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Against the Web
Michael Brooks takes on the new "Intellectual Dark Web." As the host of The Michael Brooks Show and co-host of the Majority Report, he lets his understanding of the new media environment direct his analysis of the newly risen conservative rebels who have taken YouTube by storm.
Brooks provides a theoretically rigorous but accessible critique of the most prominent "renegades" including Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Brett Weinstein while also examining the social, political and media environment that these rebels thrive in.
Brooks provides a theoretically rigorous but accessible critique of the most prominent "renegades" including Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Brett Weinstein while also examining the social, political and media environment that these rebels thrive in.
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 24, 2020
About the author
Michael Brooks
3 books71 followersMichael Jamal Brooks was an American talk show host, writer, and political commentator. While regularly co-hosting The Majority Report with Sam Seder, he launched The Michael Brooks Show in August 2017 and provided regular commentary for media outlets and made regular appearances on shows such as The Young Turks, with a progressive democratic socialist perspective.
Brooks began his career in comedy and meditation, founding the Valley Arts Project and coaching seminars at Sati Solutions. He co-authored the meditation guide The Buddha's Playbook with Josh Summers in 2011.
From April 2020 until his death, Brooks had been co-hosting a podcast called Weekends with Ana Kasparian and Michael Brooks, a collaboration with Jacobin.
Brooks contributed to various publications, including HuffPost, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, In These Times, Good Worldwide, Al-Monitor and openDemocracy. He appeared on various networks and shows around the world such as The Young Turks, HuffPost Live, Al Jazeera English, France 24, Novara Media, CCTV and Hear the Bern, the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign's podcast.
From Wikipedia
Brooks began his career in comedy and meditation, founding the Valley Arts Project and coaching seminars at Sati Solutions. He co-authored the meditation guide The Buddha's Playbook with Josh Summers in 2011.
From April 2020 until his death, Brooks had been co-hosting a podcast called Weekends with Ana Kasparian and Michael Brooks, a collaboration with Jacobin.
Brooks contributed to various publications, including HuffPost, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, In These Times, Good Worldwide, Al-Monitor and openDemocracy. He appeared on various networks and shows around the world such as The Young Turks, HuffPost Live, Al Jazeera English, France 24, Novara Media, CCTV and Hear the Bern, the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign's podcast.
From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 226 reviews
May 28, 2020
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of The Majority Report podcast. Watching their video clips online has become a daily habit of mine for keeping up with the political world, especially during these tense last few years.
Co-host Michael Brooks (who also hosts his own solo The Michael Brooks Show) always has a very poignant take which I enjoy listening to, with the ability to summarize complex issues in a way both intelligent and entertaining.
The news market nowadays is indeed very oversaturated, particularly when it comes to opinions on YouTube, yet there is a reason I find myself drifting towards the Majority Report more than sources like the more independent and objective Democracy Now. Because in this current climate, it’s not just about getting the most facts. Anyone can do so if they want.
The battle over messaging has really become about being able to fight back against misinformation as much as anything else. And that is what I truly love about Sam Seder and Michael Brooks, that they aren’t “above the fray” at all—unlike that example I’ll use again, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. They fully take on the trending online garbage of the extreme alt-right, refusing to cede the internet world over to those charlatans.
For whatever reasons of history, social media’s biases tend to reward the worst of the worst when it comes to extreme political rhetoric. Even the old medias of cable news and talk radio can’t compete with the unfortunately powerful trolls of today.
But at least some people are fighting back, and are damn good at it. Therefore, I was very intrigued when I heard about Michael Brooks’ book project titled Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. The book is slim at only a hundred pages, which fits well as an e-book for those more low-attention spanned readers struggling to keep up with the information overload of the times.
The main focus of his critique concerns the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web,” the IDW, which is truly one of the dumbest names for the cheap yet successful motivational speakers who now pervade the gross right-wing. He starts of with an analysis of Sam Harris, who rose in fame as one of those New Atheist war-mongering neo-cons during the Bush era. Brooks lays out the laziness of his debate, which never truly was very intellectual at all. Particularly embarrassing is his email spat with Noam Chomsky, in which he actually says: “The history is completely irrelevant.”
And that’s it right there. These grifters cash in by presenting themselves as deep, yet don’t care to analyze how much of the state of the world is a product of historical context. Again and again, they are proven to have an authoritarian mindset, “a penchant for defending hierarchy” as Brooks expertly sums up. Even the late Christopher Hitchens was able to mock the “IQ obsessed.” He may have been wrong on Iraq, but I can’t imagine Hitchens today tolerating the logicbro nonsense of his old contemporaries.
Much of the book focuses on Jordan Peterson as well, the very definition of a self-help hack trying to cash in on the zeitgeist. Clearly, Peterson is not very good at being an academic as he flames the campus culture wars with his overuse of the term postmodernism—that catch-all nebulous term which is usually conflated with Marxism for no reason whatsoever. Peterson famously crashed and burned in his big Zizek debate, and has since gone so off the deep end that he is now in some of kind of rehab and/or in a coma in Russia of all places after hawking a bizarre all-meat diet. You can’t even satirize this stuff.
As Brooks says, “the Petersons of the world want to naturalize or mythologize the injustices we see around us instead of analyzing them as a function of historical process that, because they are human-made, can be rectified in the future.” They never were very interested in honestly learning what makes the world turn and, God forbid, trying to make the world better. The truth is, they only want Patreon subscribers.
The way they pretend to be victims and underdogs while growing in power is particularly infuriating. As he says, “The IDW and right in general love to have it both ways with free speech. On the one hand, if a reactionary is criticized for something they say, Free Speech is Under Attack. On the other hand, if a left-wing professor says something they find objectionable, or if too many faculty members have political views they dislike, they have no problem asking the government to step in to examine the curriculum and impose ‘balance.’” (Hell, check out the presidential Twitter fact-checking controversy happening right this very moment…)
“Still, right-wing media is one of the easiest gigs in the world.” You said it, Michael.
While it’s easy enough to dunk on the shallow Dave Rubins and Ben Shapiros of the world, that standard conservative trying to rebrand as wannabe intellectuals all of a sudden—and dunk he does, who couldn’t not reference Shapiro’s disastrous BBC interview with Andrew Neils—Brooks’ real point goes far beyond such critiques. The true core of his thesis is that it’s time for the left to do better in winning over that angry young man demographic these guys so easily convert.
Don’t let them use fake terms like “classical liberal,” don’t let them have free reign on Joe Rogan and then just hope the moral superiority of the left will actually win elections and change hearts.
In his final criticisms of the “ultra-woke” left, Brooks has much to say on why we should encourage moral growth instead of shaming and canceling, of which the latter often adds fuel to the bad faith arguments of the right. Personally, I think the apparent craziness of the university protest crowd has always been exaggerated and never was as big a deal as the clickbait merchants would have us think. But Brooks does have a point.
Like it or not, this new crop of right-wingers is a loud voice today. It’s time to understand them, so that the good guys can win. The end goal is a fair and just society, a cosmopolitan socialism as Brooks concludes which is able to express itself successfully in the modern landscape. That’s the fight worth having.
It is time to form an international message of solidarity, and the path forward with be both for the left to get it together and also to finally defeat the manipulative new right of the web.
So let’s do it!
Co-host Michael Brooks (who also hosts his own solo The Michael Brooks Show) always has a very poignant take which I enjoy listening to, with the ability to summarize complex issues in a way both intelligent and entertaining.
The news market nowadays is indeed very oversaturated, particularly when it comes to opinions on YouTube, yet there is a reason I find myself drifting towards the Majority Report more than sources like the more independent and objective Democracy Now. Because in this current climate, it’s not just about getting the most facts. Anyone can do so if they want.
The battle over messaging has really become about being able to fight back against misinformation as much as anything else. And that is what I truly love about Sam Seder and Michael Brooks, that they aren’t “above the fray” at all—unlike that example I’ll use again, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. They fully take on the trending online garbage of the extreme alt-right, refusing to cede the internet world over to those charlatans.
For whatever reasons of history, social media’s biases tend to reward the worst of the worst when it comes to extreme political rhetoric. Even the old medias of cable news and talk radio can’t compete with the unfortunately powerful trolls of today.
But at least some people are fighting back, and are damn good at it. Therefore, I was very intrigued when I heard about Michael Brooks’ book project titled Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. The book is slim at only a hundred pages, which fits well as an e-book for those more low-attention spanned readers struggling to keep up with the information overload of the times.
The main focus of his critique concerns the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web,” the IDW, which is truly one of the dumbest names for the cheap yet successful motivational speakers who now pervade the gross right-wing. He starts of with an analysis of Sam Harris, who rose in fame as one of those New Atheist war-mongering neo-cons during the Bush era. Brooks lays out the laziness of his debate, which never truly was very intellectual at all. Particularly embarrassing is his email spat with Noam Chomsky, in which he actually says: “The history is completely irrelevant.”
And that’s it right there. These grifters cash in by presenting themselves as deep, yet don’t care to analyze how much of the state of the world is a product of historical context. Again and again, they are proven to have an authoritarian mindset, “a penchant for defending hierarchy” as Brooks expertly sums up. Even the late Christopher Hitchens was able to mock the “IQ obsessed.” He may have been wrong on Iraq, but I can’t imagine Hitchens today tolerating the logicbro nonsense of his old contemporaries.
Much of the book focuses on Jordan Peterson as well, the very definition of a self-help hack trying to cash in on the zeitgeist. Clearly, Peterson is not very good at being an academic as he flames the campus culture wars with his overuse of the term postmodernism—that catch-all nebulous term which is usually conflated with Marxism for no reason whatsoever. Peterson famously crashed and burned in his big Zizek debate, and has since gone so off the deep end that he is now in some of kind of rehab and/or in a coma in Russia of all places after hawking a bizarre all-meat diet. You can’t even satirize this stuff.
As Brooks says, “the Petersons of the world want to naturalize or mythologize the injustices we see around us instead of analyzing them as a function of historical process that, because they are human-made, can be rectified in the future.” They never were very interested in honestly learning what makes the world turn and, God forbid, trying to make the world better. The truth is, they only want Patreon subscribers.
The way they pretend to be victims and underdogs while growing in power is particularly infuriating. As he says, “The IDW and right in general love to have it both ways with free speech. On the one hand, if a reactionary is criticized for something they say, Free Speech is Under Attack. On the other hand, if a left-wing professor says something they find objectionable, or if too many faculty members have political views they dislike, they have no problem asking the government to step in to examine the curriculum and impose ‘balance.’” (Hell, check out the presidential Twitter fact-checking controversy happening right this very moment…)
“Still, right-wing media is one of the easiest gigs in the world.” You said it, Michael.
While it’s easy enough to dunk on the shallow Dave Rubins and Ben Shapiros of the world, that standard conservative trying to rebrand as wannabe intellectuals all of a sudden—and dunk he does, who couldn’t not reference Shapiro’s disastrous BBC interview with Andrew Neils—Brooks’ real point goes far beyond such critiques. The true core of his thesis is that it’s time for the left to do better in winning over that angry young man demographic these guys so easily convert.
Don’t let them use fake terms like “classical liberal,” don’t let them have free reign on Joe Rogan and then just hope the moral superiority of the left will actually win elections and change hearts.
In his final criticisms of the “ultra-woke” left, Brooks has much to say on why we should encourage moral growth instead of shaming and canceling, of which the latter often adds fuel to the bad faith arguments of the right. Personally, I think the apparent craziness of the university protest crowd has always been exaggerated and never was as big a deal as the clickbait merchants would have us think. But Brooks does have a point.
Like it or not, this new crop of right-wingers is a loud voice today. It’s time to understand them, so that the good guys can win. The end goal is a fair and just society, a cosmopolitan socialism as Brooks concludes which is able to express itself successfully in the modern landscape. That’s the fight worth having.
It is time to form an international message of solidarity, and the path forward with be both for the left to get it together and also to finally defeat the manipulative new right of the web.
So let’s do it!
July 21, 2020
I am truly saddened by the news of Michael's untimely passing. It is a deep shame that his progressive mission was stunted. I sincerely hope his work lives on and continues to inspire internationalism, thoughtfulness, humour and human compassion, the qualities which Brooks allowed to shine through with ease. RIP
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"...the impulse behind left-wing politics is the desire to create a world in which our lives aren’t dominated by economic concerns—where people have the free time and energy to explore, to meditate, to read novels (or try their hand at writing them), and to pursue meaningful relationships because they’re free from the workplace tyranny that leaves them too exhausted at the end of every day to do anything but watch Netflix, mindlessly skim through their social media needs, or, god forbid, game..."
