(First) Response to Uri Harris
A long time ago, in a PragerU video with a view count far, far away (from zero), Dave Rubin explained why he left the Left: while he has remained classically liberal, the Left has not. He acknowledges quite plainly, “defending my liberal values has suddenly become a conservative position” (3:41–5).[1] His timeline shows him cozying up to conservatives because, as things are now, it’s they who defend the liberal values of freedom of speech and of religion. He relentlessly attacks democrats because that’s where the attacks on these values are coming from.
According to Uri Harris,[2] it follows from these facts about Rubin’s timeline that he’s no longer really liberal. Leaving Shapiro aside, Uri argues that if Rubin and the other core IDWers were really still liberal, “we should reasonably expect them in practice to align with liberals and not conservatives.” Since they align with Republicans more than Democrats, Uri thinks, they therefore don’t align with liberals.
It’s only reasonable to expect this, however, if we ignore the two reasons why IDWers maintain their designation as liberal: to historically mark the drift of the Left away from liberalism towards social justice ideology (“Social Justice”), and to plant their flags in the ground and say no, these values you’re abandoning are worth fighting for. People routinely distinguish “liberal” from “leftist” these days to note this shift and to mark this political judgment against it. Not aligning “in practice” with certain Democrats doesn’t mean you don’t align with liberals, for some current Democrats aren’t very liberal at all. Aligning with Republicans thus doesn’t imply you’re not liberal. The IDWers won’t let Uri drag the meaning of “liberal” left with the Left. In today’s political environment, it’s not obvious that liberals shouldn’t vote Republican.
* * *
This explains why Rubin, Tim Pool and Bret Weinstein all forcefully rejected Uri’s suggestion that they’re now on the right. But they were all a bit ‘triggered,’ I think, by the fact that Uri found positive uses for Rebecca Lewis’s Alternative Influence report and Ezra Klein’s support of it. They thus mischaracterized that use. Properly understood, Uri’s suggestion is important and useful.
A well-read Nazi can teach you true things about the Second World War. You can learn those things from him without becoming a Nazi. Rebecca Lewis and Ezra Klein are social justice warriors. We can find truth in what they say, too, without becoming social justice warriors.
The true claim Lewis and Klein make that IDWers should happily accept comes in their description of the YouTube-led political realignment: what defines the “new right” that includes the IDW, Klein writes, is “a general opposition to feminism, social justice, or left-wing politics.” He continues,
“Lewis’s argument, which I agree with, is that the core, unshakable agreement uniting the reactionary right is their intense loathing of ‘the social justice left,’ of political correctness, of threats to free speech as they define it.”
Of course moral judgments attach to Lewis and Klein’s description of “the new right.” Put as simply as possible, they see the new right as bad and what it’s reacting to as good. But I identify as IDW, and I endorse this description of what divides us (though obviously not their elaboration and explanation of it). The description itself is entirely compatible with the IDW’s view that the Left has lost its way. Where our real quarrels with Lewis and Klein lie are almost too obvious to state. To take one example, they think contemporary feminism is entirely a force for good and that the only thing that explains our resistance to it is our misogyny. We see its most visible pronouncements as some of the clearest evidence of how the Left has gone wrong. But we can have these arguments against the background agreement that this is what our quarrel is fundamentally about. We do share an “intense loathing of ‘the social justice left.’” Our quarrel is whether this is because we’re evil or because we’re correct in our view that Social Justice harms our culture.
Endorsing Klein’s description of the realignment doesn’t limit how you characterize Social Justice. You can still think it’s authoritarian, a manifestation of mental weakness or illness, an utter betrayal of American or liberal democratic values or, as Lewis and Klein think, the morally superior political view. Rubin and especially Tim Pool miss this fact in their responses to Uri’s article. Casting those like themselves who are opposed to Social Justice as on the right, they think, comes at a stiff price: it “legitimizes the regressive left as mainstream.”[3]
Does it, though? That’s not entirely Uri’s intention — he’s a critic of Social Justice himself. [4] Only a partial critic, however: he notes his “decidedly mixed feelings” towards the fact that “the new left isn’t going anywhere.” His ambivalence towards Social Justice feeds his claim that the IDW should give up its claim to be liberal. As we saw, the IDW resists this claim to mark its more resolute opposition to Social Justice. Most crucially, Uri’s ambivalence towards Social Justice grounds his conclusion that, to count as “genuinely non-partisan,” the IDW “needs to open itself up to new left people and ideas.” He includes amongst those ideas, “critiques of classical liberal notions of free speech.”
