Quillette

Quillette (/kwɪˈlɛt/) is an online magazine founded by Australian journalist Claire Lehmann. The magazine primarily focuses on science, technology, news, culture, and politics; it also publishes two podcasts—the eponymous podcast Quilette and Wrongspeak. It is associated with the intellectual dark web.[3][4]

Quillette
Editor-in-chiefClaire Lehmann
Senior editor, LondonJamie Palmer
Canadian editor, TorontoJonathan Kay
Associate editor, LondonToby Young
European editor, StockholmPaulina Neuding
Staff writers
Categories
PublisherClaire Lehmann
FounderClaire Lehmann
Year founded2015 (2015)
CountryAustralia
Based inSydney
LanguageEnglish
Websitequillette.com

Quillette was originally created in 2015 to focus on scientific topics, but has come to focus on coverage of political and cultural issues concerning freedom of speech and identity politics. Its editorial position was described in 2017 as "libertarian-leaning".[5]

History

Quillette was launched in October 2015 in Sydney, Australia, by Claire Lehmann.[6] It is named after the French word "quillette" which means a withy cutting planted so that it takes root—used here as a metaphor for an essay.[7] Lehmann stated that Quillette was created with the aim of "setting up a space where we could critique the blank slate orthodoxy," – a theory of human development which assumes individuals are largely products of nurture, not nature – but that it "naturally evolved into a place where people critique other aspects of what they see as left-wing orthodoxy."[8]

Politico called Quillette the "unofficial digest" of the intellectual dark web, and, writing for The New York Times, Bari Weiss called Claire Lehmann a member of the intellectual dark web.[3][9]

In August 2017, Quillette published an article written by four academics in support of James Damore's "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo. Quillette's website was temporarily disabled. According to Lehmann, this was caused by a DDoS attack after publishing the piece.[3][10]

In a profile of Quillette, Politico reported that Lehmann knew about the Grievance studies affair before it was first reported in October of 2018, and was part of planning how to "fan the flames" of that controversy with the magazine's subsequent story defending the hoax.[3][11]

In May 2019, Quillette published an article by Eoin Lenihan that alleged connections between Antifa activists and national-level reporters who cover the far-right.[12] According to Shane Burley and Alexander Reid Ross, they and a number of other journalists received death threats after the claims were published.[13]

In August 2019, Quillette published a hoax article titled "DSA Is Doomed" that was submitted to them by an anonymous writer claiming to be a construction worker named Archie Carter who was critical of the organization Democratic Socialists of America.[14] The magazine retracted the article after the hoax was brought to their attention. According to leftist magazine Jacobin, the hoax brought Quillette's fact-checking and editorial standards into question.[15]

Reception

In an article for The Outline, writer Gaby Del Valle classifies Quillette as "libertarian-leaning", "academia-focused" and "a hub for reactionary thought."[5] In the Seattle newspaper, The Stranger, Katie Herzog writes that it has won praise "from both Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins" adding that "most of the contributors are academics but the site reads more like a well researched opinion section than an academic journal."[16][17][18] In an opinion piece for USA Today, columnist Cathy Young describes Quillette as "libertarian-leaning".[19] An article in Vice described Quillette as a "libertarian magazine".[20]

Writing for The Guardian, Jason Wilson describes Quillette as "a website obsessed with the alleged war on free speech on campus".[21] Writing for The Washington Post, Aaron Hanlon describes Quillette as a "magazine obsessed with the evils of 'critical theory' and postmodernism".[22] Writing for New York's column The Daily Intelligencer Andrew Sullivan describes Quillette as "refreshingly heterodox".[23] In a piece for Slate, Daniel Engber suggested that while some of its output was "excellent and interesting", the average Quillette story "is dogmatic, repetitious, and a bore". He wrote that it describes "even modest harms inflicted via groupthink—e.g., dropped theater projects, flagging book sales, condemnatory tweets—as 'serious adversity'", arguing that various authors in Quillette engage in the same victim mentality that they attempt to criticize.[24]

In a Daily Beast article, Alex Leo described Quillette as "a site that fancies itself intellectually contrarian but mostly publishes right-wing talking points couched in grievance politics".[25]

Podcasts

Quillette publishes two podcasts, including an eponymous podcast that began in 2018. A second podcast called Wrongspeak launched in May 2018. It is hosted by Quillette associate editor Jonathan Kay and Debra W. Soh. Wrongspeak is about "the things we believe to be true but cannot say".[26][16]

Guests have included Jordan Peterson, Coleman Hughes, James Damore, Lindsay Shepherd, Susan Bradley, Ed the Sock, Adrienne Batra, Steven Pinker, Bill Kristol, Michael Shermer, Matthew Goodwin, Irshad Manji, Sir Roger Scruton, Claire Fox, Francis Fukuyama, Peter Boghossian, Douglas Murray, Brian C. Kalt, and David Frum.[27][28][29]

