Is Bari Weiss Embarrassed by the Intellectual Dark Web?

It’s been six years since Bari Weiss published a long, glossy, and much-discussed New York Times profile, titled, “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web.” The subheading declared an “alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation” and asked: “Should we be listening?”

Despite the occasional caveat throughout almost 3,700 words, Weiss made it clear that her answer to this question was “Yes.”

Weiss listed “three distinct qualities” that members of the IDW shared: their commitment to civil discourse, even about controversial subjects; their fearless pursuit of the truth, regardless of what was “politically convenient”; and their expulsion from “institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought.”

Weiss’ elevator pitch was that members of this group—public intellectuals, podcasters, and self-proclaimed “classical liberals”—were dissident thinkers willing to smash taboos, free speech warriors who shared a commitment to open debate and civil discourse, and renegade thinkers defending Enlightenment values against the forces of authoritarianism.

They were heterodox and tribeless. Their only loyalty was to the truth.

However, in the 2018 Times essay, Weiss conceded that audience capture—a phenomenon in which public figures are rewarded for producing content that flatters the biases and prejudices of their audiences—“probably helps explain why some people in this group talk constantly about the regressive left but far less about the threat from the right.” Weiss warned of the dangers of aligning with right-wing charlatans who happen to have large platforms. She worried that “cranks, grifters and bigots” might take over the movement.

These concerns turned out to be well-founded.

The IDW name, nowadays, is more of a punchline than a movement—not even used by superfans of its erstwhile members. This is in no small part because many of its core members have devolved into a cadre of virulent MAGA activists, anti-vaxxers, and unhinged conspiracy mongers of all kinds.

Even Weiss has hinted at some regrets over her role in making the IDW “a thing.” In a January 2023 conversation with the journalist Helen Lewis, Weiss acknowledged that the IDW has “unraveled” and wondered if her original IDW essay had gotten it wrong.

And yet, Weiss hasn’t spent much energy covering the degeneration of the movement she helped catapult into the mainstream back in 2018. But shouldn’t she?

After all, the IDW may be a tarnished brand, but it lives on under less-defined umbrellas like “heterodox,” “politically tribeless,” “anti-establishment,” and “anti-elite.” Some audiences who seek refuge under these umbrellas—and happen to be quite fond of many IDWers, even as they’ve spiraled into conspiracism—overlap with Weiss’ own. In her conversation with Lewis, Weiss suggested that the overall audience of the IDW has “maybe has even grown in size” since she published her Times article.

Weiss’ website and media company, The Free Press, is one of the most influential platforms in the alternative media network the IDW helped to create. The site claims to focus on “stories that are ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative” and publishes “provocations from those thinking outside the lines.” Sound familiar?

Weiss views it as her mission to fill the political and intellectual void left by what she regards as a corrupt and ideologically homogeneous mainstream media. The Free Press promises the “quality once expected from the legacy press, but the fearlessness of the new.”

While Weiss is plenty fearless when it comes to challenging the mainstream, shouldn’t she be holding her friends in the IDW to at least as high a bar?

If Weiss intends to build a new alternative media with the same commitment to credibility and speaking truth to power as the old institutions, it’s on her to call out the “cranks, grifters and bigots” who claim to be in the same anti-establishment trench as her. (The Daily Beast made multiple attempts to reach Weiss for comment, but received no response.)

WHICH WAY, INTELLECTUAL DARK WEB MAN?

When your brand is built around dissent from the establishment, there’s constant pressure to reject “elite wisdom” or “prevailing narratives”—which often means rejecting mainstream science and expertise.

This reflexive contrarianism is emblematic of the IDW, and naturally grows increasingly paranoid and extreme as conspiracy-minded audiences reward the more sensationalist theories and narratives with their attention.

Again and again, this has proven to be the pattern followed by the IDW leaders Weiss profiled in 2018.

Eric Weinstein, a mathematician who spent years working for right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, gave the IDW its name—which he has described variously as a “half-joke” and also a brilliantly calibrated troll designed to get maximum attention. He’s considered one of the least extreme of the original IDW members.

But both in 2018 and now, Weinstein decries what he calls the “gated institutional narrative” and the irredeemable systemic corruption he believes has infected a vast array of institutions, from academia to the media. He’s convinced that many of these institutions are conspiring to silence himself and his friends (and prevent them from winning Nobel Prizes).

The self-help guru and conservative public intellectual Jordan Peterson rose to prominence in 2016 for resisting a Canadian bill which outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Peterson’s been celebrated as a kind of Paul Revere on the right for his belief that wokeness is a poisonous ideology—and his view that a return to traditional Judeo-Christian values is the only way to resist it. Whenever Weiss’ Free Press covers Peterson, it does so reverently—as a powerful voice of dissent standing against woke authoritarianism.

While Peterson was always prone to hyperbole, he has become increasingly unhinged.

