Thread by @bansisharma

1. Intellectual Dark Web (I.D.W)

Allow me to introduce you to this blissful new term, coined half-jokingly by Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital, but suddenly trending now because of a NY Times article by my favorite NYT columnist, Bari Weiss.

2. Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) is that rarest of rare new columnists who writes for NY Times and yet is totally and utterly unencumbered by all the things I don't like about NY Times. She writes with a singular clarity, devoid of guile and ideology. In other words, she is a rare gem.

3. By way of introduction to Bari Weiss's work, I would refer you this from August last year:

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4. Coming back to IDW, Bari Weiss's column this week titled "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web" has apparently set off a firestorm of criticism from the usual nincompoops who want her head on a platter for merely writing about intellectuals whom the leftists hate.

5. What is I.D.W. and who is a member of it? I will let Bari Weiss explain the unexplainable.

6. You may not be able to define membership of I.D.W. but you will instantly recognize their names. They are people like:

Jordan Peterson
Maajid Nawaz
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ben Shapiro
Christina Hoff Sommers
Sam Harris
...

You get the picture.

7. The core members of I.D.W. have little in common politically. Bret and Eric Weinstein and Ms. Heying were Bernie Sanders supporters. Mr. Harris was an outspoken Hillary voter. Ben Shapiro is an anti-Trump conservative.

8. But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness.

9. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient.

10. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.

11. “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.”

12. You want to know how starved? This starved.

13. And this.

14. Read the Bari Weiss column to see for yourself how simply informative, well written, and non-ideological it is.
nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opi…

15. And yet, it seems to have rattled the cages of so many authoritarian goons who cannot abide an article in NY Times which mentions the names of people they deem should not have any right to speak.

16. Kyle Smith writes in National Review that the reason the Left was especially rattled by its Weissophobia this week is that in her column she did two extremely scary things.

17. One is that she found a really cool name to unite a group of thought outlaws the Left wants to silence. Weiss didn’t come up with the brand “Intellectual Dark Web,” but she popularized it, and it’s going to stick.

18. IDW saturated social media the way a great Super Bowl commercial does. The IDW handle makes the love of vigorous open debate seem rebellious, dangerous, edgy, subversive. The woke crowd can’t afford to lose their near-monopoly on perceived cool among those under 30.

19. The other source of white-knuckle panic in the IDW piece is that Weiss so blithely reminded the Left of all the paths there are into the castle of public opinion without asking permission from the gatekeepers.

20/x. If Harris, Dave Rubin, and Joe Rogan are reaching millions of people through their podcasts and YouTube videos and websites, who cares if the Ashley Feinbergs of the world declare them anathema? What if getting people fired from the Atlantic turns out not to matter much?