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Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a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

Steven Pinker and Amy Wax and Persuasion

So Pinker hasn't been promoting Razib Khan, directly, that I could find, since 2021. So what has Pinker been up to?

Publishing his usual bullshit, specifically in the "Persuasion" Substack.

Persuasion, which was founded in June 2020, a few weeks before the Harper's Letter was published, appears to be part of the Harper's Letter scheme, associated with the Intellectual Dark Web and the Quillette gang.

Thirteen signers of the Harper's Letter are associated with Persuasion, including founder and editor in chief Yascha Mounk. The named instigator of the letter, Thomas Chatterton Williams, currently taking money from the Koch-funded AEI, is on the Board of Advisors.

Persuasion also has an About page which lists "People," which includes Mounk and some members of the Board of Advisors, like Pinker, Haidt, Yoffe, McWhorter; various others (including "David"); plus two more Harper's Letter-signers, → Jonathan Rauch and → Ian Buruma.

You can see how much Persuasion is aligned politically with the Intellectual Dark Web and Quillette by a glance at the "Most popular" articles on its home page:

• The Neoracists - by Quillette author and Koch employee John McWhorter. The article is about  how bad it is to be anti-racist.

• Keira Bell: My Story - about regretting being transgender - anti-trans is a pillar of the Intellectual Dark Web/Quillette, and, because those are funded by the same people who fund conservative politicians, a new pillar of the Republican Party. Quillette talks about Bell a lot. Of course.

• Why I'm Losing Trust in the Institutions - Mounk's attack on the CDC for being excessively woke. You can see Mounk whining about people calling him on his bullshit while he pretends to be "of the left." Classic Koch phony bipartisanship. I found an excellent critique of Persuasion here. 

• A Taxonomy of Fear - Emily Yoffe's "cancel culture" screed. She makes sure to namecheck her favorite reactionaries of the IDW/Quillette industrial complex including race pseudoscience promoter Jonathan Haidt, Koch employee (via FIRE) Greg Lukianoff, contemptible anti-feminist Quillette author Meghan Daum, and of course Thomas Chatterton Williams. They live in an inbred world, these IDW/Quillette people. Which makes it especially fun when Yoffe writes:

Many people ask why any of this should matter in the age of Donald Trump—a president who attacks free speech, stokes bigotry and division, and believes he is above the law. It matters because we have seen what happened when his enablers on the right failed to stand up to the worst impulses of their leader. These enablers are now morally responsible for the tragic consequences of their inaction.

But if Peter Thiel has funded Quillette - and I think the claim is true - then the very people Yoffe admires take money from the same guy who funds Trump. It makes the "left is just as bad" defense incredibly hollow.

• The Warped Vision of "Anti-Racism" by Trump-loving right-wing extremist Batya Ungar-Sargon, who, like Pinker, Haidt, McWhorter and Thomas Chatterton Williams is on the Board of Advisors of the (I believe) Christopher Rufo-founded, right-wing anti-CRT-scam FAIR for all. Ungar-Sargon's is the second "anti-racism is bad" piece in Persuasion's "Most Popular" list which should tell you exactly who is reading Persuasion. Her article spews the usual bullshit about the 1619 Project ("it's postmodern!") you can expect from the Quillette/IDW gang of goons and ghouls. Even if she takes money from Newsweek instead of Quillette.

• The Rittenhouse Verdict Shouldn't Have Been a Surprise - by contemptible infamous transphobe Jesse Singal, also on the Koch payroll.

Pinker has published two articles in Persuasion. The most recent is from this month and continues his current project of presenting himself as the arbiter of Rationality while promoting race pseudoscience as calm, cool reason.

I've long noted that Pinker is a weasel, so it is no surprise that he compares those who disagree with race pseudoscience to members of QAnon:

QAnon might be likened to a live action role-playing game, with fans avidly trading clues and following leads. Its progenitor, Pizzagate (according to which Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizzeria), also had a make-believe quality...

...Many of us are nonplussed by this way of thinking. It’s one thing to believe that Hillary Clinton is a morally compromised person—everyone is entitled to an opinion—but it’s quite another thing, and completely unacceptable, to express that opinion as a fabricated factual assertion.

But it’s our mindset that is exotic and unnatural. For many of us, it’s the dividend of a higher education which has imparted the sense that there is a fact of the matter about states of the world; that even if we don’t know it, there are ways of finding out; and that, as Bertrand Russell put it, “It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.” Indeed, one could argue that this mindset is the most important dividend of higher education.