He now says climate activists want to “sacrifice the poor,” compares them to Nazis, and suggests that global elites are using climate change as an excuse to depopulate the planet. He compares this effort to “genocidal societies” with a “utopian vision” which leads to the “mass destruction of millions of people.” He believes Vladimir Putin may well be on the right side of a civilizational battle against wokeness. He describes COVID-19 as a “so-called pandemic” and claims it’s “highly probable” that the vaccines (which he refuses to call “vaccines”) were more dangerous than the disease.

Another IDWer, Dave Rubin, became a superstar in right-wing media as a “Why I Left the Left” personality, who on his show conducted non-confrontational interviews with far-right provocateurs and a handful of anti-woke liberals—but more than anyone, IDW types like Peterson, Weinstein, and Ben Shapiro.

Rubin’s North Star was “civility.” But these days he tweets things like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) is a “dishonest communist cunt,” and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is a “vile jihadist cunt.” Tweeting recently about United States Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Samantha Power, Rubin said, “this bitch can fuck off.”

Grzegorz Wajda/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Another member of this tribe devoted to civility and rational discourse is the popular conservative podcaster and writer Ben Shapiro. As the right-wing’s angry motormouth one-time wunderkind, he’s remained somewhat consistent—having gone from saying things like, “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue” to things like, “Hamas is running Columbia University.”

In 2018, Bret Weinstein (Eric’s brother) was a biologist who (along with his wife, Heather Heying) was best known for confronting a woke mob at Evergreen State College in 2017. This episode “brought them to the attention of a national audience that might have come for the controversy,” Weiss wrote, “but has stayed for their fascinating insights about subjects including evolution and gender.” Weiss, in 2020, applauded Weinstein for his “clarity and courage” and in 2021 said Weinstein and Heying were “made for this moment.” Weinstein returned the favor by saying Weiss is “doing marvelous things” on Substack, and encouraged his followers to subscribe as “Bari builds an institution outside the capture zone.”

Here are a few of Weinstein’s fascinating insights today: He suspects that the United States is involved in a plot with China and the WHO to create a “turnkey totalitarian planet.” He claims that a “credible estimate” of the number of deaths caused by mRNA vaccines is 17 million. He suggests that China is financing infrastructure in Central America to launch an “undeclared invasion” with a covert army of “military age” men. He’s a big fan of RFK, Jr., who compared public health measures during the pandemic to Nazism and the Holocaust.

Joe Rogan, another IDW member profiled in Weiss’ 2018 piece, hosts the most popular podcast in the country, which also serves as a launchpad for innumerable conspiracy theories.

Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

To cite just one example, when Weinstein recently suggested on The Joe Rogan Experience that vaccine mandates in the U.S. military were meant to purge ethical and freethinking soldiers and replace them with disloyal and compliant immigrants—a force that would be “capable of acting on behalf of tyranny against Americans”—Rogan didn’t offer any critical comment.

Instead, he said: “Holy shit. Then you have a real coup.”

IT’S NOT JUST CANDACE OWENS

Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire recently fired the right-wing conspiracist Candace Owens—apparently for a long history of antisemitic comments. Weiss responded to the well-publicized right-wing media dust-up by describing Owens as “truly batshit” and lamented, “That it took the Daily Wire this long to sever ties with Candace Owens is alarming.”

Weiss, however, wrote of Owens in the 2018 IDW profile as a “sharp, young, black conservative” and a “telegenic speaker with killer instincts.” Weiss acknowledged several of Owens’ outrageous statements, but she couldn’t hide her admiration.

The problem is, Owens was no less batshit in 2018.

In a 2017 interview with Rubin, Owens said, “I think abortion is really just about population control.” Rubin replied with a characteristically uncritical and incurious follow-up: “That’s some serious red-pill right there.” In 2018, Owens claimed that liberals want to “exterminate blacks via Planned Parenthood, which she would later describe as a “silent genocide.” She said black conservative politicians are “all called coons” by the media. She declared that “the word ‘racism’ is repeated obsessively by people who wish to enslave black people to the Democratic Party.”

Five months before Weiss published her piece, Owens called for the imprisonment of journalists and political opponents—something that probably should have pricked the ears of a movement which claimed to be unwavering in its defense of free speech and civil discourse.

Instead, much of the IDW defended Owens.

Eric Weinstein described her as an “evolving force” who appealed to “moderates and lefties who envy her strength when dreaming of one day themselves standing up to the crowd.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (introduced by Weiss in the Times’ profile as a feminist) once co-headlined a tour with right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopolous, who repeatedly described feminism as “cancer.” But Yiannopolous wasn’t the only grifter Hoff Sommers was drawn to. Rather than express skepticism toward Owens (a supposed IDW hallmark), Hoff Sommers lauded her as the “pseudo-left’s worst nightmare: a formidable young black woman saying the emperor has no clothes.”

