Is Joe Rogan the king of morons?

What "Happened" to Joe Rogan? is the title of the most recent Some More News channel video and it's great. 

Joe Rogan, like Candace Owens, is a member of the Intellectual Dark Web that I have rarely mentioned over the past six and a half years that I've had this Pinkerite blog. And Rogan was even one of those who had his photo taken lurking in the dark, like the other grifters. 

From left to right:
Racist Michael Shermer, Thiel-tool Eric Weinstein, Ivermectin-shilling Heather Heying,
king of the morons Joe Rogan, grand arch-duke of the morons Dave Rubin, queen of the
free speech grifters Christina Hoff Sommers, race pseudoscience-shilling Sam Harris
and Game Theory fan Bret Weinstein

This Some More News video traces Rogan's journey from being a sort-of outsider to being part of the American fascism power structure. 

The host, Cody, keeps coming back to the fact that at one time Rogan referred to Trump as the "king of morons" long before he endorsed Trump. This video convinced me that Rogan is king of morons. 

And so is Trump but all non-morons knew that long ago.

I especially like this because I think there's likely some cross-over between Rogan's audience and Some More News' audience, and Rogan's audience needs to hear this - there may be hope for the percentage of Rogan's audience who are not morons.

 

Pinkerite is a member of the elite now

Plutocrat bootlicker Jesse Singal is one of the top accounts blocked by other accounts on Bluesky, along with Brianna Wu.

Here they are both at Bari Weiss's Free Press election party, along with other grifters and ghouls like Coleman Hughes, Michael Shellenberger and Nellie Bowles.

 

The reason Wu is part of the IDW/Quillette/Free Press gang of grifters and booklickers is very likely because she was offered a sweet deal to work for them and couldn't resist. After all, Bari Weiss has connections to both Peter Thiel and Harlan Crow, and other insanely fascistic billionaires who are eager to spend their money on the future, Mr. Gittes, the future!

It's a classic right-wing move to hire a member of any group the right wishes to attack, so they can say "see, even one of THEM hates liberals and the left." That's why Coleman Hughes is part of this gang of race pseudoscience promoters, and why anti-feminists Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers have careers at all. Now the gang has Brianna Wu to promote anti-trans views along with the likes of Jesse Singal.

Singal blocked my Pinkerite account, but I can still view his skeets via a Bluesky-affiliated website called Clearsky, which is also where I got the blocking statistics. I'm also blocked by Claire Lehmann and Razib Khan. But I can see their skeets on Clearsky too.

You can get an idea of how tight-knit the gang of bootlickers is by how fast Claire Lehmann and Razib Khan, both promoters of race pseudoscience beliefs - or as Lehmann prefers, "hereditarian" beliefs - jumped in to support Jesse Singal.

But also thanks to Clearsky, I've discovered I'm a member of the elite now. Razib Khan has blocked only a few Bluesky accounts: my two accounts and accounts for Jamelle Bouie and Molly Jong-Fast. And another person I wasn't familiar with, Erin Reed - but if she's blocked by Razib Khan, she must be good.

Meet Nina Paley, culture wars grifter and Kiwi Farms fan

I assumed Alex Byrne was a garden-variety culture wars grifter, writing for racist rag Quillette. I figured he was hoping to advance his career by maybe scoring some wingnut welfare, like Carole Hooven, or maybe getting a Fox News interview, also like Carole Hooven.

But I discovered Byrne has a very interesting collaborator: Nina Paley who did illustrations for Byrne's forthcoming book which is apparently loved by Steven Pinker and Christina Hoff Sommers.

Paley is notable enough to have her own Wikipedia page, although I never heard of her until today.

Paley has created a "Gender Wars" deck of cards. The red cards are the "gender-critical" good guys and the black cards are people she lumps together as "transactivists," including a mass murderer. 

Now I don't have a high opinion of culture war grifters to begin with, but even I was stunned to see that Paley included Kiwi Farms as one of the good guys in her deck of cards.

Kiwi Farms is evil to the point of being psychopathic:

Founded by Joshua Moon, a former 8chan administrator, Kiwi Farms evolved into a popular platform for creating harassment campaigns. Its users often fixated on transgender people, relentlessly stalking and doxing them. At least three of its victims died by suicide.

In the image Paley created, the cow represents "lolcows" - the people selected by Kiwi Farms for torture. Paley apparently thinks this is cute and funny.

