Quillette was 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. It has been described as libertarian-leaning,[2][3][4] "the right wing's highly influential answer to Slate"[5] as well as an "anti-PC soapbox."[6]
History
Quillette was founded in October 2015 in Sydney, Australia, by Claire Lehmann.[7]
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.[8] 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".[2][9]
In August 2017, Quillette published an article in which five academics expressed support for James Damore, author of the "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo. According to Politico, Quillette's website crashed because of the popularity of the article. Lehmann was told by her tech staff the cause may have been a DDoS attack.[1][10] In its profile of Quillette, Politico reported that Lehmann knew about the grievance studies affair before it was first reported in October 2018. In response, Quillette again published comments from five like-minded academics.[1][11]
In May 2019, Quillette published an article that alleged connections between antifa activists and national-level reporters who cover the far-right based on the accounts these reporters followed on Twitter.[12][13]Alexander Reid Ross and another journalist who were mentioned in the article said that they and other journalists received death threats after the claims were published.[13]
In August 2019, Quillette published a hoax article titled "DSA Is Doomed" submitted by an anonymous writer claiming to be a construction worker named Archie Carter who was critical of the organisation Democratic Socialists of America.[14] The magazine retracted the article after the hoax was brought to its attention. According to socialist magazine Jacobin, the hoax brought Quillette's fact-checking and editorial standards into question.[15]
Quillette has published articles supporting the "human biodiversity movement" (HBM),[16][17] which attempts to reintroduce ideas from eugenics and scientific racism into the mainstream.[18][19] HBM refers to beliefs that human behaviors are impacted by inherited genes, and certain predispositions are unique to certain ethnic groups.[19][20] Authors who published articles in Quillette supporting these claims include Bo Winegard, Ben Winegard, John Paul Wright, and Brian Boutwell.[20][21][22]Quillette published articles supporting Noah Carl.[19][20]
Reception
In an article for The Outline, writer Gaby Del Valle classifies Quillette as "libertarian-leaning", "academia-focused" and "a hub for reactionary thought."[2] 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".[23] In an opinion piece for USA Today, columnist Cathy Young describes Quillette as "libertarian-leaning".[3] An article in Vice described Quillette as a "libertarian magazine".[4]
Politico and Vox reported that Quillette has been associated with the "intellectual dark web", a term used, according to Politico, to describe "a loose cadre of academics, journalists and tech entrepreneurs who view themselves as standing up to the knee-jerk left-leaning politics of academia and the media."[1][24] Writing for The New York Times, Bari Weiss referred to Claire Lehmann as a figure in the "intellectual dark web".[1][25]
Writing for The Guardian, Jason Wilson describes Quillette as "a website obsessed with the alleged war on free speech on campus".[26] Writing for The Washington Post, Aaron Hanlon describes Quillette as a "magazine obsessed with the evils of 'critical theory' and postmodernism".[27]
Writing for New York magazine's column The Daily IntelligencerAndrew Sullivan described Quillette as "refreshingly heterodox" in 2018.[28]
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".[29] 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 criticise.[29] In an article for The Daily Beast, writer Alex Leo described Quillette as "a site that fancies itself intellectually contrarian but mostly publishes right-wing talking points couched in grievance politics".[30]
^ abcDel Valle, Gaby (22 September 2017). "Conservatives love playing the victim". The Outline. Archived from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 20 June 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.
^ abMatsakis, Louise; Koeblerand, Jason; Emerson, Sarah (7 August 2017). "Here Are the Citations for the Anti-Diversity Manifesto Circulating at Google". Vice. Archived from the original on 30 September 2018. Retrieved 20 June 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.
^Thielman, Sam (2019). "Villains". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
^Holly High and Joshua Reno. "Actually existing anarchist anthropology," in Holly High and Joshua Reno (eds.), As if already free: Anthropology and Activism after David Graeber (pp. 79-95). London: Pluto Press: 2023), p. 89.
^Lehmann, Claire (7 July 2018). "From the Editor". Quillette. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 1 October 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.
^ abcRichards, Imogen; Jones, Callum (2021). "Quillette, classical liberalism, and the international New Right". Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy. London: Routledge. pp. 126–127. ISBN978-1003105176.
^Herzog, Katie (31 May 2018). "Wrongspeak Is a Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas". The Stranger. Archived from the original on 8 June 2018. Retrieved 2 October 2018. Most of the contributors are academics but the site reads more like a well researched opinion section than an academic journal.
^Weiss, Bari (8 May 2018). "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 May 2018. Retrieved 1 October 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.
^Hanlon, Aaron (31 August 2018). "Postmodernism didn't cause Trump. It explains him". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 30 September 2018. Retrieved 2 October 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.'
^Sullivan, Andrew (21 September 2018). "America, Land of Brutal Binaries". New York. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 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.'
