This fucking guy: Peter Thiel

Absolutely bee-you-tee-ful take-down of Peter Thiel. Includes references to Curtis Yarvin and Joe Rogan.

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.

 

Yes of course the Trump administration is the Intellectual Dark Web administration

Pinker dancing for joy over Trump's
defeat in 2020
-----------------------------------------

Yes, like the Intellectual Dark Web, the Trump administration is chock-full of unqualified morons, racists, grifters and right-wing extremist plutocrats. 

I made the connection between J. D. Vance and the IDW back in August.

Trump supporters Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are hard-core believers in race pseudoscience - I noted Trump was pushing race pseudoscience during the campaign.

The Conversation, an opinion website funded foremost by religious conservatives, is celebrating this victory of IDW-style racism and fascism über alles in an article by Jamie Q. Roberts.

Roberts, an Australian, is a true believer in the Intellectual Dark Web, working on a forthcoming book about the IDW.

It's obvious that Roberts adores the idiocracy:

Donald Trump had his own celebrities, such as Hulk Hogan, but he was also supported by a group of converted Democrats: Joe Rogan, Tulsi Gabbard, (just chosen as Trump’s director of national intelligence), Robert F. Kennedy Jr (Trump’s pick to head the federal health agency), and Elon Musk, who has been selected to co-lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. 

Rogan is a self-confessed moron.

Gabbard is also a moron and a Russian asset.

Stephen Colbert recently had some great lines about Gabbard: “Tulsi Gabbard has been named Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence. Now, I... I... I have met this woman. I interviewed Tulsi Gabbard right over there during the 2020 presidential campaign, and I gotta say... uh... when, I think Tulsa Gabbard, the word intelligence is not the first one that comes to mind. Or the second. And, a reminder, a reminder: Gabbard is known for spreading Russian propaganda on fringe, far right sites, which is why Hillary Clinton said Tulsa Gabbard is being groomed by Russia, but only because she’s too old to be groomed by Matt Gaetz.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaxxer and animal-corpse-abusing kook.

Elon Musk is also a Russian asset and a full-blown corrupt oligarch in the Russian tradition, who needs to be deported back to South Africa.

The best part of the article though is when Roberts links Trump's victory to the IDW grift of Steven Pinker.

While Trump won for many reasons, including immigration and the economy, my sense is that Trump, forever the populist, harnessed a widespread dissatisfaction with a form of identity politics promulgated by a quite often well-paid, white-collar class: psychologist Steven Pinker’s “chattering class.”

Pinker can be seen a month ago worrying about a Trump presidency. While comparing Trump's fascism to "culture wars" and the woke mob.

Pinker's dislike of Trump while loving much of what Trump stands for is likely more evidence of Pinker's intellectual incoherence: he likes to have things both ways, a personality trait which many critics have noticed.

I hope Steven Pinker's devotion to the IDW grift will henceforth be recognized as an important factor in the triumph of fascism over American democracy.

From the Majority Report: Dave Rubin And Russell Brand Have An Idiot Contest

Dave Rubin was named in the infamous Bari Weiss article as a member of the Intellectual Dark Web - and even had his photo taken in the dark:

“I’ve been at this for 25 years now, having done all the MSM shows, including Oprah, Charlie Rose, ‘The Colbert Report,’ Larry King — you name it,” Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, told me. “The last couple of years I’ve shifted to doing shows hosted by Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Sam Harris and others. The I.D.W. is as powerful a media as any I’ve encountered.”

Mr. Shermer, a middle-aged science writer, now gets recognized on the street. On a recent bike ride in Santa Barbara, Calif., he passed a work crew and “the flag man stopped me and says: ‘Hey, you’re that skeptic guy, Shermer! I saw you on Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan!’” When he can’t watch the shows on YouTube, he listens to them as podcasts on the job. On breaks, he told Mr. Shermer, he takes notes.

“I’ve had to update Quillette’s servers three times now because it’s caved under the weight of the traffic,” Ms. Lehmann said about the publication most associated with this movement.

Even so, I have rarely mentioned Rubin on this blog.