Decent book, shitting on people I hate and most importantly offering a well thought out alternative. However, Brooks' book does suffer from a set of the problems that Zero Books publications suffer from - namely a lack of scope and clear structure, and a popularising style which often skews too far from academic (e.g. no citations or detailed exposition of theories). I'm a fan of Brooks, love his show and his underlying principles of internationalism, equality and 'basic human decency", but people who read these types of books don't have to be talked down to. Readers aren't stupid, they don't need a book that in parts reads like an extended blog post. Other than that, content wise this is great and succinctly puts Brooks' ideas forward, trashing the sacred cows of YouTube politics and exposing the hawkishness of Sam Harris. Perhaps if Brooks had shortened the chapters to extended think pieces in Current Affairs or Jacobin, and then made this book a bigger and slightly more scholarly development from that, it would not have the problems outlined. Hopefully Brooks can work on this and produce more writing that doesn't shy away from flexing Brooks' intellectual muscles, and isn't afraid of appearing slightly more scholarly than journalistic.
..................................................................................................
"...the impulse behind left-wing politics is the desire to create a world in which our lives aren’t dominated by economic concerns—where people have the free time and energy to explore, to meditate, to read novels (or try their hand at writing them), and to pursue meaningful relationships because they’re free from the workplace tyranny that leaves them too exhausted at the end of every day to do anything but watch Netflix, mindlessly skim through their social media needs, or, god forbid, game..."
Decent book, shitting on people I hate and most importantly offering a well thought out alternative. However, Brooks' book does suffer from a set of the problems that Zero Books publications suffer from - namely a lack of scope and clear structure, and a popularising style which often skews too far from academic (e.g. no citations or detailed exposition of theories). I'm a fan of Brooks, love his show and his underlying principles of internationalism, equality and 'basic human decency", but people who read these types of books don't have to be talked down to. Readers aren't stupid, they don't need a book that in parts reads like an extended blog post. Other than that, content wise this is great and succinctly puts Brooks' ideas forward, trashing the sacred cows of YouTube politics and exposing the hawkishness of Sam Harris. Perhaps if Brooks had shortened the chapters to extended think pieces in Current Affairs or Jacobin, and then made this book a bigger and slightly more scholarly development from that, it would not have the problems outlined. Hopefully Brooks can work on this and produce more writing that doesn't shy away from flexing Brooks' intellectual muscles, and isn't afraid of appearing slightly more scholarly than journalistic.
August 19, 2020
As a generally-speaking fan of some of the "IDW" stable such as Sam Harris, I thought it would be worthwhile to get out of my comfort zone and read a critique of some of these ideas. Having enjoyed Michael Brook's Rubin decimations on Youtube, I thought this would be worth a look, particularly given his untimely passing recently. Hopefully some of this money is making its way to his family in what must be a difficult time for them.
Unfortunately this book is not up to that task. Focusing on Harris, Peterson and Shapiro, it is mostly concerned with rehashing some fairly disingenuous takes on those people, and then just assuming the existence of the term 'IDW' would enable a little shade to be thrown on everybody involved. As the IDW is in no way an organisation/movement of any kind - simply a term used to describe some people who occasionally appeared on podcasts together, this is positively Rubinesue: Its the equivalent of saying that a few screeching SJWs represent 'The Left' as a whole.
As examples of the disingenuous arguments, Brooks wheels out the old trope that Peterson is in favour of 'enforced monogamy', as if he was some sort of alt-right version of Dr Strangelove, who wants to force the most attractive women into marrying unsuitable men for the furtherance of the species. Anyone who has watched Peterson in that interview will know that he was talking like an anthropologist - describing how for most of later history monogamous norms were enforced by cultures all over the world to avoid the instability that reigned previously, where a minority of men monopolised access to women, treated them badly, and allowed the bottom 30 percent of men to have no wives at all.
You can read this in Pinker's 'Better Angels of our Nature' among many other reputable scholarly works. It is not an argument in favour of some dastardly plan to force people to stay monogamous, it is a clear-minded discussion of why that was the norm for so much of our history, and what might occur when that norm dies way. It is the equivalent of a historian saying that for much of history people used horses to travel, and that this was of great benefit compared to walking, and your take on it being "Ah ha, this idiot thinks we should all be riding horses! What a moron!"
The other argument against Peterson is that he doesn't understand Marxism/Postmodernism and is laughably imprecise in his use of terminologies such as 'Postmodern Neo-Marxism'. From an academic perspective, this may to a certain extent be true, but most people listening understand the phenomenon he is describing, whether we call it 'The Regressive Left', 'Wokeness' or whatever. Insisting that one spend a lifetime wading through the murky waters of Marxism in order to be able to criticise it is rather like insisting that you be a theologian to have authority to criticise sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. You dont need to have understood the subtleties of 14th century papal epistles to know that having sex with kids and covering it up is wrong. The same thing is true of Marxism: Peterson is criticising it on the basis of the terrible way that it actually behaved in the world, not splitting hairs about the true meaning of 'democratic centralism' or whatever.
This is actually a necessary and logical way to talk about the subject, especially as broadly speaking, retreating into academic hair-splitting (cf Postmodernism) is how much of the Left dealt with the revelations from the 50s onwards that Marxism was not only a failure, but genuinely malevolent.
With regards to Sam Harris, Brooks renanimates Glenn Greenwald's idea that Sam Harris advocates nuking Muslims. Even the quote abstracted from Sam on the subject is not as shocking as Brooks thinks it is. It's obvious to any unbiased reader that Sam Harris is talking about the danger that religious fundamentalism could do in the world, especially when paired with nuclear weaponry. Pretending that he's advocating it, or being dishonest about finding it regrettable is a totally disgraceful (and now repeatedly discredited) take. We might as well say that Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' was actually advocating for a cataclysmic war of all against all, rather than just enumerating the possible dangers that might lie ahead.
His treatment of The 'Weinstein Brothers' is similarly imprecise. There's a lot of difference between Bret and Eric, you can't just lump them in together as ‘The Brothers’, link one of them to Peter Thiel and say 'job done'. Even worse, Brook's take on the Evergreen fiasco is that it was students with 'legitimate grievances' taking things a little too far. Anyone who's followed that story knows that is false: The grievances were not in any way legitimate. The whole thing was a power-play using accusations of racism to game the system in a place where racism is taken extremely seriously indeed. Furthermore, as we are seeing in 2020, this was not just an isolated incident, but a blueprint for an extremely illiberal movement now sweeping the Western World. Bret was just the canary in the coalmine.
All of which said, I find little to criticise in his treatment of Shapiro - who really does fit the description of the fairly shallow right wing attack dog that Brooks wants Harris and Peterson to be.
The last section of the book is actually the best: Brooks advocacy for a kinder, more socialist world, and his desire to see and understand the despair of young men drawn to people like Peterson is laudable and will outlive him. In some ways he would actually have made a valuable contribution to the IDW had he been so inclined - a conversation between him and Sam Harris or Bret Weinstein would have been illuminating. Ultimately he takes a historical materialist view of most things informed by his Marxism, which is why he butts heads with some of the IDW - they are largely concerned with the cultural side of things.
I find the historical materialist lens useful, but I dont think it's the only valuable one, and I don’t share Brook’s faith that next time we try it Marxism it will work out OK. Its significant that in search of a positive example for that idea, Brooks was forced to cite Mondragon several times in the book (a worker run business operating in the heart of a capitalist economy), probably because the example he would have used 10 years ago (Venezuela), has ended up in the memory-hole labelled ‘not real Socialism’.
Unfortunately this book is not up to that task. Focusing on Harris, Peterson and Shapiro, it is mostly concerned with rehashing some fairly disingenuous takes on those people, and then just assuming the existence of the term 'IDW' would enable a little shade to be thrown on everybody involved. As the IDW is in no way an organisation/movement of any kind - simply a term used to describe some people who occasionally appeared on podcasts together, this is positively Rubinesue: Its the equivalent of saying that a few screeching SJWs represent 'The Left' as a whole.
As examples of the disingenuous arguments, Brooks wheels out the old trope that Peterson is in favour of 'enforced monogamy', as if he was some sort of alt-right version of Dr Strangelove, who wants to force the most attractive women into marrying unsuitable men for the furtherance of the species. Anyone who has watched Peterson in that interview will know that he was talking like an anthropologist - describing how for most of later history monogamous norms were enforced by cultures all over the world to avoid the instability that reigned previously, where a minority of men monopolised access to women, treated them badly, and allowed the bottom 30 percent of men to have no wives at all.
You can read this in Pinker's 'Better Angels of our Nature' among many other reputable scholarly works. It is not an argument in favour of some dastardly plan to force people to stay monogamous, it is a clear-minded discussion of why that was the norm for so much of our history, and what might occur when that norm dies way. It is the equivalent of a historian saying that for much of history people used horses to travel, and that this was of great benefit compared to walking, and your take on it being "Ah ha, this idiot thinks we should all be riding horses! What a moron!"
The other argument against Peterson is that he doesn't understand Marxism/Postmodernism and is laughably imprecise in his use of terminologies such as 'Postmodern Neo-Marxism'. From an academic perspective, this may to a certain extent be true, but most people listening understand the phenomenon he is describing, whether we call it 'The Regressive Left', 'Wokeness' or whatever. Insisting that one spend a lifetime wading through the murky waters of Marxism in order to be able to criticise it is rather like insisting that you be a theologian to have authority to criticise sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. You dont need to have understood the subtleties of 14th century papal epistles to know that having sex with kids and covering it up is wrong. The same thing is true of Marxism: Peterson is criticising it on the basis of the terrible way that it actually behaved in the world, not splitting hairs about the true meaning of 'democratic centralism' or whatever.
This is actually a necessary and logical way to talk about the subject, especially as broadly speaking, retreating into academic hair-splitting (cf Postmodernism) is how much of the Left dealt with the revelations from the 50s onwards that Marxism was not only a failure, but genuinely malevolent.
With regards to Sam Harris, Brooks renanimates Glenn Greenwald's idea that Sam Harris advocates nuking Muslims. Even the quote abstracted from Sam on the subject is not as shocking as Brooks thinks it is. It's obvious to any unbiased reader that Sam Harris is talking about the danger that religious fundamentalism could do in the world, especially when paired with nuclear weaponry. Pretending that he's advocating it, or being dishonest about finding it regrettable is a totally disgraceful (and now repeatedly discredited) take. We might as well say that Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' was actually advocating for a cataclysmic war of all against all, rather than just enumerating the possible dangers that might lie ahead.
His treatment of The 'Weinstein Brothers' is similarly imprecise. There's a lot of difference between Bret and Eric, you can't just lump them in together as ‘The Brothers’, link one of them to Peter Thiel and say 'job done'. Even worse, Brook's take on the Evergreen fiasco is that it was students with 'legitimate grievances' taking things a little too far. Anyone who's followed that story knows that is false: The grievances were not in any way legitimate. The whole thing was a power-play using accusations of racism to game the system in a place where racism is taken extremely seriously indeed. Furthermore, as we are seeing in 2020, this was not just an isolated incident, but a blueprint for an extremely illiberal movement now sweeping the Western World. Bret was just the canary in the coalmine.
All of which said, I find little to criticise in his treatment of Shapiro - who really does fit the description of the fairly shallow right wing attack dog that Brooks wants Harris and Peterson to be.
The last section of the book is actually the best: Brooks advocacy for a kinder, more socialist world, and his desire to see and understand the despair of young men drawn to people like Peterson is laudable and will outlive him. In some ways he would actually have made a valuable contribution to the IDW had he been so inclined - a conversation between him and Sam Harris or Bret Weinstein would have been illuminating. Ultimately he takes a historical materialist view of most things informed by his Marxism, which is why he butts heads with some of the IDW - they are largely concerned with the cultural side of things.
I find the historical materialist lens useful, but I dont think it's the only valuable one, and I don’t share Brook’s faith that next time we try it Marxism it will work out OK. Its significant that in search of a positive example for that idea, Brooks was forced to cite Mondragon several times in the book (a worker run business operating in the heart of a capitalist economy), probably because the example he would have used 10 years ago (Venezuela), has ended up in the memory-hole labelled ‘not real Socialism’.
July 21, 2020
July 21st 2020 update: This morning I awoke to the news that Michael Brooks had died suddenly last night. It’s been almost 24 hours since the news first broke and I still have few words to truly convey the depth of sadness and shock I and so many others are feeling right now. Michael was an ever growing intellectual titan of a new generation of leftist thinkers and activists. That his future contributions have been torn from us so suddenly is truly tragic and Michael’s humour and analysis will be greatly missed. Now more than ever we need to not give up. Yes we need to mourn but then we need to get back up again and keep up the fight. Together we need to build the better world Michael knew was possible. Rest in power comrade.
