Solidarity in the Darkness
The Fall of Fascism and the Call for Cosmo-Socialism
Edit: Tragically, Michael Brooks passed away suddenly in July, 2020, and his legacy lives on through his radical work and the community of solidarity he built.
Prelude to the Deluge
In this article I interpolate Michael Brooks’ much anticipated book, Against the Web: The Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. For a few years, Brooks has been rising as one of the left’s shrewdest political analysts and most ardent critics of the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), a jokey branding psyop by Eric Weinstein which captured a cluster of pundits united by “free speech” and, in effect, reactionary politics. We are at another major inflection point of the culture war, and this is about the bigger picture that we all need to see for a global paradigm shift.
The IDW formed in 2018 as a stylized constellation of varied rationalist classical liberals and conservatives with anti-left agendas. The effect was disruption of the public discourse on the pretences of freethought and dangerous conversations. Peterson, who can at times be thought of as a stand-in for the whole, due to being one of the most popular and controversial, has been known to brag about how to “monetize social justice warriors”, and makes no distinctions across the progressive left he opposes. Whatever the IDW think ‘the left’ is, the supposed target of their scorn, many on across left have been debunking them all along the way.
Early in its rise, the IDW enjoyed several boosts from mainstream centrist establishment corporations like the NY Times and their anti-left pro-Israel opinion-makers like Bari Weiss and David Brooks. The phenomenon persisted for almost two years even amidst hundreds of critiques from across the New Left, some even from within the IDW sphere (See Is the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ Politically Diverse?, Caricaturing the Left Doesn’t Benefit the Intellectual Dark Web, and this). With the IDW declared dead in Dec. 2019 by Robert Wright and the hysteria mostly subsided, though some reactionary leaders and followers remain unrepentant, it’s time for a post-mortem and reconfiguration of the discourse.
Brooks’ book arrives at the end of a long campaign of the new left coalition debunking the various right-wing talking points filtered through the IDW, all while also building a grassroots coalition for a political revolution manifested in the Bernie Sanders campaign. Little of the left critique really seemed to penetrate what I’ll dub as the ‘dense-making’ frameworks and forums of the IDW ecology, because they truly never entered into leftist discourses. Instead they taunted and flirted with the left at minimal points of contact, paradoxically close yet absurdly distant in comprehension and followthrough, such as displayed by Jordan Peterson’s encounters with Slavoj Zizek or Russell Brand, or Harris’ with Ezra Klein (who is not a leftist though), etc.
Zizek also writes the introduction to the forthcoming book, Myth & Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson; four authors combining for a thorough academic debunk of the most revered thought leader of 2018 and some of 2019. This whole IDW zeitgeist ties in to what Matt McManus has written another book on, about postmodern conservatism. In answering the question — Is Jordan Peterson Postmodern? — McManus provides a few angles and explains how Peterson is more like a modernist conservative, one who unfortunately misreads key sources like Heidegger and completely mischaracterizes others like Marx.
The IDW thought leaders boast of their camaraderie and collective intelligence, but they actively (intentionally or not) spread misinformation and simulated thinking over these two long years, poisoning the well of discourse while telegraphing civility. The net effect of the IDW has left much of the discourse in a fugue state, which has upheld the establishment politics at odds with the progressive movement. Despite the IDW’s blindness of its own shadow, there are good signs that at least some of the audience are breaking away and want to rejoin the new left project (the moderator of r/IntellectualDarkWeb recently re-pledged his support for Bernie Sanders, following Yang dropping out).
What’s left of the IDW community still believes in their positive impact overall. For them, what the IDW represents is not a specific list of pundits, but rather a movement of dialogue and engagement, and not one without mistakes. They reject arguments that conflate the two, because they feel attacked when their beloved thinker is debunked. Whether its the r/IDW moderator or Rebel Wisdom, they invested time in what they saw as a genuine intellectual experiment that potentially helped hundreds of thousands of people. This makes it difficult to reconcile the critiques, which come from perspectives that the IDW spend a lot of time demonizing. The impasse remains, and only actual direct engagement between IDW-types and the left will resolve it.
The jig is largely up though, and while the IDW may be expired as a meme, the reactionary politics behind it (beyond the sincere moderate fans) are still lurking and thriving. There is in(s)ane centrist and right-wing resistance to everything progressive from basic human rights like universal healthcare to complex socio-technical systems change and economic justice afforded by a Green New Deal. The human rights and freedoms ostensibly cherished by the IDW still matter, and actually matter more to the New Left than it ever will to the free speech warriors. That is why Against the Web provides countless brutal debunks but also an ambitious vision for a better world; one that could even rescue some of the cancelled casualties of the culture war.
Aside from the sweeping message of global materialist solidarity politics driving the book, the middle chapters focus on discrediting the most over-exposed actors of the IDW cast: the case studies are mainly on Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro, who are at once the low-hanging fruit of the bunch and in some ways the most formidable and persistent. In a preview, Brooks’ calls them “the big three” for their prominent ahistoricism and mythification of ‘Western Civilization’.