Or at least, it used to be. Here's another candidate for a mythology zone: the sacred creeds of academic and intellectual elites. These include the belief that we are born blank slates, that sex is a social construction, that every difference in the social statistics of ethnic groups is caused by racism, that the source of all problems in the developing world is European and American imperialism, and that repressed abuse and trauma are ubiquitous.

In spite of my best efforts, Pinker is not known primarily as a promoter of race pseudoscience, but his belief about race and racism is the same as that of Amy Wax, who is well-known as a racist.

Let's review:

Steve Pinker: 

...another candidate for a mythology zone: the sacred creeds of academic and intellectual elites... that every difference in the social statistics of ethnic groups is caused by racism...

Amy Wax:

The centerpiece of wokeness is that all disparities, all group disparities, are due to racism, racism, racism, racism.

How is what Pinker said any different from what Wax said? I see no difference in content, only a difference in style.

Although Pinker gives an extra little weasel twist by portraying his racism as pure rationality, opposed to those crazy myth-loving "elites."

And note that Pinker's term "sacred creed" is very close to the term "sacred values" used by  Quillette Associate Editor Bo Winegard, a long-time promoter of race pseudoscience and even an advocate of national ethnicity quotas (you know, like the Nazis were.) Pinker is on the record as admiring Bo Winegard and his twin brother Ben.

Steven Pinker is the genteel mask of the hardcore racism that Amy Wax shouts from the rooftops.

And that's why Steven Pinker is more pernicious than Amy Wax and that's why this blog focuses on media-darling/sacred cow celebrity intellectual Steven Pinker and not on the more obviously racist Amy Wax.

The Koch-connected and transphobic Letter participants

According to SourceWatch:

As of February 2020, Charles Koch Institute listed the Reason Foundation as a "participating organization" on its website.

The Reason Foundation publishes Reason Magazine which recently bragged that 14% of the signers of the Harper's Letter are Reason contributors, with another six recently promoted by Reason.

There are also a whole lot of Reason contributors here, including Deirdre McCloskey, Cathy Young, Jonathan Rauch, Jonathan Haidt, Emily Yoffe, Jesse Singal, Kmele Foster, Katie Herzog, John McWhorter, Kat Rosenfield, Nadine Strossen, Laura Kipnis, Wendy Kaminer, Francis Fukuyama, and Malcolm Gladwell. (On it, too, are recent Reason interview subjects Meghan Daum, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Steven Pinker, Bari Weiss, and Garry Kasparov.)

Professional racist Steve Sailer is very pleased with Williams and the Letter:

Thomas Chatterton Williams, a sensible young part-black man of letters, has organized an open letter in Harper’s by old-fashioned center-left liberals against cancel culture.

I think the Letter is likely a project Williams dreamed up together with someone representing Koch interests, which has been for quite some time trying to influence the media and academia through free speech grifts.

The author of the Reason piece, Matt Welch, is described talking to Andrew Sullivan about the naughty Left in The Ringer.

Last week, Kmele Foster, Matt Welch, and Michael Moynihan interviewed the conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan for their podcast, The Fifth Column. The hosts and their guest spent much of the hourlong interview discussing the bellicose state of political discourse and left-wing activists who refuse to debate their opponents and even their allies, including Sullivan. “The only right that gay people had, for the longest time, was the the First Amendment right,” Sullivan said. 

I'm surprised Sullivan wasn't asked to sign the Letter, especially since like many funded by Koch (including Letter signers Pinker and Haidt,) he's a fan of race science and appears to be tight with "HBD Chick" a pal of Steve Sailer.

It's funny to see Welch trying to deflect from Koch race science support in the article:

No, I don't want to hang out professionally or personally with Nazis and/or race/IQ obsessives...

You do, Matt Welch. You already do.

Welch tries to use the "but Lefties signed the Letter" tactic:

The vast majority of public-facing writers and intellectuals I see scoffing at "cancel culture" and dismissing as a single tiresome monolith a grouping that includes Katha Pollitt, Martin Amis, Shadi Hamid, Margaret Atwood, Greil Marcus, George Packer, Michelle Goldberg, Randi Weingarten, and Zaid Jilani, are at some point just telling on themselves. You do not want to hear left-of-center thinkers bemoaning the free speech "illiberalism" on the left, and you are not curious whether at least a handful of people you have previously respected might have a legitimate concern or two about an issue you claim to hold dear. Noted.

