Review: Michael Brooks' "Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right" (Patreon)

It's a little late in the year to be writing about a book that was published back in April. Arguably most of these short reviews have appeared out of place on my Patreon. But, y'know, I've been in a terrible place emotionally and work has gotten extremely difficult. A quick belated tribute to one of the left's better podcasters seems merited as we inch towards an Election Day poised increasingly towards hinging on a Supreme Court vote. So, y'know, let's honor our own who've died this year and learn what we can from them.Leftist political commentator Michael Brooks, host of his eponymous Michael Brooks Show and co-host of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, died three months ago of an unforeseen blood clot at the appalling age of 36. The accelerative pace of the past few months makes it both difficult to believe he's been gone that long and stunning that Brooks' death is so recent. On the hellscape that is YouTube, Brooks was a cathartically intelligent, informed, and funny voice for international justice, material history, and empathy. His political commentary was of a rare caliber for someone his age, although perhaps he was as notable for his analysis as his side-splitting impressions of Dave Rubin and other Intellectual Dark Web scrotum-atrophies who misrepresent themselves as intelligent and coherent speakers. Seriously, hop on YouTube and search for "Michael Brooks and Dave Rubin." Pick a video at random. You won't regret it. Brooks wasn't without his issues - his long-standing bone with "identity politics" is faintly tedious for a white cishet male impressionist, although his critique of capricious sectarianism on the Online Left holds some credence. And he was hardly the most radical person on The Majority Report - the brilliant Jamie Peck, co-host of her own show The Antifada, can blow her male colleagues' analyses out of the water with her canny grasp on radicalism, ideology, and how identities inform people's politics. Which is to say Brooks was about as good a Youtuber as you could expect: flawed but principled, tone-deaf at times but compassionate and righteously angry. The world is poorer without him.The fact Brooks' first and only book Against the Web as a solo author was published so shortly before his death is both comforting and discouraging. On the one hand, having his insights in print is a net good. I enjoyed reading it, almost to the point that I didn't feel guilty about buying from Zero Books when they've screwed over friends of mine and published Angela Nagle. Yet Against the Web also drives speculation about where Brooks' political project would have gone next, whether he'd have interviewed Brazil's Lula again, or what impersonations of lobster Mickey Mice we could have seen. Consequently, his book is more of a teaser for a lost future than a substantial work in its own right.By no means does that mean Against the Web isn't a worthwhile read. It's a brisk, fun, and robust little book that speeds along at its concise length of 82 pages. Brooks' charisma and sensibility on display in his web presence translates fluidly into his prose. He provides a punchy and amusing overview of the Intellectual Dark Web major "pro"tagonists, laying bare the hypocrisy and incoherence of crypto-far-right axioms. Why these axioms need prosaic debunking in 2020 is worth thinking about, but remember that figures like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson still hold public credence. Brooks rightfully goes after Harris for his defense of Murray and Hernstein's The Bell Curve, laying out the ridiculousness of Harris' claim that "the history is completely irrelevant" to IQ-based discussions of race and racism, raging against Harris for the sadism and pointlessness of his famous "thought experiment" about nuking the Middle East: "Whatever you think about the solutions to the Trolley Problems, you can see the point of the thought experiment. Two principles are being pitted against each other to test which one we think 'outranks' the other. But what's the point of Harris' 'thought experiment' on Muslim genocide? What concept is it supposed to clarify? What is it supposed to show us about how we should think?" Will Shaw could only have said it moderately better himself. Fans of TMBS and The Majority Report might be disappointed by how little attention Against the Web gives Dave Rubin, although Brooks explains in the first chapter that while "there will be some of that," but prudently rules that his goal is "a broader and more important project." The individual arguments of Jordan Peterson don't matter as such - no intelligent person is going to take seriously the pseudo-Jungian ramblings of an alcoholic who calls himself an evolutionary biologist despite a complete lack of qualifications in that field and believes that the ancient Egyptians knew about DNA. The fact Peterson's shtick, and that of other grifters like Harris or Rubin (and the literally always boring Ben Shapiro, to whom Brooks gives a lovely grilling), influences public discourse and precludes material suffering and historical analysis is a serious problem that gets people killed. Incels happen, but happening is an easier job for them when Peterson is doing in public spaces and saying that they deserve all the sex from women they want (while in the same breath disparaging "equality of outcome"). The proclivity of "Ideas" (the things Dave Rubin finds so overpowering that his emaciated hippocampus goes into "recovery mode" after he encounters them) isn't just some philosophical movement, although it is a uniquely shit one. It bolsters the status quo of neoliberal capitalism and mass repression of women and minorities that's become particularly exacerbated under Trump's quasi-fascist administration. The value of studying the individual thinkers of the IDW has its limits, but laying out where these viewpoints come from has value.The book has plenty of reasonable empathy for the sentiments that attract people to the IDW though. The extent of Brooks' empathy for these people is questionable (again, this is a white guy writing about other white guys), but by calling for analysis of "the material roots of the uptick in alienation and despair that fuels Peterson's book sales" he provides a convincing leftist call for redirecting energy towards helping people who need help. Brooks doesn't land the critique without issue - implicitly unacknowledged is the fact that the majority of incels who listen to Jordan Peterson are aggressive misogynists who've given up on trying to have a constructive conversation. Yet the noble gist of the call for empathy stands - some mental healthcare and education on gender would go a long way towards creating fewer murderous sexists. Brooks' approach to all this has its limits. He's weirdly silent on the parasociality of the IDW, which is odd - you'd think as a media-savvy podcaster himself he'd be all over that. The organization of right-wing movements and recent proliferation of far-right sentiment in the United States and focus on thinkers suggests a blindspot towards organization and media potency. It is a book about "eye-dee-uhz," after all, so the lack of primal etiology regarding the IDW is a bit of an issue (you might recall Talia Lavin covered this in much more depth).There's also the extent of Brooks' critique of identity politics, which tips into cishet Caucasian male cluelessness at times. While Brooks is broadly correct that there is a toxic and censorious air to much leftist and progressive discourse about mistakes, at times he come across as a slightly aggrieved white boy (a Jewish man, granted) who complains that the "woke" left goes after people for "having a sense of humor." Brooks by no means takes this all the way and suggests that overzealous bullies on the left are morally equivalent to the far-right fucks who go on record calling for mass extermination of black people, and he has plenty of time time for material analysis by women and POC, but the limits of his approach are still there.It's hard to begrudge Brooks for his weaknesses though. Even when he was wrong, his heart was clearly in the right place and fundamentally interested in abating human suffering. Against the Web is a fun defense of radical empathy, and yet it's also disheartening for how it signals the end of a promising career. "What the world needs to counter these [reactionary, capitalist, imperialist] forces is a renewed commitment to the kind of internationalist socialist politics embodied in the Freedom Charter," Brooks asserts at the end of the book. "This book has been my contribution to this cause."And so it has. It's a noble contribution. Rest in power, Michael Brooks.