James A. Lindsay | |
---|---|
Born | James Stephen Lindsay Ogdensburg, New York, U.S. |
Occupation |
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Years active | 2017–present |
Known for | Grievance studies affair |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Thesis | Combinatorial Unification of Binomial-Like Arrays (2010) |
Academic work | |
School or tradition | Conservatism,New Atheism |
Main interests | Criticism of religion,postmodernism,critical race theory |
Notable works | Cynical Theories (2020) |
James Stephen Lindsay (born June 8,1979 [1] ),known professionally as James A. Lindsay, [2] is an American author. He is known for the grievance studies affair,in which he,Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose submitted hoax articles to academic journals in 2017 and 2018 to test scholarship and rigor in several academic fields. [3] Lindsay has written several books including Cynical Theories (2020),which he co-authored with Pluckrose. He has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories such as Cultural Marxism and LGBT grooming conspiracy theories. [4] [5] [6] [7]
James Stephen Lindsay was born in Ogdensburg,New York. He moved to Maryville,Tennessee,at the age of five,later graduating from Maryville High School in 1997. Lindsay attended Tennessee Tech,where he obtained both his B.S. in physics and M.S. in mathematics;he later earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Tennessee in 2010. [1] His doctoral thesis is titled "Combinatorial Unification of Binomial-Like Arrays",and his advisor was Carl G. Wagner. [8] After completing his degree,Lindsay left academia and returned to his hometown,where he worked as a massage therapist. [9] [10] [11]
Lindsay,along with Peter Boghossian,is the co-author of How to Have Impossible Conversations:A Very Practical Guide, [12] a nonfiction book released in 2019 and published by Lifelong Books. [13] In 2020,Lindsay released the nonfiction book Cynical Theories ,co-authored with Helen Pluckrose and published by Pitchstone Publishing. The book became a Wall Street Journal , USA Today ,and Publishers Weekly bestseller upon release. [14] [15] [16] Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker praised the book for exposing "the surprisingly shallow intellectual roots of the movements that appear to be engulfing our culture". [17] Tim Smith-Laing charged it with "leaping from history to hysteria" in a Daily Telegraph review. [18]
Lindsay is the founder of the website New Discourses,which is owned by Christian nationalist commentator Michael O'Fallon. [19] [20] [10] [21] Lindsay's video series is also hosted by Sovereign Nations,O'Fallon's Christian nationalist website. [10] According to theologian and author David W. Congdon,"framing the left as an alternative religion has made Lindsay popular among the Christian Right". [22]
Lindsay has also appeared four times on Joe Rogan's podcast The Joe Rogan Experience . [23]
In August 2022,Lindsay was permanently suspended from Twitter. [24] His account was reinstated in November 2022 after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. [25]
In 2017,Lindsay and Boghossian published a hoax paper titled "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct". [26] In writing the paper,Lindsay and Boghossian intended to imitate the style of "poststructuralist discursive gender theory". The paper argued that the penis should be seen "not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity". [26] [27] After the paper was rejected by Norma, they later submitted it to Cogent Social Sciences where it was accepted for publication. [26] [28] [29] [30]
Beginning in August 2017,Lindsay,Boghossian,and Pluckrose wrote 20 hoax papers,which they submitted to peer-reviewed journals using several pseudonyms as well as the name of Richard Baldwin,a friend of Boghossian and professor emeritus of history at Florida's Gulf Coast State College. The project ended early after one of the papers,published in the feminist geography journal Gender,Place &Culture ,was questioned by investigative journalist Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform who suspected the article was not real due to its lack of adherence to academic journal publishing standards. This resulted in widespread interest in the incident,which was written about by several journalists. [31]
The trio subsequently revealed the full scope of their work in a YouTube video created and released by documentary filmmaker Mike Nayna,which was accompanied by an investigation by The Wall Street Journal . [32] By the time of this revelation,seven of their twenty papers had been accepted,seven were still under review,and six had been rejected. One paper,accepted by feminist social work journal Affilia ,contained passages copied from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf with feminist language added, [26] though sociologist Mikko Lagerspetz has contended that the paper only contained similarities in structure,and did not contain material "historically specific in Hitler's text (racism,references to the First World War,and so on)". [33]