Paley did a podcast with Joshua Moon. She and her podcast co-host Corinna Cohn provide a dishonest description of Kiwi Farms:

In 1993 John Gilmore famously said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” To learn why that’s no longer true, listen to Josh Moon enumerate “the amount of things that have broken that people in the industry assumed could never break,” as activists with personal vendettas and political agendas relentlessly employ every possible strategy to silence his small but notorious gossip site Kiwi Farms. From Cloudflare to Hurricane Electric, ISPs, data centers, and payment processors, literally anything up and down the Border Gateway Protocol has been targeted to shut down the ‘Farms. With ISIS, the KKK, Stormfront, neo-nazis, and child porn all continuing to enjoy online services, who expected “the gossip site that makes fun of troons” to be the straw to break the Internet’s backbone? And why have the individuals and organizations who once stood against censorship lost their own?

Here's what is actually meant by "makes fun of the troons":

Mother Jones:

Kiwi Farms harvests anguish. It thrives on pain and revels in death. Users of the innocuously named forum prey on the vulnerable and marginalized—people who are transgender, neurodivergent, disabled, financially struggling—with persistent and twisted harassment campaigns. Despite its penchant for destroying lives, Kiwi Farms has been mostly overlooked by the media for much of the site’s existence. That is partly because of who it attacks, but also because reporters are wary of becoming targets themselves. The users call their victims “lolcows” because their pain can be milked for laughs. The group made its purpose clear on its Twitter page before it was taken down: “Gossip and exploitation of mentally handicapped for amusement purposes.” 

 

Kiwi Farms users deploy slightly different tactics for various victims, but the rough beats are the same. First, the group assembles extensive dossiers. Then they use the information (some true, some contorted, some fabricated) to torment their targets. 

 

When Sagal posted about her suicidal thoughts, Kiwi Farms users sent private messages urging her to kill herself, a friend said. When posters learned that Terryberry, an 18-year-old with learning disabilities, used the internet to make friends, they worked to get her social media accounts shut down while mocking her mental health struggles. They relentlessly tormented Ginder for being nonbinary. One thread went on for more than a dozen pages. 

Lacking a sense of empathy is said to be an indicator of psychopathy. 

I'm wondering if Alex Byrne and Carole Hooven like Kiwi Farms as much as Nina Paley apparently does. (YES - see below)

And you'll never guess - Paley is also an author at Quillette. Also interviewed by Paley: Razib Khan, Alice Dreger, Alex Byrne and Carole Hooven.

And as you've probably guessed, Joshua Moon is also a huge racist.

UPDATE: Paley conveniently posted fans of her cards on Twitter, and it turns out Carole Hooven is a big fan, promoting them on Twitter.

Stay classy, you poor cancelled martyr!

Also a fan, another Koch employee (besides Hooven) Pamela Paresky. Hooven cited her when she promoted the crackpot sociobiologists' social affinity theory. Apparently Paresky thinks these cards are hysterical! I knew Paresky was a wingnut ass, but I didn't guess what a hate-filled ghoul she is.

Paresky wants to "protect kids" - but presumably NOT the ones selected to be lolcows by Kiwi Farms.

And crackpot Jordan "enforced monogamy" Peterson is a fan.

Imagine hating trans people so much that you condone the glorification of psychopathically evil Kiwi Farms.

It's hard not to laugh at a right-wing wacko like Peterson: This Jordan Peterson Impression Will Absolutely Make Your Day

Oh, and in case you're a wingnut and you think I'm a hypocrite because I detest Kiwi Farms attempting to destroy the lives of nobodies, while condoning a mocking impression of celebrity grifter Jordan Peterson, consider this an illustration of the difference between rightwing humor and leftwing humor.

Rightwing humor punches down - at misfit nobodies and sexual minorities.

Leftwing humor punches up -  at wealthy public grifters.

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.)

Chat GPT spills the tea about Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web

Since ChatGPT told me that Bari Weiss received a quarter of a million dollars from Peter Thiel in 2017, it occurred to me that perhaps her 2018 article for the New York Times about the splendors of her fellow travellers, Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, was a public announcement of who had agreed to be on the Peter Thiel payroll. In addition to all those associated with Quillette.

In the article there were twenty-five individuals named by Weiss as connected to the Intellectual Dark Web, including Steven Pinker, Kanye West, Milo Yiannapoulos, Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones. 

But the most significant of the IDW bunch are those who were photographed for the article, standing in the dark in the bushes. 

I guess the photographer wanted to make a point by posing these Intellectuals in the Dark, but drew the line at literally portraying them in a Web and so had to stick them in some bushes instead.

The eight bush skulkers include Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin and Eric and Bret Weinstein.

So what does ChatGPT have to say about them?

NOTE:  this must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

        Has Peter Thiel ever funded Sam Harris?