Original and unedited review from April 24th 2020:
Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right by the political commentator and Youtube show host Michael Brooks released on the 24th of April was the second most hotly anticipated book of 2020 by a political commentator and Youtube show host following closely behind Dave Rubin’s ‘Don’t Burn This Book’ which comes out on the 28th of April.
Against the Web is currently the #1 New Release on Amazon in the category of Political Philosophy and coming in at a brief 96 pages it can easily be finished in one sitting. The books focus is on the members of the self-branded ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ (IDW) - a group of intellectuals and thinkers (using those terms very loosely) who have gained popularity with swathes of the online right and centre over the past half-decade, though some have been around for far longer. Brooks attempts (and succeeds) to bring the historical context to what he considers the mythologised claims of the IDW.
One of the first things a reader might be struck by about Against the Web is its length. Personally I’m a firm believer that authors should not stretch out their books to meet some target set by their publisher or their ego so I don’t count this against the book. Too many authors who could have made powerful cases in 150 pages unnecessarily stretch out their arguments for a further 250 pages and in the process make their books far less enjoyable and effective. That said I think Brooks could easily have added another 50 pages without becoming repetitive or overwriting and I very much wish he had. For all the books strengths, one of its few weaknesses is that Brooks tells rather than shows a small number of things in the early stages of the book.
A Brief Note
In previous posts on this website, I have harshly condemned rightwing figures who do not provide sources for their claims and counted this against them. One of the first things I do when reading any book is flipping to the notes or references pages at the back and checking the index. I was disappointed to see Brooks had neither of these particularly when he then goes on to make specific claims which would be useful to cross-check. He generally names any books or articles he quotes from in text but there are occasions in the book where he makes a claim or vague reference to a situation or concept and provides no citation. This is certainly no fatal flaw but it is an unnecessary omission.
The Bad (well really less good)
Against the Web will most likely be most appreciated by the sort of terminally online leftist that hangs around Twitter or Youtube at all hours of the day (and night) but that’s not to say others could not be drawn to it. There is much in it that conservatives and liberals could also benefit from. Knowing this I was very confused by Brooks tone in the first chapter. While I enjoyed it to an extent I also felt like it had more in common with the tone of one his more humorous Youtube looks at the IDW.
I was happy to see that the book lacked a self-serving preface or meandering introduction but that was almost where my enjoyment of beginning of the book ended. It’s not that the writing was bad or the argument wrong, it was just ineffective rhetoric for drawing in the undecided.
Not wanting to detract too much from the many excellent parts of the book I’ll briefly list my issues with the first chapter
The Rubin Dunk
Brooks dunks on the IDW by accurately noting that it includes “failed stand-up comic Dave Rubin as a charter member.” He later adds “Dave Rubin doesn’t belong in the “intellectual” anything. He’s dumb as a rock. He might as well be a rock to judge by how little he bothers challenging the right-wing guests he “has important conversations” with on his show.”
These are both fair points but incredibly bold statements to put right in the first chapter before Brooks has even demonstrated why these points are true. Someone on the fence about Rubin and especially a fan of his could be put off from otherwise excellent book by this sort of thing as they smugly say “oh so all the left can do is call us names. Guess they don’t like our facts and logic.” I also think it’s easy to make fun of Rubin for his apparent lack of intellect but I think he is smart enough to know what he’s doing and do it well enough to be very successful. That takes some skill in itself.
Brooks follows this sentence up by accurately stating “in practice he [Rubin] stares blankly into space while a parade of crackpots and crypto- and not-so-crypto fascists make ridiculous assertions.” This is demonstrably true, so why doesn’t he go a bit further and actually demonstrate it? There are many examples to choose from so it’s a shame he didn’t. Oh, and if you’re interested go check out Timbah.On.Toasts excellent series on Rubin to find those examples.
Brooks then writes down one of the dumbest conversations Rubin has ever had. I’m of course referring to the time when he argued with Joe Rogan about why he thinks libertarianism is so great and made a total mess of it.
Perhaps the name-calling may have been better suited coming after this once Rubin had been shown to be a fool
Miscellaneous
In chapter 2 Brooks calls Chuck Schumer’s views on Israel “extreme far right” and as evidence points out he attended an AIPAC conference. On its own, this won’t be convincing to your average Democrat supporter. Again it’s not that Brooks is necessarily wrong. He just doesn’t expand enough.
Throughout the book, Brooks does continue not to dig into issues in as great detail as I may prefer but he certainly gives readers a good starting point to help guide their own research. And perhaps with a book of this length and the broad scope it had it’s understandable that Brooks is only able to provide a whistle-stop tour of many of the areas of debate he writes about.
The Good
It’s from around chapter two that Brooks really comes into his own. He unleashes a devastating critique of Sam Harris that at other times could have been career-ending. Through his relentless prose, Brooks demonstrates Harris’s deep hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.
Brooks does not accept empty words, empty conservative virtue-signalling, or empty platitudes and rampages through several of Harris’ books and posts to ram home his point. Not content with just proving Harris wrong he wants to prove why his whole worldview is flawed. He continues this approach with the other personalities he tackles.
After Harris, Brooks unleashes his pen on Jordan Peterson tearing into his claims of a neo-Marxist/postmodern conspiracy. Like others before him Brooks notes the logical inconsistency that anyone espousing Peterson’s view must reconcile, explaining:
“Marx and Engels offer an analysis of such structures that’s rooted in an economic and social analysis of the social relations that constitute and produce our material conditions. Postmodernism, meanwhile, is a school of thought that developed in rebellion against “grand narratives” about history and society—grand narratives like Marxism—and which argues there’s no such thing as a stable truth.”
Despite harsh words towards Peterson himself, Brooks spares empathy towards the people who follow him and argues that the left must not dismiss the concerns of the young white men Peterson attracts regardless of whatever relative privileges they may hold. One reason Brooks gives for not dismissing the concerns is that “young and angry white men have historically been a pretty dangerous group.” Brooks also provides the better argument which is that the crisis many young angry white men feel is a crisis of the capitalistic system. The problems are with their material conditions and these can be better improved through taking large-scale action than through telling them to clean their own house before addressing other problems as Peterson urges.
Finally, in chapter 4, Brooks spends a moment analysing the careers of Ben Shapiro, and to a far lesser extent the Weinstein brothers. Brooks also has some strong words for the online left arguing that it can be too harsh on people who experience growth and change their stances saying “we should encourage moral growth instead of shaming and canceling people for having gotten things wrong in the past.”
I certainly think the behaviour he is referring to does exist - but I think it is worth noting that at times it feels like more than half the online left are former members of the right and in some cases even the far right, who have all experienced plenty of growth over the past 2-4 years. The vast majority have become strong advocates for leftwing positions and have faced little blowback for previous views. Of all the problems plaguing the online left this is not one I have seen outside of a few high profile cases. Of course, this behaviour must be criticised when it occurs unfairly but I don’t think a basic level of caution is amiss. Personally I think a more pressing issue is the response by some on the online left to others on the left who make mistakes while they are on the left.
In the same vein, Brooks continues: “What I am saying, however, is that the left (or, at least, the online left) suffers from a deficit of empathy, and we will continue to devour each other—and thus fail to win power in society—if we don’t reject the confused moralism that permeates so much left-wing discourse.”
I certainly think Brooks has a point here to an extent, particularly when referring to the online left. Some of it is the fault of the individuals involved but systematic issues to do with the platforms we all engage on must also bear some of the blame and I believe the empathy Brooks calls for must also extend to those promoting what he calls “confused moralism.”
The Excellent
By far my favourite section of the book was the last chapter in which Brooks offers his own contribution to what the answer to the IDW worldview should be. Brooks draws from a rich intellectual tradition from around the globe and is best when making a powerful internationalist case for the form of “democratic and humanistic Marxism” which he supports.
He also demolishes standard conservative talking points dating back hundreds of years that the West is somehow unique in its values and that other cultures are not capable of having or have not had ‘Western values.’
Perhaps the only flaw in chapter 5 is that some of its arguments didn’t come earlier. The claim that ‘Western values’ are uniquely ‘Western’ (and hence other cultures are inferior in some way) is one of the key foundational principles of the IDW and new online right. To put these arguments right at the end of the book is certainly no crime but I question whether they wouldn’t have been more helpful earlier on.
Reading through the chapter it’s hard to argue with Brooks’ claim that “We need a material analysis, buttressed with a sense of humor and a recognition of human fallibility, that connects the fight for a better world to the immediate interests of the majority of the population” and a desire to create a world “in which our lives aren’t dominated by economic concerns.”
Some alternatives to the current capitalist model suggested by Brooks include worker-owned cooperatives - he points to the Mondragon Corporation in Spain as one good example.
Brooks also cautions readers that the UBI model as proposed by Andrew Yang with a “combination of robots and a Universal Basic Income isn’t going to result in any kind of desirable alternative.” Brooks argues the Yang’s model would largely keep the current disparities between the wealthy and poor at their current state adding “worry about capitalism, not robots.”
Though supportive of the successes of social democracy Brooks argues that we must go further than this because “As long as the capitalist class retains its economic power, owners will always try to roll back workers’ advances.”
Brooks also has harsh words for those who engage in material analysis and then fall into the trap of joining with conservatives when they harshly attack manifestations of egregious behaviour from what Brooks terms the “woke left” saying:
“If you find yourself reacting to both the policing of comedy and the protests against serious human rights abuses at the southern border as if they were equally unserious liberal preoccupations, you’ve jettisoned your sense of perspective and lost touch with important left principles—not to mention your basic humanity.”
Final Thoughts
In Against the Web, Michael Brooks sets forth a realistic response to the current global rightward drift and his passion and penetrating analysis offer a powerful corrective to the claims of the new online right. Against the Web undermines core claims the IDW make about themselves and their beliefs pulling the ground out from under their feet without losing sight of Brooks’ true goal of building a better world, and a stronger, more resilient left. What is perhaps most impressive is that Brooks achieves all of this in a very readable and accessible manner.
I started Against the Webs with incredibly high hopes so the comparatively weaker first chapter came as a surprise. I feared the rest of the book might not offer up any better fare. By the time I finished the second chapter I realised my fears were unfounded. When he gets started Brooks goes in hard and pulls no punches. He mixes history, philosophy, and politics to effortlessly cut through rightwing propaganda providing the real story, facts, and arguments.
Although this book will probably most appeal to the terminally online left I think others - particularly fans of the figures Brooks critiques - will find much to consider after reading. Even if you end up disagreeing with Brooks’ conclusions you will find his arguments stimulating and clear. As such I would definitely recommend the book.
In conclusion, despite a couple of minor quibbles, I’d have little hesitation giving chapters 2-5 a 5-star rating but because of what I see as the weaknesses in the first chapter and the lack of a reference/notes section I believe an overall 4.5/5 stars is fair though here on Goodreads I'll be rounding up to 5.
For a very slightly longer review please check out my site: theseventhdegree.net/news/2020/4/25/a...
Original and unedited review from April 24th 2020:
Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right by the political commentator and Youtube show host Michael Brooks released on the 24th of April was the second most hotly anticipated book of 2020 by a political commentator and Youtube show host following closely behind Dave Rubin’s ‘Don’t Burn This Book’ which comes out on the 28th of April.
Against the Web is currently the #1 New Release on Amazon in the category of Political Philosophy and coming in at a brief 96 pages it can easily be finished in one sitting. The books focus is on the members of the self-branded ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ (IDW) - a group of intellectuals and thinkers (using those terms very loosely) who have gained popularity with swathes of the online right and centre over the past half-decade, though some have been around for far longer. Brooks attempts (and succeeds) to bring the historical context to what he considers the mythologised claims of the IDW.
One of the first things a reader might be struck by about Against the Web is its length. Personally I’m a firm believer that authors should not stretch out their books to meet some target set by their publisher or their ego so I don’t count this against the book. Too many authors who could have made powerful cases in 150 pages unnecessarily stretch out their arguments for a further 250 pages and in the process make their books far less enjoyable and effective. That said I think Brooks could easily have added another 50 pages without becoming repetitive or overwriting and I very much wish he had. For all the books strengths, one of its few weaknesses is that Brooks tells rather than shows a small number of things in the early stages of the book.
