Pinkerite vs. the wingnut welfare gang: Claire Lehmann, Cathy Young and Richard Hanania

Back when Claire Lehmann was on Bluesky she cheered my listing members of her goon squad, including Charles Murray, "Cremieux," and Bari Weiss.  

I recently discovered Lehmann also talked about it on Twitter/X with Richard Hanania and Cathy Young. 

Claire Lehmann, Cathy Young and Richard Hanania are on wingnut welfare.

As economist Paul Krugman wrote:

Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available.

Claire Lehmann founded Quillette ten years ago, and it's known that in addition to far-right Australian Mark Carnegie, Quillette has been funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel is a whacked-out religious fanatic who raves about "the antichrist" - they mocked him on South Park for that.

Cathy Young was one of the cheerleaders of the woman-hating mob known as "Gamergate." Her association with the Koch-funded, Ayn Rand-worshipping Reason Magazine goes back over 30 years.

Both Lehmann and Young harbor a deep hatred for women as a group. I discussed how they and the equally detestable Christina Hoff Sommers went apeshit over a short story that presented a male character in an unflattering way.

I think much of it was driven by jealousy. The author of the short story, "Cat Person," has never had to get her work into a publication based on how obedient she is to the wills of right-wing ghouls. Although to be fair, I don't think Lehmann, Young and Sommers express misogyny only because their paymasters demand it - I think they come by their gender-based self-hatred honestly.

Richard Hanania became fairly well-known in 2023 when it was revealed that he is a rabid white supremacist who got wingnut welfare from far-right billionaires. 

As Jamelle Bouie wrote in the NYTimes:

But more interesting than either Hanania — whose recent notoriety has not lifted him too far from his previous obscurity — or his rancid views are his backers. According to Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, Hanania’s organization, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, has received at least $700,000 in support through anonymous donations. He is also a visiting scholar at the Salem Center at the University of Texas at Austin — funded by Harlan Crow.

A whole coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have lent their time and attention to Hanania, as well as elevated his work. Marc Andreessen, a powerful venture capitalist, appeared on his podcast. David Sacks, a close associate of Elon Musk, wrote a glowing endorsement of Hanania’s forthcoming book. So did Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of right-wing causes and organizations. “D.E.I. will never d-i-e from words alone,” wrote Thiel. “Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon.” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, also praised the book as a “devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.”

The question to ask here — the question that matters — is: Why does an otherwise obscure racist have the ear and support of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley? What purpose, to a billionaire venture capitalist, do Hanania’s ideas serve?

Look back to our history, and the answer is straightforward. Just as in the 1920s (and before), the idea of race hierarchy works to naturalize the broad spectrum of inequalities and capitalist inequality in particular.

If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.

In other words, they hired Hanania to help promote race pseudoscience. Or more broadly, hereditarianism.

Harlan Crow also funded Bari Weiss.

Lately Hanania has been trying to present himself as a centrist. But it's only a thin veneer of bullshit - he truly loves his fellow racists, including Nathan Cofnas. Earlier this week he expressed his admiration for Cofnas.

Hanania could be seen promoting neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard on X/Twitter, a year after his white supremacist activities were revealed and he was presumably starting to build his centrist façade.

Hanania has made some progress in mainstreaming himself: the morons at the Boston Globe gave him a job. As if he needs the money with those racist billionaires supporting him.

I guess if I sold my soul to a pack of obscenely wealthy psychopaths, as Hanania, Lehmann and Young have done, I could get more traction. And I could make Pinkerite - an evil version of Pinkerite - a full-time career.

But in spite of my doing this blog in my spare time out of duty, rather than for dark money, my audience has increased over the years - do we call that traction? During September of this year, according to Blogger statistics, this blog received 256,925 views. 

To be sure, some of it is hate-reading - my most popular item is about that weirdo James Lindsay who sent his followers on Twitter to have a peek when it was first posted. Whatever happened to Lindsay? Oh right, he became so extreme that not even Claire Lehmann could stand him anymore. 

It looks like his current career is entirely based on the wingnut welfare provided by his long-time sugar daddy Michael O'Fallon. 

