While Princess Ivanka blesses the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials say at least 52 people have been killed in protests.

At least 1,700 Palestinian demonstrators were also wounded on Monday along the border fence with Gaza, the Health Ministry reported, as the mass protests that began on March 30 and that had already left dozens dead erupted anew.

The Times juxtaposes the two:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians took part in the Gaza protests, which spread on Monday to the West Bank, where the focus was on opposition to the embassy move.

By 7 p.m., 52 Palestinians, including several teenagers, were dead and at least 1,700 were injured in Gaza, the Health Ministry said. Israeli soldiers and snipers used barrages of tear gas as well as live gunfire to keep protesters from entering Israeli territory.

But never mind all that. Pretty Princess Ivanka with her golden hair and white shining teeth and garb of purest shiningest white is there to make all white and golden and perfect. Amen.

Prince Jared also spoke at the ceremony to open the embassy. She sells shoes, he sells condos; they are as gods descended among us.

In a recorded video message played to some 800 people gathered at the new embassy, Mr. Trump said the United States “remains fully committed to facilitating a lasting peace agreement.”

In a speech at the ceremony, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, also spoke of a resolution to generations of conflict. “When there is peace in this region, we will look back upon this day and will remember that the journey to peace started with a strong America recognizing the truth,” he said.

Then Netanyahu spoke of how glorious it was to see Israel killing all those rebels.

“What a glorious day,” Mr. Netanyahu exulted. “Remember this moment! This is history! President Trump, by recognizing history, you have made history.”

“We are in Jerusalem and we are here to stay,” he said. “We are here in Jerusalem protected by the great soldiers of the army of Israel and our brave soldiers are protecting the border of Israel as we speak today.”

Yes, it’s all going swimmingly.

Gail Dines also wrote, in the Guardian, about strangulation as sexy fun play.

Since the #MeToo movement, we’re learning just how many men seem to see choking women as a legitimate form of “sex play,” as it is often euphemistically referred to in porn.

Eric Schneiderman, New York State’s Attorney General, who announced he was pursuing a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein for what he described as “despicable” behavior, was just forced to resign after four women accused him of choking them, as well as other types of physical assault. Schneiderman disputed the allegations, claiming that he had only consensual sexual relations.

Is there also consensual stabbing, consensual shooting, consensual beating to a pulp?

In mainstream media targeted to women, choking, or “breath play,” as it is often referred to, is rebranded as edgy, hot sex that somehow gives the woman power. Women’s Health Magazine recently promoted the act, suggesting it can “be an exhilarating experience for some people.” While the article does admit it could lead to death, it nonetheless provides some handy tips for those women squeamish at the thought of this “hot” sex. (Learning to relax is one recommendation!) The authors quote a sex therapist who manages to flip the power dynamics by arguing that the “turn on” is that he is prepared to do anything to have you, and the result is that “you feel you have an erotic power over him.”

While he strangles you. That’s an interesting notion of power, even “erotic” power.

Time for a reality check! Data from studies on domestic violence indicate that the women most at risk of being murdered by their partners are those who were choked. Frontline activists who work with battered women say that while the batterer calls it “choking,” it is in many cases actually strangulation. Of these women, “up to 68% will experience near-fatal strangulation by their partner”. Being strangled damages the “woman’s throat and makes breathing, swallowing, coughing and talking difficult.” When the batterer takes it a few step further, “loss of consciousness can occur within 5 to 10 minutes; death within minutes.”

Not all batterers got the idea of choking a woman from porn, but over 40 years of research shows a connection between viewing porn and violence against women. A recent meta-analysis of 22 studies between 1978 and 2014 from seven different countries concluded that pornography consumption is associated with an increased likelihood of committing acts of verbal or physical sexual aggression, regardless of age.

Who is it who has the erotic (and just plain physical) power here? I’m not convinced it’s women.

The Guardian posted Gail’s article on Facebook. The first comment explains all:

Carl Garnham It’s just to get some peace and quiet when shagging a feminist.

Once the gasping has stopped.