A Brief Note
In previous posts on this website, I have harshly condemned rightwing figures who do not provide sources for their claims and counted this against them. One of the first things I do when reading any book is flipping to the notes or references pages at the back and checking the index. I was disappointed to see Brooks had neither of these particularly when he then goes on to make specific claims which would be useful to cross-check. He generally names any books or articles he quotes from in text but there are occasions in the book where he makes a claim or vague reference to a situation or concept and provides no citation. This is certainly no fatal flaw but it is an unnecessary omission.
The Bad (well really less good)
Against the Web will most likely be most appreciated by the sort of terminally online leftist that hangs around Twitter or Youtube at all hours of the day (and night) but that’s not to say others could not be drawn to it. There is much in it that conservatives and liberals could also benefit from. Knowing this I was very confused by Brooks tone in the first chapter. While I enjoyed it to an extent I also felt like it had more in common with the tone of one his more humorous Youtube looks at the IDW.
I was happy to see that the book lacked a self-serving preface or meandering introduction but that was almost where my enjoyment of beginning of the book ended. It’s not that the writing was bad or the argument wrong, it was just ineffective rhetoric for drawing in the undecided.
Not wanting to detract too much from the many excellent parts of the book I’ll briefly list my issues with the first chapter
The Rubin Dunk
Brooks dunks on the IDW by accurately noting that it includes “failed stand-up comic Dave Rubin as a charter member.” He later adds “Dave Rubin doesn’t belong in the “intellectual” anything. He’s dumb as a rock. He might as well be a rock to judge by how little he bothers challenging the right-wing guests he “has important conversations” with on his show.”
These are both fair points but incredibly bold statements to put right in the first chapter before Brooks has even demonstrated why these points are true. Someone on the fence about Rubin and especially a fan of his could be put off from otherwise excellent book by this sort of thing as they smugly say “oh so all the left can do is call us names. Guess they don’t like our facts and logic.” I also think it’s easy to make fun of Rubin for his apparent lack of intellect but I think he is smart enough to know what he’s doing and do it well enough to be very successful. That takes some skill in itself.
Brooks follows this sentence up by accurately stating “in practice he [Rubin] stares blankly into space while a parade of crackpots and crypto- and not-so-crypto fascists make ridiculous assertions.” This is demonstrably true, so why doesn’t he go a bit further and actually demonstrate it? There are many examples to choose from so it’s a shame he didn’t. Oh, and if you’re interested go check out Timbah.On.Toasts excellent series on Rubin to find those examples.
Brooks then writes down one of the dumbest conversations Rubin has ever had. I’m of course referring to the time when he argued with Joe Rogan about why he thinks libertarianism is so great and made a total mess of it.
Perhaps the name-calling may have been better suited coming after this once Rubin had been shown to be a fool
Miscellaneous
In chapter 2 Brooks calls Chuck Schumer’s views on Israel “extreme far right” and as evidence points out he attended an AIPAC conference. On its own, this won’t be convincing to your average Democrat supporter. Again it’s not that Brooks is necessarily wrong. He just doesn’t expand enough.
Throughout the book, Brooks does continue not to dig into issues in as great detail as I may prefer but he certainly gives readers a good starting point to help guide their own research. And perhaps with a book of this length and the broad scope it had it’s understandable that Brooks is only able to provide a whistle-stop tour of many of the areas of debate he writes about.
The Good
It’s from around chapter two that Brooks really comes into his own. He unleashes a devastating critique of Sam Harris that at other times could have been career-ending. Through his relentless prose, Brooks demonstrates Harris’s deep hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.
Brooks does not accept empty words, empty conservative virtue-signalling, or empty platitudes and rampages through several of Harris’ books and posts to ram home his point. Not content with just proving Harris wrong he wants to prove why his whole worldview is flawed. He continues this approach with the other personalities he tackles.
After Harris, Brooks unleashes his pen on Jordan Peterson tearing into his claims of a neo-Marxist/postmodern conspiracy. Like others before him Brooks notes the logical inconsistency that anyone espousing Peterson’s view must reconcile, explaining:
“Marx and Engels offer an analysis of such structures that’s rooted in an economic and social analysis of the social relations that constitute and produce our material conditions. Postmodernism, meanwhile, is a school of thought that developed in rebellion against “grand narratives” about history and society—grand narratives like Marxism—and which argues there’s no such thing as a stable truth.”
Despite harsh words towards Peterson himself, Brooks spares empathy towards the people who follow him and argues that the left must not dismiss the concerns of the young white men Peterson attracts regardless of whatever relative privileges they may hold. One reason Brooks gives for not dismissing the concerns is that “young and angry white men have historically been a pretty dangerous group.” Brooks also provides the better argument which is that the crisis many young angry white men feel is a crisis of the capitalistic system. The problems are with their material conditions and these can be better improved through taking large-scale action than through telling them to clean their own house before addressing other problems as Peterson urges.
Finally, in chapter 4, Brooks spends a moment analysing the careers of Ben Shapiro, and to a far lesser extent the Weinstein brothers. Brooks also has some strong words for the online left arguing that it can be too harsh on people who experience growth and change their stances saying “we should encourage moral growth instead of shaming and canceling people for having gotten things wrong in the past.”
I certainly think the behaviour he is referring to does exist - but I think it is worth noting that at times it feels like more than half the online left are former members of the right and in some cases even the far right, who have all experienced plenty of growth over the past 2-4 years. The vast majority have become strong advocates for leftwing positions and have faced little blowback for previous views. Of all the problems plaguing the online left this is not one I have seen outside of a few high profile cases. Of course, this behaviour must be criticised when it occurs unfairly but I don’t think a basic level of caution is amiss. Personally I think a more pressing issue is the response by some on the online left to others on the left who make mistakes while they are on the left.
In the same vein, Brooks continues: “What I am saying, however, is that the left (or, at least, the online left) suffers from a deficit of empathy, and we will continue to devour each other—and thus fail to win power in society—if we don’t reject the confused moralism that permeates so much left-wing discourse.”
I certainly think Brooks has a point here to an extent, particularly when referring to the online left. Some of it is the fault of the individuals involved but systematic issues to do with the platforms we all engage on must also bear some of the blame and I believe the empathy Brooks calls for must also extend to those promoting what he calls “confused moralism.”
The Excellent
By far my favourite section of the book was the last chapter in which Brooks offers his own contribution to what the answer to the IDW worldview should be. Brooks draws from a rich intellectual tradition from around the globe and is best when making a powerful internationalist case for the form of “democratic and humanistic Marxism” which he supports.
He also demolishes standard conservative talking points dating back hundreds of years that the West is somehow unique in its values and that other cultures are not capable of having or have not had ‘Western values.’
Perhaps the only flaw in chapter 5 is that some of its arguments didn’t come earlier. The claim that ‘Western values’ are uniquely ‘Western’ (and hence other cultures are inferior in some way) is one of the key foundational principles of the IDW and new online right. To put these arguments right at the end of the book is certainly no crime but I question whether they wouldn’t have been more helpful earlier on.
Reading through the chapter it’s hard to argue with Brooks’ claim that “We need a material analysis, buttressed with a sense of humor and a recognition of human fallibility, that connects the fight for a better world to the immediate interests of the majority of the population” and a desire to create a world “in which our lives aren’t dominated by economic concerns.”
Some alternatives to the current capitalist model suggested by Brooks include worker-owned cooperatives - he points to the Mondragon Corporation in Spain as one good example.
Brooks also cautions readers that the UBI model as proposed by Andrew Yang with a “combination of robots and a Universal Basic Income isn’t going to result in any kind of desirable alternative.” Brooks argues the Yang’s model would largely keep the current disparities between the wealthy and poor at their current state adding “worry about capitalism, not robots.”
Though supportive of the successes of social democracy Brooks argues that we must go further than this because “As long as the capitalist class retains its economic power, owners will always try to roll back workers’ advances.”
Brooks also has harsh words for those who engage in material analysis and then fall into the trap of joining with conservatives when they harshly attack manifestations of egregious behaviour from what Brooks terms the “woke left” saying:
“If you find yourself reacting to both the policing of comedy and the protests against serious human rights abuses at the southern border as if they were equally unserious liberal preoccupations, you’ve jettisoned your sense of perspective and lost touch with important left principles—not to mention your basic humanity.”
Final Thoughts
In Against the Web, Michael Brooks sets forth a realistic response to the current global rightward drift and his passion and penetrating analysis offer a powerful corrective to the claims of the new online right. Against the Web undermines core claims the IDW make about themselves and their beliefs pulling the ground out from under their feet without losing sight of Brooks’ true goal of building a better world, and a stronger, more resilient left. What is perhaps most impressive is that Brooks achieves all of this in a very readable and accessible manner.
I started Against the Webs with incredibly high hopes so the comparatively weaker first chapter came as a surprise. I feared the rest of the book might not offer up any better fare. By the time I finished the second chapter I realised my fears were unfounded. When he gets started Brooks goes in hard and pulls no punches. He mixes history, philosophy, and politics to effortlessly cut through rightwing propaganda providing the real story, facts, and arguments.
Although this book will probably most appeal to the terminally online left I think others - particularly fans of the figures Brooks critiques - will find much to consider after reading. Even if you end up disagreeing with Brooks’ conclusions you will find his arguments stimulating and clear. As such I would definitely recommend the book.
In conclusion, despite a couple of minor quibbles, I’d have little hesitation giving chapters 2-5 a 5-star rating but because of what I see as the weaknesses in the first chapter and the lack of a reference/notes section I believe an overall 4.5/5 stars is fair though here on Goodreads I'll be rounding up to 5.
For a very slightly longer review please check out my site: theseventhdegree.net/news/2020/4/25/a...
July 21, 2020
Been waiting for this book from Michael Brooks since late 2018, pre-ordered earlier this month, and well.. it's an 80-page pamphlet. His goal with this book is to deconstruct the pillars that buttress the media ecology of what he calls the New Right.
Brook's thesis is that the "Intellectual" Dark Web (IDW) often make ahistorical claims about historically contingent power relations. In doing so, they naturalize and reify them. Brooks' main aim is to ground these claims in history. By historicizing, he means more than just chronicling events, but rather mapping power structures across time and space.
Above-the-fray centrists, for whom Brooks' critiques are meant, will benefit greatly from this book. Those making sweeping claims about religion, humanity, and culture under the guise of logic and rationality are mythologizing without regard to history. In the case of Sam Harris-types, they are playing an insidious bait-and-switch, where their destructive ideas suddenly become philosophical musings when pressed. But sometimes, rather than the IDW, it’s just milquetoast evo psych liberals peddling pop theories to explain away complex phenomena, and they should be confronted in the same way.
As for the left, Brooks cautions against bitter moralism that fractures coalitions and prevents class solidarity. He also urges that people not write of the legitimate emotional and spiritual concerns held by Harris' and Peterson's followers, but instead present a comprehensive, internationalist alternative.
Even though this book is short in length, I worry that may not reach people beyond the Very Online left. There are a lot of unfamiliar names (especially in the last chapter, where Brooks lays out his own vision), and also lots of specific conversations and examples used to illustrate his arguments, which became sort of tedious, but I understand they were necessary to cite to make his case. There are useful portions in Against The Web for everyone, and I recommend it with some reservations.
Edit 07/21: Terribly saddened to hear about the passing of Michael Brooks yesterday. May he Rest In Power.
Brook's thesis is that the "Intellectual" Dark Web (IDW) often make ahistorical claims about historically contingent power relations. In doing so, they naturalize and reify them. Brooks' main aim is to ground these claims in history. By historicizing, he means more than just chronicling events, but rather mapping power structures across time and space.
Above-the-fray centrists, for whom Brooks' critiques are meant, will benefit greatly from this book. Those making sweeping claims about religion, humanity, and culture under the guise of logic and rationality are mythologizing without regard to history. In the case of Sam Harris-types, they are playing an insidious bait-and-switch, where their destructive ideas suddenly become philosophical musings when pressed. But sometimes, rather than the IDW, it’s just milquetoast evo psych liberals peddling pop theories to explain away complex phenomena, and they should be confronted in the same way.
As for the left, Brooks cautions against bitter moralism that fractures coalitions and prevents class solidarity. He also urges that people not write of the legitimate emotional and spiritual concerns held by Harris' and Peterson's followers, but instead present a comprehensive, internationalist alternative.
Even though this book is short in length, I worry that may not reach people beyond the Very Online left. There are a lot of unfamiliar names (especially in the last chapter, where Brooks lays out his own vision), and also lots of specific conversations and examples used to illustrate his arguments, which became sort of tedious, but I understand they were necessary to cite to make his case. There are useful portions in Against The Web for everyone, and I recommend it with some reservations.
