Is the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) Seeing SJW Everywhere? | Re Quilette | Moral Libertarian View

Welcome to Moral Libertarian View, a podcast style program where we discuss big ideas to see if they can contribute to more individual liberty and equal opportunity, values that are at the heart of the Moral Libertarian idea. My aim is to untangle the confusions and seek the truth, in the areas of civilizational values, economic policy, and culture. I hope you subscribe if you are interested.

The Intellectual Dark Web is at the heart of the recent revival of interest in classical liberal values. Its intellectual arguments in support of free speech, and against identity politics and systems of oppression theories, are indespensible in the culture war against the increasingly aggressive postmodern left. For this reason, it has attracted interest and support from both old-school liberals and conservatives alike.

But as we gradually get used to talking of the IDW as a 'thing', with a particular worldview, there has also been building criticism of the IDW as having a particular dominant perspective, and perhaps a biased one. Even though I am a big fan of the IDW in general, I have also long warned of bias developing over time. And unfortunately, I have been seeing a particular kind of bias developing within the IDW in recent months. A good example of this is Quilette's article on the Australian election last week. The article claims that elitist cultural progressives and their SJW style agenda caused the Labor party, which is roughly speaking the counterparts of the US Democrats, to lose the election. However, the fact is that there was simply little to no attention on cultural issues in that particular election, and it was almost entirely fought over economic policy. In fact, people who actually live in Australia have been keen to point this out, both in the comments section of that article and on Twitter. Meanwhile, Americans who probably know nothing of Australian politics keep comparing the situation to Hillary vs Trump in 2016, when in reality the Australian election was probably more like Bush vs Gore back in 2000. As the saying goes, when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you think about is how SJWs are destroying culture, everything looks like the fault of SJWs.

I fear if this trend is allowed to continue, the IDW would just end up losing all credibility. I mean, imagine if the 2020 US Presidential elections played out just like the 2019 Australian elections. Imagine if the Democrats went in talking about nothing but economic policies, and they still lost. Imagine prominent figures within the IDW then blaming SJWs for that lost. The IDW would probably lose credibility with at least half of America in a matter of weeks. With that, the momentum for the revival of interest in classical liberal values would also be halted, or even reversed. I think we should be very careful to prevent this happening.

I believe the best way to prevent a biased perspective is for the IDW to remain open minded about considering voices and ideas on all sides of each debate. I get that many people think that SJW behavior is a big threat to free speech, and they are unfortunately largely correct in their worries. But there are many other important issues and perspectives out there too, for example regarding economic policy, which has nothing to do with SJWs either way. A true intellectual would engage with concerns and ideas from all sides in a balanced and fair manner, and objectively investigate the truth of every situation before making a judgement on anything.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time to discuss another big idea. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

A New Cultural Hegemony of Atheist Fundamentalism, Postmodernism and Identity Politics? | TaraElla Report S4 E7

Welcome to the TaraElla Report, where I talk about cultural and political issues. All of us are individuals who are simply looking for more freedom, but we often get confused along the way. My aim is to untangle the confusions and seek the truth, in the areas of civilizational values, economic policy, and culture.Today, I want to talk about two interrelated recent developments in the internet political left, that leave me quite worried about the future of social and political discourse.

Part 1: Postmodernism as Deradicalization? No thanks!

