Intellectual Dark Web: Reading the Cancelled History of a Prohibited Debate

The Intellectual Dark Web: A History (And Possible Future) by Jamie Q. Roberts

Free debate has a way of establishing truth over time. For this reason, “I would prefer to live in a world that entertains false positives in its search for true positives, rather than one that necessarily produces false negatives to protect the false positives,” Jamie Q. Roberts writes in his history of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). “This is Joe Rogan’s podcast in a nutshell.”

Rogan was identified with the left as recently as 2020, when he says he voted for Joe Biden. He became a target of progressive cancel culture by platforming guests who debunk the received truths of the left, such as Abigail Shrier and Dr James Lindsay.

What united the IDW, he argues, and may yet be its legacy, is that culture of spirited, open debate that entertains false positives in search of true ones. The IDW defined itself against the ascendant culture of ‘no debate’, and Rogan hosted those forbidden debates.

Bret Weinstein, one of the key figures in this book, used the word “kayfabe”, a term from professional wrestling, to describe this spirit of engagement in the IDW. Rogan, like many of the males in the IDW, is an aficionado of fighting sports. Thus Roberts originally titled his book The Way of the Intellectual Dark Web: What Joe Rogan and His Associates Can Teach Us about Political Dialogue.

But then a funny thing happened in 2024. Routledge, Roberts’s academic publisher, unpublished his book after “complaints” that were never explained to him. The Intellectual Dark Web: A History (And Possible Future) was suddenly deemed insufficient as a scholarly work.

Roberts says that he wanted to skip the usual dry academic prose, and he does violate one of the biggest canards of professional historians by writing in the first person at times. These are indeed mortal sins against the academy, where obtuse language conceals the superstitions of the writer.

The IDW was in fact a reaction against “dodgy Progressive orthodoxies that originated within universities” that “have spread across wider society, including the media and corporate world, and degraded our regard for truth, evidence, reasoning, free speech and civil discussion—all traditional Liberal or Enlightenment values—and imposed their own sort of intellectual tyranny.”

Postmodernism frames everything as “only powerful people using their putative reasons to shape reality in the way that suits them. Their speech—their discourse—thus does violence because it shapes the world.” Ideas become impossible to discuss. Any discussion “is not to be weighed. It is to be silenced.”

Put simply, “in the Postmodern tradition, problems come from discourse and are thus solved by changing discourse”—that is, ‘no debate’. Any attempt to widen the acceptable range of opinions on campus is deemed ‘harmful’ and subject to protest. Academics are subject to dismissal for asking simple, sensible questions.

Elon Musk refers to this phenomenon as the “Woke mind virus”. Roberts explains it as a political religion; “the Woke left is driven by a religious zeal,” he writes. Understanding religion as a “social technology”, the IDW sees “the corruption on the left” as partly the result of “the civil rights movements from the second half of the twentieth century”—led by religious figures such as Dr Martin Luther King—“having entered a decadent phase.”

Roberts describes the spirit of Wokeness as a “Slave Morality” of binary, black-and-white thinking characterised by vengeance. The IDW sees it as essentially illiberal and anti-Enlightenment. “Some in the IDW think that this virus is a civilisation-level threat,” Roberts writes.

“Intersectionality is dangerous because it is a psychological weapon born of resentment rather than a tool for analysis.” All inequalities are explained by oppression instead of human nature, and can only be solved by changing humans to invert the oppression.

Liberalism, which recognises human nature, is “the middle path” between identity politics on the left and reactionary politics on the right. Too much reaction can be just as bad as the Woke left. Roberts had concerns about this in 2024 which are prescient of Lindsay’s post-election admonitions against the “Woke right”.

The history of the IDW cannot be divorced from politics. As Roberts points out, however, like Joe Rogan, almost everyone associated with the IDW started out on the left. “There is no doubt that the IDW has spent more time criticising the left than the right,” he explains.

“But the complexity lies in the fact that many associated with the IDW have repeatedly said they are on the left, and voiced support for left-wing policies such as public education and health care, social safety nets, and universal basic income.”

Roberts suggests that this is the truth about the IDW that the Woke left wants to suppress most of all. “Perhaps there is nothing more dangerous for the Woke left than the criticisms made by other Progressives—rather than taking these criticisms seriously, these other Progressives must be nullified by being branded ‘Alt-Right’ or ‘Conservative’,” he writes.

This is also true of most people in ‘gender critical’ organising. Every radical feminist I knew in 2015 got cancelled by the left for thoughtcrimes against transgender ideology and the glorification of ‘sex work’. They did not leave the left; they were purged from its ranks.

Many of those women are still fighting the same fights. What has changed now is that Republicans listen to them, while Democrats still denounce them as hateful, genocidal bigots, etcetera.

The IDW is defined by contention, not unity. Roberts is suspicious of “the Libertarian romance of thinking the system is bad”. The IDW tries not to become a wellspring of conspiracy theories, he writes. “At its best, the IDW threads the needle” of free debate and anti-establishment bias. “At its worst, it slides into a dubious Cyber-Libertarian-Populism.” (Or in the case of IDW podcaster Lex Fridman, Kremlin agitprop.)

Despite centring Joe Rogan, Roberts writes that the breakthrough moment for IDW was the so-called “Grievance Studies” affair involving James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose.

This event brought light on what was considered acceptable, even prizewinning discourse within the academy (“Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon”). This was in sharp contrast to the ideological exclusions of the academy, such as critics of ‘gender identity’.

It is also striking how much overlap Roberts has established between IDW and the gender critical ‘movement’. Kellie-Jay Keen’s first appearance on Triggernometry is mentioned as an historical waypoint; Helen Joyce and Andrew Doyle and Heather Heying and Kathleen Stock are all associated, closely or distantly, with IDW. I have met a remarkable number of the people mentioned in this book at Genspect conferences.

The ‘GC movement’ is simply an umbrella term for a diversity of views that came together—though in opposition to transgenderism in particular, rather than wokeness in general. Still, the two histories are eerily similar, and the amount of crossover is uncanny enough that a history of gender criticism would bear more than a little similarity to this book.

Per the subtitle of his book, Roberts suggests that the IDW has served its purpose. Some of the people mentioned in it, such as Sam Harris, have already distanced themselves from IDW to maintain their intellectual independence. No big IDW organisations have been founded. Also per the subtitle, Roberts suggests that the intellectual impact of IDW will last much longer.

Although the New Atheists are also very prominent in this book, Professor Roberts has not explained why so many New Atheists instead turned to the activist mysticism of ‘Wokeness’ instead of joining the IDW. How did so many avowed nonbelievers end up following Danielle Muscato, grand hierophant genderdruid, into the progressive political wilderness?

The difference between New Atheists and IDW, Roberts says, “is that where the New Atheists used reason to attack religion, the IDW has used reason to attack Wokeness—which, for the IDW, is a new religion.”

This point deserves deeper scrutiny. As I wrote after experiencing Detrans Awareness Day in Washington, DC last month, the only thing that all detransition stories share is the false belief that they were somehow the opposite sex, i.e. ‘born in the wrong body’, a patent faith statement.

Jamie Q. Roberts has written a valuable intellectual history for non-intellectuals. If only the academy would read it.

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