Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Is alt-right Claire Lehmann ghostwriting for Bari Weiss?

Sam Harris: "look at what a bad-ass I am!"
I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of Bari Weiss until a few months ago. Now she's shilling for alt-right Quillette in the NYTimes:
“I’ve had to update Quillette’s servers three times now because it’s caved under the weight of the traffic,” Ms. Lehmann said about the publication most associated with this movement.
So basically the "renegade" "Dark Web" is attempting to repackage alt-right beliefs as "centrist" - just like alt-right Quillette.

And Weiss lies, in the "Renegade" tradition about the Southern Poverty Law Center:
What’s more, this frog-kissing plays perfectly into the hands of those who want to discredit the individuals in this network. In recent days, for example, Mr. Harris has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a bridge to the alt-right: “Under the guise of scientific objectivity, Harris has presented deeply flawed data to perpetuate fear of Muslims and to argue that black people are genetically inferior to whites.”
The SPLC didn't simply "label" Harris as a bridge - they demonstrated the empirical reality of that fact. Did Weiss even read the article?

Of course Steven Pinker approves.



I did enjoy many of the responses to Weiss:

Jamelle Bouie


Krugman


Pseudonymous Twitterer - this might be the best.