But back to Hanania - Christopher Mathias, who initially exposed Hanania's extremist career, isn't buying Hanania's centrist façade, and wrote a post about him a couple of months ago, including:

There is maybe a genuine debate to be had about where on the political spectrum a white nationalist can land to be considered a “former” white nationalist. I’d argue, however, that spending the last three years promoting a book—Hanania’s “The Origins of Woke”—which calls for overturning the advances won by the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, is not a sufficient act of atonement. The Trump administration in its second term has attacked the Civil Rights Act, with Hanania even taking credit for inspiring Trump to repeal Executive Order 11246, a directive requiring affirmative action when hiring federal contractors. 

Hanania's dead-lifting buddy Nathan Cofnas is on the record advocating for the overturn of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

If you are a regular reader of this blog you already know that Steven Pinker is a devout supporter of Richard Hanania. Because that's what racist weasels do.

More excellent work from John Oliver: on the Neo-nazification of the Republican Party

 

Nick Fuentes of course has a connection to neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard.

Turkheimer: "Race science is useless"

Turkheimer's name appeared on this blog a few weeks ago in my post Kathryn Paige Harden and the race war manifesto of Nathan Cofnas. I quoted neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard expressing appreciation for Turkheimer and Harden as mainstreamers of hereditarianism via behavioral genetics. Although Kirkegaard did express regret that their hereditarianism had not yet made them racists.

While I think Turkheimer's support for aspects of hereditarianism is wrong, I do appreciate him stepping up to oppose race pseudoscience, as he did recently in a talk at UPenn, which was published on YouTube.

Smart Answers to Stupid Comments About Slavery from Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie is indirectly responsible for this blog - he linked to my personal blog when he was objecting to Razib Khan being hired by the NYTimes - the NYT backed down after Khan's long history of racism (even longer now) was publicized. 

Although Khan at one point claimed his "cancellation" was no big deal, more recently he has expressed his hatred for Bouie. And again just a couple of days ago.

Khan's racist allies Jesse Singal and Steve Sailer are also still bitter.

And about Michael Tracey pretending he fears for his life from a remark by Bouie - Tracey has a history of downplaying fears over the violent insurrection attempt on January 6. 

Tracey is trying to dox the victim of the Cornell gang-rape but - and you knew this was coming:

In 2019, Tracey criticized an article by Kevin Poulsen in The Daily Beast, which revealed the identity and criminal history of a man who had allegedly created a modified video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that made her appear drunk. 

But shameless hypocrisy is absolutely standard for the race pseudoscience and right-wing ghoul brigade, from Steven Pinker on down.

I'm happy to have a chance to provide a video by Bouie on a subject connected to the mission of this blog.

HIGH TREASON - impeach, remove, arrest

 Never forget that the filthy degenerate Republican Party supports this traitor 100%. The party of pure evil.

VOTE THEM ALL OUT.

Trump suggests Iran could ‘take out’ Los Angeles or San Diego

At a rally in ruby red Nebraska on Monday night, Trump told supporters that he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the fast-approaching November midterm elections. He then suggested high prices due to the war with Iran were a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.

“They can take out a city,” Trump said in Grand Island. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The crowd applauded.

Kathryn Paige Harden and the race war manifesto of Nathan Cofnas

I hadn't paid much attention to racist Nathan Cofnas on this site prior to his Jason Arday campaign. So I wasn't aware, until recently, of Cofnas' race war manifesto "A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution."

"Hereditarian" is a term used for those who believe that an important aspect of human socio-economic hierarchies is genetics. So, for example if you have good genes, you're on top. 

Cofnas' Guide is a political manifesto justified by race pseudoscience, which is a major branch of hereditarianism. The Guide suggests that "woke" can be fought by striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and re-segregating society. 

Yes, that would be completely impossible without a dictatorship of Nazi proportions. And if Cofnas was just some random kook with Fourth Reich fantasies it wouldn't matter much. But hereditarianism is not a belief only held by those on the far-right fringes. This is a belief that has been promoted by celebrity academics, most prominently by American author and psychologist Kathryn Paige Harden, described by Steven Pinker as a "left-leaning hereditarian;" and by British scientist and media personality Adam Rutherford. 