Douglas Murray, a right-wing commentator also featured in Weiss’ 2018 profile (and now a columnist for The Free Press), described Owens as a “seriously smart and sassy young American conservative whose campus and media appearances have seen her begin to gain the audience she deserves.” Dave Rubin declared, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

The IDW’s embrace of Owens is a representative example of how the movement was less based on first principles like free speech, civil discourse, and independent thought—and much more about consolidating online media clout, contrarianism, and opposition to anything deemed “woke.”

Although Owens is a transparent opportunist and demagogue—just as she was in 2018—many members of the IDW happily hitched their wagons to her rising celebrity.

In what was perhaps a veiled dig at Owens, Shapiro recently attacked “corrupt commentators” who peddle conspiracy theories behind the smokescreen of “just asking questions,” saying such people claim to “have an answer that they want to suggest, but they know there’s no evidence for it.… In other words, they’re completely full of shit.”

Shapiro appears oblivious to how much the just-asking-questions front is currently deployed on his own platform.

Take, for example, Jordan Peterson’s recent conversations with Bret Weinstein and another IDWer featured in Weiss’ profile, Maajid Nawaz, published on The Daily Wire.

Weinstein was just asking questions about the secret Chinese invasion pushing up through Central America. Nawaz was just asking questions about whether nefarious globalist authoritarians are using COVID mandates and climate change regulations to engineer a “great reset” which will “enslave” people and deprive them of their civil liberties. Peterson was just asking questions about globalist depopulation schemes and the dangerous side-effects of the vaccines distributed during the “so-called pandemic”—and vaccines in general.

“Given how influential this group is becoming,” Weiss wrote in 2018, “I can’t be alone in hoping the IDW finds a way to eschew the cranks, grifters and bigots and sticks to the truth-seeking.”

Six years later, it’s evident that the IDW didn’t just fail to eschew the cranks and grifters—many headliners of the movement are cranks and grifters.

FL: Bari Weiss in Conversation with Alana Newhouse during the Miami Book Fair presented by Miami Dade College, Wolfson campus – Day Two

Alberto E. Tamargo/Sipa via AP Images

Now, Weiss is willing to condemn Owens. But she doesn’t appear to have engaged in any public reflection over the IDW’s role in pushing Owens ever closer to the mainstream. Nor has she condemned the worst statements and actions of many other IDW figures—who have only become more influential over the past six years.

During her conversation with Helen Lewis, Weiss said the IDW remains one of her favorite subjects. If this is true, wouldn’t now be a good time to speak up about the moral and intellectual collapse of the movement she said we should all listen to a few years ago?

REAL BRAVERY IS ADMITTING YOU MADE A MISTAKE

Weiss has become one of the most influential figures in the anti-establishment alternative media ecosystem. The Free Press has over 630,000 subscribers and ranks number one on Substack. She has a million followers on X. Her voice carries weight, especially in the world of heterodox media where IDWers have amassed millions of readers, listeners, and patrons.

During a conversation with Peterson in 2021, Weiss said her move from the legacy media (The Wall Street Journal, then The New York Times) to Substack meant she had joined “a lot of heterodox journalists who don’t fit in with a tribe.” Peterson responded: “It’s like an IDW of journalists.” She smiled and agreed.

Weiss told Peterson she had to leave The New York Times “in order to fight for liberalism.” She wanted to create a “common address” for “independent-minded” readers who had been failed by the legacy media.

When Peterson described this failure as “cataclysmic,” Weiss replied: “I spent months—I could cry thinking about it—mourning that. It is catastrophic.” If she spent all her time dwelling on the “wreckage” of institutions like The New York Times, she said, she would “spend my life in grief.” But Weiss concluded: “Believe me, we can rebuild new institutions.”

For several years, this is exactly what Weiss has been doing. She now presides over one of the largest alternative media platforms in the world, and she has built her brand around the idea that journalistic standards have collapsed in the establishment media she left behind. The Free Press bills itself as a “new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism.”

Weiss has spent much of her post-New York Times career attacking the legacy media. She describes her attempt to restore the integrity of American journalism as “trying desperately to… shore up something that is so clearly rotten.”

Does she have any similar feelings toward the IDW? And if so, shouldn’t she be even more vocal about those feelings, given the intersections between the IDW and the alternative media ecosystem she’s building?

New York Times editors and fact-checkers would never let a columnist rant about the WHO’s plans for global domination or how the harm caused by the vaccines was far worse than the “so-called pandemic.”

Would Weiss allow claims like these in The Free Press? Would she let them go unchallenged in a public conversation? If the answer to these questions is no, Weiss could have a powerful impact by saying so.

Being fearless and independent doesn’t just mean challenging the mainstream—it also means challenging your allies when you know they’re wrong. This is one form of tribalism Weiss does not appear willing to give up.