Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right (2020, zer0 Books) gives us Michael Brooks’ uncompromising, hilarious, and brilliant analysis of the Intellectual Dark Web from a left perspective. He lays out for the reader all the problematic, insidious, and frightening aspects of the IDW and how we as leftists and socialists should respond to them. He ends the book with an optimistic message of humanism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism invigorated with class-conscious politics and a willingness to call to task the regressive tendencies of this new, but in some sense very old, configuration of the right.
Read MoreThe Anti-Elitist Intellectualism of Isaac Asimov
The prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov, best known for books such as I, Robot and the Foundation series, devoted his life to the causes of science, knowledge, and education. He valued the importance of intellect for a healthy democracy, lamenting the United States’ tendency towards anti-intellectualism. Yet, he also criticized the arrogance, foolishness, and elitism of some of the most intellectually-gifted in our society, particularly in his involvement with Mensa, the social organization of high-IQ individuals. His experiences with the group, good and especially bad, fostered his growing distaste for IQ tests, intellectual gamesmanship, and reactionary politics. In this essay, we’ll be exploring these themes and how their interaction cultivated Asimov’s unique position of anti-elitist intellectualism.
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