Against A Link Between The IDW, Intellectual Dark Web, And Radicalization To Right Wing Extremism

Tweet chain in which I argue against this series of tweets:

...Look, it would be wrong to suggest that any individual member of the IDW is necessarily responsible for far-right radicalization, or even that the IDW as a group is tarred by association. But it is ludicrous to deny that a link exists. Worse, it is dangerous....

....I suppose we can think of that link as consisting of three components: 

1) Ideational. Here I would include hatred of SJWs/PC/ID politics, suspicion (at least) of feminism, anxiety about the status white men and Western civ, and alarm over Islam. Lots more, but you get the idea....

....2) Platforming. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Rubin has interviewed PJW, Southern, Hopkins, Molyneux, and Milo. Many of these and others have appeared on Rogan’s show, as well as other fora associated with the IDW, etc etc...

....3) Networks. YouTube’s algorithm apparently thinks that someone who views some IDW videos is likely to have an interest in far-right videos as well. The link is presumed to exist, at least according to Google....

...I think it requires a kind of willful blindness to deny that a link exists. That link may not carry with it any responsibility or blame, but it is real. And worth talking about. If a link exists between BLM and anti-police violence, we should..

My tweet chain

1 of 11, There’s that misleading “link” again. 

Though not addressed to me, I saw your tweet chain about the 3 components. 

2 Your 1st component betrays at minimum ad hominem paradox, ideational adjacent to “hatred,” “suspicion” “anxiety” and “alarm.” There are differing, thought though and nuanced analyses of each time on your list. And differing feeling about each item exist. 

3 But the reductive latter side of your adjacency perverts the I of the IDW, which is its principal mark. 

4 Your 2nd and 3D, as does your basic point, (see below), drown in vapid amorphousness. Where does public exposure stop and start?. It’s everywhere across all media. So a link between all that media and radicalization? 

5 Plus it reductively reduces the IDW as one unvaried  blob. It elides way too many needed distinctions. 

6  And your argument from an algorithm to support a “link,” and at that a link that doesn’t in any meaningful sense exist: that’s self evidently self-annihilating and absurdly attenuated.

7 And in your own words,  “That link may not carry with it any responsibility or blame” and “it would be wrong to suggest that any individual member of the IDW is necessarily responsible for far-right radicalization, or even that the IDW as a group is tarred by association.”

8 So what does this “link” come to? I think it’s analogous to these: ...a link between Democratic speech and conduct and James Hodgkinson or a link between Cdn sexual attitudes and conduct and Marc Lépine. 

9 You can say obviously the latter are crazy and (most of) those radicalized aren’t. 

10 But we all in many ways, some sane, some not, process what’s out there , around us. Agency breaks any presumed causal chain, namely presumed links. So your whole notion of a link reduces itself to amorphous triteness, an observation so commonplace that it verges on fatuity.

11 So I suggest that criticism of your “link” isn’t wilful blindness: rather it’s seeing all too clearly what you say.