The first thing I want to talk about today is that there seems to be a new trend in the internet left to promote stories of people who were supposedly sucked into the far-right by watching some YouTube videos, who later left the far-right because they were convinced by some left-wing YouTubers, in particular ContraPoints and/or Destiny. I have come across this type of story so many times in the past few weeks that I have lost count of it by now. I have also become increasingly concerned about the narrative that is being promoted here. My first concern is that, in quite a few of these stories, Intellectual Dark Web type thinkers like Jordan Peterson are described to be part of the pipeline towards far-right thinking. While I can't rule out that some individuals may have been fans of such figures during their political conversion, the fact is many of these figures are rational and moderate people, and this sounds like a case of guilt by association. Jordan Peterson is popular across the political spectrum, for example. What I'm concerned about is that these narratives paint an unfair picture of many classical liberal thinkers, which also mean they are strongly unsympathetic to the cultural worldview of classical liberalism. Notice I said 'cultural worldview', because while leftists and classical liberals have long disagreed economically, they weren't necessarily in conflict in the cultural side of things historically. I mean, I don't see why Marx or Engels would have problems with free speech or an anti-identity politics stance, for example. To be fair, even today, some far-left thinkers like Slavoj Zizek continue to reject the postmodern and identity New Left, and I have great respect for them as a result, but they seem to be in the distinct minority nowadays. If Marx and Engels were alive today, I seriously don't think they would be liked by the New Left, with all their politically incorrect ideas. Gone are the days where the left and classical liberals disagreed on the economic system but at least agree on many cultural issues. Nowadays, to be truly left, it seems that one has to also reject the cultural values of classical liberalism, in favour of agreeing with deconstructionism, systems of oppression analyses, and postmodern political philosophy in general. My other concern is that, in many of these narratives, de-radicalization of the former far-right occurs by the way of watching some YouTubers with New Left type views, and agreeing with what they say. You start with moderate ones like ContraPoints, and work your way through the other, much more radical, channels recommended by the algorithm, including, eventually, some that openly state that free speech is not important! I mean, I actually like to watch many of these channels myself, but it is a fact that many of them are heavy on postmodernist and identitarian ideas. It paints a picture that one needs to go hard left culturally to be no longer far-right. This ignores the fact that disagreeing with one extreme on cultural issues doesn't mean you have to agree with the other extreme. I'm sorry, but I fundamentally disagree with the worldview of the Lobster Queen and her followers, even though I actually like the aesthetics of many of those videos. And disagreeing with the Lobster Queen doesn't make me, a supporter of Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard, right wing!

Part 2: Why Postmodernism and Existentialism are Atheist Fundamentalism

The main reason why I'm so concerned is that postmodernism, along with its associated ideas of existentialism, and various types of critical theory, are in my opinion, akin to a type of religious fundamentalism, where fundamental metaphysical beliefs drive the agenda, to the exclusion of both liberty and pragmatic reason. My view has always been that while people are welcome to be religious, it would be totally inappropriate for fundamentalist religious ideas to have a strong impact on politics, and this view is shared by most people in the West. While what has been long feared is the influence of say, fundametalist Christianity or fundamentalist Islam, I would say that a bigger threat nowadays is fundamentalist atheism, as expressed through postmodernism, existentialism and some forms of critical theory. These ideas are fundamentalist because their logic is totally based on a prior firm acceptance of atheism, because they simply cannot be true if atheism is rejected. Once again, I am a firm believer in religious freedom, and people are of course welcome to be atheists. The problem is that I don't want any fundamentalism in politics. Just as I wouldn't want the religious fundamentalist idea that being gay is immoral to influence our politics, I really don't want any influence from postmodernism, existentalism, or neo-Gramscian cultural hegemony theory in our politics either.

Part 3: Drug-induced 'Ideas' as False Englightenment?

Another reason why I'm concerned with BreadTube, and also the wider internet New Left, is that they often push people to just accept postmodernist ideas without properly critiquing them. For example, another big problem with a lot of post-1960s far-left philosophy is that some of those ideas may have been influenced by drug use, because some important thinkers, like Foucault for example, are well known to have experimented with drugs. Some of their ideas, for example about how everything is interconnected, sounds to me like the psychotic effects of drugs like ecstacy, at least from what I understand from what people have said in books. I think the content creators of BreadTube, who often talk about ideas that stem from Foucauldian thinking, should at least discuss this concern for once. I really want to hear their perspective on it.

Part 4: Be Woke, or You Enable the Far-Right?

A second, and clearly related thing I want to talk about is the decreasing acceptance of SJW-skeptic type ideas in left-leaning circles. Just a few years ago, SJW skepticism had a huge presence on the internet left, and it was very common for Bernie Sanders supporters to openly oppose identity politics. In fact, back then, the appeal of Bernie Sanders for many people was that he didn't play identity politics like Hillary Clinton. But those days are gone. These days, if you want to be welcome on the internet left, you have to at least refrain from attacking identity politics. What they like to say now is that SJW issues aren't important compared to economic issues like Medicare For All, and somehow indulging in criticizing SJWs will lead to victory for the far-right. Notice that this is the party line applied to SJW skeptic lefties, but pro-identity politics lefties still get a free pass to promote their views within the internet left. Therefore, the real internet left party line in 2019 seems to be that the internet left is now thoroughly supportive of SJW thinking, and anyone who doesn't agree needs to shut up. Toe the new party line, or we'll toss you into the social construct we call 'right-wing'. A very scary development indeed.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time to discuss another big idea. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

