I Googled it and wasn’t able to find anything terribly interesting. From a brief look at the Wikipedia page I can’t find anything unusual, other than the most recent vandalism:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/102963491...

... which isn’t exactly terribly substantiated on its own.

Furthermore, unless this opinion piece is demonstrably in bad faith I dunno why that would detract from viewing it in a fair light.

The article isn't a study or something that needs institutional credibility, it's just an opinion piece. Anyone interested can just read it and decide what they think of it.

I don't know the background - tell me more.

Also, your comment comes across as an ad hominem attack, not sure if I'm just misreading it though.

It was created to promulgate extremist Christian-right propaganda - the kind that is "un-heard" in the mainstream media in the UK apparently.

There are a lot of such organizations that don't openly declare their ideological background, and funding sources.

Can you cite that UnHerd was founded by and funded by “extremist Christian-right propaganda” forces? Considering that its executive editor has frequently featured commentators who are downright anti-religion (e.g. Richard Dawkins), and various commentators who subscribe to old-school 20th-century leftism including its antipathy to religion, that is a claim hard to believe.

So I search google for "undherd Richard Dawkins", first link:

https://unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richar...

"Why the atheists turned on Dawkins - They care more about social justice than whether or not God exists"

Written by: Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic Herald....

Ben Sixsmith is neither a leader or founder of UnHerd, so even if he’s a Christian Right voice whose writing they’ve carried, that hardly cobtradicts the claim that they are diverse and that they don’t focus on Christian Right content, carrying much from sides opposing thst viewpoint.

Also, as Christian but pro-secular-politics left-leaning person, I think the statement you quote as an example of far right Christian propaganda is...just literal factual truth; the negative reactions to Dawkins in some parts of the atheist community is about social justice trumping shared identity around belief in the nonexistence of God.

A current tactic of the Christian-right is to enter into alliances with people they would otherwise despise (radical feminists, "scienceologists" like Dawkins) on certain shared causes which are even more important to them - the bonding cause currently is opposing transgenderism. Dawkins happens to be transphobic - he even lost awards over it.

> A current tactic of the Christian-right is to enter into alliances with people they would otherwise despise (radical feminists, "scienceologists" like Dawkins) on certain shared causes which are even more important to them

Maybe this is just a story you've concocted to explain away evidence that contradicts your predetermined conclusions about who believes what?

Yet at the same time, there is this [0] posted by a higher-ranking staff member. That you have found an article written by a contributor who has also written for a Catholic publication does not served as proof of your claim in the GP that UnHerd was founded to push “extremist Christian propaganda” – the whole point of UnHerd is that it draws on writers from a range of ideological outlooks.

And FWIW, the idea mentioned in these links that early-millennium New Atheism eventually evolved into the current wave of social-justice activism, is something that has been often set forth by people here on HN and is not exclusive to any particular religious or anti-religious viewpoint.

[0] https://unherd.com/thepost/richard-dawkins-scientism-is-a-di...

> the whole point of UnHerd is that it is includes people from a range of ideological outlooks.

You keep saying that. Let's like at some random headlines from their "contributors" page:

> Ideology should not trump children’s health (anti-trans)

> France’s mega-mosque problem

> The emptiness of ‘British values’

> The death of American patriotism

> The problem with male feminists

> Universities have destroyed feminism

> Can Labour be saved from the hard Left?

> Labour isn’t working

> Why liberals are scared of football

> Is Labour dead?

> America attracts the wrong immigrants

Again, the whole point of UnHerd is that it includes people from a range of ideological outlooks, who ordinarily would be opposed to one another, because they share some concerns and can forge a common cause in publishing.

None of the headlines that you cite are specific to “extremist Christian-right propaganda”, indeed these are themes are commonly discussed by those who identify as leftist and unreligious, but feel that certain things that are presently insisted on in leftism as de rigeur, are not part of the leftist tradition they recognize from a few decades back. For example, with regard to being “anti-trans”, there are a lot of soixante-huitards who find the current focus on trans activism on the left excessive and even problematic, because it was utterly foreign to their struggle against rightist forces.

You have still not brought forth any proof of your claim above that UnHerd was founded and funded expressly for “extremist Christian-right propaganda” purposes. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to back up that claim, or retract it.

> includes people from a range of ideological outlooks, who ordinarily would be opposed to one another, because they share some concerns and can forge a common cause in publishing

LOL normally when people say "includes people from a range of ideological outlooks", they usually mean so they present a range of ideological viewpoints. What you actually mean is so they can present a single ideological viewpoint, how counter-intuitive.

> None of the headlines that you cite are specific to “extremist Christian-right propaganda”

Anti-islmam, anti-feminist, anti-left, anti-immigrant, anti-trans...gosh what was I thinking! It's true the headlines are not overtly religious...but I never that was the case. Propaganda is often subtle so it can hide it's true nature and purpose and origin.

> You have still not brought forth any proof of your claim above that UnHerd was founded and funded expressly for “extremist Christian-right propaganda” purposes

Websites that take up the anti-trans cause are either secular radical feminist or Christian-right. Let's look up the founder of unherd shall we? (you probably guessed I already knew this).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Montgomerie

> Montgomerie was born into an army family in Barnstaple in 1970.[7][8] He said in a Guardian interview[9] that "his teenage Thatcherism was tempered by discovering evangelical Christianity at sixteen".

I guess it's not the radical feminist kind.

People are capable on judging an argument on its own merits. After all, if you don't think HN readers possess that capability, why bother associating with the commentariat on this website?

A sizable number are never going to read the article or judge its merits. Instead they'll click an arrow based on whether the title matches their biases. "Yup, people I don't like have psychological issues..."

For the few that might it is generally worth knowing whether it's actually worth the time. If the writer is someone considered and knowledgeable, on a credible venue, for instance. I know nothing about this site/writer so I'm not commenting on that, but generally that is an input before one spends the time on an essay.

I guess it'd argue you can't judge an argument on its own merits unless it's a philosophical argument.

For example the best published scientific studies can't be judged on their own merits because you have to trust that the scientists actually conducted the studies and didn't fake the data. So you basically have to fall back to some assumption over whether the scientist is honest, not on the merits of what they wrote in the study.