Contrary to this Western exceptionalism and chauvinism, all societies have actually generated basic ideas of universal human rights and dignity. Following on ideas from Amartya Sen, Brooks embraces the truth of a global world and humanity, and the implications that “distinctions like East and West are truly fictitious — that’s not like a nice politically correct statement, that’s the reality, that is the truth of our lives.”
The social constructions that define us also divide us, and obscures the interdependencies that unite the world. This isn’t about the struggle for Western civilization; it’s about the struggle for civilization in general. The New Right’s ethnonationalism and phallogocentrism is here answered by the New Left with a demystified cosmopolitan socialism anchored in material politics and basic decency for human and ecological solidarity across time and space. This worldview draws inspiration from a range of notable thinkers, and historical milestones such as FDR’s New Deal and the ANC’s Freedom Charter, to the Bernie Sanders movement and freeing former Brazil President Lula da Silva (pictured at top) and beyond. It is a broad scope coalition, one I consider metamodern in the best sense. These things are all interconnected, and Brooks is your mapmaker and guide from the front lines of the culture war to the finish line of the political revolution.
The heydey of the IDW punditry is over, where almost all of them are now locked in to their reactionary commitments, while the left has all but concluded their critique. In some ways Brooks’ book feels like a victory lap, but we still haven’t quite won yet. We have to win politically, and we have to lead the public discourse in better directions. Meanwhile, much of the audiences who followed the IDW on this journey are still out there and hungry for real change, speaking truth to power and each other, and some spiritual sensibility for good measure. That is exactly what the New Left provides in spades, and already did before the IDW came around.
The sections below begin with a brief Review of the book, followed by Background Signal to Noise, a retrospective of how we got here, how the IDW have tuned out the true criticism, and some clues as to what’s next. The section Incurious Bastards Redux is to mock the IDW brand one last time, in an extended-universe context, while taking a little detour back into Peterson’s parochial prescriptions. I take his public health malpractice to task and expose the general selling out of classical liberalism to conservative interests.
This leads into The Raison D’etre of the Renaissance to be, which shows how classical liberalism historically had to concede to develop and expand the welfare state, so people could have living standards and living wages, voting rights, and other basic human rights, and this is exactly what it has to continue today. Finally, Cosmopolitan Socialism in Practice and Praxis celebrates and recaps Brooks’ latest adventures helping free the imprisoned former president of Brazil, Lula de Silva, as well as a panel discussion on the Sanders revolution with Cornel West and others. In lieu of a conclusion to an already too-long article, I proclaim Let There Be Light on the progressive movement and give some final thoughts and instructions.
In Summary and Review
Chapter One: “Meet the New Right: The Intellectual Dark Web and Capital’s Contradictions” starts off by introducing the basic IDW concept and where it came from. The very idea of contradictions in capitalism is mobilized through the IDW, as they grift from yellow journalistic narratives and redbaiting. Brooks trounces on Rubin’s vapid-fire interviewing skills for a few pages, showing why its dangerous. As an aside, I am linking the video Everybody Hates Rubin (2020) which somewhat humanizes Rubin against these types of attacks, but the critiques are still accurate and we need to do better to actually rise above partisanship and change each others minds. Brooks moves swiftly into the book’s major premises and themes. I would paraphrase the over-arching thesis as such:
- The roots of the reactionary right can be traced back throughout the last century, but more recently the New Right and the IDW are manifestations of the double tragedy and false choices of the 2016 US election and Brexit. Centrists and conservatives tacitly colluded to make our current neoliberal nightmare exacerbated, where we have to suffer through post-truth and polarization every day while the prospects seem to darken. Brooks acknowledges that some leftism/ performative wokeism is counterproductive, but stresses that there is still no equivalence between activists and reactionaries, and never will be.
- Reactionaries have capitalized on and benefited from this cultural and political seizure, while ironically promoting hierarchies during the simultaneous breakdown of technocratic meritocracy, which has been unmasked just another captured market for capitalist hegemony. Meanwhile, the pseudo-intellectual right naturalizes and mythologizes social problems, whereas the intellectual left historicizes and contextualizes them. The effect is that conservatism obfuscates and filibusters the very issues that we’re all trying to solve.
- A better world is possible and necessary, as defined by a “cosmopolitan vision of a global socialist humanism” which also hinges on a certain degree of localism, autonomy, and cultural freedom for people united through a planetary meshwork. This largely pivots on a proper material analysis of capitalism and alter-globalization, which the IDW bubble generally eschews outright. We have to press on not to “Singapore Station” (neoliberalism) or “Budapest Station” (authoritarian right) but onto a new “Finland Station”, a re-imagined politics of care (borrowing from Bhaskar Sunkara’s metaphors).