But I had to share this Majority Report episode - just the title alone is perfect but the debate about exactly HOW Rubin lied is hysterical.

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.” 

Good work Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart, whom I once adored, had lately been getting one my nerves, ever since he pushed the Wuhan lab conspiracy. More recently, his defense of Rogan and big fossil.

But this is a good piece of work. Kudos.

Is Eric Weinstein a crackpot?

 Just last month I called Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying crackpots, and now thanks to this Washington Post article I discovered this substack asking if Eric Weinstein is a crackpot.

Is Eric Weinstein—unofficial founder of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” money manager for eccentric billionaire Peter Thiel, and frequent guest on the Joe Rogan show and other power podcasts, where he’s gained a reputation for brilliance—a crackpot?

Times are tough for the Intellectual Dark Web these days.

Timothy Nguyen explains what a puffed-up, grifting clown Eric Weinstein is.

Vice discovers that IDW grifters gonna grift

The Intellectual Dark Web continues to get increasingly pathetic. Per the Vice article Why Is the Intellectual Dark Web Suddenly Hyping an Unproven COVID Treatment?

It's a familiar set of claims, amounting to an assertion that being given the broadest possible platform is the same as being silenced, and that one's theories being tested is the same as them having been suppressed. While Big Tech continues to issue a confused, belated, and at times contradictory response to the problem of people using its platforms to promote health quackery, Weinstein, Heying, Taibbi, and Weiss have positioned themselves as the vanguards of intellectual freedom by, in their ways, buttressing these claims. In fact, and without, perhaps, even realizing it, they’ve acted as foot soldiers for something entirely commonplace: a politicized and pseudoscientific response to a deadly disease.

Not long ago Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying were promoting a spoiler political party during the 2020 presidential campaign that even libertarians thought was stupid.

Although Evergreen State College gave Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying a payout to get them to resign, it's looking more and more like half a million dollars was a bargain to get rid of this couple of crackpots.

Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian: shameless weasels

3 stooges of right-wing griftery

There have been other debunkings of the Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian hoax grift, but new debunkings are appreciated, and the latest one published by Haaretz is a welcome addition to the genre.

Mikael Nilsson's piece 'Mein Kampf' and the 'Feminazis': What the Hitler Hoax Really Reveals About 'Woke' Academia – and Its Critics says...

According to their own account, the writers took parts of the chapter and inserted feminist "buzzwords"; they "significantly changed" the "original wording and intent” of the text to make the paper "publishable and about feminism." An observant reader might ask: what could possibly remain of any Nazi content after that? But no one in the media, apparently, did.

Indeed, in public, the trio constantly downplayed the amount of re-writing they did to the original text. On Joe Rogan’s podcast in October 2018, Lindsay described how they'd "modified the words and added theory around it so that it would fly," and in another interview explained that this was to "get past plagiarism." 

Chapter 12, he noted, included sentences like: "This is why we need the Nazi Party, and [this is] what is expected of people who are going to be part of it." What did they change? "We took that out [the Nazi party reference] and replaced it with ‘intersectional feminism.’" What's left is an entirely anodyne sentence, stripped of any identifiable Nazi vestiges. Hardly "owning the grievance warriors."

So what did the text in the article accepted by Affilia actually look like? Was it, as Fox News claimed, a "feminist Mein Kampf", suggesting men should be treated the same way as Hitler victimized Jews?

It is surprising, to say the least, that none of the journalists reporting on the controversy actually bothered to compare the two texts. If they'd done so, they would have found that the Affilia article didn't contain anything that could be recognized as "Mein Kampf" even by a Hitler expert, let alone a lay person.

The article makes the case even more strongly after that, you should read it. The piece also notes how much the 3 stooges were loved by the Intellectual Dark Web:

What is clear is that the hoax and its controversy propelled Boghossian and his co-writers into the media limelight, big time, with multiple article in the mainstream press and a particularly warm welcome from right-leaning platforms: Dave Rubin’s show The Rubin Report and Peterson’s own YouTube channel, but also from more centrist outlets like Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Boghossian deepened his longstanding allyship with right-wing provocateur, Andy Ngo, and won a phalanx of new fans from Richard Dawkins to Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan to Megyn Kelly.

