The Skeptic community is coming apart. This could be attributed to drama between individuals, to a frustration in the differences between goals and achievements, or general tension created by outside sources like the YouTube ad revenue changes. However, I think an interesting area of division is under the political philosophies of the divisions.
If you know anything about American history you may know that in the past the South was almost entirely democrats. This is far from today where the South is exclusively republican with the exception of racial minorities. This is due to what can be described as “party switching”. It is not so much that the policies of the democratic party have been the same since then, it is the case that intuitively the members of the party determine the policies. Thus we can see that although parties may retain the same names, their policies and even fundamental philosophies can change in a matter of generations or as of late years with the rate of information spreading.
A useful way to frame the divide in the skeptic community is to look at it as the progression of the democratic party by decade. In the 80’s America’s the presidents of the time were Reagan and George Bush senior. Opposing these neoconservatives the left at this time adopted a very Anti-“Christian Right” stance. It is understandable, the right of today has even rejected the stupidity of creationism, and the politically incoherent stance of political events being done by God(people being elected or not based on the will of God rather than voters). The main focuses for you to take away from this time is an Anti-“Christian right” stance(a propensity to atheism) and a disdain for Reaganomics which manifests as a desire for market intervention to both punish large corporations and “help” the working class.
During the 90’s in America we had the later part of the Bush senior administration and the entirety of the Clinton administration. During this time we had the birth of the grunge movement. Interestingly enough also the first surge in Social Justice ideology. Very much the attitude was anti-establishment, but even further than that. It was a rejection of tradition, religion, and moralities. This would be the first time that progressivism took a solid hold in the left. It was clear by the fall of the soviet union and the failure of the communal systems attempted in the 60’s and 70’s, that the allure of communism’s “liberation of the working class from capitalist exploitation” was not able to persuade the American public. However, what did ring with the American public was a prominent “Anti-racism” stance. The people were not convinced that businessmen were the enemies of workers. However, black minorities happily accepted the narrative that despite the formal laws that oppressed them being removed, that subtle unseen racism by whites was the cause of their declining economic situation.”Racists divide us. People of color have not been liberated because the racism that created Jim Crow in the first place still lingers in the minds of people who enacted them.” What to take away from this era is the transition from nearly entirely economic concerns to a racial discrimination lens to explain economic disparity and an increase in the rejection of tradition, not only an attitude of “get rid of what doesn’t work” but a dogma of “the institutions of the past are evil and must be destroyed.”
After this point we can lump the rest as various shades and swaths of Social Justice Warrior. These were so radical that the 80’s and 90’s liberals were even appalled. Thus the skeptic community coalesced. Their core principles were things like anti-collectivism, atheism, anti-traditionalism, anti-racism, economic protections for the working class, increased social spending, etc. Funnily, it was not to their advantage. The anti-collectivist stance made them, even to this day, very staunchly hostile to the notion of coming to a consensus or using social pressure to reinforce and project a unified message. Their group cohesion depended on a very libertarian notion of individualist self-interest, “I will only be involved with you if it benefits me.” It is still very early, but based on your point of view, the war against Social Justice has been won. In common language most young people know what Social Justice Warriors are and disagree with them. They still need to be removed from institutions, but that takes time more than anything, decades even. With the war with Social Justice beaten according to some, in particular the 90’s progressives. With them they do not want things like punishment for whites or reparations to non-whites, but what they do want is a racial agenda to specifically ensure the equality of non-whites to whites. They may tell you, “We want equality, meaning equality of opportunity.” However, they want equity. Because of their anti-racist stance, if all the races in a society are given equal opportunities and other races aren’t suppressing them in someway, then on average equity is achieved. However, this is not the case in reality. When other races do not achieve a similar result despite getting the same opportunities and as far as a cursory examination can ascertain there is no racism holding them back, and the primary indicator of this discrepancy has the highest correlation along with race, the 90’s progressives cannot accept this and start to create narratives and theories of internal biases that must be eliminated. Contrasted with the pre-90’s liberals, if there is equal opportunity even if all cases fail miserably, then it is each individual’s fault for their own failures.
You must understand this crucial difference. The pre-90’s liberals are concerned as far as race goes, to remove explicit structural roadblocks based on race, if they fail after that then too bad. With the 90’s progressives, if the structural racism is removed and the results do not improve or the disparity completely dissolved, then there must be subtle racism in society that must be gotten rid of. This is the source of the divide. The progressives cannot tolerate an opposition to their anti-racism stance, because this is confirmation that their narrative that there is implicit racism in society that they must destroy. The liberals don’t want any explicit structural institutions that are racist, but also don’t want any explicit structural institutions that combat and suppress implicit, subtle, or personal racism. We can see why the skeptic community is dividing. The liberals only wanted to combat the Social Justice Warriors because they were realistically projecting race based structural institutions into politics. The progressives wanted to do that too, however they want to go a step further and create institutions that openly combat race based biases. With the rise of the Alt-right, the liberals rightly so, do not see a realistic projecting of implementing race based structures or institutions they advocate for. However, the progressives see the open and honest advocating of racism as a direct threat to their core philosophy and a completely unacceptable thing within the political discourse.
I reached out to members on both sides of the split. Sargon of Akkad aka. Carl Benjamin[ https://www.youtube.com/user/SargonofAkkad100 ] who is a “Classical Liberal” who is on the liberal side of my framing of the divide gave this comment on the schism, “It is yet one more purity test in a sea of moral self-aggrandisement. Hard work is self-evident and self-justifying…” Those whom I attempted to contact on the progressive side did not reply. A very clear point of contention in the community is over the drama between the youtubers Sargon of Akkad and Spinosauruskin. The complaints of spino and the progressives being that Sargon and the liberals do not criticize and attack the right enough. The groups may or may not realize the philosophical basis of these complaints, but even if they did, they would not save the skeptic community for the only thing that held them together was the mutual benefit of standing together against the same enemy. With that enemy changed, with one part considering it an enemy just as bad as the previous, and the other not considering it an enemy worth the time to do a serious campaign the progressive group understandably gets outraged at a perceived betrayal of what they believed was a shared principle. The liberal group responding understandably mad at a perceived purity spiral by the other group, “I never agreed with everything you believe, we don’t have to agree on everything.” If you saw the skeptic community as some kind of ideal, know it never was. It was doomed to fail by virtue of its own principles, the circumstances it came about, and the political climate in which it splits.