That is roughly the spirit of the book as forecasted in Chapter One. The next three chapters are the case studies on Harris, Peterson, and Shapiro, followed by a conclusion that is the answer to the problem. Chapter Two: “The History is Completely Irrelevant” is a reference to an inane Sam Harris quote from his debates with Ezra Klein. Brooks pulls back the curtain to show how Harris virtue signals — one of the things the IDW complains leftists do. Brooks jumps around historical cases to debunk Harris, highlights the childish row with Chomsky, critiques Harris’ generally horrible takes on geopolitics (ie. Israel-Palestine, etc), clarifies the limits of New atheism, debunks the Charles Murray/ IQ scandal (ongoing), and outlines the ahistoricism of the whole IDW band of brothers.
In Chapter Three: The Dragon Who Didn’t Do His Homework, an allusion to the Zizek debate, Brooks reveals Peterson’s bootstrapped bible-thumping for what it is, and goes above and beyond to offer the a better psycho-spiritual salve in the works of James Hillman and Scott Atran. The focus returns to Peterson and his “central contradiction” or “core contradiction”. Peterson’s proverbial paradox is one that’s been said many times in many ways: his blindspots hide the answers to his problematization, and the solutions he proposes are as much part of the problem; his own quackery in psychology makes him all the more signal and tone deaf to sociology. Brooks’ response is to argue for structural solutions to the social plagues of poverty and alienation, and rightly so:
“The cosmopolitan socialist synthesis that I’m arguing for aims to deal head-on with the anxieties, pain, and confusion that Peterson evokes… To begin framing the left’s response, one must appreciate the degree to which Peterson is taking on the biggest macro-issues of our time and trying to solve them with the smallest self-help micro-solutions. Socialists can do better. We can start by analyzing the material roots of the uptick in alienation and despair that fuels Peterson’s book sales. That doesn’t mean telling people not to care about spiritual fulfillment or personal meaning. It’s not an either/or. What we should point out, though, is that increasing numbers of younger people in our late-stage capitalist economy are pushed into forms of precarious freelance pseudo-entrepreneurship…” — Against the Web
In that passage, Brooks acknowledges the attraction of Peterson, but does not pull punches elsewhere. There are some critiques I resist indulging. For example, leading leftists like Brooks and Nathan J. Robinson (of Current Affairs) dismiss Maps of Meaning wholesale, as if its smoking gun proof of Peterson’s pseudoscientific bona fides. That is going to turn off a lot of Peterson’s audience, but I urge fans to appreciate the critical context. For Peterson, all these things are entangled — his academic work, and his paranoid anti-socialist praxis — and critics see the harm it causes.
There are many reasons for leftists to overcorrect and criticize eveything about Peterson. For Robinson, Peterson’s misreading of Orwell as his own grounds for rejecting socialism, revealed in Maps* intro, hits to close to home. The fact that Orwell actually identified with democratic socialism makes this personal anecdote from Peterson near the top of his egregious and embarrasing intellectual errors. It’s like when religious evangelists weaponize Einstein, who was in fact a very secular pantheist, and a socialist to boot. Nevertheless, while Maps of Meaning as a whole may very well be deeply flawed from a certain perspective, I drew some value out of it, particularly in its idiosyncratic employment of “abstraction” as the iterative and reflexive cognitive process at the root of our social evolution and mythological metaphysics.
In Chapter Four: Shapiro’s Propaganda and Other Dishonorable Mentions, Brooks carries on the debunking of the white lies and western myths of Ben Shapiro and others. The critique up-ends it self when Brooks pivots to Mark Fisher and the concept of the Vampire Castle. IDW figures are both bloodsuckers and victims of call-out culture and the urge to cancel each other. The coup de grace is a justified character assassination of Dave Rubin, the biggest rube of the roundtable that absorbed all the right-wing coded classical liberalism like a sponge, who now works with Glenn Beck. Finally, Chapter Five: The Answer invites you to the movement for actual intellectual discourse and global change. Buy the book to take in Brooks’ worldview.
“The answer to the IDW and the new right in general is a cosmopolitan-socialist synthesis that centers a global materialist politics. The alienated and confused young men who flock to someone like Jordan Peterson can’t be won over to the left by telling them constantly to acknowledge and question their privilege. Nor can the even greater mass of people who aren’t as plugged into politics or the culture war as IDW fans be tempted into greater engagement through a politics that centers moralism and the policing of every petty interaction. We need a material analysis, buttressed with a sense of humor and a recognition of human fallibility, that connects the fight for a better world to the immediate interests of the majority of the population.” — Against the Web
Background Signal to Noise
Before we expand on the advanced argument, I want to take us back to almost two years ago. I wrote a longform critique of the IDW because I felt it was necessary to answer in-depth the reactionary, anti-postmodern, and anti-sociological aspects of it with a leftist, metamodern, sociological assessment. I spent a section foregrounding their merits and good intentions before several sections on debunking their dogma and offering critique. My fundamental constructive through-line is that they should all know better (given critiques of them from the left are valid), and that they’re therefore potentially redeemable (in theory). I was thorough because criticizing the IDW is a necessary but distracting sideshow from the real work of “ideas” and of transforming politics.