* * *
It’s with this last suggestion in mind, I think, that the IDW can most usefully define itself. In the next section I’ll define “new right” and “new left,” but let’s make clear here that these are stipulative definitions. As such, while you may critique their usefulness, it’d be a misunderstanding to critique them the way Tim Pool critiques Uri’s definitions of these same terms. Tim thinks Uri’s definitions “literally makes no sense” (6:12–3), for they make Obama and Bill Maher “new right,” since they both critique Social Justice.
If that’s how we stipulatively define “new right,” however, then this result, if slightly awkward, is thoroughly compatible with them being otherwise “on the left,” for nothing is implied about them politically save the distinction stipulated in the definition (‘for’ or ‘against’ Social Justice). Of course any overarching definition of “left” and “right” will group together people with very serious differences. Debates over the usefulness of proposed definitions are essentially over which more adequately characterize our political reality: what are the most important agreements and disagreements around which we form political alliances and oppositions?
This is the nature of Uri’s claim, and I join his judgment: Rubin and Ben Shapiro are not crossing the most fundamental political divide today when they argue the merits of gay marriage and abortion. It’s not the greatest divide, for there is a greater divide: where one stands on Social Justice. And on this issue the entire IDW is aligned. Rubin, Lauren Chen and Tim Pool all missed this feature of Uri’s argument. They all thought they could cite the fact that Dave and Ben debate gay marriage and abortion to resist Uri’s claim that the IDW doesn’t cross today’s most fundamental political divide (see from 6:42 of Tim’s video).
We thus can make sense of the fact that Obama and Bill Maher now come out on the (new) right. Traditional conservatives are both old and new right. Now they’re on the new right with Obama. This doesn’t lessen the seriousness of their antipathy for him. It merely claims that this antipathy takes a back seat to a more urgent issue on which they can count Obama and Bill Maher as allies: their opposition to Social Justice.
For Tim Pool, the fact that Obama and Maher come out on Uri’s new right is a reductio ad absurdum of the concept. Tim’s thought, of course, is that they’re liberals stating their opposition to leftists. With that I thoroughly agree. But Tim is effectively insisting that “liberal” stays on the left. My definition will put liberals on the new right. But I’m standing with Tim and Dave against Uri in maintaining an understanding of “liberal” as someone who defends the values of freedom of speech and of religion. It makes sense to now place such people on the right (at least in this clearly specified sense), for the most serious attacks on these key values today come from the social justice left.
So while I endorse Uri’s alignment of “new left” with a commitment to Social Justice, I won’t let “liberal” be dragged left with it. That’s the semantic shenanigans that allows Uri to respond to Dave’s tolerance of Trump with, “Rubin is just a right-wing troll now. … So much for being a liberal” (Twitter, 4.13.19, 6:20am). I call Dave a right-wing liberal: Uri’s right that opposing abortion and gay marriage “is no longer a condition of being on the right.” But he should also recognize that opposing Republicans is no longer a condition of being a liberal. Many liberals have expressed their feelings of political homelessness. We shouldn’t disrespect what they identify as if they beg for alms at the GOP.
The battle over definitions thus does involve claims about what the true battle lines are out there in political reality — about which agreements are essential and which are of secondary importance. My attempt will meet with less confusion, however, if it’s grasped that my definitions are stipulations of how I will — and I suggest we do — use these terms. They’re thus not deep empirical or ontological claims about the political being of those subsumed under these concepts, which is how Tim takes Uri’s definitions. It’s true that, if Tim accepts Uri’s characterization of him as “new right,” he’s thereby grouped with conservatives. But this doesn’t ‘make him conservative,’ as he worries. Stipulative definitions don’t imply anything beyond what’s stated in the definition itself. If we’re clear, as neither Uri nor Tim are, that it’s these we should be working with, we can all recognize Tim as a new right social liberal.