Celebrity hereditarians

Rutherford and Harden attempt to distance themselves from race pseudoscience, but it is built on hereditarianism. The pseudo-scientific belief that Black people are genetically inferior is known as the "hereditarian hypothesis."

Steven Pinker is also an hereditarian, but he is lower-key these days in his promotion of hereditarianism than Rutherford and Harden. Pinker published his own hereditarian manifesto The Blank Slate 24 years ago but since then his primary strategy is to claim he is opposed to racism, while simultaneously promoting the careers of an endless-seeming parade of rightwing political operatives who also happen to be extreme racists, from Steve Sailer to Richard Hanania. And of course appearing on neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard'a Aporia podcast. 

Yesterday Pinker could be seen demonstrating his dedication to race pseudoscience by contributing yet again to the far-right racist Peter Thiel-funded shitrag Quillette.

Pinker, Rutherford and Harden are important nodes in the international hereditarian network because they use their respectability and celebrity to promote hereditarianism in the name of behavioral genetics.

And they will not respond to questions about their hereditarian claims nor their connections to race pseudoscience, preferring instead to block and insult critics.

Perhaps they are so hostile to critics because even Harden, Pinker and Rutherford are dimly aware that behavioral genetics is basically evolutionary psychology under a layer of genetic test "associations." I listed some of the problems the field has in the ninth part of my "What happened to Adam Rutherford" series. 

There are some who think the entire field is on the verge of collapse. Jay Joseph, in his essay Behavioral Genetics on the Brink says:

...DNA-based research failure provides additional evidence that the critics of twin studies, adoption studies, and the heritability concept were right all along. As the behavioral genetic paradigm unravels, the social and behavioral sciences should begin working on a new post-behavioral genetics developmental paradigm.

But Harden is such a true believer in hereditarianism that she compared those who refuse to accept the claims of behavioral genetics to criminals. She was praised in the white supremacist publication American Renaissance for that:

And yet, she denounces those who ignore genes in stronger terms than Dr. Murray is ever likely to have used:

It’s stealing. It’s stealing people’s time when researchers work to churn out critically flawed scientific papers, and other researchers chase false leads that will go nowhere. It’s stealing people’s money when taxpayers and private foundations support policies premised on the shakiest of causal foundations.

Bravo for Prof. Harden. Let her words ring out throughout the social sciences and in the halls of government.

Nathan Cofnas acknowledges Harden's usefulness to his cause by dropping her name into the last paragraph of his hereditarian race war manifesto (my highlight):

But race realism crumbles a central pillar of our moral–political system. Widespread acceptance of hereditarianism, especially among the elites, will undermine the reigning left–liberal order as we know it. Initially, many individuals will follow Kathryn Paige Harden’s lead and cling to the old value system even after the empirical claims that undergirded it are shown to be wrong. In the long run the Harden approach will be unsuccessful. When race realism is accepted, our cultural values will change. A new equilibrium will arise.

Cofnas does not mention Harden anywhere else in his manifesto. No doubt he assumes his target audience does not need an introduction: the race pseudoscience network celebrated the article written by Gideon Lewis-Krauss in The New Yorker, promoting Harden's first book "The Genetic Lottery. " Lewis-Krauss summarizes the book:

...Harden argues that an appreciation of the role of simple genetic luck—alongside all the other arbitrary lotteries of birth—will make us, as a society, more inclined to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy lives of dignity and comfort. She writes, “I think we must dismantle the false distinction between ‘inequalities that society is responsible for addressing’ and ‘inequalities that are caused by differences in biology.’ ” She cites research showing that most people are much more willing to support redistributive policies if differences in opportunity are seen as arbitrarily unfair—and deeply pervasive.

But the social safety net alluded to here already exists in many countries, without the justification of behavioral genetics. So Harden's attempt at promoting compassion through hereditarianism is at best useless, and at worst, well we see how Cofnas considers Harden a fellow traveler, but who, unfortunately, ignores those allegedly empirical claims in order cling to the old "left-liberal order."

