Quillette 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. 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".
History
Quillette was launched in October 2015 in Sydney, Australia, by Claire Lehmann. It is named after the French word "" which means a withy cutting planted so that it takes root—used here as a metaphor for an essay. Lehmann stated that Quillette was created with the aim of "setting up a space where we could critique the blank slate orthodoxy" – a theory ofhuman 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". 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. In August 2017, Quillette published an article written by four academics in support of James Damore's "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo. Quillette website was temporarily disabled. According to Lehmann, this was caused by a DDoS attack after publishing the piece. 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. 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. According to Shane Burley and Alexander Reid Ross, they and a number of other journalists received death threats after the claims were published. 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. The magazine retracted the article after the hoax was brought to their attention. According to leftist magazine Jacobin, the hoax brought Quillette fact-checking and editorial standards into question.
Reception
In an article for The Outline, writer Gaby Del Valle classifies Quillette as "libertarian-leaning", "academia-focused" and "a hub for reactionary thought." 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." In an opinion piece for USA Today, columnist Cathy Young describes Quillette as "libertarian-leaning". An article in Vice described Quillette as a "libertarian magazine". Writing for The Guardian, Jason Wilson describes Quillette as "a website obsessed with the alleged war on free speech on campus". Writing for The Washington Post, Aaron Hanlon describes Quillette as a "magazine obsessed with the evils of 'critical theory' and postmodernism". Writing for New Yorks column The Daily IntelligencerAndrew Sullivan describes Quillette as "refreshingly ". 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. 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".