Kate Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, in the Times Friday:

It doesn’t take much to cut off someone’s oxygen supply, or to restrict blood flow to and from her brain. Around 10 seconds of pressure on the carotid artery, either constant or intermittent, is usually enough to render the victim unconscious, and it requires less pressure than it takes to open a can of soda.

This act is often labeled “choking,” as it was in an article this week in The New Yorker, by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow, in describing the multiple occasions on which Eric Schneiderman, New York’s former attorney general, allegedly assaulted women in this manner.

But experts on domestic violence don’t call it that, they call it strangulation. One chokes on a bit of potato, one is strangled by the hands of a human being squeezing one’s neck.

Nonfatal manual strangulation is a well-known precursor to intimate- partner homicide. Victims of such attacks are some seven times more likely to become the victim of an attempted homicide by the same perpetrator. The New Yorker article noted the irony that Mr. Schneiderman himself had written legislation that established stiffer penalties against those who strangle. “I think this will save a lot of lives,” he predicted.

And yet – strangulation is now seen as part of sex, aka “kink.”

In addition to causing great pain and fear, strangulation sends a powerful message. What strangulation effectively communicates to a victim, more clearly than words could, is that an abuser is willing to exert punitive control by preying on her most fundamental visceral needs — such as the bodily imperative to gasp for air when she cannot breathe, and the desperate urge to end the intense pain that strangulation causes.

Experts compare the sensation of being strangled to waterboarding; it is tantamount to torture. And then there is the terrifying knowledge that someone is deliberately causing your body to thus protest, which in itself may be what breaks you.

But but but, the “sex positive” team cries, that’s what makes it hot, and as long as it’s consensual – knock yourselves out, literally.

“I cannot fathom that someone who drafted the legislation on strangulation is unfamiliar with such concepts,” Jennifer Friedman, an expert on intimate-partner violence, said of Mr. Schneiderman in The New Yorker. How could he be ignorant of what strangulation does to the human body, and what it communicates to the victim?

Many will take this question as a puzzle, not a rhetorical lament. So perhaps this is an apt moment to point out a dark but important truth about intimate-partner violence: Some abusers are perfectly well aware of what they are doing, at least at a certain level. And that is why they keep doing it. They want to maintain dominance and exercise control over their female partners, among others. And that is why an abuser may resort to the cruelest and most covert of methods, such as cutting off her air supply with his bare hands, leaving no bruises.

But at least she can’t talk, right?

What could go wrong?

An anti-gay, pro-Trump pastor from Dallas will give the opening prayer Monday night at the introduction ceremony of the new US embassy in Jerusalem. Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor and supporter of President Donald Trump, will add to the controversy surrounding the diplomatically awkward event.

Jeffress, who serves as an informal faith adviser to Trump, has maligned most world religions and condemned homosexuality, while on Fox he spouts biblical justifications for Trump’s agenda.

Sounds perfect.

Jeffress, who runs the First Baptist Dallas megachurch in Texas, has referred to both Islam and Mormonism as “a heresy from the pit of hell.” He believes Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are all cults, and that Catholicism represents the “genius of Satan.” Jews, he believes, are going to hell. “You can’t be saved by being a Jew,” he’s said.

Hmm maybe not quite perfect. He does know there are quite a few Jews in Israel, yes?

Jeffress also provides religious cover for Trump’s policies and views. On immigration, where other Christian leaders have called for compassion toward immigrants, particularly undocumented people brought here as children, Jeffress has defended Trump. “The Bible also says that God’s the one who established nations and its borders,” Jeffress said on “Fox & Friends” last September. God “is not necessarily an open borders guy.” When Trump said he didn’t want immigrants from “shithole” countries coming to the United States, Jeffress said he disagreed with the president’s “vocabulary” but that Trump was “right on target in his sentiment.”

Yes that’s definitely the important thing about what Trump said – the naughtiness of the word “shit” as opposed to the racist shittiness of the “sentiment.”

So, ok, I take it back, a lot could go wrong.

Even George Will.

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Feral, oleaginous, toadyism, and lickspittle all in one paragraph. I like it.