The empirical claim in this designation is this: Tim’s alliance with conservatives in opposing Social Justice is more fundamental to him than his dispute with conservatives over social issues. If Tim rejects this he’s saying his alliance with the social justice left and against conservatives on social issues is more important to him than his opposition to the social justice left (or as important). Tim’s body of work bears my claim out. It’s thoroughly compatible with the existence and importance of his dispute with conservatives. Tim’s response to Uri shows he assumes otherwise.
* * *
Uri suggests the IDW open itself up to “critiques of classical liberal notions of free speech.” Let’s now lay down our definitions in response. You’re “new right,” I suggest, if you’re still willing today to endorse the marketplace of ideas interpretation of free speech. Similarly, you’re “new left” if you think that the solution to the problems facing our current political reality involves abandoning the marketplace of ideas interpretation of free speech. It’s alliances and oppositions formed on this issue, I suggest, that constitute the fundamental battle of our times.
Against Uri, I’ve shown how we can still see the IDW as predominantly liberal. Notice, though, that my definitions entail the truth of his central claim: the entire IDW lines up as new right. The IDW thus is partisan, for discussions between IDWers are not crossing this most fundamental left-right divide.
I endorse Uri’s suggestion, furthermore, that the IDW should make more efforts to cross this divide — so far as this is possible. This is an important qualification. Let’s take some time to examine our new left opponents to see why it’s necessary.
The new left is composed of two subgroups: those that are (or might be), and those that are not willing to engage in real conversation and with actual arguments. I call these, respectively, good- and bad-faith new leftists. The latter seek to slime rather than argue with their opponents, usually via the tired, and now thankfully less effectual tactic of labeling them racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, or Islamophobic.
Uri claimed that the mainstream left and right are gradually morphing into his (Klein’s) new left and new right. Tim Pool draws another reason for rejecting Uri’s definitions from the Hidden Tribes of America report:[5] Social Justice can’t be the “mainstream” left, he says, because it’s only endorsed by about 8% of the population. Can a distinction that puts only 8% of us on one side of it really mark our most urgent political divide?
Yes it can. It’s safe to assume that all of Uri’s social justice left counts as new left on my definition. For the sake of argument let’s concede that as few as 8% of the American population counts as new left on my definition, inshallah. (If the percentage is higher, of course, my definitions are less in need of defense.) Defeating them culturally is still the defining issue of our times, for they’re not merely overrepresented in the commanding heights of cultural reproduction (academia, politics, tech and media); they’re asserting an ever-increasing dominance over them. The new left is extremely overrepresented in what Charles Murray calls “the narrow elite,” the graduates of the elite schools who have occupied positions of cultural, financial, and political power, and who have, since the 1960s, consolidated a unique culture quite independent of, and increasingly cut-off from, the culture shared by the rest of us.[6]
Let’s take an example. The New York Times is new left. Consider its article, “Weaponizing Free Speech: How the First Amendment Became a Conservative Cudgel.” Larry Sanger responded in Quillette.[7]
“This is monumental news: the most influential newspaper in the world, the standard bearer of the Establishment, is announcing that free speech is, or should be, over.”
Sanger stands his liberal ground to show us how the New York Times has drifted left.
“The Times article… says that the Republicans, or conservatives, are making free speech into a controversial issue. But this doesn’t hold water. If Republicans are simply standing by the free speech absolutism that characterized mainstream thought on both sides of the aisle for a couple of generations, it implies that people such as Kagan who find such absolutism to be a ‘weaponizing’ of the First Amendment are the ones who are making free speech ideological. But let’s be precise. Free speech always was ideological; it is part of the American civil religion. But the social justice left’s commitment to its own ideological ‘religion’ seems to be getting the upper hand.”
Sanger won’t let “liberal” drift left with the Left. He takes the Times to task for casting two professors strongly critical of the marketplace of ideas interpretation of free speech as “liberals.” “Such people are leftists, not liberals.” Sanger explains,
“The notion that people who attack American traditions of free speech and First Amendment are liberal, of all things, is patently absurd. If you are skeptical of free speech absolutism, then you are not a liberal for that reason alone: what is more essential to American liberalism than a strong commitment to free speech?”