Academic reviewers had praised the hoax studies of Lindsay,Boghossian,and Pluckrose as "a rich and exciting contribution to the study of ... the intersection between masculinity and anality","excellent and very timely",and "important dialogue for social workers and feminist scholars". [34]
Lindsay has supported Democratic Party candidates,including volunteering for Barack Obama,and was part of the New Atheism movement. [35] In 2023,Lindsay published an article on New Discourses in which he set out to defend the philosophical basis of classical liberalism,which he summarized as "the project of organizing our society from a position of political equality with certain rights that are inalienable,among these life,liberty,property,capacity for their use toward our happiness and purposes,and a reasonable expectation of privacy in which we can maintain their sanctity". [36]
Lindsay is a critic of "wokeness",which he analogizes to religious belief. [37] He describes "the Social Justice Movement" as his "ideological enemy". [38] Though he opposed Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election,Lindsay announced his intention to vote for Trump in the 2020 election,arguing that the danger of "wokeness" is much greater than that of a Trump presidency. [39]
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler looked to Lindsay to understand critical race theory [10] [40] because,in Mohler's words,few have "given sustained attention to critical theory from a conservative viewpoint". [10]
Lindsay has promoted several prominent conspiracy theories. [4] [7]
He is a proponent of the right-wing LGBT grooming conspiracy theory and has been credited as one of several public figures responsible for popularizing "groomer" as a slur directed at LGBTQ educators and activists by members of the political right. [25] [41] [42] Lindsay has referred to the Pride flag as "the flag of a hostile enemy." [5] [24]
In 2021,Lindsay wrote on Twitter that "there will be" a genocide of whites if critical race theory "isn't stopped." [43] His statement was met with widespread criticism,including from founder of libertarian anti-identity politics magazine Quillette Claire Lehmann who wrote:"James Lindsay is now peddling White Genocide Theory. Implying that a genocide against whites in the U.S. is imminent has the potential to inspire racist violence. Such comments are extreme,reckless,and irresponsible. They should be denounced." [43] [44]
Lindsay has promoted the far-right Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, [45] [35] [6] [46] [ better source needed ] which alleges a concerted effort by Marxist critical theorists to undermine Western civilization using Marxism. [6] [45]
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also referred to as the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization is actively controlling international banks, and through them governments, in order to collude against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
Feminist geography is a sub-discipline of human geography that applies the theories, methods, and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society, and geographical space. Feminist geography emerged in the 1970s, when members of the women's movement called on academia to include women as both producers and subjects of academic work. Feminist geographers aim to incorporate positions of race, class, ability, and sexuality into the study of geography. The discipline was a target for the hoaxes of the grievance studies affair.
Post-Marxism is a perspective in critical social theory which radically reinterprets Marxism, countering its association with economism, historical determinism, anti-humanism, and class reductionism, whilst remaining committed to the construction of socialism. Most notably, Post-Marxists are anti-essentialist, rejecting the primacy of class struggle, and instead focus on building radical democracy. Post-Marxism can be considered a synthesis of post-structuralist frameworks and neo-Marxist analysis, in response to the decline of the New Left after the protests of 1968. In a broader sense, post-Marxism can refer to Marxists or Marxian-adjacent theories which break with the old worker's movements and socialist states entirely, in a similar sense to post-Leftism, and accept that the era of mass revolution premised on the Fordist worker is potentially over.
Peter Gregory Boghossian is an American philosopher and pedagogue. Born in Boston, he was a non-tenure track assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, and of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide.
The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate plot to cause the extinction of whites through forced assimilation, mass immigration, and/or violent genocide. It purports that this goal is advanced through the promotion of miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non-white immigration, racial integration, low fertility rates, abortion, pornography, LGBT identities, governmental land-confiscation from whites, organised violence, and eliminationism in majority white countries. Under some theories, Black people, Hispanics, and Muslims are blamed for the secret plot, but usually as more fertile immigrants, invaders, or violent aggressors, rather than as the masterminds. A related, but distinct, conspiracy theory is the Great Replacement theory.