I think those Lefties were invited to sign the Letter - a Letter that on the surface sounds high-minded and craftily avoided naming names or specifics about the cases they were complaining about - exactly so that its devisers could claim bi-partisan support.

And two of those Lefties are known as transphobes. And Jilani is a fan of Quillette an author at Quillette.

Chotiner strikes again - Chotiner vs. AEI's Danielle Pletka

CHOTINER FOR 
THE WIN

When we last saw the New Yorker's Ian Chotiner, he was embarrassing free speech grifting stooge Thomas Chatterton Williams (to think I once admired Williams.)

Now Williams is, as far as I have been able to discern, only loosely connected to the wingnut welfare system funded foremost by Koch.

(UPDATE: Williams became an official member of the plutocrat funded wingnut welfare system by accepting a post at the AEI in December 2020.)

But in Chotiner's interview, published today, with Danielle Pletka, he strikes at the heart of the Koch plutocracy since Pletka is an American Enterprise Institute bigwig (like IDWs Charles Murray and Christina Hoff Sommers). 

Chotiner asked Pletka about her time working for infamously racist Jesse Helms.

You know things that were wrong. This isn’t a “may.”

But I worked for him on the Middle East and South Asia, and I was very proud of what we accomplished.

You know his record on South Africa, though, correct? [Helms opposed any sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela visited the Capitol in 1994, soon after he was elected South Africa’s first post-apartheid President, Helms turned his back on him.]

I didn’t work on South Africa. I worked on the Middle East and South Asia.

I understand that. But I’m saying you must know about the guy’s career? I mean, the Civil Rights Act, the Martin Luther King holiday, his interactions with Carol Moseley Braun, his ads, his comments about South Africa and African National Congress. This stuff isn’t completely unknown to you.

I’m not quite sure what this has to do with my article.

What a weasel. And then this part:

Most significant to me is that Pletka was a "never Trumper" who claims to have changed her mind about Trump. I think what likely happened was that the plutocrats yanked her chain and she fell in line.

...and I really am crushed by this cancel culture, by the bullying, and by the transformation of American political discourse. And, by the way, I have really been happy, actually, to in some ways blame Donald Trump for that. It started with him. What did Michelle Obama say? “When they go low, we go high.” That has not been the guiding principle here.

Trump is probably making cancel culture, however much significance you attribute to it, significantly worse. That’s why I was surprised a little bit by the op-ed, because it seems like his defeat would be good for some of the things you’re worried about.

Yes, except for the fact that I think the ship has already sailed.

The obsession with "cancel culture" is telling. I think it's probable the AEI is the original instigator of the Harper's letter. Certainly many of the Harper's letter signers have Koch connections.

The Koch-dominated branch of the Right promotes the Trump antifa smear campaign against Biden, a campaign possibly inspired by and coordinated with the IDW's favorite shameless grifter Andy Ngo. 

Who was nominated is irrelevant, you mean?

Yes. I think that that choice was irrelevant, because I don’t think that those voters are the people who are steering the direction of the Party.

You write, “Are there problems on the right—horrible nasties on a par with the violent protesters who have lately inflicted untold damage on many U.S. cities, businesses and lives? You bet. These execrable gun-toting racists have received too much tacit encouragement from Trump.” Would you say it’s tacit? Isn’t it more direct than tacit?

I have to think about my answer. I think Donald Trump has played an opposite and equal role in encouraging bad people in the destruction that we’ve seen this year.

I’m asking because he talked about liberating Michigan. And then what he said about Kyle Rittenhouse.

Well, again, Donald Trump’s reaction, for example, in the wake of Charlottesville was abhorrent. I find an unwillingness on the part of many to condemn the destruction that takes place. The shootings, the violence, the threatening that’s been taking place—I find that also extraordinarily troubling. Now, is it incumbent upon the President to behave better? Damn, yes. That is why, for the last three and a half years, I’ve done very little but condemn Donald Trump on these matters. I try to be fair in calling balls and strikes, as I tried to be fair with Obama. I’m a conservative, so my view of what a ball and a strike is is different from yours. Nonetheless, those things are abhorrent. The problem that I see and the problem that brought me to write this is that there is an almost equal and opposite reaction on the other side.

