The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
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Overview

Alternative media outlets of the Left and Right have become a crucial supplement to our knowledge of the world, providing those perspectives usually ignored by our mainstream media. This small webzine will aim to provide convenient access to at least a fraction of those voices and topics.

Masthead

  • Editor-in-Chief and Publisher: Ron Unz
  • National Security Editor: Philip Giraldi

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Boilerplate

Mission Statement

For decades I have spent a couple of hours every morning carefully reading The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and several other major newspapers. But although such a detailed study of the American mainstream media is a necessary condition for remaining informed about our world, it is not sufficient. With the rise of the Internet and the alternative media, every thinking individual has increasingly recognized that there exist enormous lacunae in what our media tells us and disturbing patterns in what is regularly ignored or concealed.

In April 2013 I published “Our American Pravda,” a major article highlighting some of the most disturbing omissions of our national media in issues of the greatest national importance. The considerable attention it attracted from The Atlantic, Forbes, and a New York Times economics columnist demonstrated that the mainstream journalists themselves were often all too aware of these problems, but perhaps found them too difficult to address within the confining structure of large media organizations. This reinforced my belief in the reality of the serious condition I had diagnosed.

In an attempt to partially remedy this disturbing situation I will be regularly publishing on this website a selection of the sort of interesting, important, and controversial perspectives that rarely if ever reach the pages of our major newspapers or the pixels of our television sets. The handful of columnists and bloggers whose work I am herein providing represent merely the smallest slice of the enormous range of unconventional ideas that lie just a mouse-click or a Google search away from each of us, and my particular selection is certainly not intended to be comprehensive. But over the years I have regularly read the writings of all these individuals and found their ideas stimulating and useful, and I believe that many others might have the same reaction.

This is not to say that I personally agree with all or even most of what these writers believe or claim. However, sometimes the most valuable insights are obtained by reading opinions sharply divergent from one’s own. Facing a sharp intellectual or ideological challenge forces us to more effectively frame our arguments and buttress the weaknesses in our logic and evidence that had previously remained unnoticed. Taking the measure of an effective critic is always more valuable than listening to a mindless echo. And I would always prefer reading something disturbing than something dull.

Ron Unz, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I republish the articles on this website?

The articles and columns that appear here are under legal copyright and the authors or their representatives have merely granted The Unz Review the right to publish them. The underlying copyrights are still controlled by the existing holders, and only they can authorize republication elsewhere.

Does The Unz Review stand behind all the controversial claims made in the articles it publishes?

Absolutely not! In any event, that would be a logical impossibility, since so many of the writers and their arguments directly contradict one another. Each reader must carefully weigh the logic and evidence backing the viewpoint of each author and decide for himself how much—or how little—of the material to accept. Thinking for yourself is difficult but necessary. However, as publisher of The Unz Review, I do fully stand behind my own past writings, and over the years the corpus of my work has grown to include numerous major articles across a wide range of topics presenting ideas at least as controversial as almost anything else published on this website. Here’s a lengthy list of these highly contentious articles, which certainly offer any angry critics as “target-rich” an environment as they could possibly desire:

Is The Unz Review “rightwing” or “leftwing”?

Neither and both. Many of the writers we publish are commonly regarded as having a very clear position on the political spectrum and often an extreme one. However, that is largely due to the misconception that ideological perspectives may usefully be measured along a simple, linear axis, and this is obviously false, with the space of such ideas actually having very high dimensionality. Furthermore, although mindless political automatons—or syndicated political hacks— may indeed often possess views that constitute an indivisible political package, received from some external media outlet, the thoughtful and courageous individuals we tend to publish often immune from such failings. They come to their own conclusions, and those conclusions rarely fall into a single, discrete political camp.

Who is Ron Unz?

I’m a theoretical physicist by training, with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Stanford University. In the late 1980s, I entered the financial services software industry, and soon founded Wall Street Analytics, Inc., a small but successful company in that field. A few years later, I became strongly involved in politics and public policy writing, and I have subsequently oscillated between software and public policy activities. Below are links to several major media profiles from the late 1990s, chronicling my activities to that point. I also served as publisher of The American Conservative, a small opinion magazine, from 2006 to 2013. Most recently, in late 2013 I launched an initiative campaign to raise the minimum wage to $12.00 per hour in California and the rest of the country, based on ideas I had previously published on the subject, and this is discussed in the linked New York Times article. Unfortunately, my campaign was unsuccessful, with more of the details available here.

Summary Biography of Ron Unz

Major Media Profiles TNR-Unz

Comments Policy

The Unz Review intends to moderate comments with a relatively light hand, believing that knowledge is best obtained through the open clash of conflicting ideas. However, comments and commentators that focus on topics unrelated to the article in question, who substantially indulge in profanities or personal attacks, or whose grammar or spelling constitutes an embarrassment may see their comments trashed; and advocating illegal activity is prohibited. Individuals should also avoid cluttering up threads with repetitious or completely non-substantive remarks; craft your comments carefully. Please avoid multiple, successive remarks on a given thread. Spending a bit more time and thought in order to produce a single, more comprehensive comment is much better for everyone.

Given the wide-ranging discussion, often on highly controversial topics, the overwhelming majority of commenters prefer to maintain their anonymity behind a personal “handle,” and this is perfectly acceptable. However, commenters are absolutely prohibited from using multiple handles, which would allow them to engage in “sock-puppetry” and mislead others as to the widespread nature of their views. Also, the system makes it easy for visitors to place particular commenters they find useless on their “Ignore” list and this cannot be done if those commenters are freely switching their handles. Commenters who utilize multiple handles should not be surprised if their shared identity is later revealed or all their commenters are relabeled “Anonymous.”

The system implements various automatic checks to discourage or prevent multiple identities, let alone attempts to “false-flag” another commenter by stealing his identity. Given that our website does not require password registration for commenting, these methods are hardly foolproof, but still reasonably effective. Commenters are urged to select the “Remember My Information” checkbox when they leave a comment, which will save their input values in a permanent cookie, reducing the strain on their memory. In addition, frequent commenters who have checked that box are allowed to leave Agree/Disagree/LOL/Troll indicators on other comments, though no more than once per hour.

Clicking a commenter’s handle-link will provide access to a complete archive of all comments under that handle, allowing other commenters to better judge the views of the individual in question. This mechanism allows commenters to gradually develop a “reputation,” which they would put at risk by ignorant or unfair comments.

However, any commenter may also freely leave comments under the Anonymous/Anon handles, which are absolutely anonymous. But such totally anonymous comments may easily be misused for back-biting or malicious, unfair attacks on others, and should be taken much less seriously than comments that come “have a return address,” perhaps coming from individuals with established credibility.

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