Idea Laundering

Philosophy (Humanities), 2017

Getting a university or media outlet to publish your fiction so it appears less absurd than it is.

Analogous to money laundering, the concept of “laundering” radical ideas through academic ecosystems was first described as “the process of having a front group or industry-funded organization propose your idea as a way of giving it credibility” (Sourcewatch, 2004). It was later popularized through the 2018 “Grievance Studies” (“Sokal Squared”) hoax, where the social sciences yet again not only accepted a feminist version of Mein Kampf as one of 20 false journal papers, but refused others for not being extreme enough. A detailed discussion of the quasi-religious nature percolating underneath the hoax was given by James Lindsay in Areo article “Postmodern Religion and the Faith of Social Justice”.

• https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?&year_start=1950&year_end=2019&content=idea+laundering
• https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=idea+laundering
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NelsKQQDTxU
• https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-faith-of-social-justice/