You follow up that last quote by writing, “But they do not represent the mainstream of the Republican Party or guide the choices of the vast mass of Republican members of Congress.” Can you explain this a little bit more? I was slightly confused, because Trump is actually the President. And so it feels like maybe that does represent the mainstream of the Party, since he is the nominee and extremely popular and the most powerful and important Republican.

So Pletka's argument is that while violent extremists do represent the Democratic Party in spite of its nominee's moderate positions, on the other hand violent Trump supporters don't represent the Republican Party even though its leader, Trump, openly defended their violence.

The mind-fuckery and SHAMELESSNESS is absolutely appalling.

And to demonstrate once again the wretched character of the people aligned with Koch and the IDW, like Pinker and his defenders and the IDW/GamerGate creeps, Pletka takes a stupid cheap shot at Chotiner.

I’m thirty-seven—no, no, I’m thirty-eight.

You can’t even add.

Pletka hates Chotiner for allowing her to reveal herself as the soulless toady and defender of racists that she always has been and likely always will be.

Thomas Chatterton Williams agrees to accept wingnut welfare

Pinkerite noted the high number of Reason magazine contributors associated with the Thomas Chatterton Williams-led Harper's letter, back in July.

So this latest news is not surprising:

Author and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams joins the American Enterprise Institute

I think it's likely that the Harper's letter was Williams' audition, to show he was sufficiently on board the free speech grift, to be worthy of a post at AEI.

Reason magazine, like the American Enterprise Institute, is heavily funded by Charles Koch. 

Williams is now part of the wingnut welfare system, AEI division, along with IDWs Charles Murray and Christina Hoff Sommers.

Steven Pinker, Harper's and Hypocrisy

Well if Steven Pinker is involved in something there's a good chance you'll find hypocrisy.

Jesse Singal and his mob

I've documented what a hypocrite Pinker has been, claiming Stephen Jay Gould's criticisms of evolutionary psychology were invalid because Gould held left-wing views while at the same time Pinker supported the career of a race science-promoting, right-wing operative like Razib Khan and a right-wing plutocrat-funded racist like Steve Sailer.

So no surprise that many of the co-signers of the letter in Harper's whining about "intolerant culture" and free speech are huge hypocrites. Many I've already documented.

Several of the signers are associated with Quillette. In addition to Pinker: Jesse Singal, Cathy Young, Megan Daum, McWhorter. I haven't heard of one of them championing free speech in the face of Claire Lehmann and her recent SLAPP threat against an op-ed.

Cathy Young was a cheerleader for the vicious Gamergate campaign against feminist women.

Jesse Singal is known for his obsession with trans people, as well as his dissembling defense of Steven Pinker's alt-right statements.

Meanwhile, J. K. Rowling is a billionaire who could publish anything she wants, any time, but is annoyed because she published some things that were felt as attacks by trans people, she got criticism for it and now she's a poor suffering martyr to "an intolerant society."

I enjoyed this Twitter response to the Letter from Vice senior features editor.

And I enjoyed this parody.

Steven Pinker, the Intellectual Dark Web, Race Science and the Jeffrey Epstein files

Well that didn't last long. I called Claire Lehmann the voice of reason last month, but now, the woman who won the International Society for Intelligence Research's Constance Holden journalism award is ho-humming her way through one of the biggest stories of the year, if not the decade.

Claire Lehmann has a history of not caring if someone is pro-pedophilia as can be seen in her praise of Camille Paglia, who loves pedophilia so much she bascally declared it one of the pillars of Western Civilization.

Lehmann's circle of ghouls and grifters jumped in to agree with her about the lack of entertainment value from the Epstein files.

So who are these people who find underage rape by famous men so terribly tiresome?

Well there's Cathy Young, who mostly doesn't find underage rape interesting but she found it absolutely fascinating when a creepy guy published his ex-girlfriend's personal information in order to harm her as much as possible. Young seems to have a real fondness for Eron Gjoni, to the point where she appears to be trying to rehabilitate him, even though at the same time she got him to admit that he had no regrets about his grotesque and indefensible invasion of privacy.

I am convinced that Young has a serious case of internalized misogyny, right along with Lehmann, Paglia and Young's based Gamergate comrade, Christina Hoff Sommers, which is why, I believe, Young gets the maximum enjoyment out of seeing women, especially young women, in emotional pain.

She's also chummy with professional racist Razib Khan.