Please note Weiss, Sullivan and Megyn Kelly are also Advisors of FAIR. As is, of course, Steven Pinker.

One more point - Nilsson says: 

It is surprising, to say the least, that none of the journalists reporting on the controversy actually bothered to compare the two texts. If they'd done so, they would have found that the Affilia article didn't contain anything that could be recognized as "Mein Kampf" even by a Hitler expert, let alone a lay person.

It's no surprise that the right-wing media didn't compare the two texts - they certainly weren't going to look a grift horse in the mouth. 

The real shanda was the mainstream press that promoted the grift without question. But this is the same media that refuses to ask Steven Pinker about his decade-long support for professional racist Steve Sailer. Pinker no longer talks about Sailer, but Sailer still has Charles Murray proudly in his corner.

"Defending Western Civilization" is a dog whistle for white supremacy

The latest news about The Proud Boys in Raw Story:

Civil war brewing inside Proud Boys as top leader says he’s done pretending he isn’t a Nazi

It begins:

The far-right Proud Boys gang has long denied that it is a white nationalist organization and has instead claimed that it only exists to defend “Western Civilization.”

However, Newsweek reports that some members of the group are ready to openly embrace being a racist organization and are dropping any pretenses of wanting support of non-white people.

And ends:

(Kyle Chapman) also made clear that he believed talk of defending “Western Civilization” was really just a racist dog whistle all along.

“We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race,” he wrote.

"the West was built by the White Race" is the most likely reason Quillette staff member and obvious racist Bo Winegard and his brother Ben Winegard declare their love for "the West" and "Western Civilization" in their Twitter profiles.

So what are the connections between the Proud Boys and the Intellectual Dark Web?

Joe Rogan hosted Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.

Stefan Molyneux - named by Bari Weiss herself as connected to the Intellectual Dark Web - interviewed Gavin McInnes

Mike Cernovich, another named member of the IDW organized a "freedom party" with McInnes and Molyneux 

Ebony Magazine points out that Gavin McInnes and Razib Khan write for the racist Taki's Magazine - Khan's career has long been supported by Steven Pinker 

Both Quillette founder Claire Lehmann and Gavin McInnes worked for right-wing extremist nut job Ezra Levant's Rebel Media.

There are likely more. 

Speaking of McInnes - he likes to portray himself as a decent family man victimized by the Left, often mentioning his wife - who appears to be as extremist as he is - but McInnes made a less than wife-guy appearance in the latest issue of The Atlantic, Why the Alt-Right’s Most Famous Woman Disappeared:

(Lauren) Southern finished on set and ordered an Uber to the airport for her flight home to Toronto. Partway through the ride, her phone rang. It was McInnes. Southern listened to him closely for a few seconds.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this at all,” she said, laughing uncomfortably. Then her face tightened. “See, the thing is, because my moral compass tells me you have a wife and kids, it’s not even in my realm of consideration.” McInnes, according to Southern, had just reiterated an offer he’d made the night before, when she’d been out with him and a group of other far-right friends: “You know you want to fuck me; I’m your childhood hero.”

(When reached for comment, McInnes stated, “As a married man, I have never sexually propositioned Lauren Southern or any other woman.”)

With a grimace, Southern hustled him off the phone. She was speechless for a moment. “Send help,” she said feebly. “Help.”

But really considering how incredibly misogynist Gavin McInnes is - and I don't mean he hates feminists I mean he despises women and especially women's bodies (McInnes is obsessed with ovaries) - you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with Gavin McInnes' wife.

Two IDWs spread a lie to help Trump's Reichstag Fire campaign strategy

Vulture reports on two IDWs spreading a lie 

Joe Rogan Is Already a Headache for Spotify

The first involves a brush with misinformation. On Thursday, The Joe Rogan Experience published an episode with Douglas Murray, the conservative British political commentator, in which Rogan repeated a claim, derived from a conspiracy theory, that “left-wing people” have been arrested for intentionally causing wildfires in Oregon. That conspiracy theory had already been debunked by several mainstream news sources by the episode’s publication, and while Rogan’s citation of the claim seemed to be more of an aside contributing to the flow of the episode’s conversation on Murray’s “madness of crowds” ideas, the whole thing nonetheless added up to a situation where a piece of misinformation — which might be inflammatory or harmful, depending on how you interpret the impact mechanics of misinformation — ended up being spread further by an extremely popular podcast that’s now being paid for, hosted, and distributed by a major audio streaming platform.

