Intellectual dark web

The term "intellectual dark web" was coined as a joke[1] by mathematician and venture capitalist Eric Weinstein and popularized by New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss.

These include a debate between Harris and Ben Affleck on Real Time with Bill Maher in October 2014, the publication of "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" by James Damore in August 2017, and Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson on Channel 4 News in January 2018, each of which related to controversial topics such as Islamic extremism and workplace diversity policies.

[2] Other notable IDW members according to Weiss include Bret and Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Heather Heying, and Christina Hoff Sommers.

[3] While IDW members tend to not espouse overt white supremacy and ethnonationalism, their beliefs overlap with those of the white-nationalist alt-right movement, such as in debates over gender identity, feminism, men's rights, and race science.

[2] IDW commentators tend to dismiss issues of transgender rights and racial and gender inequality as the concerns of leftist "social justice warriors" while welcoming some gay men, such as Murray and Rubin, into their ranks.

[2] Jacob Hamburger argues in the Los Angeles Review of Books that the IDW belongs to a neoconservative tradition of attacks on "political correctness" that began during the Reagan era, associated with commentators such as Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D’Souza, David Brooks, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz.

[13] Nick Fouriezos of Ozy magazine describes IDW as "a growing school of thought that includes a collection of mostly left-leaning professors, pundits and thinkers united in their criticism of the modern social justice movement as authoritarian and illogical.

"[15] Henry Farrell, writing in Vox, expressed disbelief that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro or neuroscientist Sam Harris, both claimed to be among the intellectual dark web by Weiss, could credibly be described as either purged or silenced.