Why Pete Buttigieg isn't the 'Liberal Elite' Enemy | TaraElla Report Radio

Welcome to TaraElla Report Radio, the podcast style compliment program to the TaraElla Report, where we revisit and Rethink the fundamental Classical Liberal ideals and values for the 21st century. Our aim is to reboot classical liberalism by looking for new and interesting ideas, and evaluating these ideas through the lens of free speech, individual liberty and equal opportunity. On different days, we will be looking at issues around civilizational values, economic policy, culture, and more.

Today, I'm going to talk about 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. And yes, this is one of those special episodes of the podcast where you can actually see me talking. From what I see, Mayor Pete has become deeply unpopular in some circles, where he is called names like 'Sneaky Pete', or the gay version of Hillary 2016. I am even getting new dislikes on my old Buttigieg videos. From what I understand, there are several reasons for his new-found unpopularity. Firstly, he has received a lot of mainstream media attention, which many fans of Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang find unfair, because these candidates with clearer policy platforms have received almost no attention. Being a fan of both Gabbard and Yang myself, I totally get this sentiment. Secondly, there's a suspicion that he is only getting this attention because he is gay, which feeds into the general rising resentment against identity politics everywhere. A related issue is the amount of funding he has received from pro-gay elites. Thirdly, his very elite background has become very well-known, and this is, understandably, a point of worry for many people who fear that he would become an out-of-touch President should he get elected.

I will now address these issues one-by-one, and I will show you why I don't think we should see Pete Buttigieg as an elitist enemy of the common people. Firstly, if the media is giving attention to Pete Buttigieg but not Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard, it is the media's own choice, and there is no evidence that Buttigieg himself condones this unfair treatment. I mean, if you were in his shoes, you can't afford to boycott mainstream media just because they are unfair to other candidates, right? Some of you may say that this media attention demonstrates that Buttigieg is now the establishment pick, and should hence be opposed by all anti-establishment candidate supporters. But my experience tells me that the establishment, who always like to play it safe, is highly unlikely to pick somebody who is both gay and 37 years old. The other thing is that Buttigieg didn't get much attention until a sudden surge in March, unlike for example Kamala Harris, who received a lot of attention from the day of her announcement. This also supports the idea that he is not the establishment choice. In other words, it is possible that the establishment is using Buttigieg to their own ends, perhaps to influence the relative popularity of other candidates. If this is true, the media attention could be seen as a windfall for Buttigieg, but then this would only be a side-effect of being used to fulfill other plans that don't involve him actually getting the nomination. I think we all need to be smarter with how mainstream media actually tries to manipulate opinion.

Secondly, to his credit, Buttigieg has not played the identity politics card, unlike some of the other 2020 candidates. He has not made a big deal about being gay, and he is also opposed to the whole boycott Chick-Fil-A thing. He even spoke negatively of identity politics in front of an LGBT audience! The fact that others make a big deal about him being gay isn't his fault. The fact that pro-gay elite donors have donated to his campaign also isn't his fault. While I think it is a very bad idea to support Buttigieg simply because he is gay, if some people choose to do that, it is not his fault either. I mean, some people supported Obama simply because he was black, but nobody blames him for that, and nobody should. It is clear to me that Mayor Pete is not actively courting the gay-identity vote, and this is all that matters for me. Another thing is, Buttigieg actually has a much needed moderating influence on the social justice activist crowd, with his comments from the Chick-Fil-A situation to the need to bring people together. This is perhaps the main reason why I sometimes promote Buttigieg, even though I actually like Yang and Gabbard more.

Finally, the elite background thing, you know, going to Harvard, working in a very well-paid job as a young man, and so on, this is a real concern. But then, it's not like most other candidates don't have a similarly posh background. Tulsi Gabbard comes from a political family, which is arguably the biggest head start you can get in politics. Andrew Yang's parents are very well educated. The sad truth is, no average person can become President in this day and age, and it's something we have to just accept, at least for the time being.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time to discuss another big idea. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.