Rogan’s recitation of the conspiracy theory turned out to be inadvertent, and to his credit, Rogan issued an apology over his social media accounts the next day, explaining that he had been misled by an article that he had read.

Here’s the version of the statement that went out over Twitter:

Pinkerite has never mentioned the activities of Douglas Murray, but he is a genuine named member of the Intellectual Dark Web, and certainly just as right-wing and sleazy as Rogan.

And it makes sense that two IDWs would spread a lie that helps Trump. I am convinced that many members or friends of the Intellectual Dark Web are working directly or indirectly with the Trump campaign.

Back in May I expressed my doubts about Rogan succeeding on the Spotify platform, due to his bigotry. So I wasn't surprised to read in Motherboard:

Some staff inside the company feel alienated by Spotify's hosting of certain The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) episodes, according to copies of some of the questions presented to the meeting obtained by Motherboard. The news signals how Spotify, as it moves into the podcasting space beyond music, is facing content moderation decisions more commonly associated with social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Spotify has already removed JRE episodes with some right-wing figures, including Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes.

Meanwhile Hillary hating extremist Glenn Greenwald defends Joe Rogan. The IDW and the far Left have much in common, as I have noted previously - in fact in the same article in which I discussed Rogan's deal with Spotify.

 

So is this what Heather Heying meant by "we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom"?

Heather Heying made that statement in Bari Weiss's 2018 IDW article. 

It's been pretty clear since even before the article that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein and her brother-in-law Eric Weinstein are opportunistic grifters, and more recently they are probably working for the Trump campaign like so many other members of the IDW appear to be: Joe Rogan, James Lindsay, Andy Ngo and Bari Weiss herself.

But even I could not guess how stupid and sleazy they would turn out to be. 

Per Business Insider:

Unity 2020 is the brainchild of former Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein, a charter member of the "intellectual dark web" (IDW) who is probably best-known for being the target of a student-led mob on campus in 2017. Unity 2020 isn't a party; it's "a grassroots presidential campaign to restore patriotic, courageous & capable leadership to the United States," according to its website.

Fundamental to the Unity 2020 ethos is the belief that the country faces certain doom if either President Donald Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins the election in November. The idea, then, is that a "patriotic" bipartisan ticket can save the day.

The "student-led mob" story was very likely one of the earliest free speech grifts of the Intellectual Dark Web, before they even decided on their little club's name.

Somehow, mysteriously, the IDWs of the Unity 2020 grift can't see a difference between Trump, a treasonous, corrupt, pussy-grabbing monster from hell and a middle-of-the-road standard politician like Joe Biden.

Heying could be seen hawking the "both sides are bad" on Twitter recently. It's so funny to see such a conscience-deficient sleazeball like Heying proclaiming anybody else to be guilty of playing to "basest instincts." 

The continuing dishonesty of Bret Weinstein was on display a little later in the Business Insider article:

A self-described "radical progressive," Weinstein said: "Economic inequality, growing past a certain point, tends to trigger revolts." But he added, "The focus on race on the BLM left is going to drive the entire nation to a place that it has been in the past, where race was a primary feature of how we viewed each other. And anybody who understands the United States knows that moving in that direction will be negative and not positive."

How stupid would someone have to be to buy Weinstein's story that he's a "radical progressive?"

I have to say, though, that Heying and the Weinstein brothers did get me to agree with an actual Libertarian:

The Libertarians and Greens have other ideas about Unity 2020's ambitions. 

"They're absolute f---ing morons," Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian Party chair from 2014 to 2020, said. "They don't have any plan for ballot access other than pretending it's not a thing."

