Brigitte Macron has sued the hateful Candace Owens!

Back in March I asked:

When will Brigitte Macron sue the hateful Candace Owens?

And finally SHE DID IT!  🥳

Macrons Sue Candace Owens, Right-Wing Podcaster, Claiming Defamation

Ms. Owens and The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, severed ties that month over her antisemitic rhetoric, and she repeated the claim about Ms. Macron on her independent podcast and other platforms. 

 

Ms. Owens “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim,” the filing says, and “rather than engage with President and Mrs. Macron’s attempts to set the record straight, Owens mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base.” 

 

“Because Ms. Owens systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods in response to each of our attorneys’ repeated requests for a retraction, we ultimately concluded that referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue for remedy,” the Macrons said in a statement from their lawyer. 

 

The suit also names Ms. Owens’s media company and the company that runs her website, which are both registered in Delaware.

What a stupid horrible person Candace Owens is.

No wonder Owens was praised as a member of the Intellectual Dark Web by Bari Weiss back in 2018. The entire Intellectual Dark Web is simply a pack of garbage people, from Owens, to Weiss to Eric Weinstein to Steven Pinker.

Weaponized crackpottery and the influence of the Intellectual Dark Web

Professor Dave notes in his latest video that physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is parroting Peter Thiel's talking points about the alleged slow-down of scientific advancement, and speculates that Hossenfelder is on the Thiel payroll. Something I've been wondering about for years now.

Thiel is of course known for funding Trump. It's very likely he and his network are behind the Trump administration's attacks on science and academia.

The fact that Hossenfelder has decided to support infamous crackpot and Thiel employee Eric Weinstein - often given credit, if you can call it that, for coining the name "Intellectual Dark Web" - is something she would be more likely to do if she, too, was on the Thiel payroll. 

Although I suppose it's possible she decided to torch her science career out of sheer stupidity. 

I recorded Peter Thiel giving a speech at Stanford in 2022 - and created a transcript - and in his stream-of-consciousness babble, he explains his paranoid belief that there is a nefarious influence preventing scientific advancement, which boils down to, basically, hippies, claiming they were influenced by Charles Manson (my highlighted emphasis):

But but if I had if I had to sort of give a single again steelman idea. The best argument for why, why this has been so slow for the last 50 years and I think we have to somehow engage with and take take more seriously. Is that there is something about science and technology that has taken you know very dystopian very destructive turn in the um, in the in the 20th century and there are you know it, it is, it is not we're not in the 18th century 19th century you know rationalist enlightenment age, where it seems to be simply making everything better in every way, all the time. You know, already the two world wars, certainly, certainly the nuclear weapons. You know, on some level suggested that the sort of, I don't know the the the sort of rhetoric of Rousseau or Voltaire about the natural goodness of man was starting to run you know a little bit then by by by the 50s and 60s. And the the the kind of um the kind of history I would tell it's not perfect, but of of the last 70-75 years is this gradually seeped into society. It sort of manifested in different ways, you know um you know, you have a crazy person like Charles Manson, you know, what did he see when he was overdosing, you know, on LSD? He saw that there was going to be a thermonuclear war, and then he decided to become some sort of, you know, anti-hero from Dostoyevski and start killing people because everything was permitted in this world that was headed towards the apocalypse. And there was something like this that seeped in, and this was what gave the environmental movement so much force in the 70s. It's like we have to just slow this down. We have to put some brakes on. Uh and it is it is just the way in which so many of these technologies have this, have this dual use component.

Thiel is one of the richest men in the world and has funded race pseudoscience garbage heap Quillette, the main publication of the Intellectual Dark Web. 

You can blame at least some of the insanity of our current political situation on the malign influence of crackpot plutocrats like Thiel.

Physicist Angela Collier explains why the claim that science, or at least physics, has slowed down is bullshit in this video. At minute 0:31, Collier makes a passing reference to Hossenfelder's article Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years.

And on top of Thiel's wacky talking points, propagated thanks to money or stupidity by the likes of Eric Weinstein and Sabine Hossenfelder, there's the whole TESCREAL crackpottery. But that's a post for another day. But for now, here is a good intro - Peter Thiel's name is dropped at minute 4:25.