Then there was Pence’s lickspittling of Joe Arpaio last week.

Noting that Arpaio was in his Tempe audience, Pence, oozing unctuousness from every pore, called Arpaio “another favorite,” professed himself “honored” by Arpaio’s presence, and praised him as “a tireless champion of . . . the rule of law.” Arpaio, a grandstanding, camera-chasing bully and darling of the thuggish right, is also a criminal, convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order to desist from certain illegal law enforcement practices.

And he’s a former sheriff who abused prisoners to the point of torture. That is not being “a tireless champion of the rule of law”; there are laws against torture and abuse.

It is said that one cannot blame people who applaud Arpaio and support his rehabilitators (Trump, Pence, et al.), because, well, globalization or health-care costs or something. Actually, one must either blame them or condescend to them as lacking moral agency. Republicans silent about Pence have no such excuse.

There will be negligible legislating by the next Congress, so ballots cast this November will be most important as validations or repudiations of the harmonizing voices of Trump, Pence, Arpaio and the like. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.

Federal employees are working for TRUMP now and they will watch Fox News at work and like it.

CBS News has confirmed an email was sent to researchers at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research responding to apparent efforts to change the channel on internal television screens. The email from “[White Oak] Digital Display” sent on Wednesday, May 3, was sent to inform the researchers of the “reason for the change from CNN to Fox.” White Oak is the name of the FDA’s campus.

The email goes on to inform employees that the decision came from the Trump administration.

“The reason for the change is that a decision from the current administration administrative officials has requested that all monitors, under our control, on the White Oak Campus, display FOX news,” the email reads.

Then, White Oak apologizes for the “inconvenience,” adding, “I am unable to change any of the monitors to any other news source at this time.”

Just be thankful you’re not tied to your seats with your eyes taped open.

The email can be read below:

From: WO Digital Display
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 9:49 AM
To: CBER Researchers
Subject: Attention: Regards about the news on the monitors in your locations

Good Morning, CBER Researchers,

Please excuse me for sending this out to your entire group via your listserv, but I was alerted by a member in your group and I wanted to let everyone know that the reason for the change from CNN to FOX.

The reason for the change is that a decision from the current administration administrative officials has requested that all monitors, under our control, on the White Oak Campus, display FOX news.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I am unable to change any of the monitors to any other news source at this time.

That’s not so much a reason as a “they said so,” but ok.

This one is getting a whole lot of mockery.

If you don't like "Intellectual Dark Web" call it something else. "Intellectual Free-Thinkers" "The New Enlightenment" "The Intellectual Free Enlightenment" whatever. The name isn't important, nor are the people leading it. It's the idea of free thought that counts.

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) May 11, 2018

If you don’t like “Intellectual Dark Web” call it something else. “Intellectual Free-Thinkers” “The New Enlightenment” “The Intellectual Free Enlightenment” whatever. The name isn’t important, nor are the people leading it. It’s the idea of free thought that counts.

Wait – if neither the name nor the people named is/are important, then what’s left? With neither the people nor the name there’s…nothing, so what are we even talking about? Sure, the idea of free thought is an important idea, but who says that’s what the “Intellectual Dark Web” is about? How do we know it’s not about darkness, or webs?

But of course more centrally, note the vanity. “Why yes, now that you mention it, I am a hero of intellectual free thinking and enlightenment and intellectual free enlightenment. Thank you for asking.”

And the hilarity of Gad Saad.

Thank you to all those who tagged @bariweiss to point her to the glaring omission in her @nytimes piece. She must have missed my engagement over the past 20+ years both in academia and in the public arena when few if any academics were speaking out against bad ideas. https://t.co/8Sq7TOoWYu

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) May 8, 2018

The glaring omission of MOI

I just found out from someone on the IDW @nytimes list that he had specifically mentioned me to @bariweiss to ensure that I be duly included/covered but perhaps I'm a Nazi or something. Oh well, time for lunch!

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) May 8, 2018

She’s just jealous!