In an interview with the Belgian paper De Standard, Cofnas confirmed that he and Emil Kirkegaard were friends. And naturally Cofnas has appeared on the neo-Nazi podcast Aporia.

Neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard and the top tier behavioral geneticists

Neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard explains the usefulness of mainstream hereditarians to the cause of race pseudoscience:

The extreme denialism of the old — recall they denied results from twins (together or apart), adoption studies, and everything else psychology related — has been replaced with a general acceptance of behavioral genetics, even enthusiastic. Here I am speaking primarily of Eric Turkheimer (who I have written about many times), and his former pupil Kathryn Paige Harden. These are both top tier behavioral geneticists... 

 

...But they have not given up their political convictions, well, they are toned down somewhat, but not given up. Now it is chiefly aimed at the target that was always the main worry: group differences, in particular, race differences. So a kind of trade has happened where the most of behavioral genetics is now mainstreamish science (e.g. published in Nature Reviews Genetics), but the race differences have been further taboorized. Big players like Robert Plomin and Ian Deary have wisely (for their careers) avoided the topics, with a staunch focus on individual differences, chiefly between Europeans. It is a sensible move. Thanks to them we now have good behavioral genetics and intelligence research departments at Universities of Edinburgh, Colorado, Minnesota, Kings College London, and so on. Progress!

Several academics at Kings College London are supporters of Nathan Cofnas.

Fortun vs Basile

The Kirkegaard article I quote above was referenced recently by Mike Fortun, in his attack on Jonathan Basile because Basile wrote a negative review of Harden's most recent book, "Original Sin."

It's clear, based on Kirkegaard's own testimonial, posted above, that Fortun is attempting to white-wash the hereditarian (Harden) connection to race pseudoscience (Kirkegaard) when he writes:

Are there actual white supremacist eugenicist scientist poseurs in today’s world? Yes. But outside the Fantasy Politics League of academia, a true Far Rightist like Emil Kirkegaard portrays Harden not as a fellow traveler but as a “woke behavioral geneticist” who, along with the likes of her teacher and sometimes co-author Eric Turkheimer, is among the cadres of “the psychometric left.”

I praised Basile's review lavishly so I was very curious about Fortun's attack, also printed in the LA Review of Books. And I do mean attack. For daring to criticize Harden's book, Fortun suggests that Basile is a misogynist:

Basile’s critiques of behavioral genetics do not tell us anything Harden has not already told us. Yet he figures her as a Scientific Calvinist, an ardent believer in genetic predestination engaged in what he calls “advocacy” for “pathologizing the behavior of every arrestee, restless schoolchild, and sexually active teen, and trying to eliminate it through medication or eugenics.” This grossly misrepresents Harden’s scientific and social arguments and contradicts what Harden writes in Original Sin. It is also at odds with what Harden has written on her Substack about eugenics and polygenic scores. It suggests that Basile is less interested in faithful representation than he is in the deliberate shaming of a woman scientist who has been shamed before.

Shamed before

The "shamed before" that Fortun mentions is a reference to Harden's mother:

Consider an arresting scene in Harden’s book, passed over by Basile. About to embark on a long-deferred vacation, a break after years of research on twins, Harden drops off her kids at her Evangelical mother’s house in Tennessee. She happens upon “an index card taped to the middle of the fridge, right above the ice dispenser,” with a “picture of White Jesus” and a note in her mother’s handwriting, “the top line underlined for emphasis”

undesirable unwanted
I am no longer grieving the loss of “what” Paige could have become -
Her choices—Her responsibility—Her consequences

“I feel humiliated,” Harden writes, “to be called out by name on my mother’s fridge. How many people have seen this scarlet index card”? She snaps a photo and texts it to a friend, who replies: “Oh holy FUCK. What do you even do with that?” Harden texts back, “I handled it super maturely by silently ripping it into tiny pieces and saying nothing.” Harden addresses her readers, asking: “What does it feel like for your identity to be collapsed into just one thing about you? For all your complexity to be flattened into one dimension? It feels wretched. Alienating, and bewildering, and sad.”