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.

 

The triumph of race pseudoscience in the Trump administration

Well the Intellectual Dark Web gang of race pseudoscience promoters must be thrilled with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He can be seen during his hearing promoting race pseudoscience.

TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited):

                SENATOR ANGELA ALSOBROOKS  

 

…you said the following and I quote: “we should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites because their immune system is better than ours.”

Can you please explain what you meant? 

                        KENNEDY 

There are areas of studies, I think, most of them, by uh Poland um that show that the particular antigens that Blacks have a much stronger reaction… there’s differences in reactions to different products by different races…  

                SENATOR ANGELA ALSOBROOKS 

So I have 17 seconds left. Let me just ask you then. What different vaccine schedule should I have received?

                        KENNEDY  

I mean uh the Poland article suggests that that Blacks need fewer antigens than -

                SENATOR ANGELA ALSOBROOKS  

Mr. Kennedy with all due respect that is dangerous.

                           KENNEDY   

...this is science, this is published peer-reviewed science.”

The reference to Poland is Dr. Gregory Poland, and Kennedy completely misrepresented the finding in a 2014 film, discussed here by NPR in An Anti-Vaccine Film Targeted To Black Americans Spreads False Information (my highlight):

The film also brings up a 2014 study from the Mayo Clinic that showed Somali Americans and African Americans have a more robust immune response to the rubella vaccine than Caucasians and Hispanic Americans. One of those interviewed in Kennedy's film then asks, "So if you have that process that could be caused by vaccines, why wouldn't there be a link between vaccines and developmental delays?" 

 

But the study's own author and leading vaccine researcher, Dr. Gregory Poland, says this conjecture is not accurate. 

 

According to a statement provided to NPR by the Mayo Clinic, the study demonstrated "higher protective immune responses in African-American subjects with no evidence of increased vaccine side effects" and that any claim of " 'increased vulnerability' among African-Americans who receive the rubella vaccine is simply not supported by either this study or the science."

Now Steven Pinker doesn't like Kennedy, but other IDWers like crackpot Bret "Game Theory" Weinstein LOVES KENNEDY and so does IDW-namer crackpot Eric Weinstein, Peter Thiel's personal bootlicker.

But don't worry about Pinker, he still loves racists. Here he can be seen promoting, yet again, the career of racist ghoul Razib Khan.

And Pinker is not at all embarrassed to tell the world he has a connection to the racist/neo-Nazi Aporia Magazine. He can be seen on Twitter using his "celebrity intellectual" status to help legitimize the Emil Kirkegaard-controlled organization, just as he does with racist garbage rag Quillette.

Providing yet more evidence that I was absolutely right to include Pinker in my EMIL KIRKEGAARD'S RACE PSEUDOSCIENCE AND NAZI NETWORK diagram.

Oh and Razib Khan hates New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. I notice he didn't post this on Bluesky. Only on Elmo's racist cesspit.

Now Khan is infamous for his racist views but never forget that he also hates trans people. More about that in the next post.

Intellectual Dark Web 101: Bret and Eric Weinstein

 

Meanwhile, The Majority Report reports on Eric, solo.

Jonathan Katz on J. D. Vance and the Weinstein brothers

Jonathan Katz took a deep dive into the infamous Eric Weinstein-hosted interview of J. D. Vance and came up with some good, if predictably nauseating stuff.

He refers to Bret Weinstein as "disgraced evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein." I certainly have long thought Bret was a disgrace, since the Evergreen incident, which I am convinced was at the very least partly a deliberate scam on the part of Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying. My opinion was then bolstered by Bret and Heather shilling ivermectin as a treatment for Covid. 

And then there's that obsession with Game Theory.

But I didn't know about this latest Bret Weinstein disgrace:

Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biology professor turned podcaster and ivermectin guy, repeated a series of discredited pseudo-theories about AIDS in a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Weinstein, a frequent guest, told Rogan that he found the theory that party drugs like poppers cause AIDS to be “surprisingly compelling.” (It is not.) Weinstein also told Rogan he came to these ideas by reading a recent book by anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, creating a sort of unholy turducken of misinformation passed onto an audience of millions. 

