Katz, a Quillette cause and known for inappropriate conduct with students at Princeton.

Elizabeth Weiss was probably invited to speak at Racist CPAC as much for her being the third wife of disgraced sociobiology racist Jean-Phillippe Rushton as for her treatment of Native American remains. She's written for racist Quillette - of course. 

Because of her connection to Rushton, she is arguably the spiritual leader of this collection of white supremacists, racists and Trump-lovers. Here she tells sociobiology racist Michael Shermer that Rushton wasn't really a racist. Although he argued that Black people are a separate type of human and spoke at an American Renaissance conference explaining why Black people are a separate type of human.

And of course, Steven Pinker the leading mainstream "celebrity intellectual" defender of race pseudoscience. His long-time support for race pseudoscience was persistently ignored by the mainstream press until last year.

This blog is full of examples of Pinker supporting and promoting racists like Steve Sailer, going so far as to include a piece of dreck written by Sailer in "The Best Science and Nature Writing" of 2004. He continues to promote racist Razib Khan and racist rag Quillette. 

If he had not been invited to Racist CPAC I would have been very surprised.

I discuss the rest of the speakers here.

Jordan Peterson & Andy Ngo - Peterson cries about ANTIFA

Andy Ngo is a horrible rightwing grifter.

Peterson is a crazy grifter.

Andy Ngo supports a traitor, shot while trying to murder members of Congress

Those who have followed the career of grifting sleazoid Andy Ngo, as I have, will not be surprised to see him, on the anniversary of the January 6 attempted coup, portraying Ashli Babbitt as a martyr.

During the coup, Babbitt tried to lead a murderous mob right to members of Congress. 

Washington Post:

Babbitt and others were attempting to breach a barricaded door inside the Capitol building on Wednesday afternoon, angrily demanding that three U.S. Capitol Police officers who were guarding the door step aside, one of the clips shows. The officers moved away as colleagues in tactical gear arrived behind the rioters, according to the clip and other video posted online.

Roughly 35 seconds after the officers moved away, as she climbed up toward a broken section of the unguarded door, Babbitt was shot by an officer on the other side.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old California native, and more than a dozen others appeared to be trying to get into the Speaker’s Lobby, a hallway that would have given them access to the House of Representatives chamber, according to a Post analysis of video footage and plans of the Capitol

Not only was (still is?) Ngo's lawyer a Republican committeewoman, Harmeet K. Dhillon, but during the run-up to the 2020 election he acted as Trump's ratfucker, promoting the Antifa panic. 

Trump loved the Antifa panic narrative so much, he tried to use it for January 6.

President Trump on Monday privately — and falsely — blamed "Antifa people" for storming the Capitol, even though clear video and documentary evidence exists showing the rioters were overwhelmingly Trump supporters.

Why it matters: Despite facing an impeachment vote for an assault he helped incite, the outgoing president is still sticking with his tried-and-true playbook of deflecting and reaching for conspiracies.

I will never forget how Quillette and the IDW worked with Andy Ngo and supported his career.

Christina Hoff Sommers supported Andy Ngo and gave a shout-out to others who were apparently Andy Ngo supporters including Jesse Singal, Sam Harris, Peter Boghossian and Cathy Young.

This is the kind of thing, along with the report that Peter Thiel secretly funded Quillette, that makes you realize just how extreme are many people associated with Quillette and the IDW.

Has Peter Thiel funded Quillette?

Byline Times has an interesting article on Trump-supporter Peter Thiel's international right-wing connections, entitled PETER THIEL’S Free Speech for Race Science Crusade at Cambridge University REVEALED.

The article revealed a fascinating tidbit that I hadn't known: Claire Lehmann sits on the advisory board of Toby Young's "Free Speech Union." 

But the biggest bombshell was the article's mention of a recently-published book, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin, which claims that Thiel secretly funded Quillette.

Lehmann denies it:

Quillette founder Claire Lehmann has completely and unequivocally denied recent claims published in a new biography of the billionaire, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Max Chafkin that “Thiel was secretly funding” Quillette around 2016.

Lehmann told Byline Times that Chafkin’s account is “wrong on multiple levels” and based on the claims of “a notorious internet troll and fraudster”. Peter Thiel’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

However, the social connections of key Quillette contributors to the “Thiel network” around Cambridge University points to an alignment of interests and ideology illuminating the extent to which several Quillette writers and editors operate within Peter Thiel’s sphere of influence. 

But I'd believe almost anybody before I'd believe Claire Lehmann, up to and including a "notorious internet troll and fraudster."

I don't like The Baffler, but they get credit for mentioning the issue when the Chafkin book was first published, in September:

Bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker is only the tip of the iceberg: one source told Chafkin that Thiel had secretly funded Quillette (Claire Lehmann, the publication’s founder, has said that Thiel’s start-up manual Zero to One, coauthored with Blake Masters, inspired her to create the magazine); he also funds a journal that questions the scientific consensus on evolution and climate change.

I'm kicking myself for missing this Thiel-Quillette claim for three months.

I've been wondering about Quillette's funding sources for years now. It was already obvious there was some connection between Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web because crackpot Eric Weinstein works for Thiel, but I never found any information proving a direct funding connection.

Peter Thiel funding Quillette does seem inevitable and it would especially make sense because Quillette has been such a big supporter of right-wing grifter and Trump-aligned ratfucker Andy Ngo.