I've also mentioned Damon Linker on this blog. He's a thinktank creature who was mad that Trump was brought to justice, if only temporarily a few years ago. He's written for Lehmann's own gutter racist publication Quillette and signed the Harper's letter with the rest of the grifters and race pseudoscience promoters.

But let's not forget Matt Taibbi, who also finds stories about rape such a chore. Which is surprising, because apparently Taibbi used to find tales of rape hysterically funny and entertaining enough to write about in detail. 

Taibbi is part of Lehmann's far-right racist gang these days, which, considering all the misogyny in this crowd, is a perfect fit.

To most everybody's amazement, Lehmann was yeeted from X of all places, apparently for being bored with underaged-rape. Lehmann can be seen on Linked In complaining about it.

I find it amazing, all the people whose real names and jobs are displayed on Linked In, going public with their awfulness by supporting a gutter racist like Claire Lehmann. 

The suspension did not last long, and Lehmann is back on X now, which is the right-wing safe space, most of the time, and so a perfect home for her.

But what about Steven Pinker and Jeffrey Epstein?

I will be writing about that soon.

But fatuous and self-important is on-brand

Richard Kim had the best response yet to the Letter in Harper's.

And it turns out that Thomas Chatterton Williams is the troll who created the fatuous and self-important drivel and then invited the IDW and Quillette and Koch-connected like Cathy Young, Jesse Singal, Megan Daum, Katie Herzog, Jonathan Haidt, Coleman Hughes, Bari Weiss, Nadine Strossen, and Steven Pinker to sign it. I was once an admirer of Williams but he's turned into quite the race science abetting creep.

The INTERNATIONAL League of Race Pseudoscience Ghouls, Evolutionary Psychology Goons and Rightwing Grifters publishes a Westminster Declaration

A tweet from Michael Shermer in
supporter of racist extremist
J. Philippe Rushton - I think
Shermer is a fair representative of 
the reactionaries and race
pseudoscience promoters 
who signed this 
Westminster Declaration
But racist Toby Young would also
be a good choice.
===========================

Hot on the heels of the most recent right-wing declaration of their right to promote race pseudoscience and reactionary politics without pushback (a "scholarly" paper,) comes a DECLARATION for the right to promote race pseudoscience and reactionary politics - including anti-trans hatred, climate change denial and Covid conspiracies - without pushback.

Apparently this has been out for like a month but I'm only finding out about it now.

Anyway, let's review this INTERNATIONAL list of utterly shameless race pseudoscience ghouls, evolutionary psychology goons and rightwing grifters. Some of the same people who published the paper also signed this declaration. 

This list includes former far-leftists who are now stooges of the right.

The rightwing is basically addicted to this kind of declaration ever since the Harper's Letter - no wait - ever since racist Linda Gottfredson published a defense of The Bell Curve. 

Signing these papers and declarations is how the Right performs virtue-signaling.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as the list is international, but I really didn't expect to see so many Putin supporters and apologists.

You know Steven Pinker is going to be here - I'd bet he had some role in organizing both the paper and the declaration:

1. Matt Taibbi, Journalist, USA - reactionary grifter - went down the path to rightwingdom after his behavior with Russian women and women correspondents became better-known - Taibbi is absolute psychopathic misogynist filth, based on that Washington Post article, and once that became well-known he apparently had nowhere else to go except to the far right, where they absolutely love psychopathic misogynist filth.  His buddy Mark Ames appears to have been even worse, if you can believe it, bragging about statutory rape with a 15-year old and bragging about how he induced his pregnant Russian girlfriend to get an abortion by threatening to kill her. Both men claimed it was all just "satire" and complete fiction. I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans tried to recruit either Taibbi or Ames as candidate for president in 2028.
2. Michael Shellenberger, Public, USA - Koch employee, climate change denier, failed candidate for governor of California
3. Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, USA - race pseudoscience promoter
4. John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, USA - long time Koch employee - also signed the paper
5. Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, USA - of course of course of course
6. Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia - rightwing stooge
7. Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, USA - stooge of the Right - apparently turning into Bob Roberts
8. Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, USA - supporter of race pseudoscience
9. Glenn Loury, Economist, USA - Koch employee - also signed the paper
10. Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK - creepy old reactionary - get off his lawn you hippies!
11. John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK - creepy old reactionary - get off his lawn you hippies!
12. Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia - anti-trans reactionary
13. Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US - dictator apologist
14. Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, USA - conspiracy theory promoter
15. Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, USA - bullshit - he's a traitor to the USA and he's a Russian now
16. Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA - Koch employee via FIRE
17. Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK - wife of Julian Assange
18. Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, USA - reactionary grifter, Trump apologist
19. Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK - "cancel culture" hysteric
20. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada - infamous crackpot
21. Bari Weiss, Journalist, USA - the odious rightwing grifter, Supreme Court corrupter Harlan Crow is her sugar daddy
22. Walter Kirn, Author, USA - ally of Matt Taibbi
23. Peter Hitchens, Author, Journalist, UK - far-right ghoul
24. Niall Ferguson, Historian, Stanford, UK - far-right ghoul
25. Matt Ridley, Journalist, Author, UK - rightwing ghoul
26. Melissa Chen, Journalist, Spectator, Singapore/USA - one of the creepiest of the rightwing grifters - likes to display herself for Peter Boghossian- speaking of whom...
27. Peter Boghossian, Philosopher, Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin, USA - a rightwing creep - mad at me for being a nobody yet daring to criticize celebrity intellectual Steven Pinker
28. Yanis Varoufakis, Economist, Greece - the far-right's idea of a leftist
29. Michael Shermer, Science Writer, USA - racist who thinks infamous racist J. Philippe Rushton was right about Black people and Pinker's personal friend
30. Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics, UCL, UK - idiot stooge of the right
31. Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology, Oxford, UK - rightwing idiot who signed the Koch-connected Great Barrington Declaration
32. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor, Stanford, USA - another Great Barrington idiot
33. Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine (on leave), Harvard, USA - another Great Barrington idiot
34. Aaron Kheiriaty, Psychiatrist, Author, USA - rightwing idiot
35. Chris Hedges, Journalist, Author, USA - one of those leftists whose mission is to help Republicans win elections
36. Lee Fang, Independent Journalist, USA - ally of reactionary stooge Glenn Greenwald
37. Alex Gutentag, Journalist, USA - reactionary stooge - COVID hysteric
38. Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher, UK - right-winger, purveyor of woo
39. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Activist, Author, Netherlands - rightwinger, born-again Christian
40. Konstantin Kisin, Author, UK - Putinbot and right-wing extremist - but I repeat myself. Also a Barbie-phobic misogynist asshole. He needs to be sent back to Russia, toot sweet.
41. Leighton Woodhouse, Public, USA - ally of Shellenberger
42. Andrew Lowenthal, liber-net, Australia - stooge of the right, ally of Matt Taibbi
43. Aaron Mate, Journalist, USA - Putin sympathizer - appears to be Canadian not American
44. Izabella Kaminska, Journalist, The Blind Spot, UK - right-winger, supporter of crackpot RFK Jr.
45. Nina Power, Writer, UK - right-winger
46. Kmele Foster, Journalist, Media Entrepreneur, USA - rightwing grifter, loves Ayn Rand