Sarwark said Unity 2020's plan is to "transcend laws" by using a kind of magical thinking that he likened to Marianne Williamson's big-on-love and short-on-policy campaign.

"Who's your ticket? Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi Gabbard? And the runners-up were William McRaven and Andrew Yang. It's like the start of 'Street Fighter': Randomize your fighter and let's see how it goes," Sarwark added.

That was pretty damn funny for someone who admires Ayn Rand.

But I think it's extremely unlikely that they ever meant Unity 2020 to be on any ballots. The likely point of the whole thing is to help Trump by claiming to their idiot social media followers that Joe Biden, a vastly superior human being to Trump (as virtually all human beings are) is somehow on the same incomprehensibly psychopathic level as Trump, thus dampening their enthusiasm and likeliness of voting for Biden.

The IDW in general, and certain members in particular are soulless, corrupt, lying, sleazy grifting rat-fuckers. They do absolutely nothing in good faith and they have absolutely no qualms about it.

Bari Weiss promotes the IDW ~ 2020 edition

Contempt for women

This is where the Dirtbag Left, the IDW and Trump supporters find common ground: contempt for women


New York Times columnist Bari Weiss famously promoted her friends, mostly right-wingers as the "Intellectual Dark Web" two years ago.

Since then, the Intellectual Dark Web has had its ups and downs. Ben Sexmith of the right-wing, Trump-loving Spectator USA was ready to perform an autopsy on it just this month:

The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ has fractured now. Sam Harris is still droning on his podcast with more soporific power than a packet of Restoril. Rubin has become an overblown Fox News personality. God bless Jordan Peterson, wherever he is. The phenomenon left lots of people with a lot of questions. If we want them to have answers, well — now is our chance.

And Quillette certainly isn't what it was in 2018. Sure, it's still a sausagefest - I counted two bylines from women among twenty-four on its homepage today, but lately the coronavirus pandemic has shifted its focus from Quillette's usual enemies list: liberals, socialists, feminists, Muslims, and opponents of race science. Although reliably there is an article attacking transgender activism as a mob by bigot and hypocrite Jon Kay.

According to Graphetron, Quillette has fewer patrons now than when Bari Weiss promoted it in 2018 as "...the publication most associated with (the IDW) movement."

But Quillette is not dependent on individuals, it has an admitted funder, right-wing plutocrat Mark Carnegie, and other unnamed funders. My bet is one of them is Koch.

And speaking of sausagefests - Joe Rogan is the most successful of Bari's IDW friends. Bari wrote an article for the NYTimes today celebrating Rogan's Spotify deal:

When I saw the news that the king of all podcasting, Joe Rogan, had inked a deal with Spotify for his widely popular show I texted to congratulate him on getting crazy rich. How rich? 

“Weirdly richer,” he replied. “Like it doesn’t register. Seems fake.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal could amount to more than $100 million, a number that Rogan doesn’t want to discuss. “It feels gross,” he told me Thursday night. “Especially right now, when people can’t work.”

News of Tuesday’s deal, which gave Spotify exclusive rights to “The Joe Rogan Experience,” sent the company’s stock soaring: It added $1.7 billion to its market cap in 23 minutes. The musician and critic Ted Gioia pointed out on Twitter that “a musician would need to generate 23 billion streams on Spotify to earn what they’re paying Joe Rogan for his podcast rights.”

OK, so it’s a lot of money. But Spotify reportedly paid almost double for Bill Simmons’s podcasting company, the Ringer, earlier this year. Money is not the only reason this deal matters. 

Rogan is a friend of mine, and I’ve been on his show. But I still find the extent of his popularity mind-boggling. Imagine if I had told you, a dozen years ago, that the former host of “The Fear Factor,” an MMA color commentator who loves cool cars and shooting guns and working out, a guy with a raw interview show featuring comedians, athletes and intellectuals, was more influential than the entire slate of hosts on CNN.
You’d think I was nuts. But it’s true. His fans are everywhere — I’ve met them working behind the register and wearing loafers at hedge funds.

With "His fans are everywhere" Weiss links to an article in The Atlantic about Rogan. But Weiss never mentions a major point in The Atlantic piece: Rogan's fans are overwhelmingly male.