But the New York Times isn’t merely new left. In 2018 we saw it occupied by the subset of the new left unwilling to properly argue for its new left position. They hired Sarah Jeong to their editorial board. She’s new left: “where public discourse is right now, we’re not talking about how great freedom of expression is. We’re talking about how the internet has a problem.”[8] But she’s also bad-faith new left: while many of the “internet men” she judges misogynist in her book might be disgusting trolls who indeed should be banned from the internet, she counts Jordan Peterson amongst them. (See her tweetstorm in response to Nellie Bowles’ Jordan Peterson: Custodian of the Patriarchy, 5.18.18.) Label applied. Argument over. Most of us at least recognize Jordan as a thinker with arguments worth grappling with. Not Sarah. She judges him “not actually a thinker” (Twitter, 5.18.18, 9:51am).
It’s clear which conclusion Kara Swisher favors: censor more. But her writing drips so thickly of moral censure that it’s impossible to lift anything from it that might help move someone committed to free speech. On her podcast, too, even when she manages to calm her outrage enough to get words out, it’s hard to suss out any coherent premises for her conclusion. Tech CEOs aren’t grappling with a real dilemma of how to balance the values of “safety” and free speech; they’re simply “misbehaving” in not censoring enough. Why do they misbehave? Because as white males they haven’t felt threatened the way the women and minorities they should be protecting have. Kara was mostly joking when she said she’d kick Ben Shapiro off YouTube if she could. Mostly.
Kara’s view is reinforced by Kevin Roose’s articles. They detail the ways various conservative wrongthinkers have transgressed norms of (narrow elite) decency, yet are still for some reason permitted to speak online. For a striking example of Kevin’s bad-faith new leftism, consider the lie he told on the Times’s podcast The Daily when he joined Mike Barbaro to explain why Gab needs to be purged from the internet.[9] He told the nation that there were no Gab users denouncing the murder of 11 Jewish Americans at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.[10]
Rebecca Lewis’s Alternative Influence report argues that if you talk to people who talk to people who talk to Nazis you should be censored from YouTube. Kevin tweeted that her report “is one of the best things I’ve read on YouTube extremism, and a great explanation of how reactionary politics are smuggled into mainstream discourse through guest appearances and cross-promotion” (@kevinroose, Twitter, 9.18.18, 7:22am).
Michelle Goldberg was instrumental in getting Gavin McInnes purged from the internet.[11] In her Monk Debate with Jordan Peterson, she famously deflected Jordan’s objection to her mischaracterization of his statements by urging listeners to “google it.” (They did, correcting her.)[12] She then explained her opposition to his views by saying that, “the more those views are mainstreamed, the more people are going to shut down in response because people are really scared” (JBPP#52, 148:51–150:28). This is a bad-faith new left tactic: she doesn’t argue that Jordan’s views shouldn’t be mainstreamed because his claims are false or that his conclusions don’t follow from his premises. He shouldn’t be mainstreamed because the questions he asks scare people (denizens of the narrow elite like herself).
Lindy West’s episode of This American Life is entitled, “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT ALL IN CAPS.” Her article for the Times, “Save Free Speech from the Trolls,” bears as its header image the First Amendment all in caps.
If we go left from the New York Times, of course (Vox, HuffPo, etc.), we’ll find the marketplace of ideas theory of free speech rejected more forcefully, and the attempts of bad-faith new leftists to slime rather than argue their way to their conclusions more patent.
* * *
How can Dave Rubin do his part to satisfy Uri’s call to cross our most fundamental left-right divide? He could start by inviting all these high profile journalists to appear on his show. I imagine he’s done so, or would, and if not, he should. I’d love to see Eric Weinstein and Kara Swisher move beyond their occasional swipes on Twitter and have an actual conversation.
But here’s the thing: Eric’s willing to talk. Kara’s not. Dave isn’t holding his breath on Lindy West’s invitation. It’s a fundamental feature of our present political reality that while IDWers are, fairly earnestly, seeking nourishment from their ideological others, their bad-faith new left opponents are putting all their energies into preventing them from having public conversations. If you don’t those New York Times writers would deplatform the IDW if they could, you haven’t been paying attention.