Since then more debunks from the left than I can count have contributed to a chorus of critique, so I always note that the critique extends far beyond my own summaries of it. Leftists like Michael Brooks critique regularly as issues come up. His book tries to put a pin in it and move on. The next major time I felt compelled to revisit the IDW was in a two-part analysis and juxtaposition of Integral Theory and metamodernism vis-a-vis each other and the IDW, in which Brooks’ insight features again, helping track various misunderstandings and communication blockages between sense-making communities and the oversimplified political thinking of many Integralists, including Ken Wilber. The simple injunction here is that we have to maintain higher standards for public intellectual discourse and progressive values, and how they relate to each other.
The new age nonsense and bland centrist politics were supposed to be purged already, but Ken Wilber and Rebel Wisdom seem intent on bringing it back in through their bastardization of integral theory into armchair analysis with an ‘integral politics’, and further entangling their own projects in the debacle of the IDW, while not supporting or participating in leftist discourse at all. It all falls quite short of serious intellectual rigour, especially when the IDW talk outside their expertise (but even within it), playing up the spectacle and divisive effect.
I raise these points as the necessary background to catch up to the current moment in finer detail, to appreciate the advanced argument being made here. There is no room here to condense all the critiques of the IDW or everything I’ve written or Brooks has in his book. This article you are reading is about the bigger picture. I tapped Brooks as a key thinker in what I optimistically termed “the Emergentsia”, an emerging post-political distributed intelligentsia for fostering the emergence of meaning making and systems transformation; something like that. I described this prospect vis-a-vis the IDW as the;
“…bright lights emerging amidst the intellectual shadows (and shade) cast by the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), into a similar cerebral, liminal, and spiritual space but, crucially, without the apparent sociological ambivalence. Emergentsia thinking therefore often feels and sounds more fully and adequately complex because they are moving between a broader spectrum of epistemologies, worldviews, and practices with a kind of post-ideological political consciousness, rather than what can sometimes sound, in IDW circles, like a fixation with free speech for its own sake.” — Rise of the Emergentsia #1
In the ideal sense, a diverse Emergenstia emerges to address some of those same needs as the IDW, but offers a more serious engagement with the meta-crises than the best classical liberals can muster. Despite attempts to move on, some of the pathologies of IDW dense/sense-making — namely an aversion to social justice and sociological analysis —also linger in some circles like Integral, and “Game B” (which coincidently is not too far removed from the Weinstein bros), and related spaces. They have no coherent political critique nor an effective praxis for engagement.
Brooks is on the sharp end of the spectrum of political proaction, with his leftist organizing and vision of cosmopolitan socialism. In this book he provides a fairly definitive consideration and judgment of the New Right’s M.O., and offers a way through for leftists and IDW fans alike still in search of a higher truth or purpose.
Critics like Brooks and myself can easily acknowledge what people like Peterson, and the IDW as a whole, are right about, but we are also very tired of doing it. We share many common values in enlightenment principles like reason and free speech, but evidently execute and advocate for them quite differently (and better) in the political space. But the request to entertain the positive traits of the IDW is often a trap to solicit concessions and ignore the critique. This is about what they get wrong and we get right. Brooks spends the necessary minimum amount of space steel-manning his opponents before critiquing them in this book, but he also mocks them ruthlessly with his trademark humour.
Brooks also goes further than I do in articulating exactly what’s wrong with the parts of the left that the IDW critique; and this is exactly what should appeal to the dark webbers if they actually are sincere about learning and reform. The context of authority and legitimacy of who speaks for, as, and with the left also matters here, as Brooks’ auto-critique comes from the heart of the actual left vanguard and is much more credible than Bret Weinstein’s defensive posturing from his fringe liberal echo chamber, where they still complain loudly that they are silenced. The irony here is that the actual lefist revolutionaries are also the reformers, the game changers, and the moderates, centrists, and reactionaries are status-quo.
Incurious Bastards Redux
At one point I thought to title this article “Incurious Bastards”, because I frame the IDW as essentially self-proclaimed freethinkers who seem utterly disinterested in the answers to the very questions they raise and problems they provoke. In some regards they have unlimited curiosity to pursue their intellectual and financial interests, but they also conveniently seem to avoid learning critiques and changing their minds on politicized topics. To varying degrees, they are all incurious bastards.
Alas, I found that this great title has provenance with Andrew Cohen in 2009, in the title of his reflections on the political culture of the time vis-a-vis the book The Founding Fathers Reconsidered. Incurious bastards is a fitting phrase for our times too (and the IDW), as Cohen laments that America’s founders had quite longterm foresight, whereas today’s (circa 2009) leaders are myopic and incurious. The founding fathers were far from perfect, Cohen notes, but now we find that our “political discourse is polluted”, our “airwaves are populated with snake-oil salesmen”, and the ““philosophy” offered by popular modern-day political thinkers is embarrassingly simple or already rejected” precisely because they’re so short-sighted. Indeed, the writing was on the wall then, as it is now.