Lots of people have bad relationships with their mothers. Mine was a fanatical Catholic, so I have plenty of stories to tell. But nobody comes to this blog to read about my relationship with my mother, so why would I write about it here?

The reason Harden got a contract to write "Original Sin" is not because her personal life is so interesting, or that she's a great writer. She got the contract because she became famous for publishing a book that promotes hereditarianism and she got a glowing profile in the New Yorker out of it.

It's certainly odd that Harden felt so "humiliated" by her mother's refrigerator note, and worried about how many people saw the "scarlet index card," yet she decided to include it in her book, portraying her mother, to an audience far more vast than for a family refrigerator, as a massive bitch.

Talk about shaming.

It makes me wonder if this is a personality trait of Harden - playing the wronged innocent while getting the maximum payback possible.

Neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard - again

The passage where Fortun claims that Basile was shaming poor Harden includes a link to an article on Harden's Substack, and that article says more about who Harden really is than anything she or her defenders can write.

In the article, Have Your Best Baby, Harden muses about eugenics. She includes this section portraying Diana S. Fleischman and Bo Winegard as legitimate researchers. 

Harden mentions a disagreement with Fleischman, but in doing so presents the opinions of Fleischman:  "reminds me of a criticism that Diana Fleischman..." as if they are of interest to non-racists. Obviously Harden considers Fleischman's opinions worth sharing.

Harden somehow fails to mention that both Fleischman and Winegard are long-time promoters of the most extreme forms of race pseudoscience and at the time of Harden's post, January of this year, both Fleischman and Winegard were working for neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard via Aporia:

HDF operates the online magazine Aporia.[2] Matthew Frost founded Aporia in 2021 and sold it to Emil Kirkegaard.[2] Frost has stated that the magazine should be read "by the elite, people aspiring to the elite".[2]

Diana Fleischman is its podcast host.[7] She attended the 2023 Natal Conference with members of the New Right.[8] Bo Winegard, Aporia's executive editor, stated that he believed racial stereotypes were "reasonably accurate" and requested that his readers embrace "white identity politics".[2] Winegard was dismissed from his position at Marietta College.[2] In 2020, Winegard published a retracted paper which drew on Richard Lynn's flawed IQ data.[2] Winegard's race and intelligence research was criticized for resembling pseudoscience.[9][10]

No, all Harden tells us about Fleischman is that she's "An evolutionary psychologist who is also interested in ethics and genetics." 

First, just the fact that she's an "evolutionary psychologist" is plenty to discount her views, even without the racism, since evolutionary psychology is utter bullshit. 

Fun fact: Fleischman's PhD advisor was David Buss, the king of evolutionary psychology.

Second, it's mind-boggling that a grotesquely conscience-deficient freak like Fleischman would be described by anybody, unironically, as interested in any kind of ethics: she works for a neo-Nazi organization.

There is no way that Harden was ignorant of the fact that those two were employed by a neo-Nazi when she published her Substack article. 

Naturally Fleischman is also a fan of Nathan Cofnas. 

This isn't the first time Harden has knowingly helped to give a racist career a boost:

Harden & Jensen

Basile wrote a response to Fortun's attack:

Fortun describes, with admiration, Harden’s handling of questions of nature and nurture as her attunement to the “questions, uncertainties, and ambivalence” surrounding her science. What he sees as nuance and profundity, I would describe as doublespeak. Harden claims to accept the most obvious and prevalent criticisms of her field, in order to pretend that she has advanced beyond them. Notably, Arthur Jensen pursued the same rhetorical strategy in his notorious 1969 essay on race, IQ, and scholastic achievement (see page 42). This rhetoric lays the groundwork for one to say, once these criticisms are raised anew, “Yes, yes, I know all that already.” Fortun has obviously been won over by this strategy.

For that reason, in my review, I did not focus on Harden’s assertions of the unsoundable depths of the nature-nurture problem (in fact, I felt that I was doing her a favor by not evaluating her work as philosophy). I focused instead on the strategic function her doublespeak serves, namely, to convince unsuspecting liberals of eugenic premises. Fortun happily accepts his role as one of those liberals.