Yes, Peter Thiel has provided funding to Sam Harris in the past. In fact, Thiel was one of the early supporters of Harris' podcast and helped fund the creation of the Waking Up app, which was later renamed to the Sam Harris app. Thiel and Harris have also engaged in public conversations and have expressed mutual respect for each other's work in various fields.

----------------------------------------

Supposedly Harris says he's done with the Intellectual Dark Web.

I came up empty on a Thiel funding source for Michael Shermer, but ChatGPT did have this info, which is not even available at SourceWatch.

Has the Skeptic magazine received funding from Donors Trust?

Yes, according to public records, Skeptic magazine has received funding from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that provides support to a variety of conservative and libertarian organizations. Specifically, tax filings from Donors Trust show that they provided funding to the Skeptics Society, the organization that publishes Skeptic magazine, in both 2014 and 2015. It's worth noting that Donors Trust supports a wide range of organizations across the political spectrum, and the fact that an organization receives funding from Donors Trust does not necessarily imply any particular political alignment or agenda. 

----------------------------------------

Donor's Trust is the infamous right-wing funding vehicle that also gives millions to racist monsters VDARE.

ChatGPT had nothing about Thiel or Donors Trust funding for Christina Hoff Sommers, but it's not a secret that she's taken money from Koch-funded organizations for decades. ChatGPT agreed:

Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative writer and critic of contemporary feminism, has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on policy, education, and advocacy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Sommers     include:

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Bradley Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, civic engagement, and free markets.
• The Charles Koch Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research and education programs on a variety of topics, including economics, political science, and civil liberties.
• The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a conservative organization that advocates for policies and initiatives that promote economic freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on policy research in areas such as urban policy, energy, and education. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)

Here's what ChatGPT had to say about Heather Heying:

Heather Heying has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on science, education, and policy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Heying include:

• The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank that promotes free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses.
• The John William Pope Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, healthcare, and public policy.
• The Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research on science, spirituality, and human purpose.
• The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes intelligent design theory and critiques of evolutionary biology.
• The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on political philosophy, constitutionalism, and American exceptionalism.

I'm curious what The Discovery Institute hopes to get from Heying for its money, since it promotes intelligent design and critiques of evolutionary biology.

We do know that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein have promoted junk science during the Covid pandemic. But that's Game Theory.

When I asked ChatGPT about Dave Rubin it said:

Rubin has expressed support for many conservative and libertarian ideas and causes, and he has collaborated with a number of individuals and organizations in these spheres. Some of the individuals and organizations that have expressed support for Rubin or his ideas include:

• Peter Thiel: As mentioned earlier, Thiel has expressed support for Rubin and his work, but there is no clear evidence that he has provided direct financial support to Rubin.
• PragerU: Rubin has collaborated with PragerU, a conservative educational organization that produces videos promoting conservative and libertarian ideas.
• Turning Point USA: Rubin has also worked with Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization that promotes conservative and libertarian ideas on college campuses.
• The Federalist Society: Rubin has expressed support for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that promotes originalist interpretations of the US Constitution.
• Republican politicians: Rubin has expressed support for several Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul.

Eric Weinstein of course works for Thiel Capital, but I did not know he and Bret had been Thiel Fellows:

Bret and Eric Weinstein were both fellows at the Thiel Foundation, which provides funding to young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The Weinsteins have also been associated with the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose network of public intellectuals who are known for challenging mainstream narratives on a range of topics. While the IDW is not a formal organization and does not receive direct funding, many of its members are supported by conservative and libertarian donors who share their views.

Curiously ChatGPT wouldn't say that Bret Weinstein was funded by the same organizations who fund his wife, Heather Heying, which makes no sense. It did say about Weinstein:

Weinstein has also been critical of what he calls "woke ideology" and the progressive movement, and has spoken out in support of free speech and academic freedom. These views have earned him support from some conservative and libertarian organizations and donors. For example, he has appeared as a guest speaker at events hosted by the National Review Institute, a conservative think tank, and has been praised by conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro was another person named in Weiss's NYTimes article as IDW.

I came up with bupkis for Joe Rogan.

So according to ChatGPT,  Sam Harris has taken money from Thiel, and Eric and Bret Weinstein were fellows at the Thiel Foundation, and all the others, except Joe Rogan have connections to lots of other far-right funders.