This goes out to Ms. @bariweiss who might have missed that which the blind could see. One of innumerable emails that I receive on a daily basis. [Only providing you the data to ensure that in the future you pursue your journalistic integrity with greater alacrity.] pic.twitter.com/CCadUVRSEv

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) May 8, 2018

A screenshot of a piece of fan mail, drawn to the attention of Bari Weiss because she didn’t mention him in her Dark Web piece. That’s not embarrassing at all.

Updating to add: I missed one:

Let me know Ms. @bariweiss what your email address is so that I might send you the 13 trillion other similar emails (to help you out for any future article on the topic). Cheers. ;)

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) May 8, 2018

The winky is probably supposed to be understood as “I’m just joking”…but a display of insistent vanity can’t be defanged with a smiley.

NBC reports:

North Korea can look forward to “a future brimming with peace and prosperity” if it agrees to quickly give up its nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged on Friday ahead of a historic summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Er…isn’t that what the Iran deal was? The Iran deal that Trump just yanked the US out of? Rewards and incentives to a highly authoritarian and repressive regime in exchange for denuclearization with strict oversight?

Why is it ok to do that with North Korea but not with Iran?

The joint winners of the @ParkPlazaHotels *Brand or Marketing Campaign* Award are @YouTube and @Playboy! #BritishLGBTAwards pic.twitter.com/xs55CRrSjw

— British LGBT Awards (@BritLGBTAwards) May 11, 2018

What?? Playboy winning an LGBT award? What could be more straight and heteronormative, not to mention patriarchal and sexist, than Playboy?

The LGBT Awards honour… Playboy. Seriously? So sad this movement now reeks of misogyny. https://t.co/zB1GtOFKTg

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) May 12, 2018

Because nothing says sexual equality better than a brand which has treated women as sexual objects for decades https://t.co/Phbc6BEbB9

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) May 12, 2018

So the porn industry is now officially bankrolling the LGBTQQUPPGWEEEEQQQQI 'community. Disgraceful: https://t.co/BpUGEKqAYr

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) May 12, 2018

John Kelly on NPR this morning:

Are you in favor of this new move announced by the attorney general early this week that if you cross the border illegally even if you’re a mother with your children [we’re going] to arrest you? We’re going to prosecute you, we’re going to send your kids to a juvenile shelter?

The name of the game to a large degree. Let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from – fourth, fifth, sixth grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English, obviously that’s a big thing. They don’t speak English. They don’t integrate well, they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. But a big name of the game is deterrence.

Family separation stands as a pretty tough deterrent.

It could be a tough deterrent — would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers.

Even though people say that’s cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children?

I wouldn’t put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.

Or whatever.

OR WHATEVER.

Time magazine a couple of weeks ago:

Federal officials lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children last year after a government agency placed the minors in the homes of adult sponsors in communities across the country, according to testimony before a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

…

“You are the worst foster parents in the world. You don’t even know where they are,” said Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. “We are failing. I don’t think there is any doubt about it. And when we fail kids that makes me angry.”

Since the dramatic surge of border crossings in 2013, the federal government has placed more than 180,000 unaccompanied minors with parents or other adult sponsors who are expected to care for the children and help them attend school while they seek legal status in immigration court.

An AP investigation found in 2016 that more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. At the time, many adult sponsors didn’t undergo thorough background checks, government officials rarely visited homes and in some cases had no idea that sponsors had taken in several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking.

Whatever.

Whatever.

Whatever.

Republican Sen. Rob Portman gave HHS and the Department of Homeland Security until Monday to deliver a time frame for improving monitoring.

“These kids, regardless of their immigration status, deserve to be treated properly, not abused or trafficked,” said Portman, who chairs the subcommittee. “This is all about accountability.”

Portman began investigating after a case in his home state of Ohio, where eight Guatemalan teens were placed with human traffickers and forced to work on egg farms under threats of death. Six people have been convicted and sentenced to federal prison for their participation in the trafficking scheme that began in 2013.

Whatever.

Oliver North, that guy in charge of funneling profits from weapons sales to Iran to right-wingers in Nicaragua who were waging war against the socialist government, has found a new low to burrow his way to: calling activists for gun control “terrorists.”