More shame needed

For the sin of doublespeak I think that Kathryn Paige Harden absolutely deserves to be shamed even more.

But I fear, at the end of the day, she really has no sense of shame.

Virginia Heffernan vs. Steven Pinker

 

Oh wow, this review of Steven Pinker's latest book, but more importantly of his career, is a thing of beauty. And just in time for Steven Pinker's 72nd birthday.

Written by Virginia Heffernan, it highlights Pinker's strongest trait: trying to have things both ways.

But something’s not right. Pinker’s off his cognitive game. He’s admittedly had a hard stretch over the past few years, during which his reputation has sustained slow-rolling but significant damage. His glory days – from The Language Instinct in 1994 to his selection by Time magazine as a top evo-psych influencer in 2004 – may simply be behind him now. And though Bill Gates, Joe Rogan, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson and other masters of the manosphere continue to look up to him, Pinker’s also at the centre of a cyclone of academic catastrophes. 

For one, he’s still smarting from a six-year-old petition that tried in vain to get him removed from a linguistics association for alleged racist statements. “In the old days,” he said of cancellation culture on a recent podcast, “there were public hangings, public crucifixions, burnings at the stake. The electronic equivalent is the internet petition with 600 signatures.” 

That petition must have hit extremely hard. After all, to liken it to a crucifixion is not a very Steven Pinker thing to do. Generally he considers it prudish wokeism to complain that words are “toxic” or “violent.” Like many American academics, he believes that speech, no matter how bullying or racist or cruel, can never be criminal. Just last year he tweeted: “Speech is not violence. Violence is not speech.”

I assume she said it ironically, but in any case, it is a very Pinker thing to do: smugly proclaim that when the "woke" are bothered by language they are silly - but when he is on the receiving end of negative verbiage, it's the equivalent of a public crucifixion.

I wrote about Pinker, and his friend, the equally logic-challenged Anna Krylov, displaying this hypocrisy five years ago:

But then Krylov asks rhetorically:

Do words have life and power of their own? Can they really cause injury? Do they carry hidden messages? The ideology claims so and encourages us all to be on the constant lookout...

Do words carry hidden messages? You tell me, Krylov - what does it mean to use the same word for renaming a science term as you use to describe murder? 

And if words don't cause injury, why is Krylov making such a big issue out of renaming science terms? 

Today’s censorship does not stop at purging the scientific vocabulary of the names of scientists who “crossed the line” or fail the ideological litmus tests of the Elect.11 In some schools,33,34 physics classes no longer teach “Newton’s Laws”, but “the three fundamental laws of physics”. Why was Newton canceled? Because he was white, and the new ideology10,12,15 calls for “decentering whiteness” and “decolonizing” the curriculum...

Who does it harm if Newton's Laws are called "the three fundamental laws of physics"? Certainly not Newton, who died almost 300 years ago. But a few paragraphs later, Krylov leaves no doubt that she believes that changing a term is a cataclysmic event:

The answer is simple: our future is at stake. As a community, we face an important choice. We can succumb to extreme left ideology and spend the rest of our lives ghost-chasing and witch-hunting, rewriting history, politicizing science, redefining elements of language, and turning STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education into a farce. Or we can uphold a key principle of democratic society - the free and uncensored exchange of ideas and continue our core mission, the pursuit of truth, focusing attention on solving real, important problems of humankind.

Do words have life and power of their own? Which is it Krylov, are words lifeless and powerless, or does using different words to indicate Newton's Laws mean OUR FUTURE IS AT STAKE?

It's clear what Krylov means by "the free and uncensored exchange of ideas" - she means only ideas she agrees with. When others merely proposed a new approach to science terminology, she called that an example of "cancel culture."

Krylov appears to be having it both ways, in the Steven Pinker tradition and Pinker echos her in the tweet I shared in Part 1: "...she exposes the primitive word magic of language-cancellers: that words have dreadful powers, independent of usage, convention & context."