47. Toby Young, Journalist, Free Speech Union, UK - infamous racist, former Quillette staffer, comedian Stewart Lee mocked him in the Guardian
48. Winston Marshall, Journalist, The Spectator, UK - right-winger
49. Jacob Siegel, Tablet, USA/Israel - rightwing stooge
50. Ulrike Guerot, Founder of European Democracy Lab, Germany - Putinbot
51. Heather E. Heying, Evolutionary Biologist, USA - evolutionary psychologist trying to trade on the good reputation of evolutionary biology - rightwing grifter - lately spending her time drumming up anti-trans hysteria
52. Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist, USA - ask Bret and Heather about Game Theory! They became infamous for promoting ivermectin as a treatment for Covid
53. Martina Pastorelli, Independent Journalist, Italy - rightwing Catholic
54. Leandro Narloch, Independent Journalist, Brazil - anti-trans reactionary
55. Ana Henkel, Independent Journalist, Brazil - anti-trans
56. Mia Ashton, Journalist, Canada - anti-trans, right-wing extremist
57. Micha Narberhaus, The Protopia Lab, Spain/Germany - Putinbot, ally of Konstantin Kisin
58. Alex Sheridan, Free Speech Ireland - Trump supporter
59. Ben Scallan, Gript Media, Ireland - right-winger
60. Thomas Fazi, Independent Journalist, Italy - right-winger pretending to be of the left
61. Jean F. Queralt, Technologist, Founder @ The IO Foundation, Malaysia/Spain - far-right goon
62. Phil Shaw, Campaigner, Operation People, New Zealand - apparent supporter of conspiracy kooks
63. Jeremy Hildreth, Independent, UK - marketing ghoul, former associate of Koch-infused CATO Institute
64. Craig Snider, Independent, USA - Koch ally
65. Eve Kay, TV Producer, UK - rightwing COVID hysteric
66. Helen Joyce, Journalist, UK - anti-trans fanatic
67. Dietrich Brüggemann, Filmmaker, Germany - stooge of the Right
68. Adam B. Coleman, Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, USA - rightwing grifter 
69. Helen Pluckrose, Author, UK - rightwing grifter
70. Michael Nayna, Filmmaker, Australia - right-winger ally of racist Eric Kaufmann
71. Paul Rossi, Educator, Vertex Partnership Academics, USA -rightwing anti-"woke" idiot
72. Juan Carlos Girauta, Politician, Spain - "hard-right"
73. Andrew Neish, KC, UK - right-winger, likes to retweet Fox News and Nigel Farage
74. Steven Berkoff, Actor, Playright (sic), UK - hideous old misogynist
75. Patrick Hughes, Artist, UK - this guy, I guess - racist Nicholas Wade is a fan
76. Adam Creighton, Journalist, Australia - anti-"woke" hysteric
77. Julia Hartley-Brewer, Journalist, UK - rightwing embarrassment to the UK
78. Robert Cibis, Filmmaker, Germany - conspiracy promoter
79. Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies, UK - far-right ghoul, ally of Shellenberger and Taibbi
80. Dirk Pohlmann, Journalist, Germany - "The Journalist Sebastian Leber referred to Pohlmann in the Tagesspiegel in April 2022 as a "conspiracy ideologue" who had conspired jointly in the secret action "Leberschaden" (liver damage) with the "who's who of the German "swashbuckler scene" (German: Schwurblerszene)," especially blogger Robert Cibis."
81. Mathias Bröckers, Author, Journalist, Germany - conspiracy kook
82. Kira Phillips, Documentary Filmmaker, UK
83. Diane Atkinson, Historian, Biographer, UK
84. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck, University of Buckingham, Canada - extreme right-winger and racist
85. Laura Dodsworth, Journalist and Author, UK - Covid kook
86. Nellie Bowles, Journalist, USA - Bari Weiss' wife - rightwing reactionary grifter - one-time (and possibly still?) fan of psychotic stochastic terrorist Libs of TikTok
87. Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law, Swansea University, UK - right-winger, member of the Koch-connected Heterodox Academy
88. Julius Grower, Fellow, St. Hugh’s College, UK - anti-trans crusader
89. Nick Dixon, Comedian, UK - right-winger, "comedian"
90. Dominic Frisby, Comedian, UK - right-wing, libertarian Bitcoin bro and "comedian"
91. James Orr, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, UK - rightwing extremist
92. Brendan O’Neill, Journalist, spiked, UK - Koch employee "Marxist libertarian" LOL
93. Jan Jekielek, Journalist, Canada - rightwing ghoul, likes to repost James "your mom" Lindsay on Twitter
94. Andrew Roberts, Historian, UK - far right
95. Robert Tombs, Historian, UK - right-winger
96. Ben Schwarz, Journalist, USA - right-winger, former national editor of the Steve Sailer-publishing, founded-by-racists The American Conservative
97. Xavier Azalbert, Investigative Scientific Journalist, France - promoter of anti-vaccine kook Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
98. Doug Stokes, International Relations Professor, University of Exeter, UK - far-right
99. James Allan, Professor of Law, University of Queensland, UK - far-right CPAC ghoul
100. David McGrogan, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK - rightwing Covid hysteric
101. Jacob Mchangama, Author, Denmark - right-winger, member of the racist Quillette gang
102. Nigel Biggar, Chairman, Free Speech Union, UK - rightwing, ant-woke, transphobic religionist
103. David Goodhart, Journalist, Author, UK - right-winger, reposts Putinbot Kosnstantin Kisin on Twitter
104. Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, Netherlands - Republican idiot
