The Intellectual Dark Web: A History (and Possible Future)

Outside of the progressive academics and activists whose ideology came to dominate the West in the second decade of the twenty-first century, arguably no group influenced public discourse as much as the Intellectual Dark Web. Challenging the restrictive and relativistic intellectual and cultural orthodoxies on the left that engulfed universities, the media, and big tech, this group—a loose collective of politically diverse intellectuals, commentators, and scholars critical of political correctness, identity politics, and cancel culture—relied on alternative platforms like podcasts, digital magazines, and YouTube to advocate for free speech, universal rights, and individual liberty.

While the term is most commonly identified with Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Claire Lehmann, Douglas Murray, and Joe Rogan, as author Jamie Q Roberts shows, the group's concerns and philosophy extended more broadly to include a wide range of individuals who helped mainstream critiques of “woke” culture and a robust defense of free speech, including Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Stephen Fry, and Elon Musk.

Although the Intellectual Dark Web's coherence began to unravel in the early 2020s due to internal differences, such as over the response to COVID-19 and climate change, it played a determining role in changing the politico-cultural landscape, influencing both electorally successful right-wing platforms and playing a major role in the rise of an independent media ecosystem that is today in many ways more influential than mainstream media. Indeed, as Roberts argues, the Intellectual Dark Web's full legacy and historical impact are yet to be determined. The ideas and principles its members championed continue to define not only the ongoing effort to protect universal rights and individual freedoms but also the current and future direction of global policy and politics.

Jamie Q Roberts is a lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He specialises in international relations with a focus on international security and popular culture. More broadly, he is a ‘ first principles’ political philosopher who is interested in the relationship between the individual and the group, the nature of progress, and the creation of knowledge. Additional interests include exploring the political insights we can gain from literature.