Wow, what a garbage person.

Katz goes on to give a full accounting of the Intellectual Dark Web's racist, misogynist pseudoscience context that inform's Eric Weinstein's views, and demonstrates how much Vance agrees with them.

The problem is that race-baiting, misogyny, and a general obsession with supposedly in-born hierarchies aren’t distractions from the Trump team’s message. They are the campaign’s message. Even when confronted with an issue that genuinely concerns the electorate — such as the still-high cost of living, especially for those of us raising children — they can’t resist offering rhetoric and solutions that sound like they come from the minutes of a 1920s meeting of the American Eugenics Society, if not the pronatalist movement in Fascist Italy itself. The reason is simple: They really believe this stuff.

***

The vice-presidential candidate concludes:

VANCE: Just to sort of bring this full circle to where we started, is that the economic logic of always prioritizing paid wage labor over other forms of contributing to a society is to me, it's actually a consequence of a sort of fundamental liberalism that is ultimately gonna unwind and collapse upon itself. It has to. I think it's, yeah — it’s the abandonment of a sort of Aristotelian virtue politics for a hyper market.

Yes, Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and great influencer of medieval Christian doctrine, who taught, among other things that: “the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying”; and “for the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority,” and who summarized “the female is a misbegotten male.” Those virtue politics.

In spite of Steven Pinker's public distaste for Trump, the Republican ticket is the Intellectual Dark Web ticket, holding the same pseudoscience beliefs that Pinker has been promoting via evolutionary psychology first, then by a cleaned-up version of Steve Sailer's "human biodiversity." Or as David Lubinski, bigwig at the International Society for Intelligence Research calls it "human psychological diversity."

Which is why the Republican ticket, funded by anti-democracy Peter Thiel and lead by a pussy-grabbing rapist and a misogynist creep, is the most evil in American history. 

And Pinker likes to attack Trump but he has no qualms about allying himself with Republican operative Bari Weiss and her garbage rag. But that's who Pinker is, a complete and utter weasel.

The Intellectual Dark Web strikes again

Eric Weinstein, here to explain
the whole purpose of
"post-menopausal females."

J. D. Vance is owned by Peter Thiel, so that was plenty of evidence for me that J. D. Vance was a creature of the Intellectual Dark Web, but it turns out he had another connection.

And a reminder that the Intellectual Dark Web is not ONLY racist, although it is that of course - the Intellectual Dark Web is hideously misogynist:

In a 2020 appearance on the Portal podcast — hosted by Eric Weinstein, the Managing Director of Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital — the then-venture capitalist expressed his weird take on elderly women and how his mother-in-law has helped raise his son — he now has three children.

“There's sort of all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren — it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents,” Vance told Weinstein.
“That's the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female, in theory,” the podcast host said, as Vance chimed in, “Yes.”

Eric Weinstein is the apparent leader of the Intellectual Dark Web, credited with coming up with the name. And you don't even have to speculate whether he is funded by Thiel - he is an official employee of Thiel.

I was just talking yesterday about Bari Weiss - the biggest cheerlead of the IDW - promoting right-wing grifter Christina Hoff Sommers as a "feminist" in spite of the fact that Sommers is a female misogynist whose career has been funded by wingnut welfare.

Sommers was one of those profiled in the Bari Weiss article, one of the special ones photographed lurking in the dark, back in 2018, along with Eric Weinstein.

Bari Weiss is a long-time fan of Eric Weinstein and other horrific right-wing ghouls including that freak James "your mom" Lindsay.

I notice that Weinstein's 55-year-old sister-in-law, Heather E. Heying, appears to be ignoring her whole purpose as a post-menopausal female. When does she have time to mind the children? Tsk tsk!

Heather and her husband Bret Weinstein are big fans of GAME THEORY.

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.” 