Coincidently, that ‘snake-oil salesman’ Cohen is referring to is none other than Glenn Beck, a staple right-wing figure, in the same orbit as the IDW, even recently taking Dave Rubin under his wing. To be sure, all these pundits produce enough harmless content to fly under the radar a lot of the time, but also they are all objectionable on the regular. Here’s Beck’s latest obscene reductio ad absurdum:
About a year ago Jordan Peterson had a chin wag with Beck on the topic of ‘toxic masculinity,’ which tracks surprisingly sensibly in parts but predictably veers into patriarchal and paranoid anti-left ranting by Peterson. In the denouement, Beck charges Peterson with having a ‘truth agenda’ to which Peterson politely denies and replies: “I have an agenda which is to not say something stupid.” I’m afraid we have some very bad news for Dr. Peterson (more below). A softened Beck then prays for Peterson and wishes him well, to which a world-weary Peterson replies, “I hope I can manage this without making any catastrophic mistakes.” It is an ominous exchange, given his infinite series of mistakes and current mental health troubles.
Beck has a range of toxic views, beliefs, and social policies, but this isn’t about guilt-by-association. Peterson has his own dangerous limitations and lack of curiousity about sociological problems and how to solve them, as does Glenn Beck. And I’m all for difficult conversations and empathy, but this is how not to have one: Here’s a clip where Peterson tacitly agrees with Glenn Beck that 16-year olds who oppose the second amendment are just plain crazy, and then goes on to explain how the Parkland high school mass shooting had “very little to do specifically with guns” but rather something worse; being “possessed by an evil ill-will” and nihilism. Peterson un-ironically adds that the shooting could have been prevented by following his Rule #6 (ie. clean your room), and remarks that he talks about it in the book.
It is not uncommon for Peterson to recommend his own book as the solution to complex sociological problems. If we look at relevant passages in 12 Rules For Life it doesn’t actually mention Parkland specifically but nonetheless prescribes little more than reading Tolstoy for solving the afflictions of gun-toting teens. To be sure, it’s not that Peterson isn’t partially right. It’s that he’s partially very wrong, anti-sociological, ahistorical, and is, quite frankly, saying and even writing some incredibly stupid things, deviating far from his own “agenda” of stupid-avoidance. Guns have a lot to do with the Parkland shooting. Speaking of Rule #6, Brooks notes;
“Rule 6, which is a clear-cut example of Peterson letting his reactionary politics bleed into his life advice, and which simply states: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. The problem, as Slavoj Zizek tried to point out to Peterson in their debate, is that sometimes people’s houses aren’t in order precisely because of the condition of the world. As we’ll see, this is the central contradiction in Peterson’s worldview. On the one hand, he’s a cultural conservative bemoaning disorder and social atomization. On the other hand, he’s an uncritical apologist for the “free market” system that generates the very conditions he laments as predictably as a boiling tea kettle generates steam.” —Against the Web
Peterson often also violates his own rules, specifically Rules 9 and 10 (good faith and precise speech) with all his various abuses and conflations of terms like marxism and postmodernism. For Rule #6, Brooks is highlighting the obvious connection between late capitalism and social crises that Peterson ironically ignores. The violent example I draw from Peterson’s social commentary on school shootings makes Brooks’ apt choice of words all the more chilling, where “his reactionary politics bleed into his life advice”.
There are links, albeit sometimes abstract and oblique, between anti-social theorizing, and innocent people dying; moreover, there are direct links between his will to suppress the humanities in universities and actual fascist governments around the world doing so. That is why sociologists understand these types of social issues, and popular psychologists do not — many in fact seem to be incurious bastards about it, like Pinker. Note that Peterson’s simple solutions to the world’s complex problems are not only hyper-individualistic at their core, but in large part are his particular form of individualism, nested in anti-sociological beliefs.
The hyper-individualistic focus and embrace of market ideology is at loggerheads with the very idea of public health, not least because it allows lobbyists to write policy, and corporations to profit from sickness and addiction. I’m sure Peterson would be shattered to learn of the dark side of his dogma, but denial and repression is much more convenient. I don’t wish to highlight such a gruesome example, but Peterson’s candid bad take on mass shootings is so totally incurious and is pure fodder for the far-right agenda. And Beck, like Rubin, is a perfect receptacle for it.
This is all even more unsettling when you consider the intersection of Peterson with the Christchurch mass shooting, which happened shortly after he toured there and was photographed with a man wearing an unmissable Islamophobic tee-shirt, prompting New Zealand book stores to pull “12 Rules”, and eventually Cambridge to rescind his fellowship offer. And while there was no direct connection (like there have been with Ben Shapiro and mass shootings), the shooter’s rampage was likewise motivated by Islamophobia, white supremacy, and more broadly, Peterson’s favorite ahistorical nostalgia, “Western civilization.”
