Lisa Sugiura's book The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women (2021) is open access.
Sugiura explains the Intellectual Dark Web's complaint against what they call "grievance studies," modern academic pursuits that they see as driven by biased political agendas:
"In 2017, three scholars linked with the intellectual dark web – James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian, who describe themselves as left-leaning liberals and seemingly have more time at their disposal than most academics – coordinated a scam against gender, queer, critical race, masculinities studies, amongst others nicknamed Sokal Squared. Heavily influenced by the Sokal Hoax, the ploy involved the creation of 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon submitted to various journals in these fields, with the aim of exposing ridiculous conclusions."
Alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos pushes the envelope with his overtly antisemitic and racist comments. Along with Jordan Peterson, he claims his right to speak is being curtailed:
"Yiannopoulos rationalised his comments, emphasising his homosexuality and alleging that he is a victim of child abuse, as well as referring to his Jewish mother and being raised Jewish...In 2019, he was permanently banned along with other far right commentators – Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan and Paul Nehlen, from Twitter and Facebook for breaching their hate speech rules."
In March 2021, Yiannopoulos declared he is now ‘ex-gay’ and his husband is now his housemate, Sugiura said.
They aren't being silenced
Sugiura explains this:
"Loud claims about being silenced from people with significant political and institutional power demonstrate that the exact opposite is occurring. If they were truly silenced, as those who are oppressed, then we would not hear or see them, and they certainly would not have the wealth of access to the public consciousness in the manner they do. As Sara Ahmed so eloquently puts it 'whenever people keep being given a platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power'. Claiming to be silenced amplifies and distributes reactionary forms of speech generating outrage. This is how figures such as Jordan Peterson and Milo Yiannopoulos have created platforms, by alleging they have none." [emphasis mine]
By the way:
"There is a current loophole within the proposed law, that protections for free speech could result in perverse outcomes, where a user could complain that legal racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic content has been removed and therefore should be re-uploaded on a platform."
However
On August 23, 2023, an Ontario court upheld a November 2022 order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario which said Peterson must take social media training to improve his professionalism in his public statements.
Also: Climate change denial
"Magatte Wade, who heads an internal Atlas project called the Center for African Prosperity, frequently cites de Soto as an inspiration for her take on Africa and climate change. In multiple op-eds over the past few years, and in an interview this year with Canadian professor and right-wing figurehead Jordan Peterson, Wade, who was born in Senegal but moved to Germany when she was 7, describes climate activists as the new colonialists, arguing that climate action will keep Africans poor and deprive them of access to energy. Wade often depicts those who would deny the continent its current fossil fuel boom as out-of-touch elitists and regularly claims that climate action will kill a billion Africans—all while refusing to engage with the fact that African climate activists are being arrested at an alarming rate."
— Meet the Shadowy Global Network Vilifying Climate Protesters For decades, the Atlas Network has used its reach and influence to spread conservative philosophy—and criminalize climate protest. Amy Westervelt and Geoff Dembicki, New Republic, September 12, 2023.
On which point, I encourage you to purchase a Medium membership so you can read my article: "When you claim that experts don't know their stuff", about Jordan Peterson's January 2022 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in which he claimed that climate scientists have no idea what they're talking about because "climate" doesn't refer to anything in particular.
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