James A. Lindsay

James Stephen Lindsay, born 8 June 1979, known professionally as James A. Lindsay, is an American author and cultural critic. He is known for the grievance studies affair, in which he, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose submitted hoax articles to academic journals in 2017 and 2018 to test scholarship and rigor in several academic fields. Lindsay has written several books including Cynical Theories (2020), which he co-authored with Pluckrose.

James A. Lindsay in 2022

Quotes

• [About giving in during a struggle session:] To betray yourself or others is to give away some part of what makes you truly human. It is to dehumanize yourself. It is to cut off a piece of your soul, and that is the part of you that honors others, that makes relationships trustworthy and loyal. That's the part that makes you trustworthy instead of craven. So when you fail, you make yourself less trustworthy. If you betray somebody, everybody else see you betray somebody for your own skin. You're craven and you damage all of your relationships. You become less trustworthy as a person. It's the part of you that makes you loyal. [...] They make you give that away. They don't take it from you. Pay attention. They make you give it away. So that you debase and demoralize yourself. So that you cut yourself off from your social circles. So that you undermine your worthiness. And that demorizes others who are disappointed in you when they see it happen. You make yourself less trustworthy, less loyal, less human, so that you can escape a psychological pressure that they are putting on you.
  • "Surviving a Modern Struggle Session" (at 1h31m17s), New Discourses, 27 December 2022.

• Whether you're at the center or the periphery of a struggle session, you have to understand its dynamics, you have to understand its goals, and you have to understand what's going on. [...] It's so important to understand that we are in the midst of a Maoist insurgency against this country, against the West. These are its tactics, you can see who its players are, you can see how they work.
  • "Surviving a Modern Struggle Session" (at 2h17m28s), New Discourses, 27 December 2022.