During the 1990's and especially the early 2000's there was a kind of "mini-age of enlightenment" period going on, with many very famous an popular secular skeptic philosophers and scientist influencers making a quite great impact on western society as a whole by bringing up to the public consciousness a more rational logical evidence-based thinking that exposed the fallacies of religion and pseudoscience.
This is what has been called the "New Atheism" movement. Philosophical and scientific rational skeptic heavy-hitters like the great Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett ("the four hosemen" of skepticism") and many others were getting the spotlight on televised debates, discussions, interviews and so on. Their goal was to bring rationality, logical thinking and scientific skepticism to the wider public, to raise awareness of the fallacies of pseudoscience and religion, and why not only do they logically fail but are in fact detrimental to society and humanity.
This "New Atheism" movement raised to its peak somewhere around 2007, when "The Four Horsemen" held a broadcasted debate, which gained much attention and popularity, and it really boosted the notion of rational skepticism into the public consciousness.
Today, in the decade of the 2020's, you don't hear about them or these ideas and this movement almost anywhere anymore. Very rarely is the subject brought up in television and publications. While in 2007-2010 the amount of rational skeptic YouTube videos exploded, nowadays you'll be hard pressed to find any.
What happened to it? What killed it?
The answer is quite clear: The social justice ideology killed it, and it killed it so badly that almost nobody has been interested in it for like a half decade now, and almost nobody is bringing up the subject and the discussions anymore.
The main problem with scientific rational skepticism is that it's highly academic. Which means that it's centered in and mainly originates from the cradles of scientific epistemology, ie. universities. And since universities have been completely taken over by a totalitarian fascist sociopolitical ideology that's utterly unscientific and puts politics ahead of everything else and forces everything to submit to its politics at gunpoint, it's no wonder that it very quickly killed the "New Atheism" rational skepticism movement that was gaining traction.
The main problem with the social justice ideology is that it doesn't stand scrutiny, it doesn't stand criticism, it doesn't stand skepticism. In many aspects it's highly unscientific, engaging in blatant pseudoscience in many aspects (eg. when it comes to biology). It also absolutely and categorically cannot allow any form of dissent or opposing opinions.
Thus, as the social justice ideology quickly took over universities and converted them into social justice activism indoctrination and training camps (which is not an exaggeration or hyperbole, as more and more social justice professors are starting to openly and unashamedly admit and promote the idea), the rational skepticism had no place in its area of influence (which at increasing rates has been the entirety of society).
A big part of the "New Atheism" movement was completely overtaken by social justice political ideology, even to the point that many of its members relegated the main impetus of the movement, ie. atheism, to the background and put identity politics on the forefront. In fact, so much so that a good portion of this new revamped "social justice atheism" stopped and discouraged the criticism of most religions, most prominently Islam. (Indeed, many members of this social-justice-infested "atheist" community tread on eggshells when dealing with Islam, and a few even openly discouraged any sort of criticism of it.)
Unsurprisingly, the majority of this new "social justice atheism" movement was absolutely tyrannical, totalitarian and oppressive, forcing all members of their community to submit to the identity politics or face shunning, discrimination and harassment.
A small portion of the old "New Atheism" movement remained apolitical and even skeptical of the social justice ideology, and has been under constant attack and been the target of harassment campaigns by the "tolerant" far left, especially from the academia.
But all in all, the social justice ideology, which completely took over universities, the media and most of society, successfully smothered and killed the once-thriving "New Atheism" movement. As mentioned earlier, the mainstream media rarely talks about it anymore, rarely interviews the people involved, rarely raises awareness of these ideas. YouTubers who used to make copious amounts of videos on the subject in 2010 have either stopped, have become insufferable social justice bigots who can't shut up about it and rarely criticize religions anymore, or alternatively have become anti-SJWs who likewise don't make any secular-skeptical videos anymore, but just talk about the social justice ideology and little else.
There exist a few such YouTubers who have held on, and still make videos dealing with pseudoscience and religion, but they tend to be relatively small channels (usually with subscriber counts in the low tens of thousands) without much visibility nor influence.
Also some of the original big philosophers and scientists are out there, still trying to promote rational thinking, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who have not succumbed to the indoctrination, harassment and discrimination, but they have been mostly silenced to the point that they have not much reach except among their most avid fans.
Is it any wonder that irrational thinking has been on the raise during the past decade or so?
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