Most of Rogan’s critics don’t really grasp the breadth and depth of the community he has built, and they act as though trying is pointless. If they decide they want to write off his podcast as a parade of alt-right idiots and incels (as opposed to a handful of cretins out of about 1,400 guests) they will turn up sufficient evidence. And his podcast is a parade of men. So many men. Talking so (so, so, so) much about the things men talk about in 2019 when they think no one’s listening.

 It's curious that Weiss omits this - possibly because she's trying to help out her self-declared friend Joe Rogan achieve a bigger audience.

Although the article is about Rogan, Weiss can't help mention other members of the IDW:

But there is also a very practical reason Rogan can say whatever he thinks: He is an individual and not an organization. Eric Weinstein, another podcaster and a friend of Rogan, told me, “It’s the same reason that a contractor can wear a MAGA hat on a job and an employee inside Facebook headquarters cannot: There is no HR department at ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’.” 

Eric Weinstein is not only a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, he's its founder. If Bari Weiss is getting paid as the IDWs press agent, Weinstein would be the one cutting the checks.

And Joe Rogan has done exactly as the IDW would want. Before it was clear that Biden was the front-runner, Rogan supported Sanders. After Biden was the presumed nominee, he supported Trump and he said it while he was talking to Eric Weinstein who works for Trump supporter Peter Thiel.

In standard IDW fashion, Weiss claims several times in the article that Trump-supporting IDW Joe Rogan is not political. But he is absolutely political and he clearly is right-wing and has a special antagonism towards women. This is again from the Atlantic article Weiss linked to:

Rogan’s most recent Netflix special is often funny because Joe Rogan is a professional stand-up comedian, but if you look past the jokes themselves and focus on the targets he’s choosing, the same patterns emerge. Hillary, the #MeToo movement, why it sucks that he can’t call things “gay,” vegan bullies, sexism. Of all the things in the world for a comedian to joke about right now, why these? “I say shit I don’t mean because it’s funny,” he says during the special, which is something all comedians say, and is sort of true but also sort of not. People reveal their deepest selves in the subjects they keep revisiting, and the hills they choose to die on. With Rogan, you can often see and hear the tension between what he knows he’s supposed to believe and what he really thinks. Joe Rogan may be all about love, but beneath the surface he’s seething.

The members of the dirtbag left
 that Bari Weiss likes

In the article, Weiss mentions podcasts she likes to listen to, including one by Sam Harris. She also mentions a podcast called Red Scare, which is part of the Dirtbag Left. One of the hosts of Red Scare is Anna Khachiyan known for trashing feminists with Chapo Trap House's Amber A'Lee Frost in Spiked, a media outlet funded by Koch to run its free speech grift called the "Unsafe Space Tour", the one in which Steven Pinker made his pro alt-right remarks.

Red Scare demonstrates exactly where the Dirtbag Left and the IDW meet, in their admiration for Camille Paglia, stating at one point in their podcast which promotes an article by her: "(Paglia's) right about everything."

Camille Paglia is the ideal feminist for the IDW and the Dirtbag Left because she has utter contempt for women, proclaiming:

"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."

Quillette founder Claire Lehmann referenced this remark by Paglia with approval.

Many members of the IDW admire Camille Paglia: Michael Shermer, Christina Hoff Sommers, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, Claire Lehmann (of course), Charles Murray, Eric Weinstein, (Anna Khachiyan and Eric Weinstein admire Paglia together on Weinstein's podcast)

This is where the Dirtbag Left, the IDW and Trump supporters find common ground: contempt for women. As the Atlantic article says:

In 2019, men feeling thwarted and besieged is a bipartisan experience. This is the era of the Angry White Man, and it’s not just the MAGA army. It’s a description that also matches your garden-variety “Bernie bro,” the Biden guy who just wants to change the subject, and that walking man bun who charged the stage at a Kamala Harris campaign event and showed his “profound respect” for all the women present—for a conversation about equal pay—by grabbing the microphone to lecture her about animal rights. All kinds of men out there are pissed off and looking for someone to blame.