Since the late 1980s the African and eastern roots of classical Greece have been unearthed, exposing the falsity of the hegemonic Western narrative. Black Athena and the Incredible Whiteness of Being, an article/ review by Louise Hitchcock, articulates the ongoing controversy of such discoveries. It exposed that in fact Classical studies departments had a racism problem so abstract they didn’t even notice, because it was at a very granular level of taken for granted paradigms, and in many cases the scandal was answered with further institutional denial. For a deeper commentary on the controversy, see Black Athena, White Power: Are We Paying the Price for Classics’ Response to Bernal?, by Denise Eileen McCoskey.
This revisionist approach dovetails with the notion of Black Metamodernism, and the broader subaltern roots of both “Western civilization” (and even ‘metamodernism’ to some extent) and the cosmopolitan socialist struggle to transcend it. One would have to be devoutly incurious to avoid appreciating these contradictions embedded in the myth of “the West”. Further to these ends, the axial age is not exclusive to or originating solely from classical antiquity, but rather;
“…societies all over the world gravitated more strongly towards egalitarian ideals and constraints on political authority — traits usually associated with axiality — as they reached a tipping point in the evolution of social complexity.” — Seshat History of the Axial Age, 2019
The Raison D’etre of the Renaissance to be
All of this is important because the true heritage and legacy of ‘classical liberalism’ as it evolved through the first half of the 20th century was actually to realize how it was a failure especially during the Great Depression, and to adopt social welfare policies as a result. Thus, a great way to achieve Peterson’s goal for people to have personal sovereignty is to scaffold their journey through a democratic socialist political revolution with systems change; exactly the kind of MLK-inspired ‘SJW-nonsense’ Peterson eschews. It requires massive social and infrastructural reforms, just like the New Deal. It requires classical liberalism to support its declared enemy — democratic socialism — once again. Arthur Schlesinger’s words on the New Deal period resonate with our current moment, as they reflect the need for the classical liberal tradition to live up to its values:
“When the growing complexity of industrial conditions required increasing government intervention in order to assure more equal opportunities, the liberal tradition, faithful to the goal rather than to the dogma, altered its view of the state. […] There emerged the conception of a social welfare state…” — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans” (1962)
What a beautiful and lucid insight that the IDW has completely inverted. In his book, Brooks does not miss the opportunity to unpack a meta-perspective on the tribe’s more innocuous thought leaders; the Weinstein brothers, with classical liberalism in tow. Brooks suggests that beyond the drama circus of Evergreen college which the science bros turned into a cash cow, there is a simpler truth at play that reflects real socio-economic justice concerns. Paraphrasing Zero Books publisher Doug Lain’s speculations, Brooks writes that perhaps the real problem at Evergreen was…;
“…[an] increasingly corporatized administration was playing divide-and-conquer by deflecting student anger away from real decision-makers and onto a professor who was arrogant and tone-deaf enough about the students’ legitimate anger and activism to make for an easy target. The way that activists turned their attention to this ridiculous and thoroughly unimpressive person (who none the less has connections) turned him into a cause celebre for the right. Whatever else is true about all this, what matters most is that Bret and his brother Eric Weinstein are here with us now, pushing the right-wing “classical liberal” pablum of the IDW.” — Against the Web
This is a more meta- perspective, and with this we can also understand a key critique of the IDW that is not exclusively targeted at the figureheads themselves, but rather the whole context as well as the absurd revival of an antiquated classical liberalism in today’s world, and its clear weaponization by conservative pundits against the left. Classical liberalism in this expression is increasingly negligent of its own historical transformation, it’s own obligations to social welfare and democratic reforms, as discussed above by Schlesinger. Classical liberalism today has become a weapon of the political right-wing that opposes all these progressive measures, and the IDW didn’t even notice, but they certainly deny their complicity. For good measure, Brooks continues that the IDW has of course been a success on account of the left’s failure, for which we take some responsibility. He writes;
“In a world where the left was just a little bit better at acting strategically, Bret, might well still be teaching biology at a nice hippie liberal arts college, while Eric quietly did whatever it was that he did for billionaire ghoul Peter Thiel.” — Against the Web
There is an acknowledgment of decoherence of the student-activist left there, and a regret that Bret’s faith in the left project was so fragile that it could be shattered in that way. Bret’s own framing in his endless stream of content is much more self-aggrandizing and disparaging of ‘the left’, though he can’t see as far as the Bernie movement. The cheap shot at Thiel can be excused if you understand the broader context of the book and the progressive movement, but the problem boils down to the fact that Thiel’s politics are pro-Trump, the anti-thesis of progressivism.