Steven Pinker and the race pseudoscience network

Carole Hooven was seen last August on Pinkerite, along with Larry Summers, when each was promoting Quillette's racist/neo-Nazi editor Bo Winegard last year.

It seems that Hooven's career is now supported by Steven Pinker. I'm not surprised.

Pinker is a long-time supporter and some-time contributor of racist rag Quillette, and an admirer of Bo Winegard.

Pinker is no doubt a supporter of Hooven because she's another believer in the sociobiology/evolutionary psychology school of gender and race essentialism, the "scientific" justification for right-wing bigotry.

In this article in the September 2022 edition of the Archives of Sexual Behavior,  Hooven defends Larry Summers' belief in the inferiority of lady brains in STEM.

In spite of Summers' claim, women's participation in STEM is steadily rising. 

We know that's not due to women's genetics or brain structure changing in such a short period of time. 

Maybe it's due to pushback against the essentialist beliefs that sociobiologists like Summers, Pinker, Winegard and Hooven cling to for dear life.

In the article, Hooven proposes the crackpot social affinity theory that is the absolute favorite sociobiologist explanation for why people are hostile to their pseudoscience-based claims. Bo Winegard is a big fan.

Hooven:

Why do people direct such outrage at scholars who are trying to do their jobs, discovering and communicating how the world works? In the aftermath of the Summers imbroglio, Steven Pinker, the well-known professor of psychology at Harvard, argued that Summers had been met with such vitriol because he had violated a cultural taboo. (Pinker 2005)  People who belong or want to belong to a social group, whether centered around political views, or a country or school, ethnic or gender identity, can signal their loyalty to the group and its values by demonstrating their "moral purity." (Paresky, 2022)

Paresky is Pamela Paresky, who has been on the Koch payroll.

This fanciful explanation demonstrates how detached sociobiologists are from basic human social reality - maybe that's why they believe so reflexively that virtually all contemporary human behavior is the result of evolved biological essences.

The far more likely explanation for the Summers controversy is because at the time Summers made the statement he was the president of Harvard, speaking at a conference on why women were underrepresented in STEM, and Summers suggested the problem was women themselves.

To spell it out in a way that even a sociobiologist might grasp, Summers represented a clear institutional threat to women who were interested in STEM careers. How idiotic do you have to be to seriously believe the controversy was due to "moral purity"?

I would say that Hooven, Pinker, Paresky and Winegard are being deliberately obtuse, but I'm afraid it might not be deliberate. 

In this recent video, at minute 1:10 Hooven says:

...(Pinker's) also interested in, obviously, at lot of the kinds of issues that I'm interested in, The Blank Slate, is, you know, his early book, had a big impact on me and my thinking - how I thought about sex differences...

...more than anyone else at Harvard... he gave me a new office, he took me into his department, he stood up for me, he counseled me, it's been a really difficult time and he, if it weren't for him I really would not be at Harvard any more and I am because of him.... 

But Pinker has long been a champion of those who support sociobiology, as his ongoing support for hardcore race pseudoscience extremist Linda Gottfredson demonstrates.

And of course his support for the career of professional racist Steve Sailer.

"The Blank Slate" was Pinker's evolutionary psychology manifesto, so perfectly reviewed by Louis Menand in the New Yorker when it was released in 2002:

Having it both ways is an irritating feature of "The Blank Slate." Pinker can write, in refutation of the scarecrow theory of violent behavior, "The sad fact is that despite the repeated assurances that 'we know the conditions that breed violence,' we barely have a clue," and then, a few pages later, "It is not surprising, then, that when African American teenagers are taken out of underclass neighborhoods they are no more violent or delinquent than white teenagers." Well, that should give us one clue. He sums the matter up: "With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution." This is just another way of saying that it is in human nature to socialize and to be socialized, which is, pragmatically, exactly the view of the "intellectuals." 

My theory for why Pinker tries to "have it both ways" is because he wants plausible deniability for his actual beliefs about Black people.

The New Yorker review mentions Judith Rich Harris, but the review does not mention how instrumental Pinker was in promoting the career of Harris. 