Edit 07/21: Terribly saddened to hear about the passing of Michael Brooks yesterday. May he Rest In Power.
July 6, 2020
I have to say I was, and still am, very unfamiliar with Michael Brooks as a person or social-media figure. I don't watch his Youtube show and I found this book having been recommended it via Goodreads. However the subject is a very interesting one and one that the left seems to really be ignoring, that is, the exponential growth of successful IDW speakers in every form of media and social-media, reaching numbers that leftists can only dream of.
Brooks begins with a cogent summary of the movement and then proceeds to critiques of Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro. He is at his best on the last two, I don't really see Harris as being a member of the right and it seems like Brooks spends an inordinate amount of time on him, at least to me. His tone veers into blog-ranting and condescension with unnecessary references to his Youtube show and how this line would have sounded on this show, but mostly he stays on target. Also this is not intended to be a scholarly critique of scholarly works, rather, this is a mainstream criticism of popular speakers so perhaps this tone is more appropriate than it may seem on first reading.
The main issue that I have with this is that it offers no solutions to the problem that he clearly identifies, that is, these speakers are dominating the social-media airwaves and filling stadiums to have talks on postmodernism, free-speech suppression, campus climate, and "meaning" for millenials and gen-Z; leftists are policing Twitter for cultural appropriation and cancel opportunities among their own kin. His summary mainly focuses on what values he would espouse and some good historical context for those views, however, the issue of somehow addressing the various speakers he despises completely controlling the message is left mostly undiscussed.
Brooks begins with a cogent summary of the movement and then proceeds to critiques of Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro. He is at his best on the last two, I don't really see Harris as being a member of the right and it seems like Brooks spends an inordinate amount of time on him, at least to me. His tone veers into blog-ranting and condescension with unnecessary references to his Youtube show and how this line would have sounded on this show, but mostly he stays on target. Also this is not intended to be a scholarly critique of scholarly works, rather, this is a mainstream criticism of popular speakers so perhaps this tone is more appropriate than it may seem on first reading.
The main issue that I have with this is that it offers no solutions to the problem that he clearly identifies, that is, these speakers are dominating the social-media airwaves and filling stadiums to have talks on postmodernism, free-speech suppression, campus climate, and "meaning" for millenials and gen-Z; leftists are policing Twitter for cultural appropriation and cancel opportunities among their own kin. His summary mainly focuses on what values he would espouse and some good historical context for those views, however, the issue of somehow addressing the various speakers he despises completely controlling the message is left mostly undiscussed.
July 24, 2020
RIP Michael Brooks (1983 - 2020).
This book, at its core, is an attempt to critique and provide an alternative to a clique of reactionary - and mostly online - figures dubbed "The Intellectual Dark Web" by the then-New York Times journalist Bari Weiss. For the most part, I find myself in agreement with Brooks' critique of these intellectual lightweights, as well as his vision for a cosmopolitan and compassionate left that does not waste its time with constant moralising and Cancel Culture-type reactions. That being said, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The text lacks scholarly rigour, a coherent structure, and adequate attention to detail. It reads more like an extended blog post addressed to an audience that already agrees with its conclusions.
This book, at its core, is an attempt to critique and provide an alternative to a clique of reactionary - and mostly online - figures dubbed "The Intellectual Dark Web" by the then-New York Times journalist Bari Weiss. For the most part, I find myself in agreement with Brooks' critique of these intellectual lightweights, as well as his vision for a cosmopolitan and compassionate left that does not waste its time with constant moralising and Cancel Culture-type reactions. That being said, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The text lacks scholarly rigour, a coherent structure, and adequate attention to detail. It reads more like an extended blog post addressed to an audience that already agrees with its conclusions.
May 5, 2020
Concise and entertaining but hard to recommend to those who don't know anything about the author and his targets. I only really read it because it pillories people I hate.
January 13, 2021
Not necessarily what I expected, as this was less about the IDW itself and more just a critique of three of its prominent members. It lacked structure and at many points made me feel like I was reading an overly long opinion piece published in the NYT as opposed to a... book? Oh well.
Disclaimer: I had no idea who Micheal Brooks, Dave Rubin and Sam Harris were before I read this book. I am somewhat familiar with Ben Shapiro's and Jordan Peterson's "work".
I agree with a variety of things Brooks expresses, but also found myself disagreeing/rolling my eyes here and there. Especially the good old "Free speech for me, but not for thee" spiel - at one point in the book, he criticizes the left's call to deplatform those to the right of the political center and denounces "cancel culture", but then later acts like the IDW are ridiculous for asserting that this whole thing might be a threat to free speech. Thing is - both sides do this. The right wants the left to be shut up, and the left wants the right to be shut up. (Important to note: right(-wing) =/= Nazi/racist/etc. Libertarians, for example, are also part of the right.)
Overall, the book was okay and there were a couple of things Brooks said that I thought were note-worthy and/or important. My favorite quote though was definitely this one:
"To understand the IDW moment (referring to the moment in history the IDW came into being) we should look back to April 1917, when Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile in Switzerland."
Disclaimer: I had no idea who Micheal Brooks, Dave Rubin and Sam Harris were before I read this book. I am somewhat familiar with Ben Shapiro's and Jordan Peterson's "work".
I agree with a variety of things Brooks expresses, but also found myself disagreeing/rolling my eyes here and there. Especially the good old "Free speech for me, but not for thee" spiel - at one point in the book, he criticizes the left's call to deplatform those to the right of the political center and denounces "cancel culture", but then later acts like the IDW are ridiculous for asserting that this whole thing might be a threat to free speech. Thing is - both sides do this. The right wants the left to be shut up, and the left wants the right to be shut up. (Important to note: right(-wing) =/= Nazi/racist/etc. Libertarians, for example, are also part of the right.)
Overall, the book was okay and there were a couple of things Brooks said that I thought were note-worthy and/or important. My favorite quote though was definitely this one:
"To understand the IDW moment (referring to the moment in history the IDW came into being) we should look back to April 1917, when Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his exile in Switzerland."
Read
November 21, 2021R.I.P. Michael Brooks. One of the very few true greats who knew how to communicate leftist ideas to as many people as possible, a man who stuck to his principles but was nonetheless willing to extend the olive branch far and wide, an internationalist who helped steer the American conversation in a leftward direction... why am I even talking, if you're reading this, you probably know the story, you don't need the hagiography.
It saddens me deeply that this slender volume is the sole book we'll ever get from the man, unless his better videos get transcribed into a collection (which seems inevitable, a bit like all those Tupac albums that got released in the early '00s), and it's a charming attack on the "intellectual" right who made Joe Rogan appearances over the past few years, focusing on Jordan "Henry Darger Drawings Predicting the Benzos" Peterson, Ben "What's a Clit?" Shapiro, and Sam "Wouldn't Shut Up in Freshman Philosophy" Harris, along with a plea for a left that meaningfully challenges capitalism and doesn't devolve into po-faced TikTok discourse. If I was to give a single book to someone to explain my positions more eloquently than I could, this might be it.
It saddens me deeply that this slender volume is the sole book we'll ever get from the man, unless his better videos get transcribed into a collection (which seems inevitable, a bit like all those Tupac albums that got released in the early '00s), and it's a charming attack on the "intellectual" right who made Joe Rogan appearances over the past few years, focusing on Jordan "Henry Darger Drawings Predicting the Benzos" Peterson, Ben "What's a Clit?" Shapiro, and Sam "Wouldn't Shut Up in Freshman Philosophy" Harris, along with a plea for a left that meaningfully challenges capitalism and doesn't devolve into po-faced TikTok discourse. If I was to give a single book to someone to explain my positions more eloquently than I could, this might be it.
May 18, 2020
I enjoyed this book, partly because I was already familiar with some of the people Brooks criticizes. He spends the first half of the book criticizing Sam Harris. I've read three of Harris's books, but not The End of Faith, the one Brooks spends the most time on. I do understand from the examples how atheists like Harris can hide behind "thought experiments" to unfairly target Muslims. Next, Brooks talks about Jordan Peterson. I read 12 Rules for Life when it first came out, and thought it had some stuff that could be helpful, but found some of what he talks about towards the end to just be macho b.s. Peterson got me interested in Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung, so it was cool when Brooks pointed out other thinkers with different takes on some of those figures. Like with Harris, I was once interested in Peterson but now have moved on. Brooks's last major target is Ben Shapiro. I've always found Shapiro to be insufferable. That show he's on, "The Daily Wire," keeps coming up on my YouTube and I can't get rid of it. Brooks just made me dislike him even more. This book is longer than The Communist Manifesto, and it held my attention well enough for me to finish it in one day, so maybe that's a testament to how good it was. Brooks is fair to the people he criticizes and gives credit where it's due; he covers all his bases and doesn't leave any gaps in his arguments or use any logical fallacies that I'm aware of.
May 20, 2020
My positive rating is mainly based on the fifth and final chapter of Brooks' book, "Beyond the IDW." The rest of the book is a fun and effective criticism of Harris' deeply flawed "thought experiments," Peterson's shallow self-help, and Shapiro's vicious reactionary views. That's all fine and and good for countering the influence of those people. But Beyond the IDW is what makes this really worthwhile. In it Brooks concisely argues for a democratic socialist (and basically libertarian Marxist) solution to the problems facing alienated, atomized people who the IDW shallowly tries to appeal to... as well as everyone else. Where the IDW points to the decline of culture as the source of all ills (smells like fascism), Brooks sees that the real issues are alienation, economic uncertainty, growing wealth disparity, and a lack of opportunities affecting young people. He offers a vision of a society that facilitates personal growth and self-actualization, humanist goals that should be important to everyone. He also explains how the shaming tactics of the "woke" crowd alienate people and drive some into the arms of the IDW and the reactionary right.
July 23, 2022
Plenty of great passages in a relatively short work, one worth mentioning;
“People aren’t having trouble maintaining relationships or waiting longer to have children because of Marxism or feminism or the existence of trans people; they are having trouble maintaining relationships or waiting to have children because they live lives defined by relentless anxiety and underconsumption. The loss of stability experienced by so called “millennials” and “zoomers,” moreover, hasn’t been compensated by a meaningful increase in autonomy. Whether you’re employed by General Motors or Uber, workplaces at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century remain sites of autocracy”
I really appreciate the ways in which Brooks is critical of left wing reactionaries, humorless, and ineffective and grabbing the attention of young people, especially young men the ways the Jordan Petersons and Ben Shapiros of the world can
“People aren’t having trouble maintaining relationships or waiting longer to have children because of Marxism or feminism or the existence of trans people; they are having trouble maintaining relationships or waiting to have children because they live lives defined by relentless anxiety and underconsumption. The loss of stability experienced by so called “millennials” and “zoomers,” moreover, hasn’t been compensated by a meaningful increase in autonomy. Whether you’re employed by General Motors or Uber, workplaces at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century remain sites of autocracy”
I really appreciate the ways in which Brooks is critical of left wing reactionaries, humorless, and ineffective and grabbing the attention of young people, especially young men the ways the Jordan Petersons and Ben Shapiros of the world can
July 26, 2020
RIP to the only good youtuber.
Brooks' voice is palpable in this, you can't help but hear it in your head as you read. It all comes off as more of a transcript of an unaired TMBS episode than a book proper, though I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
It is a genuine tragedy though that his time was cut short and that we will have to settle for this as his only book.
Brooks' voice is palpable in this, you can't help but hear it in your head as you read. It all comes off as more of a transcript of an unaired TMBS episode than a book proper, though I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
It is a genuine tragedy though that his time was cut short and that we will have to settle for this as his only book.
April 29, 2020
I don't see what the target audience for this book is...
On one hand if you watch TMBS you already know everything that's on this book delivered in a more entertaining way. And if you don't know the show or Michael this barely counts as an introduction to the IDW or a serious rebuke of it.
I do like that we now have "Dave Rubin is stupid" in book form though, that's worth something.
On one hand if you watch TMBS you already know everything that's on this book delivered in a more entertaining way. And if you don't know the show or Michael this barely counts as an introduction to the IDW or a serious rebuke of it.
I do like that we now have "Dave Rubin is stupid" in book form though, that's worth something.
May 3, 2022
Thank you Michael. We always miss you.
June 8, 2020
This is a short but solid read that functions as a response to the handful of 15-minutes-of-fame "thinkers" that were with us in the 2010s. Brooks is able to elucidate the lack of intellectualism of the self-proclaimed "Intelectual Dark Web" (IDW) in no less than 100 pages; this speaks to the lack of collective though of the IDW and conversely Brooks's talent as thinker himself. Although these dim-lit intellects (as of 2020) have lost all relevance on- and offline their tenebrous footprints are still with us leaving possibly millions of people with an ahistorical view and a fumbling understanding of the past.
