The Intellectual Dark Web

This week the New York Times published an op-ed about a movement called the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). The dark web links piece identifies a group of thinkers and media personalities who believe they are locked out of mainstream media.

They include a diverse group of thought leaders, including Jordan Peterson, the self-help guru and clinical psychologist who has criticized campus activism over gender neutral pronouns; Bret Weinstein, a evolutionary biologist who has challenged gender studies professors’ views about evolution; and Sam Harris, a prominent atheist writer who has argued against political correctness.
Political Correctness

Political correctness is a term that describes the idea of choosing words and actions that avoid offending or disparaging people from certain groups. It can be a good idea to practice this kind of correctness, as it can protect those who may be vulnerable to discrimination. However, it also has its drawbacks and can be a source of criticism.

In the early 1990s, a growing number of conservative intellectuals became alarmed about a new movement that they referred to as “political correctness.” They argued that college professors were teaching students subversive notions about equality, and that they were instilling a totalitarian mindset that would harm American society.

These debates over political correctness have been around for decades and are now commonplace in the national media. The current crop of right-wing provocateurs in the intellectual dark web often harken back to these older arguments.

One example is an ardently anti-political conservative website called the Right Wing Review. It posts articles arguing that leftist professors are infiltrating the academic world with dangerous theories from the Old Continent. The resulting political infighting has the potential to harm liberal democracy.

Another group that finds itself in these sorts of debates is a small number of social justice warriors. They are students, a few of them in college, who have developed activist projects that challenge the boundaries of liberal norms.

The neoconservatives of the 1990s were often intolerant of these students’ radical activism, and they drew a connection between this sort of campus politics and postmodern neo-Marxism. This is a point that members of the dark web frequently make as well, even though they often go beyond neoconservatives to claim universalist values of their own.

As a result, their ideas can seem extreme to those on the left of center who share these concerns but don’t want to indulge the political repercussions of this critique. That’s where the idea of recognizing that these beliefs are conservative might help.

Taking the time to think about these beliefs could help us to understand how they affect the intellectual dark web and to better address them. Moreover, it might give us some insight into how these ideas might be applied to other political struggles. If these ideas are, in fact, conservative, then a critical approach that treats them as such would clear space for progressive alternative arguments to be brought into the public debate.
Identity Politics

Identity politics is a political theory that seeks to secure the rights of certain groups that are often marginalized within society. These groups include people of color, members of the LGBT community, immigrants, and Muslims. These groups often organize around the re-claiming of their unique ways of understanding themselves, which challenge the dominant characterizations that are imposed on them.

It is important to note that identity politics does not simply call into question the way people of a particular social group are categorized, but also the disciplinary function these characterizations can have on their members. By urging mobilization around a single axis (gender, race, class, sexuality), identity politics can lead members to reductively identify that axis as their own distinctive feature. This can be dangerous, as it may leave them feeling pressured to relegate their identities to a broader societal context.

In this vein, identity politics has been used by both the left and the right to delegitimize certain types of activism that are seen as promoting a more inclusive and diverse society. This is especially true of the neo-liberal movement, which has become increasingly unpopular in recent years.

The intellectual dark web, a loose cadre of thinkers that is largely made up of former liberals who have lost their place in the world, has emerged as a powerful force in the current political environment. It includes a range of conservative, left-leaning, and New Atheist thinkers who share a common opposition to political correctness.

They are also adamant about free speech and oppose censorship in the media. Some of them, such as Sam Harris, are well-known for their controversial ideas. Others, such as Jordan Peterson, are more seasoned commentators.

Many of these writers have argued that the current political environment is dominated by conservatives. They point to issues of racial inequality, the gender wage gap and police brutality as evidence of this fact.

Among other things, this criticism has led these intellectuals to claim that such inequalities can be eliminated by individual choices and behaviors. These arguments are often referred to as “standpoint epistemology.” This is an idea that originated with the Combahee River Collective, a radical queer black feminist group, in the 1970s. It was a rejection of the prevailing white-male authority that governed much of the social sciences at the time.
Gender Politics

If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably seen a lot about the so-called intellectual dark web. It’s a loose, unofficial network of media stars and academics who rely on their audiences’ outrage at their perceived persecution by the establishment to fuel their popularity (Weiss & Winter, 2018).

While it would be easy to think that this group is driven by racism or misogyny, these are not the only motivations behind their success. A recent New York Times piece by Bari Weiss reveals that much of what drives this group of right-leaning intellectuals is actually a disdain for liberal orthodoxy.

Historically, conservatives have held a firmly rooted view that democracy is a system wherein equality between individuals is guaranteed by law. That’s a far cry from the left-wing view that inequality is a result of exploitation, discrimination, or oppression.

In the past, political correctness served as a conservative conceptual weapon to fight against left-wing attempts to enforce equal outcomes through interventions in social policies. While some people on the left still advocate for interventions, it’s no longer the norm.

As a result, the dark web has embraced a sexist and racist interpretation of political correctness. This largely takes the form of arguing that the left’s anti-discrimination claims are based on misunderstandings of social science statistics, or are simply false.

But these arguments, if they are true, can only serve to further divide society and reinforce the idea that people should always be judged by their race or gender. As Brooks notes in his article, a fetish for drawing artificial lines between cultures is a distraction that erodes trust among the population as a whole and may ultimately hinder progress toward greater equality.

Another aspect of dark web thought that’s not well understood is its support for free speech. Many of these people claim to be dissidents of political correctness, but they also defend academic freedom and reject the idea that academics are required to censor their own work because it violates certain standards.

This is a very important issue, especially for the dark web. It is a pity that the mainstream media does not have a better handle on this.
Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty is a serious issue that affects students’ academic development and their ability to succeed in school. It can result in a range of consequences, including reduced grades, revoked scholarships, suspension, and expulsion.

Plagiarism refers to the act of presenting someone else’s work as your own without properly crediting it. This can involve submitting a paper written by another student or simply taking portions of another student’s work and incorporating them into your own work. It also includes using personal devices or unauthorized notes during an exam and collaborating with other students on an assignment.

Cheating is also a major issue that accompanies academic dishonesty. This can include buying course papers or exam answers from a third party, asking parents or friends to help with academic exercises, downloading an essay and presenting it as your own, or collaborating with others on an assignment to improve your results.

Contract cheating is the act of committing an academic misconduct by engaging a third party to complete an assignment for you. This could involve hiring a tutor to help you complete a term paper, or purchasing an essay from a commercial writing service. It can also involve allowing another student to take an exam for you, changing a graded exam to receive more credit or writing notes in a blue book (exam booklet) before an exam.

Collusion is a more serious form of academic dishonesty that involves forming groups to collaborate on an assignment and sharing results. This can include allowing someone to use a computer during an exam, utilizing a personal device, and collaborating on an essay by referring to a Google Doc that was shared with other members of the group.

Similarly, fabrication and falsification are other forms of academic dishonesty. Fabrication occurs when a student artificially creates information that was not collected from an actual experiment, while falsification occurs when a student alters data to suit their own needs or the requirements of a particular project or exam.

Bari Weiss, an opinion writer for The New York Times, recently profiled the so-called intellectual dark web. Her piece explores how the movement has outsmarted the cultural left’s gatekeepers and spoken directly to a growing audience of conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians. She argues that many of the leading thinkers in the dark web movement have been catapulted to internet fame after butting heads against the intellectual monoculture of the left. Weiss explains how these thinkers feel they have been pushed out of the mainstream and their status has been declining in relative terms, bringing on anger and resentment.