Moreover, when her great encourager Steven Pinker and I each nominated her paper for the annual award for “outstanding paper on general psychology,” the judges selected her as co-recipient of the—I am not making this up—George A. Miller Award. (To his credit, Miller later termed the irony “delicious.”)

Harris is so popular among believers in sociobiology that a leading promoter of "biosocial criminology," Kevin Beaver, is the Judith Rich Harris Professor of Criminology at Florida State University.

Beaver is on the editorial board of Evolutionary Psychological Science along with Pinker and other believers in race pseudoscience such as Todd K. Shackleford, Sam Harris, David C. Geary, as well as the infamously misogynist Dario Maestripieri and the guy who can't tell female desire from female slavery, David Buss.

Biosocial Criminology holds that Black people are innately less intelligent, and more criminally-inclined than members of other "races." We know this because there is a book edited by Kevin Beaver, Biosocial Criminology: New Directions in Theory and Research in which his fellow biosocial criminologist John Paul Wright is given a chapter to argue that belief:

Page 149:

...Areas afflicted by crime and other social pathologies are more frequently black than white, and even less frequently Oriental. Part of the reason for these visible and dramatic differences may have to do with the differential abilities of races to organize socially. 

Page 150:

From the available data it would seem ludicrous to argue that "race" is a construct devoid of a biological or evolutionary backdrop. That evolutionary forces have produced biological variance across races is now scientifically undeniable. That many of the characteristics that define races appear to be universal and time stable is also undeniable. Evolution can produce many forms of adaptations, but it cannot produce equality. 

The connection between race and criminal behavior is clearly complex and involves a range of historical, social, psychological and individual variables. Evolution however, provides a powerful mechanism to understand the development of human races and the distribution of traits and behaviors within and across races. It helps explain why races would appear and under what conditions races would appear. It helps to explain why certain traits would be beneficial and why these traits such as higher IQ, would be unequally distributed across races. Moreover evolutionary theory helps explain why race-based patterns of behavior are universal, such as black over-involvement in crime. No other paradigm organizes these patterns better. No other paradigm explains these inconvenient truths.

I have no doubt Pinker holds similar beliefs. He has consistently promoted and supported those who hold these beliefs (Razib Khan, Bo Winegard, Linda Gottfredson, Steve Sailer) and his beliefs echo those of racist Amy Wax.

Unfortunately any time Pinker is interviewed, the interviewer treats him with kid gloves, due to the rarely broken gentlemen's agreement and refuses to make Pinker express exactly what he believes, as in this interview:

The left was uh completely out to lunch when it came to... the um causes of crime, badly badly wrong when it uh - it still does... when it attributes crime to um poverty and racism...

So if the problem isn't poverty and racism... what exactly is the problem? Pinker is too much the weasel to come right out and say it.

Pinker's influence extends to the promotion and support of the much debunked claims of the hypothesis called "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" created by two racists, who were brought together by racist Steve Sailer.

The publisher of the Hooven video, Freedom Pact likes to platform members and friends of the IDW including Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Niall Ferguson, Chloe Valdary, Dave Rubin, Douglas Murray and David Buss. 

The Freedom Pact website reveals nothing about who is funding them, but given how IDW-leaning its guests have become since 2018, including two interviews with Ivermectin-promoting Bret Weinstein, the brother of Peter Thiel's employee and apparent crackpot, Eric Weinstein, and given Thiel's reported financial support for race pseudoscience-promoting and IDW-connected Quillette, I have my suspicions.

And I predict that one day Carole Kennedy Hooven will have her own Quillette byline, where she can share her grievances with Quillette's far-right, racist and mostly male readership.

If Quillette will support Amy Wax's right to be a public racist troll while working for an educational institution, they'll certainly support Hooven. 

Rebecca Watson vs. the former skeptics of the IDW

Rebecca Watson, who has had more unpleasant personal experiences with the misogynist/racist-right members of the new atheist movement of the 2000s than anybody else, made a great video about these members of the Intellectual Dark Web and their slide into non-skepticism. 

The transcript is available at Skepchick.

I hope Slater is a guest speaker at the next Quillette conference.

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