Woke is a political slang adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
"Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness. The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the supposed "Christian values" of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values.
Jack Michael Posobiec III is an American alt-right political activist, television correspondent and presenter, conspiracy theorist, and former United States Navy intelligence officer.
The Palmer Report is an American liberal fake news website, founded in 2016 by Bill Palmer. It is known for making unsubstantiated or false claims, producing hyperpartisan content, and publishing conspiracy theories, especially on matters relating to Donald Trump and Russia. Fact-checkers have debunked numerous Palmer Report stories, and organizations including the Columbia Journalism Review and the German Marshall Fund have listed the site among false content producers or biased websites.
The Great Replacement, also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of "replacist" elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."
The grievance studies affair was the project of a team of three authors—Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose—to highlight what they saw as poor scholarship and erosion of standards in several academic fields. Taking place over 2017 and 2018, their project entailed submitting bogus papers to academic journals on topics from the field of critical social theory such as cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine whether they would pass through peer review and be accepted for publication. Several of these papers were subsequently published, which the authors cited in support of their contention.
The Kalergi Plan, sometimes called the Coudenhove-Kalergi Conspiracy, is a debunked far-right, antisemitic, white genocide conspiracy theory. The theory claims that Austrian-Japanese politician Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, creator of the Paneuropean Union, concocted a plot to mix and replace white Europeans with other races via immigration. The conspiracy theory is most often associated with European groups and parties, but it has also spread to North American politics.
Helen Pluckrose is a British author and cultural writer known for critiques of critical theory and social justice and promotion of liberal ethics, most notably in the grievance studies affair.
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody is a nonfiction book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, published in August 2020. The book was listed on the bestsellers lists of Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and the Calgary Herald.
Marxist cultural analysis is a form of cultural analysis and anti-capitalist cultural critique, which assumes the theory of cultural hegemony and from this specifically targets those aspects of culture which are profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism.
The international Jewish conspiracy or the world Jewish conspiracy has been described as "the most widespread and durable conspiracy theory of the twentieth century" and "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle, referred to as International Jewry, conspires for world domination, the conspiracy theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration. It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, White genocide conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution.
Since 2020, efforts have been made by conservatives and others to challenge critical race theory (CRT) being taught in schools in the United States.
The notion that LGBT people, or those supportive of LGBT rights, are engaging in child grooming and enabling child sexual abuse is a far-right conspiracy theory and anti-LGBT trope. Although the belief that LGBT individuals are more likely to molest children has no basis in fact, this stereotype has existed for decades in the U.S. and Europe, going back to before World War II.
[Lindsay] has also taken to promoting the conspiracy theory that global elites are enacting a vast, diabolical "plan" to reduce "world population to under 2B[illion], perhaps by the end of the decade" (2021a) – a task to which the insidious grievance-mongering of critical academics is apparently essential. Only one 'Enlightenment'-loving conspiracist among many others, these views are propounded from the bully's pulpit of a 201,000-follower Twitter account (at the time of writing).
The hoax got the attention of Michael O'Fallon, a conservative activist and president of Sovereign Nations, a conservative Christian nationalist group.
…a third paper, published in a journal of feminist social work and titled 'Our Struggle Is My Struggle,' simply scattered some up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Hitler's 'Mein Kampf…' They set out to write 20 papers that started with 'politically fashionable conclusions,' which they worked backward to support by aping the relevant fields' methods and arguments, and sometimes inventing data.
James Lindsay, a well-known right-wing academic whose work Lohmeier cites in his book, faced criticism from many of his fellow conservatives last week after writing on Twitter that "there will be" a genocide of whites "if this ideology isn't stopped." Earlier this month, Lindsay was a featured panelist at the annual retreat of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, a conservative networking organization, at The Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. "James Lindsay is now peddling White Genocide Theory," Claire Lehmann, founder of the right-leaning website Quillette, wrote on Twitter on June 9. "Implying that a genocide against whites in the U.S. is imminent has the potential to inspire racist violence. Such comments are extreme, reckless, and irresponsible. They should be denounced."