And since Thiel has funded Quillette we can infer these people have received Thielbucks due to Quillette authorship (my annotations in parentheses):

Quillette is an online magazine that publishes articles on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Some of the individuals who have written articles for Quillette include:

• Jordan Peterson: Canadian psychologist and author (IDW member per Weiss article)
• Claire Lehmann: Australian psychologist and founder of Quillette (Quillette is the primary publication of the IDW per the Weiss article)
• Sam Harris: American philosopher and author (see above)
• Christina Hoff Sommers: American philosopher and cultural critic (see above)
• Jonathan Haidt: American social psychologist and author 
• Heather Mac Donald: American political commentator and author
• Gad Saad: Canadian evolutionary psychologist and author
• Bret Weinstein: American biologist and evolutionary theorist (see above)
• Douglas Murray: British author and political commentator (named member of IDW)
• Andrew Doyle: British comedian and writer (or "comedian")
• Cathy Young: Russian-American journalist and author
• Debra Soh: Canadian sex researcher and science writer (named member of IDW)
• Conor Friedersdorf: American journalist and writer
• Peter Boghossian: American philosopher and professor
• Toby Young: British journalist and author (also was Quillette associate editor)
• Maajid Nawaz: British activist and writer
• Meghan Daum: American author and columnist
• Yascha Mounk: German-American political scientist and writer
• Helen Pluckrose: English author and editor of Areo Magazine
• James Lindsay: American author and mathematician
• Bruce Gilley: American political scientist and professor
• Claire Fox: British author and commentator
• Jamie Palmer: British writer and commentator (Quillette editor)
• Heather Heying: American evolutionary biologist and writer (see above)
• Ed Husain: British writer and commentator
• Coleman Hughes: American writer and podcaster
• Frances Widdowson: Canadian academic and writer

This is not an exhaustive list, as many other individuals have also written articles for Quillette.

----------------------------------------

It's important to note that Peter Thiel is a democracy-hating far-right funder of monsters like Donald Trump, and has been called both a psychopath and a sociopath. And he's a babbling, Bible-quoting crackpot, with billions to spend on his far-right agenda. 

And those people have taken his money.

Or as David Bertoli, one of the admirers of the Anna Krylov/Jerry Coyne grift might say:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” 

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.

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.

When the IDW comes after you

 

Lehmann claimed, without evidence,
that Ngo was the victim of a chemical attack.
There was no chemical attack.

Quillette was identified by Bari Weiss, in her NYTimes article as "the publication most associated with (the IDW)."

In spite of claims that can be found online that Andy Ngo was fired by Quillette, he is in fact still listed as a "contributing writer" at Quillette.

As Buzzfeed News wrote:

He’s whittled his themes down to a brutally efficient, social media- and Fox News–friendly trio: Hate crimes are hoaxes, anti-fascists are the real fascists, and liberals are naive about Islam, which is violent. And he now edits part time for Quillette, the so-called heterodox publication that has staked out a position as a home for centrist journalists and academics disgruntled about left-wing activism and woke culture. It gives him an easy way to defeat charges that he’s a right-wing activist.

Ngo also had connections to the Trump administration, and Ngo's relentless attempts to demonize the rag-tag group of unorganized anonymous leftists, Antifa, was so popular with the Trump administration that at one point during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Trump claimed the attackers were Antifa.

So I was very interested to see an article in The Intercept, A Right-Wing Brawler Asked a Court to Protect Him From an Antifascist’s Tweets. 

It seems that rightwing extremists went after an activist who had volunteered to investigate far-right groups:

LODER FIRST BECAME alarmed while working as a consultant for tech companies that wanted to keep their sites clear of hate speech and messages that promote violence; they realized that social media platforms were not doing enough to keep extremists “from fundraising and recruiting and spreading their hateful messages.” Paying attention to what was on those platforms during Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and in the lead-up to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Loder said, felt like “pointing at an oncoming freight train, and then just watching it happen.” 

So, working on weekends, Loder started to tackle the problem as a volunteer, watching hours of footage from right-wing social media feeds and trying to identify groups that might be using political rallies as “grass to hide in, to recruit and carry out violent acts.” 

Loder has tried to prod social networks into taking action against users who threaten violence. In 2019, Loder set up searches to collect death threats directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, after then-President Donald Trump tweeted a video that distorted her comments on the 9/11 attacks alongside images of the World Trade Center in flames. Loder then urged other users to mass-report those tweets to press Twitter to enforce its rules and remove them.

The article reports on Andy Ngo's connection: 

In July, Loder helped identify  far-right activist Aaron Simmons as the masked attacker who clubbed an independent filmmaker in the head during an anti-trans protest in Los Angeles. (That attack had been wrongly blamed on antifascists after video of the assault was tweeted with a misleading caption by Andy Ngo, a far-right commentator.) Simmons was subsequently arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon for the attack on the filmmaker (Simmons had menaced Loder outside the Torrence courthouse in September)...