Nevertheless, as Brooks well understands, some of the IDW are also potential allies in the current cultural and political moment, and this has been written in the stars for some time. The real left has been mobilizing political power for a new post-progressive platform, while the whine-stein brothers have been playing pariah from the peanut gallery. We’re in it for the endgame, ready to embrace any legitimate support coming our way to achieve the political revolution together. This is why Michael Brooks and Ben Burgis (who also challenges Quillette readers occassionally) so strongly embraced Joe Rogan’s preference for Bernie Sanders, and for Bernie going on Rogan’s show in the first place.
The ostensibly most left figures of the IDW (Bret Weinstein and founding brother Eric) are still anti-Bernie Sanders as of late, despite being for him in 2016. Their reverse-grievance has made them reactionary and cognitively captured beyond recognition of any semblance of left politics. On Progressive Voice, Sahil Habibi dismantles Bret’s anti-Bernie tweets. Habibi then talks about the podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein, in which Harris was being incredibly dismissive and pejorative about Sam Seder. Harris admitted he had virtually no context of actually watching Seder’s content, but had to whine about it because he’d been critiqued, meanwhile Eric offered a mild defense of Seder amidst other nonsense. Habibi jokes that they were getting “high on their own farts”, which is pretty apt.
And yet, many of the IDW characters and allies have upheld the pretence that they are still ‘of the left’, as if they are actually relating and conversing with other leftists on real issues (they aren’t; just look at their podcast guest lists), or perhaps rejoining the mass movement they abandoned in 2016 (they aren’t; look at their twitter accounts). The truth is the opposite; they are functionally leaning into this New Right undercurrent, not least being anti-Bernie on account of an ‘equality’ boogeyman, like Bret Weinstein. They’ve alienated themselves into a corner, and are now weirdly comfortable yet politically homeless in the defunct center.
In their latest rounds of self-promotion, Eric and Bret have cooked up a low resolution conspiracy realist theory about how their ideas are being suppressed, by a “Distributed Idea Suppresion Complex” (DISC). By contrast, I write about a much better methodological approach called systemic-conspiracy. It’s based in academic literature, and Eric’s theory has some merit insofar as can be better explained by mine. By comparison, his sound close to delusions of grandeur and made-up acronyms based on paranoid mental farts, but I can empathize about idea suppression as a problem in the sociology of knowledge, and of educating the public on complex ideas in general. And while they talked about their version of “ideas” for two years, real better ideas were being suppressed by their showboating and shadowboxing.
With regards to the label “conspiracy theorist”, Eric pushes back and says “it’s time for this technique of trying to intimidate people by using that epithet to die and if you want to come after me be my guest do it in print and let’s have some fun.” That’s from Broken Mice, Epstein & the DISC, Bret & Eric Weinstein at 46:30, and I agree about the “conspiracy theorist” term to an extent, because there are conspiracies (see my article linked above), but I’m still going after him. Eric’s speculations about Epstein are somewhat worth listening to, but not to indulge him too much I would recommend TrueAnon podcast as a better (leftist) alternative.
As we have seen, the IDW characters have by and large famously avoided their best leftist critics, such as the case with Dave Rubin refusing Sam Seder. The amount of distance between these echo chambers and the wider left is embarrassing and fixable, if people actually cared more. Talk about an idea suppression complex… the IDW itself and its loyalist interlocutors don’t want anyone to spoil their fun. This is the secret of their success, by the way: pander to the right by criticizing some abstraction or stereotype of “the left” then further appease the right and reap the spoils, all while preaching about civility and refusing to engage respectfully and in good faith. Michael Brooks has often explained how easy this would be to sell-out in this way, and how depraved and cynical, or just really gullible, one has to be to do it. But to have real ethical standards and moral conviction is to abstain.
Some dark webbers avoid all but a few critics and write flippant repudiations or even face off directly, as in the case of Peterson vs. Zizek, which was a turning point in definitively exposing Peterson’s ignorance on (and resentment for) basic sociology. In both cases it makes the IDW claim of fostering transpartisan civil dialogue absurd on the face of it, but plausible enough to those who still want to believe. Not to mention the Stephen Pinker vs. Phil Torres feuds, but at least that is slightly more highbrow, systems related, and ever-so-slightly less sensationalist.
Despite all this bad blood and spilled milk, we need to be united against the darkness of both the bland neoliberal technocracy and the new right-wing authoritarian populism sweeping the globe. I can’t stress this enough. This is not only about defeating Trump, but about curing the pathologies in establishment politics everywhere, and about uniting a real New Left broad-based big-tent coalition to defeat New Right (ideally even the never-Trump conservatives can at least feign support for us).
Actual progressives are virtually already united on the fact of both the Establishment Democrats and Republicans being typically corrupt technocrats in all sorts of abstracted and white collar ways that they don’t even think they’ve done anything wrong. But its high time to come to honest terms with the New Left of today, which has strongly emerged to take responsibility and action for climate change, rampant inequality, political polarization, and decommissioning the military-industrial complex, to reset the political spectrum.
