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Why Racists (and Liberals!) Keep Writing for Quillette

UnpopularBlargh

UnpopularBlargh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,209
Via The Nation:
A year ago, I came across an article by Stephen Elliott, a writer I'd admired. There were plenty of disturbing things about the piece—a self-pitying attack on the MeToo movement by a man who'd recently been accused of abusing women—but what startled me was that he had chosen to publish it in an online magazine called Quillette.

Elliott had written a moving, tender book of fiction about kink, trauma, and consent that I'd enthusiastically reviewed in Salon, and he'd since become a star of the literary world, founding The Rumpus, an online publication that nurtured the careers of Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed. He'd also organized the Progressive Reading Series, which raised funds around the country for left candidates and issues like rent control. What was he doing in a magazine that publishes claims that black people are less smart than whites, feminism is harmful, and trans people are a threat to women and children?

But Elliott isn't the only self-described liberal writing for Quillette. There, last May, was pro-gay legal scholar Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama's regulatory czar, excerpting his new book, Conformity: The Power of Social Influence. He'd earlier praised the magazine on Twitter for its "independence of mind, concern with evidence, and (very important) wit & sense of humor." Later, Sunstein said in a podcast interview that he'd "been admiring of" the magazine and how it tries "to be empirical." (Sunstein declined a request for comment.) Also in Quillette, publishing a long piece on her anger at the women's movement in June, was second-wave feminist Phyllis Chesler, the author of Women and Madness and a cofounder of the National Women's Health Network. (Chesler, alas, has been writing Islamophobic works since the early 2000s.)
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Perhaps the most important weapon Quillette uses is applying pressure on a few specific fault lines that divide liberal audiences, such as the MeToo movement. Quillette has recruited liberal men accused of sexual harassment or assault, like Elliott, and empowered them as experts on feminism. In his first Quillette piece, Elliott blasted the desire to "believe women," and blamed one accuser for his poor book sales and his television agent's not returning his calls. Elliott has since written three more pieces for the magazine and become one of its strongest partisans on Twitter, joking about a "Quillette Hot American Summer" and frequently retweeting the magazine's diatribes against feminism. "Wow, Quillette has been killing it recently," he said in one tweet.

Despite his public defense of the magazine, Elliott told me, "People say, 'Oh they published this or that,' and I don't know what they're talking about. I don't read most of the articles in Quillette." Asked about the magazine's repeated promotion of racist pseudoscience, Elliott said, "I don't agree with that, obviously. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.… The articles you're talking about, I haven't read. Maybe if I read one, it would be so offensive that I would say I can't write for them anymore."
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Another fault line on which Quillette is pushing hard is lingering anti-trans views among the left. Like much of the right, Quillette has eagerly welcomed anti-trans feminists. Kathleen Stock, a British anti-trans feminist philosophy professor, has published two articles in Quillette claiming, among other things, that trans women will attack cisgender women if they are allowed into women's bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. Honoring trans women's self-identification "puts females in those spaces at risk," she declared. Quillette has also published other articles hostile to both feminism and trans people, warning, "If society denies biological differences and does not rigidly enforce gender roles, then the way is cleared for transgenderism." Stock told me by e-mail that she was willing to publish in Quillettedespite its racist and antifeminist articles, because "few of the left-wing publications toward which I would normally gravitate will touch such issues."
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This is a good break-down of how Quillette uses "wedge" issues to get so-called liberals to write for them and give them legitimacy. There's a lot in the link above including how they target journalists covering white supremacy, to how their goal is literally to move the overton window to where race science can be seen as legitimate, and how they were literally started by a blatant islamaphobic former contributor of Rebel Media.

Yay. Another great Canadian export!

Quillette was also a staunch defender and employer of known Nazi collaborator Andy Gno until they weren't for no good reason.

Quillette is also home to Sam Harris designated black friend Coleman Hughes who wrote the classic deep thought aptly titled "Black American Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap" which is exactly what you think it is.

Also Steven Pinker is a huge fan of them too. Whodathunk?
 
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Sunster

Sunster

The Fallen
Oct 5, 2018
10,114
Ngl that name made me think of Rita Skeeter from HP

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Hella

Hella

Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,443
Very informative piece. That's the most comprehensive takedown of Quillette I've read yet.


Fuck fascists and any that support them.
 
excelsiorlef

excelsiorlef

Bad Praxis
Member
Oct 25, 2017
73,497
Lol at "maybe they're racist and I'd stop associating my name with them if I read their articles l, but I don't read articles on Quillette I just write em, so check out my latest piece on how women use sex to ruins men's careers, right here on Quillette"
 
Akira86

Akira86

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,619
I'm glad the Nation is doing that. Someone needs to bury quillette and all the judicialwatch junior "legitimate writing" websites like it.
 
OP
OP
UnpopularBlargh

UnpopularBlargh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,209
excelsiorlef said:
Lol at "maybe they're racist and I'd stop associating my name with them if I read their articles l, but I don't read articles on Quillette I just write em, so check out my latest piece on how women use sex to ruins men's careers, right here on Quillette"
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Right? Like dude. If you're as liberal as you say you are maybe do literally the bare minimum of research.
 
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