They are looking to blame women. Especially women who don't know their place in what the Dirtbag-IDW-Trump coalition consider the natural male-dominated order of things.

This is especially well-illustrated by a recent NYTimes article about Chapo Trap House, the leading Dirtbag media outlet:

They dove into a discussion of the caucuses, and polling, and whether the media is fair to Mr. Sanders (they think not). 

“Should everything go according to plan on Monday, you will have the opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of every single one of the most insufferable cowards in the world,” Mr. Menaker said. 

“I’ve been keeping a list,” Ms. A’Lee Frost said. “Have you been keeping a list?”

There was a case of White Claw, an alcoholic seltzer water, onstage. 

When Hillary Clinton’s name came up, the reaction was nearly indistinguishable from a Trump rally.

“Lock her up,” the co-host Matt Christman said to the crowd.

The crowd began to chant: Lock her up. Lock her up. 

“She never really cracked the glass ceiling,” Mr. Biederman said. “She more like fell down the glass staircase.”

This photo from the NYT article demonstrates the male:female ratio for the 
Chapo Trap House audience is about the same as Quillette's bylines

Speaking of misogynist media that is doing very well financially, Chapo Trap House rakes in millions of dollars. Someone on Twitter posted a listing of how much money leftist podcasts make and it's a lot, especially because for some of the podcasters, like Jacobin and the Bruenigs, the podcast is a side hustle.

Ken Klippenstein, an author at The Nation magazine, found it offensive that someone pointed this out.

The top four earners in this list are part of the Dirtbag Left, and #5 on the list, The Dig, which is Jacobin, is very friendly with the Dirtbag Left and has the same hostility to feminism as the Dirtbags.

Jacobin recently published an article in which it was asserted that feminism isn't about women, it's about every gender. Although this being Jacobin the actual point is that women should stop focusing on their own rights like selfish capitalist bitches and learn where they rank in the socialist hierarchy (not very high.)

 I'm still waiting for Jacobin to publish an article about Black Lives Matter declaring it's not about black lives.

Weiss' article tells us that Joe Rogan is the new mainstream, but ends like this:

The real question for Rogan Nation is whether their man will be changed by a Spotify contract. “Why would I sell out now? You sell out to get what you want.”
And he’s got it.

Now that Rogan is taking Spotify's money, its guidelines may well change Rogan's show. According to Spotify's web site:

Hate content is content that expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability. We do not permit hate content on Spotify. When we are alerted to content that violates this standard, we will remove it from the platform. If you believe a piece of content violates our hate content policy, complete the form here and we will carefully review it against our policy. We are also continuing to develop and implement content monitoring technology which identifies content on our service that has been flagged as hate content on specific international registers.
Repeated violations of our prohibited content policies can result in losing access to the Spotify platform

The IDW does its part to help Trump

Per the Guardian:

The podcast host Joe Rogan has said he will vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the presidential election, should the former vice-president be the Democratic nominee. 

The comic was speaking on Friday’s edition of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which regularly tops the iTunes chart for downloads. Rogan has nearly 6m Twitter followers, regularly appears on television as a commentator on mixed martial arts, and is seen as an influential voice with young and blue-collar male voters. 

During a conversation with guest Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital, talk turned to the election. Weinstein, who works for the Trump-supporting tech mogul Peter Thiel, said he would not vote for Trump or Biden, the probable challenger in November.

Of course only gullible Sanders supporters ever believed Rogan sincerely want Sanders to become POTUS.

It's screamingly obvious that Trump would rather face Sanders than Biden which is why Trump was ratfucking so hard with Ukraine.

Rogan was only doing his part for the Trump team, trying to get the nomination for Sanders.

And Weinstein of course is the founder of the IDW and we see how much use he is in opposing a monster from hell like Trump - not at all.

Bernie Sanders makes common cause with the IDW

Sanders appeared on Joe Rogan's show and then made a promotional ad featuring Rogan's endorsement.

This is Joe Rogan:



Rogan made the Sanders endorsement, appropriately enough, while interviewing Bari Weiss, publicist for the Intellectual Dark Web, who wrote about Rogan in her NYTimes article about the IDW:

“People are starved for controversial opinions,” said Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country. “And they are starved for an actual conversation.” 

