The Finest Minds Retardia Has to Offer. We Are So Sorry.
Throughout its storied and deeply questionable history, Retardia has produced a remarkable collection of individuals. Each one has contributed something to the nation — whether that contribution was welcome is a matter of ongoing debate.
Sovereign of the Lower Right, Defender of the Obvious, Grand Inquisitor of Woke Marxism
Once a mathematician of modest promise, James Lindsay discovered that 'woke ideology' was secretly a Gnostic Marxist plot approximately fifteen minutes after nobody bought his atheism books. He has since dedicated his life to explaining, at extraordinary length, that everything — critical race theory, drag shows, library science, sourdough — is in fact the same communist conspiracy wearing a different hat. His podcast New Discourses has published over 400 episodes, each one discovering the same conspiracy for the first time. He co-authored fake academic papers to expose the corruption of grievance studies, then became grievance studies. He now sees Gnosticism everywhere, including, one suspects, in the mirror.
Prophet of Personal Responsibility, Professional Reasonable Person
Konstantine Kisin arrived in Britain from Russia and promptly declared himself the last sane man in the West. A comedian by training — a fact his material increasingly struggles to support — he rose to fame on the strength of a single Oxford Union speech in which he told students that success requires effort, a revelation that the audience received as though Moses had descended from Sinai. He co-hosts TRIGGERnometry, a podcast dedicated to platforming people who are definitely not controversial while being very controversial, in the name of free speech. He describes himself as a liberal. His guests describe themselves as persecuted. Both are doing very well financially.
Master of Street Epistemology, Resigned in Protest (from Everything)
Peter Boghossian was a philosophy professor at Portland State University until he resigned in a dramatic open letter, having spent years making his institution's life difficult and then expressing surprise at the frostiness of the reception. He pioneered 'Street Epistemology,' a technique for changing people's minds by asking them questions on camera until they look confused, then uploading it to YouTube. He co-authored the grievance studies hoax papers, which proved that peer review can be gamed — a finding he applied exclusively to fields he already disliked. He now runs workshops teaching people to have conversations, which is a thing he is professionally unable to do.
Director of Counterweight, Author of Very Long Essays, Last True Liberal
Helen Pluckrose describes herself as a liberal humanist, which in practice means she spends most of her time explaining why the left has gone too far while maintaining plausible deniability about where she has ended up. She co-authored 'Cynical Theories,' a book about how postmodern ideas have corrupted academia, written in a style that suggests postmodern ideas may have had a point about readability. She runs Counterweight, an organisation that helps people push back against diversity initiatives, which she insists is not a right-wing project, from her position on an increasing number of right-wing panels. Her essays are thorough, well-cited, and approximately 11,000 words longer than necessary.
Former True Believer, Current True Believer, Professional Escapee
Keri Smith was a committed social justice activist until she wasn't, at which point she wrote a Medium post about it that went viral and has been writing the same Medium post ever since. Her personal journey from woke progressive to anti-woke progressive is documented in granular detail across every platform, each retelling adding new layers of persecution and revelation. She describes the social justice movement as a cult with eerie accuracy, apparently without noticing that the community she joined to escape it has its own vocabulary, its own orthodoxies, its own heretics, and its own very strong feelings about who is and isn't thinking correctly. She is currently in excellent standing.
Seer of Things Already Known
The Oracle refuses to give their name on the grounds that names are a construct of the material world, which they have transcended. They accept payment in the material world, however. Their prophecies are delivered in a tone that implies you should already know this, and concern events that have typically already occurred.