Brooks ends his book with a compassionate call for a unified cosmopolitan response to the (not so new) New Right.
Brooks ends his book with a compassionate call for a unified cosmopolitan response to the (not so new) New Right.
July 26, 2020
Michael Brooks was a very clear communicator and was able to reach a wide audience through his regular contributions on Sam Seder’s the Majority Report and his own show, which was building a strong presence online. I actually preferred listening to Michael over Sam, he had the right balance of humour and seriousness, covering a wide array of issues which showed him as someone who believed in internationalism. Simply covering the American context was only part of the story, something that many political commentators on youtube seem to lose focus of. I am going to miss him. I was a daily listener to his content, particularly in the last 5 months or so. I really enjoyed his interview with Zizek for example. When I heard he died, I felt I needed to engage with his book. Michael also died on my birthday, July 20th.
Michael in this text writes a fairly general critique of thinkers profiled originally by Bari Weiss in the New York Times as comprising the intellectual dark web. I think Michael wanted it to be a general overview, which was assessable to everyone, rather than a scholarly text. I think this has benefits and negatives. I personally think he was just getting started in his career and that he had good scholarly texts within him, that we would have seen had he not died. The pamphlet style mindset certainly fits with his internationalism and his approach to politics, which was about accessibility, and openness. The polemic he gives us though has loads of strong moments which I will outline here.
Attacking the defence of hierarchy in the pronouncements of people like Jordan Peterson was good. There is almost a defeatism and anti-activist streak in Peterson, who believes in individualism over collective action under his meme worthy dictum: get your own house in order, clean your room. Hierarchies are natural and exist everywhere, the Pareto principle, lobsters and so on. Brooks describes it as such
“I’ve said that the Intellectual Dark Web’s favorite move is to naturalize or mythologize historically contingent power structures.”
Brooks does a good job presenting an “antebellum” version of this argument, in showing how it could be used to defend any type of status quo and that argumentative skeleton probably was used. In raising Murray and others, Brooks gives a brief overview of some controversies in the sociological literature with “hate facts”, as some on the right like to call them. I think a deeper engagement with this literature is really worthwhile. There is a fantastic critique of Murray’s work by Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist, which I would recommend to any reader of this book as a supplemental resource.
I liked his comments on the Zizek/Peterson debate. I remember putting my hands over my eyes and cringing when Peterson started to quote from the Communist Manifesto. I am not sure why I was expecting Peterson to have a seriously well developed critique of Marxism, but I was not expecting him to start quoting at length from a tiny workers pamphlet as though it represented all of Marxian thought since. It was ludicrous and Brooks rightly pointed out this lack of depth when he describes Peterson’s extended discussion on Marx.
“In his debate with Zizek, Peterson claimed that “even Marx” “admits” in the Manifesto that capitalism is the most productive economic system that has ever existed. Benjamin Studebaker sets him straight on this point in an article in Current Affairs. This is the point in the talk where Peterson most clearly reveals his lack of engagement with the content of Marx’s theory of history. Marx thinks that each economic system is the most productive in history when first introduced, but that eventually each outlives its usefulness and is replaced by something more appropriate to the technology of the time.”
Another notion that Brooks attacks really well is the supplemental thesis from these thinkers that the west is the best. This thesis is advanced due to the west having secularism, free speech and other principles derived from the enlightenment. Brooks does a good job pointing out that this is a really simplistic rendering of history and embracing a type of history about ‘civilisation’ that was invented later. Brooks in discussing Sen’s work notes:
“Sen elegantly and amply demonstrates that there are Asian, African, and Islamic arguments for open societies and free debate. Both the European chauvinist’s narrow and bigoted claim that “West is the Best” and the despotic case for “Asian” values should be rejected—not because of some moralistic “taboo,” but because the historical narrative underlying both arguments is a patchwork of nonsense.”
I think when discussing Sam Harris, he gets bogged down. Brooks rightly attacks Sam for his notion of what a “thought experiment” is and gives examples of the Trolly Problem. The example Sam provides in The End of Faith (2004) instigating a “defensive” nuclear strike on a suicidal Islamic regime, is obviously not a proper thought experiment. He attempts to relay this with Sam’s thoughts on free will, which I am not so certain works. It feels less inspired, but this might be because Sam admittedly is more slippery than the other IDW thinkers. Ben has a clearly defined platform of fast talking conservativism and Peterson has the clearly defined Jungian inspired spiel and individual responsibility. Sam has atheism and what? Secular meditation?
I like the passage though where Brooks attacks Sam’s position on cultures having different ‘moral development’. An interesting sociological view, which feels like we are repeating ‘the limits to growth’, looking at third world countries and their propensity to modernisation/industrialisation and the various Marxian counter arguments arguments which emerged. Instead it is now in the “moral development” of cultures.
“Harris says that “not all cultures are at the same stage of moral development.” He spends a fair amount of time in this passage—as is typical for Harris—congratulating himself on having the courage to formulate such a bold opinion. “It is time to admit,” Harris sputters, that this “is objectively true,” even though saying it is “radically impolitic.” This is ridiculous for two main reasons. First, Americans have been making this argument since they began displacing indigenous peoples in the eighteenth century. Second, hard-core moral relativists who believe that it’s never acceptable to criticize the injustices of another country or culture are a lot thinner on the ground in real life than they are in the writings of people like Harris, who are always congratulating themselves on their rejection of moral relativism. I imagine that if people at dinner parties react badly to Harris saying morality isn’t relative, that’s because they know the racist path on which he is treading.”
One of the highlights of the book and this is something that his sister mentioned he was ruminating on a lot leading up to his death, was the rejection of identitiarian left wing politics, where moralism has taken over and people are being “cancelled” for transgressions. Brooks, in line with Mark Fisher, another tragic left wing voice who died too soon, discusses exiting the vampire castle. The new left wing focus on cancel culture is a losing issue and something that ultimately creates new ways for powerful interests to maintain their hegemony over normal working people. As Brooks mentioned himself, be kind to people, be awful to systems instead. Challenging and changing systems are where real change happens, at the root.
At the base of this particular view is the notion of understanding. Something that Michael had in bucket loads. It is also a lesson where significant parts of the international left needs to learn, if they are to gain any significant influence particularly in populist political spaces. Instead of writing off and lambasting a working class person for having anti immigrant views for example, there should be an attempt to understand why and where this view has germinated. Propaganda is powerful when it can feed into something that has a basis in reality, such as in America where the rust-belt heard Trump attacking the follies of outsourcing and the decimation of the manufacturing heartlands of America’s industrial past. It was music to their ears and ultimately a message which could resonate with people who feel disenfranchised, powerless and disillusioned. It worked because the message rung true, as previous administrations decimated worker protections in reckless trade deals such as NAFTA and now TTP. Rather than seceding the ground to the right and focusing on Trump’s presentation issues and his blustering stupidity, or on conspiracy theories surrounding Russia, we need to be hammering the populist message he supposedly believed in and exposing him for a fraud in that way.
Brooks put these issues as such
“Similarly, we should reject both the Shapiro/Peterson defense of traditional hierarchies and the misguided attempts of the ultra-woke to improve society by scolding people for holding imperfect ideas in their heads (or for having senses of humor). Wittingly or unwittingly, ultra-woke scolds feed a project of endless fragmentation and standpoint epistemology that, if relied on as a strategy for action, destroys any possibility for collective liberatory endeavor.”
I think the lessons to take from this book is that “free speech” can be mobilised and used as a calling card by the right wing only when puritanical mobs continue to cancel people for having the wrong opinion. The IDW as a phenomenon was important because it was portrayed as transgressive. The opinions which Brooks carefully deconstructs in this text, are viewed as “facts”, only because they are not seriously hammered, with the right context. Being brave and taking your message out there is another important calling here. A true internationalist approach to politics is important and should be the ultimate goal of any progressive movement, with the express aim being to advance collaboration beyond borders.
Michael in this text writes a fairly general critique of thinkers profiled originally by Bari Weiss in the New York Times as comprising the intellectual dark web. I think Michael wanted it to be a general overview, which was assessable to everyone, rather than a scholarly text. I think this has benefits and negatives. I personally think he was just getting started in his career and that he had good scholarly texts within him, that we would have seen had he not died. The pamphlet style mindset certainly fits with his internationalism and his approach to politics, which was about accessibility, and openness. The polemic he gives us though has loads of strong moments which I will outline here.
Attacking the defence of hierarchy in the pronouncements of people like Jordan Peterson was good. There is almost a defeatism and anti-activist streak in Peterson, who believes in individualism over collective action under his meme worthy dictum: get your own house in order, clean your room. Hierarchies are natural and exist everywhere, the Pareto principle, lobsters and so on. Brooks describes it as such
“I’ve said that the Intellectual Dark Web’s favorite move is to naturalize or mythologize historically contingent power structures.”
Brooks does a good job presenting an “antebellum” version of this argument, in showing how it could be used to defend any type of status quo and that argumentative skeleton probably was used. In raising Murray and others, Brooks gives a brief overview of some controversies in the sociological literature with “hate facts”, as some on the right like to call them. I think a deeper engagement with this literature is really worthwhile. There is a fantastic critique of Murray’s work by Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist, which I would recommend to any reader of this book as a supplemental resource.
I liked his comments on the Zizek/Peterson debate. I remember putting my hands over my eyes and cringing when Peterson started to quote from the Communist Manifesto. I am not sure why I was expecting Peterson to have a seriously well developed critique of Marxism, but I was not expecting him to start quoting at length from a tiny workers pamphlet as though it represented all of Marxian thought since. It was ludicrous and Brooks rightly pointed out this lack of depth when he describes Peterson’s extended discussion on Marx.
“In his debate with Zizek, Peterson claimed that “even Marx” “admits” in the Manifesto that capitalism is the most productive economic system that has ever existed. Benjamin Studebaker sets him straight on this point in an article in Current Affairs. This is the point in the talk where Peterson most clearly reveals his lack of engagement with the content of Marx’s theory of history. Marx thinks that each economic system is the most productive in history when first introduced, but that eventually each outlives its usefulness and is replaced by something more appropriate to the technology of the time.”
Another notion that Brooks attacks really well is the supplemental thesis from these thinkers that the west is the best. This thesis is advanced due to the west having secularism, free speech and other principles derived from the enlightenment. Brooks does a good job pointing out that this is a really simplistic rendering of history and embracing a type of history about ‘civilisation’ that was invented later. Brooks in discussing Sen’s work notes:
“Sen elegantly and amply demonstrates that there are Asian, African, and Islamic arguments for open societies and free debate. Both the European chauvinist’s narrow and bigoted claim that “West is the Best” and the despotic case for “Asian” values should be rejected—not because of some moralistic “taboo,” but because the historical narrative underlying both arguments is a patchwork of nonsense.”
I think when discussing Sam Harris, he gets bogged down. Brooks rightly attacks Sam for his notion of what a “thought experiment” is and gives examples of the Trolly Problem. The example Sam provides in The End of Faith (2004) instigating a “defensive” nuclear strike on a suicidal Islamic regime, is obviously not a proper thought experiment. He attempts to relay this with Sam’s thoughts on free will, which I am not so certain works. It feels less inspired, but this might be because Sam admittedly is more slippery than the other IDW thinkers. Ben has a clearly defined platform of fast talking conservativism and Peterson has the clearly defined Jungian inspired spiel and individual responsibility. Sam has atheism and what? Secular meditation?
I like the passage though where Brooks attacks Sam’s position on cultures having different ‘moral development’. An interesting sociological view, which feels like we are repeating ‘the limits to growth’, looking at third world countries and their propensity to modernisation/industrialisation and the various Marxian counter arguments arguments which emerged. Instead it is now in the “moral development” of cultures.
“Harris says that “not all cultures are at the same stage of moral development.” He spends a fair amount of time in this passage—as is typical for Harris—congratulating himself on having the courage to formulate such a bold opinion. “It is time to admit,” Harris sputters, that this “is objectively true,” even though saying it is “radically impolitic.” This is ridiculous for two main reasons. First, Americans have been making this argument since they began displacing indigenous peoples in the eighteenth century. Second, hard-core moral relativists who believe that it’s never acceptable to criticize the injustices of another country or culture are a lot thinner on the ground in real life than they are in the writings of people like Harris, who are always congratulating themselves on their rejection of moral relativism. I imagine that if people at dinner parties react badly to Harris saying morality isn’t relative, that’s because they know the racist path on which he is treading.”