“They’re not activists—this is civil terrorism. This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America,” Oliver North told the Washington Times. “You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things—even there you didn’t have this kind of thing.”

By “a civil rights organization” he means the National Rifle Association, which he was just elected president of. I don’t consider the NRA a civil rights organization. I don’t consider the “right” to keep and bear arms a core civil right and I certainly don’t consider the NRA’s inflated and absurd version of that right – in which people have a “right” to keep and bear machine guns – any kind of civil right at all. Comparing the lobbying of the NRA to the civil rights movement is insulting and disgusting.

In referencing Jim Crow, North appeared to be comparing the plight of the NRA with civil rights activists who fought for racial equality in the 1960s, during a time in which many were beaten and murdered.

I don’t think Oliver North was out there with them.

May 13 updating to correct: Jared Keller explains that the event was not at the White House and wasn’t military spouses in general.

The photo was actually taken at the annual Joint Armed Forces of Washington Luncheon (JAFOWL) on April 24, not the White House. In fact, it only shows members of the Air Force Officers’ Spouses’ Club.

…

Given that the wives in this photo chose to marry Air Force officers — 20 percent of whom identify as a racial minority, below the rate for officers across the entire U.S. armed forces — it would make sense that there might be a distinct under-representation of black and Asian military spouses, and it’s certainly a problem. But the issue isn’t that the White House only invited white women — it’s that organizations like JAFOWL, though they serve the military and veterans communities admirably, are stuck in the f*cking 1950s.

Many others believe that groups like JAFOWL reinforce a hierarchy where officers’ spouses have a louder and more prominent voice than enlisted spouses, and Military Spouse Appreciation Day is a fantastic chance to get the Pentagon’s attention on like this. Sadly, Ron Klain ruined it with an inaccurate cheap shot at the White House — and in an age where all quarters of the government shout down their critics as “fake news,” this sort of inaccuracy can muddle the waters on a subject indefinitely.

H/t Sackbut

Wow.

The WH hosted military spouses today. Our armed forces are 40% non-white. The odds that — BY CHANCE — a group of 52 military spouses would contain no people of color are lower than 100 trillion to 1. So, umm…. pic.twitter.com/zi6XzmzYBd

— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) May 11, 2018

Oliver North. We thought we’d escaped him, didn’t we. Not so fast there, buddy – he’s back. He’s the new head of the NRA, and he’s on Fox News saying all Iranians are liars.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Colonel, you alerted me before we came on the air. I made some phone calls, top sources in Israel have confirmed that multiple rockets were fired at Israel within the last couple hours. And Israel has in fact — they were fired from Syria, Israel has responded. No Israelis were injured, though, in the attack against them. This having to do with Israel’s previous military attacks against Syria in recent weeks. Nothing to do with the Iranian deal, I was told, at a very high level.

OLIVER NORTH: Yeah, well, look, never believe an Iranian because if their lips are moving, they are lying.

“Colonel.”

Another one of these – another “___ while black” item. This time it’s falling asleep while working on a paper in the dorm common room while black.

Other entrants include: couponing while black, graduating too boisterously while black, waiting for a school bus while black, throwing a kindergarten temper tantrum while black, drinking iced tea while black, waiting at Starbucks while black, AirBnB’ing while black, shopping for underwear while black, having a loud conversation while black, golfing too slowly while black, buying clothes at Barney’s while black, or Macy’s, or Nordstrom Rack, getting locked out of your own home while black, going to the gym while black, asking for the Waffle House corporate number while black and reading C.S. Lewis while black, among others.

I recognize several of those without following the links – the graduating too boisterously one, the Starbucks, at least one of the buying clothes, the locked out of your own house.

Siyonbola is a first-year graduate student in the African Studies department at Yale. She had papers and books spread out in a common room while writing a paper Monday, but had flipped off the lights and went to sleep, she explained in her Facebook Live video.

Another graduate student, Sarah Braasch, walked in, turned on the lights and said she was calling police. The common room was off-limits for sleeping, she added.