That hunger has translated into a booming and, in many cases, profitable market. Episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which have featured many members of the I.D.W., can draw nearly as big an audience as Rachel Maddow. A recent episode featuring Bret Weinstein and Ms. Heying talking about gender, hotness, beauty and #MeToo was viewed on YouTube over a million times, even though the conversation lasted for nearly three hours.

Rogan is considered such an important member of the Intellectual Dark Web he had his photo taken for the article, just like Michael Shermer and Christina Hoff Sommers.

It's important to note that Rogan would like to see a ticket with Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. In other words the two candidates who hate the Democratic Party.

I hope that this stops Sanders' recent rise in the polls. I can't imagine why any African Americans, who were already trending towards Biden, would ever vote for Sanders in the primary after this.

Sanders supporters of course can't admit any of this is a problem. I am very disappointed in Ezra Klein for defending Sanders over this. Just like the Trump cult, the Sanders cult cannot admit when their mighty leader is wrong.

Steven & Bari & Stefan & Eric

A little over a year ago Bari Weiss published "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web" subtitled "An alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation. Should we be listening?"

Weiss wrote:

Go a click in one direction and the group is enhanced by intellectuals with tony affiliations like Steven Pinker at Harvard. But go a click in another and you’ll find alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich (the #PizzaGate huckster) and Alex Jones (the Sandy Hook shooting denier).

Eric Weinstein, his brother Bret and his sister-in-law Heather Heying all appeared in the silly photoshoot for the article, and were interviewed by Weiss, so there was certainly a high level of cooperation on the article from them. But Eric, who has been given credit for the name "intellectual dark web" does not consider Molyneux to be a member of the gang, in spite of Weiss's including him in "the group". As we can see in this tweet exchange from September 2018.

Later the same day Weinstein claimed he never met Molyneux and that he barely knew his ideas.

In January of this year, Weinstein still says he does not know Molyneux.

It seems that Bari Weiss did not speak to Molyneux for the article. 

As we can see by his reaction.

Weiss has never been on Molyneux's show, although several other people she included in the IDW have, including Michael Shermer, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens. Meanwhile Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan both had Molyneux on their shows. Weiss appeared on Rogan's show.

Weiss opened her Intellectual Dark Web article like this:

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.” 

I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.

Before I continue, there are skeptics who doubt Sam Harris is an actual neuroscientist and that Dave Rubin has ever been a comedian.

Also "fundamental biological differences between men and women" is not nearly the extent of what they believe, and the description doesn't mention race, which is at least as important to IDWers as gender.

This is Weiss's group definition in the article:

Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.

Then Weiss links to this web site as the "closest thing to a phone book for the I. D. W." which includes many people not mentioned explicitly by Weiss, including Carl Benjamin, AKA Sargon of Akaad, described in his Wiki:

British political commentator, politician, anti-feminist, polemicist and YouTuber with the online pseudonym Sargon of Akkad. He was a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate for the European Parliament's South West England constituency in the 2019 election, although he failed to win his election. Benjamin grew to prominence through the Gamergate controversy. Since Gamergate, he has covered topics such as identity politics, the alt-right, Brexit and political correctness.

However, the site does not include Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones nor Stefan Molyneux. Weiss writes:

But in typical dark web fashion, no one knows who put the website up.

By the end of the article, there is still no explanation for why Bari Weiss grouped Molyneux in with the IDW. She writes:

I get the appeal of the I.D.W. I share the belief that our institutional gatekeepers need to crack the gates open much more. I don’t, however, want to live in a culture where there are no gatekeepers at all. Given how influential this group is becoming, I can’t be alone in hoping the I.D.W. finds a way to eschew the cranks, grifters and bigots and sticks to the truth-seeking.

But I think that what Pinkerite has been demonstrating, blog post by blog post, is that in fact there really are few differences in point of view, especially about race and gender, between those Weiss considers respectable, like Steven Pinker, and "the cranks, grifters and bigots."