105. Matt Goodwin, Politics Professor, University of Kent, UK - rightwing ghoul
106. Alan Miller, Together Association, UK - anti-vax kook
107. Catherine Liu, Cultural Theorist, Author, USA - "leftist" idiot
108. Stefan Millius, Journalist, Switzerland - everything about him I could find is written in German. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's a right-winger
109. Philip Hamburger, Professor of Law, Columbia, USA - PragerU freak
110. Andrew Doyle, Author and journalist, UK - rightwing grifter - idiot Jerry Coyne loves him
111. Rueben Kirkham, Co-Director, Free Speech Union of Australia, Australia -  Free Speech Union a far-right organization founded by racist Toby Young and run by members of the far-right including white supremacist Douglas Murray - "related" to Heterodox Academy - so probably Koch-funded
112. Jeffrey Tucker, Author, USA - libertarian Bitcoin idiot
113. Sarah Gon, Director, Free Speech Union, South Africa - Free Speech Union a far-right organization founded by racist Toby Young and run by members of the far-right including white supremacist Douglas Murray - "related" to Heterodox Academy - so probably Koch-funded - Gon looks like an old-school pro-Apartheid racist to me
114. Dara Macdonald, Co-Director, Free Speech Union, Australia - Free Speech Union a far-right organization founded by racist Toby Young and run by members of the far-right including white supremacist Douglas Murray - "related" to Heterodox Academy - so probably Koch-funded - Macdonald appears to be a far-right ghoul
115. Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union, New Zealand -  Free Speech Union a far-right organization founded by racist Toby Young and run by members of the far-right including white supremacist Douglas Murray - "related" to Heterodox Academy - so probably Koch-funded
116. David Zweig, Journalist, Author, USA - rightwing idiot
117. Juan Soto Ivars, Author, Spain -  everything about him I could find is written in Spanish. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's a right-winger
118. Colin Wright, Evolutionary Biologist, USA - evolutionary psychologist, anti-trans fanatic, ally of far-right freak Christopher Rufo, disgraced researcher
119. Gad Saad, Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, Author, Canada - evolutionary psychologist, rightwing oaf, attendee of Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists
120. Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, USA - anti-vax kook
121. Jill Glasspool-Malone, PhD., USA - anti-vax kook (see link for Robert W. Malone)
122. Jordi Pigem, Philosopher, Author, Spain - appears to be a Covid hysteric
123. Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Australia - rightwing anti-trans idiot, contributor to racist Quillette
124. Michele Santoro, Journalist, TV Host, Presenter, Italy - stooge of the Right
125. Dr. James Smith, Podcaster, Literature Scholar, RHUL, UK - stooge of the Right
126. Francis Foster, Comedian, UK - rightwing "comedian" and ally of Putinbot Konstantin Kisin - Kisin sure has a lot of friends on this list
127. Coleman Hughes, Writer, Podcaster, USA - rightwing grifter, Quillette author
128. Marco Bassani, Political Theorist, Historian, Milan University, Italy -  everything about him I could find is written in Italian. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's a right-winger
129. Isabella Loiodice, Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Bari, Italy - almost  everything about her I could find is written in Italian. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that she's a right-winger
130. Luca Ricolfi, Professor, Sociologist, Turin University, Italy - everything about him I could find is written in Italian. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's a right-winger
131. Marcello Foa, Journalist, Former President of Rai, Italy - no surprise here: "Marcello Foa, a Eurosceptic journalist who has often shared stories proved to be fake..."
132. Andrea Zhok, Philosopher, University of Milan, Italy - too much Italian
133. Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Bergamo, Italy
134. Alberto Contri, Mass Media Expert, Italy - anti-vax kook
135. Carlo Lottieri, Philosopher, University of Verona, Italy - libertarian idiot
136. Alessandro Di Battista, Political Activist, Writer, Italy - Putinbot: "Di Battista declared that "for the world peace, thankfully we have Putin". On 22 February 2022, Di Battista declared "Russia is not invading Ukraine" and "that Putin wants everything but a war"."
137. Paola Mastrocola, Writer, Italy
138. Carlo Freccero, Television Author, Media Expert, Italy
139. Giorgio Bianchi, Independent Journalist, Italy - appears to be a Putinbot
140. Nello Preterossi, Professor, University of Salerno, Scientific Director of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy  - everything about him I could find is written in Italian. But based on the previous 100+ signers of the declaration, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's a right-winger
141. Efrat Fenigson, Journalist, Podcaster, Israel - anti-vax kook
142. Eli Vieira, Journalist, Genetic Biologist, Brazil - right-winger, idiot
143. Stephen Moore, Author and Analyst, Canada - there are too many Stephen Moores in the world. I'm going to guess that the one listed is this right-wing Trudeau-hating idiot.