There’s a failure to acknowledge this reality in Uri’s charge that the IDW isn’t “genuinely non-partisan” unless it opens itself up to “critiques of classical liberal notions of free speech.” The bad-faith new leftists force us to remain resolutely partisan against them. Since they aren’t interested in rationally critiquing us, but only in censoring us, until they accept our invitations to talk we’ve no choice but to engage them in total cultural war.
What does it look like to win a battle in this war? Like Jack Dorsey agreeing to return to the Joe Rogan Experience — immediately after Alex Jones’s appearance, no less. Jack, of course, is awash in an ocean. Strong currents pull him both (new) left and (new) right. I can sympathize: while I currently identify as IDW, and thus as new right, I more strongly identify with the truth — with the force of the better argument. I’m open to the possibility that, in the final analysis, the new left might have the better argument about how best to respond to our current political problems.
You’ve no hope of convincing me of that, however, unless we have that argument. The most dangerous group consists of those who think they know that the new left’s answer is the correct one but are unwilling to argue their case against those who aren’t so sure. Jack showed his willingness to share his reasons for censoring and deplatforming people and to listen. He’s thus not in this group. We might’ve found Jack’s reasons thoroughly inadequate, but that just makes it all the more important that he made himself face Tim Pool’s public critique of those reasons. Our biggest problem is with those who are powerful, have bad reasons, but aren’t willing to risk refutation.
* * *
With regard to good-faith new leftists, however, Uri’s advice is well taken. One such person the IDW should reach out to is the legal scholar Kate Klonick. In a celebrated article,[13] she explains how big tech’s content moderation policies were forged by lawyers committed to the marketplace of ideas interpretation of free speech. But she offers this as a diagnosis of our current political problems. We must abandon that view, she argues — be new left — to fix our current political problems.
Kate presents a cogent argument for the new left’s position. The IDW should jointly investigate with her whether it’s sound. There’s more than mere truth seeking at stake.
Kate is positively disposed to Social Justice. (She takes advice on how to moderate Twitter from Anita Sarkeesian for this article she published in Vox.[14]) It’s thus natural that she’s taken Data & Society and Sarah Jeong as her natural allies. Since Social Justice is, for her, politically correct (pun intended), our distinction between good- and bad-faith new leftists won’t show up for her.
The culture war is a battle for minds like Kate Klonick’s. She’s a truth-seeker who will, I believe, respond to the force of the better argument. She needs to hear good arguments for alternative conclusions about Anita Sarkeesian, about Sarah Jeong, about Social Justice, and about how best to characterize our current political predicament. (She’s essentially accepted the media’s view that the current internet is an intolerably toxic and destructive mess.)
Who better to offer those arguments than the IDW? Uri Harris is right that learning from and presenting such arguments to people like Kate is a more urgent task than another Dave-and-Ben-on-gay-marriage show.
If we’re not whispering in Kate’s ears, the whisperings of our bad-faith new left opponents are going unchallenged.
It’s a battle for hearts and minds. Let’s meet the enemy where they are.
References
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiVQ8vrGA_8.
[2] https://quillette.com/2019/04/17/is-the-intellectual-dark-web-politically-diverse/.
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE11-Q_EBZM, 0:23–6.
[4] https://quillette.com/2018/11/17/the-institutionalization-of-social-justice/.
[6] See Coming Apart (2012).
[7] “The New York Times Comes Out Against Free Speech,” Quillette, 7.4.18. For a book-length exploration of the current Times’s opposition to free speech, see Politikos: The Intellectual Dark Web vs. The New York Times, https://www.amazon.com/POLITIKOS-Intellectual-Dark-York-Times/dp/1795071311/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=politikos&qid=1557436325&s=gateway&sr=8-1.
[8] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150326/12252530454/free-speech-censorship-moderation-community-copia-discussion.shtml, (3/2015, 9:08–18).
[9] See also https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/us/gab-robert-bowers-pittsburgh-synagogue-shootings.html.
[10] The Daily, 10.29.18, 10:37–46.
[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/bombs-democrats-trump-republicans-civility.html.
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KycbPJZy-eo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjNz86ocumQ.
[13] The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech: https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/the-new-governors-the-people-rules-and-processes-governing-online-speech/.
[14] https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/25/13386648/twitter-harassment-explained.