One of the highlights of the book and this is something that his sister mentioned he was ruminating on a lot leading up to his death, was the rejection of identitiarian left wing politics, where moralism has taken over and people are being “cancelled” for transgressions. Brooks, in line with Mark Fisher, another tragic left wing voice who died too soon, discusses exiting the vampire castle. The new left wing focus on cancel culture is a losing issue and something that ultimately creates new ways for powerful interests to maintain their hegemony over normal working people. As Brooks mentioned himself, be kind to people, be awful to systems instead. Challenging and changing systems are where real change happens, at the root.
At the base of this particular view is the notion of understanding. Something that Michael had in bucket loads. It is also a lesson where significant parts of the international left needs to learn, if they are to gain any significant influence particularly in populist political spaces. Instead of writing off and lambasting a working class person for having anti immigrant views for example, there should be an attempt to understand why and where this view has germinated. Propaganda is powerful when it can feed into something that has a basis in reality, such as in America where the rust-belt heard Trump attacking the follies of outsourcing and the decimation of the manufacturing heartlands of America’s industrial past. It was music to their ears and ultimately a message which could resonate with people who feel disenfranchised, powerless and disillusioned. It worked because the message rung true, as previous administrations decimated worker protections in reckless trade deals such as NAFTA and now TTP. Rather than seceding the ground to the right and focusing on Trump’s presentation issues and his blustering stupidity, or on conspiracy theories surrounding Russia, we need to be hammering the populist message he supposedly believed in and exposing him for a fraud in that way.
Brooks put these issues as such
“Similarly, we should reject both the Shapiro/Peterson defense of traditional hierarchies and the misguided attempts of the ultra-woke to improve society by scolding people for holding imperfect ideas in their heads (or for having senses of humor). Wittingly or unwittingly, ultra-woke scolds feed a project of endless fragmentation and standpoint epistemology that, if relied on as a strategy for action, destroys any possibility for collective liberatory endeavor.”
I think the lessons to take from this book is that “free speech” can be mobilised and used as a calling card by the right wing only when puritanical mobs continue to cancel people for having the wrong opinion. The IDW as a phenomenon was important because it was portrayed as transgressive. The opinions which Brooks carefully deconstructs in this text, are viewed as “facts”, only because they are not seriously hammered, with the right context. Being brave and taking your message out there is another important calling here. A true internationalist approach to politics is important and should be the ultimate goal of any progressive movement, with the express aim being to advance collaboration beyond borders.
March 11, 2024
"… even after the intellectual dark web withers away, the new right will continue in the same vein. It will, for instance, continue to hide its conservatism. That Harris is an atheist with some socially liberal domestic policy positions, that Ruben is a married gay man and even Jordan Peterson never quite calls himself a conservative. All of this helps them brand themselves as unclassifiable Renegades even as they share elements of an unmistakable anti left agenda. They all defend the capitalist economic order domestically and American imperial hegemony globally. They all see themselves as defenders of a poorly understood and frankly historically illiterate construct called the West. They all defend what they imagined to be biology against feminists, and at least some of them, like Sam Harris (…), defend a similar stance when it comes to race. Crucially, in all of these areas, the IDW promotes narratives that either naturalize or mythologize historically contingent power relations between workers and bosses, between men and women. They are old school reactionaries."
"… the Petersons of the world want to naturalize or mythologize the injustices we see around us, instead of analyzing them as a function of historical processes that, because they are human made, can be rectified in the future."
Michael Brooks
"… the Petersons of the world want to naturalize or mythologize the injustices we see around us, instead of analyzing them as a function of historical processes that, because they are human made, can be rectified in the future."
Michael Brooks
December 28, 2020
awash in easy money from right-wing billionaires and foundations and easy access to media bullhorns right-wing public figures have grown intellectually lazy (the grift is so easy these days).In the old days of social democracy and the fairness doctrine, the ghouls of movement conservatism had to work harder and were more driven by sadism, protection of privilege, and resentment of the downtrodden rather than a cushy media career. The IDW is a case in point if it wasn't for algorithms on youtube and lots of cash to prop up these guys an uneven playing field any college student could dispense with lazy ahistorical arguments. Michael Brooks did a wonderful takedown of these fools who get way too much attention. Michael was someone who was rising in left politics before his very untimely and early death. He was a figure that left a big hole on the left when he passed on. Left is best, Rest in Power.
April 4, 2024
I’m just surprised that so much of this book is dedicated to bitching about The Left. Brooks honest to god cites Exiting the Vampire Castle, an essay about defending poor widdle billionaire and serial domestic abuser Russell Brand. When that essay came out it was embarrassing and in 2019 when this book was written it was even more embarrassing.
There are tons of weird moments of coddling objectively bad faith actors, notably Ben Shapiro, who has said abysmal things about every demographic possible yet Brooks seems to think this is a good time to lecture us wokescolds about alienating fascists. He does the same thing in the Jordan Peterson section, going so far as to bold his warning about how we need to prioritize getting white men from becoming school shooters.
Brooks goes so far as to insist that the left lacks empathy, and again, this is during the same chapter where he highlights all the fucked up things Shapiro has said about Palestinians. No amount of”cancel culture” can ever compete with the unbelievable dehumanization that the fascists have for marginalized people. Perhaps if we said that Israel was canceling Palestinians assholes like brooks would race to end colonialism instead of providing weak commentary. And it IS weak, because Brooks is plenty acerbic about these so called intellectual dark web idiots being bumbling fools but when discussing their politics he always manages to be at least a little understanding.
This book has aged like rotten eggs on a hot day with all the dumbasses praising it in the first few pages. Notable names include Glenn Greenwald and Ana Kasparian, who were always on the fascist side of every social justice issue but have gone completely mask off recently. The part where Brooks admonishes Peterson for his transphobia would likely set both of these clowns off into going on unhinged twitter rants today. Ultimately this is my issue with Against the Web because it isn’t really so much against the web as it is fighting for the audience that the IDW has. It’s a turf fight….and a TERF fight, har har.
Plus I have little tolerance for anti communism and I have long since outgrown this infantile Trotskyism that always somehow seems to be a gateway into fascism. It’s been a century, can we please let the Stalinism thing go? Why must we relitigate every single issue the left has ever had? Again, this is the fighting over the audience thing. We need to convince young white men that the left can be cool even with us disgusting wokescold minorities. I promise that we will keep these savages under control so please join us? Pretty please? Also the constant Bhaskar Sunkara meat riding is absolutely wild. He edits Jacobin dude. He’s not fucking Marx.
The obnoxious justification of how CLR James used “dead white men” (his quotes) to write about liberation of the black diaspora is yet another bit of evidence that this book, consciously or not, is trying to appeal to the people who buy into the idea of the IDW. Brooks argues that we would stop policing people for cultural appropriation, which he puts in fucking quotes like is not a real thing, and this is just plain dishonest. Being pissed at a white guy with dreads while you’re not hired because you wear your hair in dreads is not trivial and is actual material reality. White people wear black hairstyles and are treated as trendsetters yet black people literally aren’t allowed to wear our hair naturally in “professional” settings? Okay dude! Citing all these black people to prove how stupid and bad we are for being mad at something so dumb as cultural appropriation is EXACTLY what IDW ghouls do but Brooks clearly thinks he’s got noble intentions in his racism.
Fuck this book. I’m not gonna sit here and rate it higher just because Brooks is no longer with us. This is his legacy and while I wish he had more time to grow from such a toxic mindset, this is what we have to work with.
There are tons of weird moments of coddling objectively bad faith actors, notably Ben Shapiro, who has said abysmal things about every demographic possible yet Brooks seems to think this is a good time to lecture us wokescolds about alienating fascists. He does the same thing in the Jordan Peterson section, going so far as to bold his warning about how we need to prioritize getting white men from becoming school shooters.
Brooks goes so far as to insist that the left lacks empathy, and again, this is during the same chapter where he highlights all the fucked up things Shapiro has said about Palestinians. No amount of”cancel culture” can ever compete with the unbelievable dehumanization that the fascists have for marginalized people. Perhaps if we said that Israel was canceling Palestinians assholes like brooks would race to end colonialism instead of providing weak commentary. And it IS weak, because Brooks is plenty acerbic about these so called intellectual dark web idiots being bumbling fools but when discussing their politics he always manages to be at least a little understanding.
This book has aged like rotten eggs on a hot day with all the dumbasses praising it in the first few pages. Notable names include Glenn Greenwald and Ana Kasparian, who were always on the fascist side of every social justice issue but have gone completely mask off recently. The part where Brooks admonishes Peterson for his transphobia would likely set both of these clowns off into going on unhinged twitter rants today. Ultimately this is my issue with Against the Web because it isn’t really so much against the web as it is fighting for the audience that the IDW has. It’s a turf fight….and a TERF fight, har har.
Plus I have little tolerance for anti communism and I have long since outgrown this infantile Trotskyism that always somehow seems to be a gateway into fascism. It’s been a century, can we please let the Stalinism thing go? Why must we relitigate every single issue the left has ever had? Again, this is the fighting over the audience thing. We need to convince young white men that the left can be cool even with us disgusting wokescold minorities. I promise that we will keep these savages under control so please join us? Pretty please? Also the constant Bhaskar Sunkara meat riding is absolutely wild. He edits Jacobin dude. He’s not fucking Marx.
The obnoxious justification of how CLR James used “dead white men” (his quotes) to write about liberation of the black diaspora is yet another bit of evidence that this book, consciously or not, is trying to appeal to the people who buy into the idea of the IDW. Brooks argues that we would stop policing people for cultural appropriation, which he puts in fucking quotes like is not a real thing, and this is just plain dishonest. Being pissed at a white guy with dreads while you’re not hired because you wear your hair in dreads is not trivial and is actual material reality. White people wear black hairstyles and are treated as trendsetters yet black people literally aren’t allowed to wear our hair naturally in “professional” settings? Okay dude! Citing all these black people to prove how stupid and bad we are for being mad at something so dumb as cultural appropriation is EXACTLY what IDW ghouls do but Brooks clearly thinks he’s got noble intentions in his racism.
Fuck this book. I’m not gonna sit here and rate it higher just because Brooks is no longer with us. This is his legacy and while I wish he had more time to grow from such a toxic mindset, this is what we have to work with.
November 18, 2020
I had not planned to read this so soon. There were plenty of other things to read. However, as I had it in my little collection of books, I could not do otherwise when I learned it's author and Journalist, Michael Brooks, died yesterday. Cohost of the Majority Report and Weekends on Jacobin, and Host of The Michael Brooks Show (TMBS) it was confirmed today on The Majority Report's coverage remembering his death that he died because of a sudden Thrombosis in his neck. He was 37 years old. With this being the case, I decided to read this book.
The book is very simple. In five short chapters, it looks at 3 figures (and makes fun of Dave Rubin): Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro. The most attention is given to Sam Harris because Harris has the most to unpack. Not because Harris is the most complex views, but because Harris can be so difficult to deal with. How is Harris difficult? He is difficult because he, for lack of a better word, weasels out of accepting criticism. This comes to the forefront explicitly in the book by showing that Harris misuses the philosophical tool "Thought Experiment." Brooks calls on the help of philosopher Ben Burgis for this criticism because where a thought experiment is supposed to set up an experiment to test some beliefs, Harris uses the term thought experiment to as a kind of play. Play because he would like to think the belief he espoused was not being espoused and instead of that he put the idea out there, played with the idea, to see the significance of its implication. Thus, Harris seems philosophical because he is using the philosophical term when he is actually transforming the term for his benefit to avoid accepting criticism.
The sections on Peterson and Shapiro are much shorter, in fact, the book is really short. It might even be better to consider it a long published essay. Nevertheless, the problem with Peterson is his hidden Conservative assumptions and the problem with Shapiro is that he creates a dishonest history that is not accurate and that he has never learned from his mistakes. A theme of the book is that these members of the intellectual dark web (IDW) have failed to historicize their work. That is to say, their work fails to stand up to historical scrutiny. This is what makes the Shapiro chapter more interesting that the Peterson chapter, even though they are the same length, because Brooks has to show that Shapiro's history is a false history.
After Brooks' death, what may be most important to take from this short book is his last Chapter. Because his last chapter does not take down any IDW members, he doesn't even take a jab at Dave Rubin (a pastime that was responsible for the creation of the show Weekends); rather, this chapter expresses himself. I did not know Michael Brooks. I only knew him that was present on the shows he hosted. From his last chapter, we can see his call to international solidarity. Often, we can think of having solid relationships with our immediate communities, even our immediate countrypeople; however, we cannot and should not forget those who are not immediately recognizable to us. So, this last chapter will last because it expresses his beliefs. While we want to move past the IDW, we want the IDW to be a thing of the past, the last chapter shows what he believed we would want as our future.