References
  1. "Who We Are". Quillette. June 27, 2018. Archived from the original on October 2, 2018. Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  2. "About". Quillette. Archived from the original on October 2, 2018. Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  3. Lester, Amelia. "The Voice of the 'Intellectual Dark Web': Claire Lehmann's online magazine, Quillette, prides itself on publishing 'dangerous' ideas other outlets won't touch. How far is it willing to go?". Politico Magazine (November/December 2018). ISSN 2381-1595.
  4. Beauchamp, Zack (July 3, 2019). "The assault on conservative journalist Andy Ngo, explained". Vox. Archived from the original on August 7, 2019. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  5. Del Valle, Gaby (September 22, 2017). "Conservatives love playing the victim". The Outline. Archived from the original on September 23, 2017. Retrieved June 20, 2018. In an interview with Psychology Today last week, Claire Lehmann, the founder of the libertarian-leaning, academia-focused digital magazine Quillette, suggested that the website was a refuge from the political correctness and leftist bias that allegedly plague both academia and the mainstream media.
  6. Duke, Jennifer (May 1, 2019). "'Huge gap in the market': the local publisher winning where others won't tread". The Sydney Morning-Herald. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
  7. Lehmann, Claire (July 7, 2018). "From the Editor". Quillette. Archived from the original on October 1, 2018. Retrieved October 1, 2018. In French, a synonym for quillette is bouture d'osier, which is a type of wood off-cutting used to grow new trees. An off-cutting planted in the ground that grows into a tree – this seemed to me a great metaphor for an essay.
  8. Lester, Amelia. "The Voice of the 'Intellectual Dark Web': Claire Lehmann's online magazine, Quillette, prides itself on publishing 'dangerous' ideas other outlets won't touch. How far is it willing to go?". Politico Magazine (November/December 2018). ISSN 2381-1595. Contributors often shared Lehmann's interest in debunking the “blank slate” theory of human development, which postulates that individuals are largely products of nurture, not nature. But, Lehmann told me, it quickly grew beyond that topic. In "setting up a space where we could critique the blank slate orthodoxy," she says, Quillette "has naturally evolved into a place where people critique other aspects of what they see as left-wing orthodoxy.
  9. Weiss, Bari (May 8, 2018). "Opinion | Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2018. Other figures in the I.D.W., like Claire Lehmann, the founder and editor of the online magazine Quillette, and Debra Soh, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, self-deported from the academic track, sensing that the spectrum of acceptable perspectives and even areas of research was narrowing.
  10. Duke, Jennifer (May 1, 2019). "'Huge gap in the market': the local publisher winning where others won't tread". The Sydney Morning-Herald. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
  11. Bartlett, Tom (May 22, 2019). "Opinion: The Academy's New Favorite Hate-Read". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  12. Lenihan, Eoin (May 29, 2019). "It's Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders". Quillette. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  13. Burley, Shane; Ross, Alexander (June 19, 2019). "Opinion: What happened when I was the target of alt-right death threats". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 19, 2019. Retrieved June 19, 2019.
  14. Freedman, Aaron (August 16, 2019). "How the right wing fell for its own fables about the working class". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  15. Freedman, Aaron (August 8, 2019). "Exclusive: We Found Archie Carter". Jacobin. Retrieved August 9, 2019.
  16. Herzog, Katie (May 31, 2018). "Wrongspeak Is a Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas". The Stranger. Archived from the original on June 8, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2018. Most of the contributors are academics but the site reads more like a well researched opinion section than an academic journal.
  17. Dawkins, Richard [@RichardDawkins] (July 25, 2017). "Quillette, superb online magazine, stands up for the oppressed minority who value clarity, logic and objective truth" (Tweet). Retrieved October 2, 2018 – via Twitter.
  18. Pinker, Steven [@sapinker] (September 17, 2017). "The story behind Quillette, one of the most stimulating & original new web magazines" (Tweet). Retrieved October 2, 2018 – via Twitter.
  19. Young, Cathy (August 8, 2017). "Googler fired for diversity memo had legit points on gender". USA Today. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
  20. Matsakis, Louise; Koeblerand, Jason; Emerson, Sarah (August 7, 2017). "Here Are the Citations for the Anti-Diversity Manifesto Circulating at Google". Vice. Archived from the original on September 30, 2018. Retrieved June 20, 2018. The author also used news articles from outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, as well as smaller publications like libertarian magazine Quillette.
  21. Wilson, Jason (March 18, 2018). "How to troll the left: understanding the rightwing outrage machine". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 6, 2018. Retrieved June 20, 2018. Nevertheless, along with spreading the video, Ngo wrung from the evening an article for Quillette, a website obsessed with the alleged war on free speech on campus.
  22. Hanlon, Aaron (August 31, 2018). "Postmodernism didn't cause Trump. It explains him". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 30, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2018. In Quillette — an online magazine obsessed with the evils of 'critical theory' and postmodernism — Matt McManus reflects on 'The Emergence and Rise of Postmodern Conservatism.'
  23. Sullivan, Andrew (September 21, 2018). "America, Land of Brutal Binaries". New York. Retrieved October 3, 2018. As Claire Lehmann, the founding editor of the refreshingly heterodox new website Quillette has put it, 'the Woke Left has a moral hierarchy with white men at the bottom.'
  24. Engber, Daniel (January 8, 2019). "Free Thought for the Closed-Minded". Slate. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  25. Leo, Alex (March 23, 2019). "Quillette, Ben Shapiro, and the Myth of Conservative 'Facts'". Retrieved June 20, 2019.
  26. "Wrongspeak". Quillette. May 14, 2018. Archived from the original on September 28, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2018.
  27. "Wrongspeak Podcast". SoundCloud. Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  28. "Quillette Podcast on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved October 29, 2019.
  29. "Podcast Archives". Quillette. Retrieved October 29, 2019.
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