Still reeling from global Occupy movement and the lame duck Obama years with deepening inequality, the left was very fragmented in 2016, because the Establishment — and the Professional-Managerial-Class, the 1%, the oligarchs, etc — were and are still exercising enormous leverage against the progressive movement, specifically against Bernie Sanders as the spokesperson and insurgent then. Hillary Clinton had the presidency handed to her on a silver platter, due to a conspiracy for her own contrived coronation, along with a pied-piper scheme that gave us Donald Trump. This was never the fault of “the left”, but of the compromised center. By the same defunct logic, the “Third Way” think tank has advised all centrists to unite against Bernie Sanders.
Now in 2020 Bernie Sanders (as the frontrunner by some measures) is facing even more absurd resistance. It is critically important that anyone who practices being a public intellectual not be naive about this. Public intellectuals have to question what interests they are serving (whether selfish, special, or social), and rather try to always join the coalition that is leading the progressive change, not the authoritarians resisting it. This has always been a question in intellectual history, and is more relevant than ever.
Cosmopolitan Socialism in Practice and Praxis
All the IDW defects aside, Brooks’ always has a deeper point. His book is like an artefact of the embodied progressive project, and a bellwether for the coming paradigm shift. To start off this year 2020, Michael Brooks flew to Brazil to interview the former president of Brazil, Lula de Silva. Silva is a global political hero who as president lifted the Brazilian underclass out of poverty with a socialist platform (2003–2010). In 2018, Lula was persecuted and imprisoned on false charges, paving the way for soon to be president Jair Bolsonaro with all the hallmarks of a coup, including assassinations (Marielle Franco, 2018).
Building on reporting from Glenn Greenwald and advocacy by Bernie Sanders, Michael Brooks, and a small network of international allies helped break the story and champion Lula’s release from prison, after 580 days behind bars. The IDW and GameB coiners and moderators feign interest in justice but then would snub their noses at this kind of real work, a global cosmopolitanism socialism in action.
This narrative embodies metamodern optimism and finds some cathartic resonance in the following 2-part interview with Lula. It shines light on Lula as a cosmopolitan socialist role model, who builds solidarities based on trust and social renewal rather than the conventional neoliberal geostrategy of Obama, Clinton, neocons, and the like.
The context of these case studies is the insipid alliances between the neoliberal status-quo and authoritarian fascism around the world. It finds vivid expression in the juxtaposition of Justin Trudeau and Jair Bolsanaro, for example, and of course the US has as special relationships with many dictators. See also Michael Brook’s amazing Interview with Petra Costa, director of The Edge of Democracy, a documentary about Brazil’s rise and fall, and its precarious moment:
Brooks followed up his assignment abroad with an epic panel of intellectuals assembled to crystallize the democratic socialist moment, at Harvard no less. The first panel was called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and featured leading left ladies Krystal Ball, Meagan Day, Katie Halper, and Nomiki Konst. The second panel was the “Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party,” headed by Cornel West, Michael Brooks, Phillip Agnew, and Esha Krishnaswamy. This is the IDW’s worst nightmare, because they’d have no idea how to respond other than to probably (de)cry communism and go back to spinning their own bad ideas. Here is the description from the Harvard event itself, and the two videos below, which are a real treat:
“In 1912, Harvard armed its students to break a strike, using the motto “Defend Your Class.” On January 28, 2020, prominent progressives will gather at Harvard to discuss the past, present, and future of class struggle, and to envision the leftist movement that will arise from it. The 2020 primary is shaping up to be a referendum on the Democratic party, an ideological battle between the traditional, Biden-led wing of status quo politics and an emerging faction led by calls for the political revolution of Bernie Sanders. But the primary, like the 2020 election at large, is only the beginning.” — Class Warfare: The Future of Left Politics, January 28, 2020
Let There Be Light
We need to end war, which includes ultimately drawing down class warfare through economic justice as well, and the way to do that is through solidarity against the darkness of late capitalist hegemony and its weaponization of politics from the liberal left to the far right. What we are for is just as clear, if not clearer. We are for uniting a New Left in a global coalition to fulfill the mandates of the progressivism and beyond, to achieve a paradigm shift to a post-capitalist metamodern society. We are for this in the movement embodied in Bernie Sanders and grassroots economic populism.
The passing of the IDW is another teachable moment, on how not to do public discourse and social critique. Their legacy amounts to flamewars against the left, and undermines sociological and political sense-making. If you followed my argument before, you already know this. What’s increasingly novel is the much better solution the New Left offers, with the promise of all the bells (but without the dogwhistles) of a serious intellectual political project. With this framework in mind and path at our feet, we should fill that space left by the IDW and keep foregrounding the real issues that matter. Because here we are again, at another moment of truth, another crucible of change, with a do-or-die democratic primary in a whirlwind of bad opinions and paid stories drowning out the most vital truths.
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