RIP Michael Brooks.
The book is very simple. In five short chapters, it looks at 3 figures (and makes fun of Dave Rubin): Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro. The most attention is given to Sam Harris because Harris has the most to unpack. Not because Harris is the most complex views, but because Harris can be so difficult to deal with. How is Harris difficult? He is difficult because he, for lack of a better word, weasels out of accepting criticism. This comes to the forefront explicitly in the book by showing that Harris misuses the philosophical tool "Thought Experiment." Brooks calls on the help of philosopher Ben Burgis for this criticism because where a thought experiment is supposed to set up an experiment to test some beliefs, Harris uses the term thought experiment to as a kind of play. Play because he would like to think the belief he espoused was not being espoused and instead of that he put the idea out there, played with the idea, to see the significance of its implication. Thus, Harris seems philosophical because he is using the philosophical term when he is actually transforming the term for his benefit to avoid accepting criticism.
The sections on Peterson and Shapiro are much shorter, in fact, the book is really short. It might even be better to consider it a long published essay. Nevertheless, the problem with Peterson is his hidden Conservative assumptions and the problem with Shapiro is that he creates a dishonest history that is not accurate and that he has never learned from his mistakes. A theme of the book is that these members of the intellectual dark web (IDW) have failed to historicize their work. That is to say, their work fails to stand up to historical scrutiny. This is what makes the Shapiro chapter more interesting that the Peterson chapter, even though they are the same length, because Brooks has to show that Shapiro's history is a false history.
After Brooks' death, what may be most important to take from this short book is his last Chapter. Because his last chapter does not take down any IDW members, he doesn't even take a jab at Dave Rubin (a pastime that was responsible for the creation of the show Weekends); rather, this chapter expresses himself. I did not know Michael Brooks. I only knew him that was present on the shows he hosted. From his last chapter, we can see his call to international solidarity. Often, we can think of having solid relationships with our immediate communities, even our immediate countrypeople; however, we cannot and should not forget those who are not immediately recognizable to us. So, this last chapter will last because it expresses his beliefs. While we want to move past the IDW, we want the IDW to be a thing of the past, the last chapter shows what he believed we would want as our future.
RIP Michael Brooks.
July 25, 2020
Now that I’ve given myself some time to think over the things Michael said in this book, I feel like I have my head together a little better to write about it.
Firstly, Michael Brooks was an absolute asset this world and has left a major void in his wake. I’ll miss listening to his goofy impressions alongside his very apt discussions on global solidarity. It’s heartbreaking to think that we lost someone so whip-smart and compassionate right as his career was taking off.
I think this book comes off initially like an opportunity for a left-wing pundit to take easy shots at the edgy pseudo-intellectual right, and Michael definitely doesn’t hold back in cracking jokes at their expense. However, he takes it to a higher level, examining the place of actors like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro in the larger history of the reactionary right movement. More importantly, Michael offers us an answer to combating the damage they’ve done to rational discourse - we have to stop splitting off into identity-based groups and attacking one another. Rather, we should lift one another up and create a leftist movement based in compassion - and humor. I appreciate the hopefulness and love that emanates from Michael’s words. I miss him a bit more because of this book. ❤️
Firstly, Michael Brooks was an absolute asset this world and has left a major void in his wake. I’ll miss listening to his goofy impressions alongside his very apt discussions on global solidarity. It’s heartbreaking to think that we lost someone so whip-smart and compassionate right as his career was taking off.
I think this book comes off initially like an opportunity for a left-wing pundit to take easy shots at the edgy pseudo-intellectual right, and Michael definitely doesn’t hold back in cracking jokes at their expense. However, he takes it to a higher level, examining the place of actors like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro in the larger history of the reactionary right movement. More importantly, Michael offers us an answer to combating the damage they’ve done to rational discourse - we have to stop splitting off into identity-based groups and attacking one another. Rather, we should lift one another up and create a leftist movement based in compassion - and humor. I appreciate the hopefulness and love that emanates from Michael’s words. I miss him a bit more because of this book. ❤️
July 2, 2020
Good update on the ridiculousness of some alt right favourites (grouped together here as the IDW). Getting to know about the Jordan Peterson apple cider of doom fragment was already worth the effort of reading this book. I al also compulsively watching Dave Rubin make an ass of himself online now.
July 21, 2020
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Michale Brooks introduced me to this amazing Martin Luther King Jr. quote; it’s cogency and importance is beyond apparent. Whilst I didn’t intend on writing a review for Brooks’ first book, his tragic and untimely passing-away did prompt me to reflect on it. What’s immediately apparent about ‘Against The Web’s introduction is that, despite what made him popular and what launched him into the hearts and minds of many people - that being dunking on ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ dorks - is that Michael had a bold political vision: to engender within the Left the urgency to create an international movement. This movement was to understand the realities of political power globally and to inspire a common appreciation for reformation, transformation, justice, love and equality, irrespective of background. His show outlined this commitment through Brooks’ impressive and almost encyclopaedic knowledge regarding international relations and history. I’ve been a fan of the Majority Report for years now and before he launched his own show I always clamoured for more insight into Michael’s views on global politics. This discussion is clearly his passion and after reading this book, I was hotly anticipating when he’d put these thoughts to paper next.
Sadly we’ll never get that book, but ‘Against The Web’ is still a very competent, if a bit rehashed, exploration into the IDW; namely, the works of Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein. Brooks’ excels at demonstrating the bankruptcy of thought shared between the three in his usual snarky albeit considered fashion. His chapter on Sam Harris is particularly delicious: his delve into ‘The Moral Landscape’ and various blog statements exposes Harris as not only ignorant, not only dangerous, but lacking in real solutions. This further serves as a broader critique of the ‘New Atheist’ crowd that permeated the intellectual scene in the early 2000s. Paraphrasing from one of his show appearances, “you can’t say you want to embolden reformists within a religion, whilst also saying it’s fundamentally shit and dangerous”; you can’t expect to move people out of dangerous dogmatic theologies whilst not considering what material conditions attracted them to it in the first place, and what our responsibility is for that. All of these critiques are brilliantly married with the humour and consideration only Michael could perfect.
Anyone who is ‘online’ and wants to understand the resurgence of hierarchy, religion, social-conservatism and dogmatism within Gen Z, or the introductory ideas within the ‘alt-right pipeline’, will learn something from Michael. It is a shame we’ll never read more from him, but there’s still years of knowledge he’s shared on YouTube that I’ll certainly be revisiting.
Rest In Power.
#LulaLivre
Michale Brooks introduced me to this amazing Martin Luther King Jr. quote; it’s cogency and importance is beyond apparent. Whilst I didn’t intend on writing a review for Brooks’ first book, his tragic and untimely passing-away did prompt me to reflect on it. What’s immediately apparent about ‘Against The Web’s introduction is that, despite what made him popular and what launched him into the hearts and minds of many people - that being dunking on ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ dorks - is that Michael had a bold political vision: to engender within the Left the urgency to create an international movement. This movement was to understand the realities of political power globally and to inspire a common appreciation for reformation, transformation, justice, love and equality, irrespective of background. His show outlined this commitment through Brooks’ impressive and almost encyclopaedic knowledge regarding international relations and history. I’ve been a fan of the Majority Report for years now and before he launched his own show I always clamoured for more insight into Michael’s views on global politics. This discussion is clearly his passion and after reading this book, I was hotly anticipating when he’d put these thoughts to paper next.
Sadly we’ll never get that book, but ‘Against The Web’ is still a very competent, if a bit rehashed, exploration into the IDW; namely, the works of Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein. Brooks’ excels at demonstrating the bankruptcy of thought shared between the three in his usual snarky albeit considered fashion. His chapter on Sam Harris is particularly delicious: his delve into ‘The Moral Landscape’ and various blog statements exposes Harris as not only ignorant, not only dangerous, but lacking in real solutions. This further serves as a broader critique of the ‘New Atheist’ crowd that permeated the intellectual scene in the early 2000s. Paraphrasing from one of his show appearances, “you can’t say you want to embolden reformists within a religion, whilst also saying it’s fundamentally shit and dangerous”; you can’t expect to move people out of dangerous dogmatic theologies whilst not considering what material conditions attracted them to it in the first place, and what our responsibility is for that. All of these critiques are brilliantly married with the humour and consideration only Michael could perfect.
Anyone who is ‘online’ and wants to understand the resurgence of hierarchy, religion, social-conservatism and dogmatism within Gen Z, or the introductory ideas within the ‘alt-right pipeline’, will learn something from Michael. It is a shame we’ll never read more from him, but there’s still years of knowledge he’s shared on YouTube that I’ll certainly be revisiting.
Rest In Power.
#LulaLivre
July 21, 2020
A Readable and Concise Case for Compassion in Politics
Michael Brooks takes a uniquely international approach to politics, which is refreshing. He is a man who understands people and understands the lessons of history. For most of the book, he makes a powerful argument against the value of the IDW and highlights the danger that sort of thinking poses and does so in an adult way.
However, it is Brooks' unfailing humanity that elevates it. It is present in every sentence in the book and yet isn't self-aggrandising or preachy in any way. Because to Michael Brooks, compassion is almost a truism - it's something that even the best of us sometimes have to force, but with him it's just there. He just, truly, deeply, cares about the world.
This is a wonderful first book that establishes a foundation of kindness that I'm sure would have enabled his subsequent works to soar to great intellectual heights. Tragically, cruelly, those subsequent works will never come - or at least, they won't be written by Michael. Every good soul lost is a disaster for the world but I'm glad that this book exists to codify the fundamentals that every person who believes in the power and importance of kindness in global affairs should aspire to. Sometimes it feels impossible to view the world through such an optimistic lens; Michael Brooks proves it isn't.
Rest in peace, Michael. People like you are needed now, more than ever. I hope this book can empower all of them.
Michael Brooks takes a uniquely international approach to politics, which is refreshing. He is a man who understands people and understands the lessons of history. For most of the book, he makes a powerful argument against the value of the IDW and highlights the danger that sort of thinking poses and does so in an adult way.
However, it is Brooks' unfailing humanity that elevates it. It is present in every sentence in the book and yet isn't self-aggrandising or preachy in any way. Because to Michael Brooks, compassion is almost a truism - it's something that even the best of us sometimes have to force, but with him it's just there. He just, truly, deeply, cares about the world.
This is a wonderful first book that establishes a foundation of kindness that I'm sure would have enabled his subsequent works to soar to great intellectual heights. Tragically, cruelly, those subsequent works will never come - or at least, they won't be written by Michael. Every good soul lost is a disaster for the world but I'm glad that this book exists to codify the fundamentals that every person who believes in the power and importance of kindness in global affairs should aspire to. Sometimes it feels impossible to view the world through such an optimistic lens; Michael Brooks proves it isn't.
Rest in peace, Michael. People like you are needed now, more than ever. I hope this book can empower all of them.
April 25, 2021
Maybe this is actually a 2-star TBH but why not be charitable (and then undermine that charity in the review)? This guy sure loves to dunk on this crew! I guess it should have been fairly clear that's what I was getting into though. And to be fair the dunking was occasionally fun and sometimes illuminating (though often kinda felt gratuitous - in spite of the fact that they all def deserve it), but considering it's unlikely any of their fans are going to read the book, and I did read it, I could have used more depth in the best part of the book - the last chapter where he laid out his vision of the "cosmopolitan answer" teased in the title. It had a little more emphasis on the pitfalls of wokeness/callout culture than seemed to me to be productive (while still feeling more or less accurate in word), and if the whole book was a fleshed out version of how to synthesize the ideas culled from other political environments that he touched on at the end, I bet I would be likely to return to this one over and over!
Update: I guess in the end it was a 2-star after all!
Update: I guess in the end it was a 2-star after all!
September 27, 2020
Although the IDW phenom is very time specific (and may have lost some of its punch and cultural relevance) the techniques it used, which are here delineated in mythologizing the past and removing the present from its historical context. Removing context (power relations, historical or present) is a favorite technique of the right to hide and justify inequality, be it racial, gender, orientation economic or any other. A fast read that brings Michael Brooks’ essential voice back. He will be missed.
July 20, 2020
REST IN POWER MICHAEL BROOKS.
July 4, 2023
Excellent takedown of the IDW, circa 2019.
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