Dangers of Tolerance on the Intellectual Dark Web

Before asking why “classical liberal” is a label making a comeback, one has to understand what the “Intellectual Dark Web” is, at least what the IDW is according to a column by Bari Weiss in the New York Times (May 8, 2018):

The closest thing to a phone book for the I.D.W. is a sleek website that lists the dramatis personae of the network, including Mr. Harris; Mr. Weinstein and his brother and sister-in-law, the evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying; Jordan Peterson, the psychologist and best-selling author; the conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray; Maajid Nawaz, the former Islamist turned anti-extremist activist; and the feminists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hoff Sommers. But in typical dark web fashion, no one knows who put the website up.

The core members have little in common politically. Bret and Eric Weinstein and Ms. Heying were Bernie Sanders supporters. Mr. Harris was an outspoken Hillary voter. Ben Shapiro is an anti-Trump conservative.

But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.

There is often an event that pushes one to question the conventional left-right dichotomy. Often, the event culminates with isolation, a rejection by one’s peers that forces a reexamination of the groupthink too common among partisans.

The metaphors for this experience vary: going through the phantom tollbooth; deviating from the narrative; falling into the rabbit hole. But almost everyone can point to a particular episode where they came in as one thing and emerged as something quite different.

A year ago, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying were respected tenured professors at Evergreen State College, where their Occupy Wall Street-sympathetic politics were well in tune with the school’s progressive ethos. Today they have left their jobs, lost many of their friends and endangered their reputations.

All this because they opposed a “Day of Absence,” in which white students were asked to leave campus for the day. For questioning a day of racial segregation cloaked in progressivism, the pair was smeared as racist. Following threats, they left town for a time with their children and ultimately resigned their jobs.

Weiss makes an argument similar to my own. Classical liberals and others need to denounce the cranks, even as we advocate for free speech and open debate. We cannot tolerate intolerance; though we might resist legal restraints on stupidity we must identify and call out hatred when we see it. The failure of many libertarians to denounce racists abusing “states’ rights” historically is only one clear example of failing to call out intolerance. Karl Popper was correct, there’s a paradox of intolerance. Popper wrote:

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

In the Times, Weiss warns us that the IDW is overly tolerant of the intolerant trolls:

I get the appeal of the I.D.W. I share the belief that our institutional gatekeepers need to crack the gates open much more. I don’t, however, want to live in a culture where there are no gatekeepers at all. Given how influential this group is becoming, I can’t be alone in hoping the I.D.W. finds a way to eschew the cranks, grifters and bigots and sticks to the truth-seeking.

“Some say the I.D.W. is dangerous,” Ms. Heying said. “But the only way you can construe a group of intellectuals talking to each other as dangerous is if you are scared of what they might discover.”

— Bari Weiss is a staff editor and writer for the Opinion section.

Those of us committed to true free and open debate, especially within academic and think-tank settings, must occupy a moral high ground. We cannot allow the intolerant to hijack and abuse freedoms — because that’s precisely what they will do. We were warned in the past that our society would be destroyed because it was open. Even today, foreign powers rely on our open media to shape narratives.

Complacency is bad. Dismissing the cranks with some idealist hope that they will reveal themselves and then be rejected is even worse. In reality, we know that the trolls are not rejected. Lousy people end up with willing followers. Silence is not an option if you believe in the marketplace of ideas.

I will defend free speech and intellectual curiosity, but only as I speak out against intolerance.