Ngo was identified as a "free speech grifter" in 2018 along with a named member of the IDW, Christina Hoff Sommers. But of course free speech only goes one way with grifters:

In the meantime, Loder has also repulsed two recent legal complaints from lawyers working for Andy Ngo. The first was a copyright complaint over a photograph Loder tweeted of Ngo posing in front of fascist graffiti in Poland. The second was a cease-and-desist letter concerning Loder’s role in a Twitter campaign to shame companies into pulling their ads from the Canadian website Ngo writes for, The Post Millennial.

Loder scoffs at Ngo’s complaint that putting pressure on the site’s advertisers is a form of censorship. “I’m not censoring you,” Loder said they would tell Ngo. “But I am showing advertisers what your site looks like and what’s on there, and they’re dropping you.”

Thanks to Quillette and other rightwing media, Ngo was classified as a "journalist" for a time, but soon news outlets discovered that Ngo was very much a partisan:

Nowhere was this demonstrated more quickly than in the case of the meteoric rise and equally rapid fall of Andy Ngo, the provocateur and social media personality who garnered nationwide sympathy last June, when he tweeted that he was attacked by antifascist protesters at a Proud Boys rally. Last week, the local newspaper the Portland Mercury reported that a left-wing activist going undercover as a member of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group known for promoting and engaging in violent clashes with leftist activists, had given the publication an 18-minute video that included footage of Ngo with a group of Patriot Prayer members as the members discuss an upcoming brawl, including weaponry to be used in altercations with antifa. Ngo, who describes himself as a journalist, did not record the conversation, and does not appear to have his camera or notebook out. For part of the footage, he is seen on his phone.

It should be mentioned here that both Ngo and Proud Boys have shown up at public demonstrations disguised as Antifa and BLM supporters.

Luckily for Loder, California has a robust anti-SLAPP law:

Unfortunately for Kiefer, that is not how the law works. Thomas Burke, a lawyer who wrote a book on California’s anti-SLAPP statute, told me that it doesn’t matter at all if Loder is defined as an activist or a journalist. The law is designed to protect anyone whose free speech in a public forum or on a matter of public interest is threatened by a meritless lawsuit or injunction.... 

...As Burke explained, the original aim was to stop wealthy corporations from suing environmentalists or residents of an area who protested a company’s use of land but could not afford the legal fees to defend themselves from a libel suit. A later amendment added language saying that the statute “shall be construed broadly.” Since then, courts have ruled that anti-SLAPP protections apply to people who are providing information to the public, whether they are activists or journalists.

My work is different from Loder's: he focuses on the rightwing extremists themselves. I am less likely to be the target of violent threats, since I focus on the mainstream right-wingers who sometimes aid and abet extremists, and "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker, who, while he may not support Andy Ngo directly, seems to have no problem supporting Quillette, which helped legitimize Ngo's grift. Pinker even has a couple of bylines in Quillette.

Quillette also published Razib Khan's review of Charles Murray's latest book in which Khan agreed with Murray we need to "connect the dots" about Black Americans or "face disaster." That information is public, but few people outside the Quillette audience are aware of it. It's possible Khan considers my publicizing his menacing views of Black Americans as some kind of threat to his career.

I'm grateful New York State also has a robust anti-SLAPP law.

James Lindsay and Your Mom

UPDATE: thanks to James Lindsay for sending all his followers my way. 

This isn't the first time I've written about what a grifting, hypocritical oaf Lindsay is. Enjoy.

Ever since Bari Weiss introduced her pals the Intellectual Dark Web to the world in May, 2018, the IDW like to congratulate each other for how civil they all are.

But far from being exemplars of reason and civility, the IDW and their friends are often not just uncivil, but outright vicious on social media, as when Claire Lehmann, Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers attacked a writer for fiction they felt was too disrespectful of a male character, or when  Christina Hoff Sommers retweeted Camille Paglia calling Lena Dunham a "pile of pudding" or the time Michael Shermer called a critic of Steven Pinker a "cockroach" or recently when Quillette's managing editor Colin Wright claimed I was "demonstrably insane" for presenting evidence for facts he didn't want to know about.

But the most shameless, most blatant hypocrite in the crowded field of IDW shamelessness is James Lindsay, author of a book, with Peter Boghossian called "How to Have Impossible Conversations a Very Practical Guide" which stresses the importance of civility in public discourse.

So how does James Lindsay, in his public persona on social media, demonstrate the lessons he presumes to teach others? With oafish and extreme incivility.

One of his favorite responses to critics is to mindlessly repeat some variation on "your mom."

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That's 23 so far.

In case you have't guessed by his witty repartee, James Lindsay is a leading "intellectual" of the Intellectual Dark Web, praised by IDW race science promoters like Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne and Andrew Sullivan.