There’s a slight gap there – between a claimed rule about not sleeping in the common room and calling the police. There are intermediate steps between a minor rule violation and calling the police. Life is full of rules, explicit and implicit, but they don’t all involve calling the police in cases of violation. It’s a rule violation to use the “10 items or fewer” line at the grocery store if you have 20 items in your cart, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth calling the police to deal with it. Sleeping in a dorm common room seems high on the list of non-police-worthy violations. It actually seems like the kind of violation it’s ok to ignore if it’s not bothering anyone. If Brasach wanted to do something in the common room – watch tv, work with the lights on, chat with friends, whatever – surely she could have just done that, leaving Siyonbola to move to her room to nap or go back to writing her paper according to preference.

Agitated, Siyonbola went to Braasch’s room, aiming a cellphone camera at her, and demanded to know why she had called the authorities.

“I have every right to call the police,” Braasch said after snapping a photo of Siyonbola. “You cannot sleep in that room.”

I don’t think that’s even correct. The police frown on frivolous calls. I don’t think we do have “every right” to call the police over a small rule violation. Do parents call the police when their children talk while chewing? I doubt it.

The issue is, of course, much bigger than Yale. People have picketed coffee shops and received apologies from CEOs and college presidents over viral issues of bias that spread at the speed of the Internet, giving institutions an instantaneous black eye.

And with the “while black” incidents piling up, the aggrieved parties have begun to point out the similarities — sometimes in the very videos they post.

And this is one of those places where “identity politics” and “standpoint epistemology” come into play, simply because white people don’t realize how much this kind of thing happens because it doesn’t happen to us. It’s fatally easy to do that homemade epistemology thing of rifling quickly through one’s memory for examples of the kind of thing under discussion, turning up nothing, and concluding that nothing is all there is. It’s fatally easy to forget that one’s own experience can’t always be assumed to stand for everyone else’s experience.

In a post on her Facebook page a day after the incident, Siyonbola also acknowledged that other black people have endured similar treatment.

“Grateful for all the love, kind words and prayers, your support has been overwhelming Black Yale community is beyond incredible and is taking good care of me. I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America.”

Then she invited anyone reading her post to share similar stories.

By Thursday, 1,400 people had commented.

Maybe some day we can do better.

The Graun did a sarcastic Q&A about the Intellecshual Dark Web:

How do they hold their dangerous conversations? Through some kind of shadowy underground network? They go on Rubin’s YouTube show, which has 700,000 subscribers. Or they host popular podcasts, attracting thousands in monthly donations.

Talk about being sidelined.Who are these people? Among those often included are former Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro; husband and wife “professors in exile” Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, who resigned from Evergreen State College after denouncing a planned Day of Absence, where white students were asked to leave the campus; and psychologist and political correctness scourge Jordan Peterson.

You mean it’s all just … terrible people? Professional controversialists, I would call them. They come from both the right and sometimes left extremes of the political spectrum, but they all tend to combine some form of hardcore libertarianism with an unfortunate manner.

Libertarian plus obnoxious; a decent summary.

And this is popular? Oh yes. IDW members expound their dangerous ideas in front of packed houses – out of necessity, having been denied the more direct public forum of a professorship at a college you’ve never heard of.

It must be hard to to talk about being no-platformed in front of so many people. The bigger problem is that the movement is so ill-defined. Its free-thinking, “anything goes” nature means that mainstream intellectuals such as Steven Pinker are often included alongside cranks and show-offs including Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones.

Well it’s probably not so much the free-thinking, “anything goes” nature as it is the fact that a list of random cranks like Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones is just that, while if you add people like Steven Pinker it seems more serious. I’m pretty sure Bari Weiss had that firmly in mind, writing for the Times and all.

Sam Harris is a kind of bridge between the two. He’s not an academic and he doesn’t write or think or discuss like an academic, but he did get that there PhD, so a lot of people are fooled into thinking he’s more thoughtful or disciplined or evidence-based than he really is. It’s a bit like the Templeton Foundation setting up all those think tanks and fellowships with names like “Cambridge” and “Faraday” in the title so that people will think they’re academic and serious and rigorous.