Krylov and Pinker scoff at the dreadful power of words, yet agree that swapping out words is an existential threat.

The passages I quote come from a piece by Krylov that Pinker called a "powerful essay."

The hypocrisy is so blatant, so shameless, so utterly stark that it makes me seriously wonder if Pinker and Krylov understand the very concept of hypocrisy at all. 

Is there some kind of neurological disability that renders someone unable to detect hypocrisy? If so, then I think Steven Pinker has that disability.

Eric Weinstein is an absolute putz

ANOTHER great one by Professor Dave, this time a video about Peter Thiel's lapdog, Eric Weinstein.

Please note Weinstein's hostility toward the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which echos that of nutty Nathan Cofnas.

It's clear that the ultimate goal of the racist hereditarian network - of which the Intellectual Dark Web is a part - is to reinstitute racial segregation. That's how extreme they are.

Razib Khan, racism, and face-eating leopards

I've been talking recently about the stupidity of people who align themselves with organizations that hate them for their ethnicity and/or religion.

Nathan Cofnas, who is Jewish, has allied with neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard.

So has Steven Pinker, who is also Jewish.

This isn't a new phenomenon - the Jewish magazine Moment ran an article about right-wing Jews who tried to make common cause with the Nazi Party in the apparent belief that being right-wing would save them. 

And more recently we see
that Razib Khan, who has spent the past two decades promoting race pseudoscience and who is, objectively, racist, as can be seen on his X tweet at the top of this post, has noticed a racist Republican coming after his own ethnic group.

Say it with me: 

"I never thought leopards would eat MY face!"

Professor Dave hits it out of the park again - another excellent video about grifter Sabine Hossenfelder

Damn this guy is good - so thorough, so much patience to explain the hereditarian idiocy step by step.

God it's so annoying to listen to Hossenfelder talk. Why does she talk through gritted teeth like that?

I posted another video Dave made about Hossenfelder in April 2025.

Neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard denied entry to the UK - but neo-Nazi Milo Yiannopolus is on his way back

Well just as the UK had to take pedophilia-apologist, neo-Nazi Milo Yiannopolus back after he was deported by ICE, the UK denied entry to another pedophilia apologist, neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard.

According to Kirkegaard himself:

So I was going to give a talk in the United Kingdom. But then I found out the hard-way that I had been banned from their tourist visa-light for the reason you see in the title - [Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good]

Apparently Kirkegaard was on his way to   give a speech  to "The Witan 2026."

The organization behind The Witan 2026 is Scyldings, described by Hope not Hate as:

...a far-right conference company. It is part of the Beowulf Foundation, and advances the organisation’s aim of building an intellectual elite.

Founded in 2021, it runs expensive pseudo-academic events in the UK (named “The Witan”), as well as in the US, Germany and Australia. Past speakers include Curtis Yarvin, Michael Wright (AKA Morgoth), Edward Dutton, Charles Cornish-Dale (AKA Raw Egg Nationalist) and Carl Benjamin.

In November 2023, Scyldings offered their conference-organising apparatus to the Human Diversity Foundation, a race science group led at the time by Matthew Frost. It held a ticketed event featuring speeches by Erik Ahrens, the German white nationalist, and Edward Dutton at the Little Ship Club in central London. Kenny Smith, founder of the fascist Homeland Party, and his then-national media officer Alec Cave, both attended Scyldings in August 2024. They were interviewed by the Lotus Eaters host Dan Tubb.

Run by the influencer Martin Judge (AKA Maven Politic), he is assisted by Thomas Brice, Andrew Duncan, and friends from the Basketweavers network. In April 2026, Scyldings will host a conference in Germany called “Karlstage”, for which single tickets cost €650.

Human Diversity Foundation, of course is Emil Kirkegaard's racist pseudoscience and neo-Nazi network, now called Polygenic Scores LLC.

Erik Ahrens is now a defector from the German white nationalist movement.

Colin Robertson not Colin Robinson
------------------------------------------

Kirkegaard is described on the Witan site as: 

...a famed IQ researcher and academic known for his independent research across a variety of topics that he has been posting online for the last twenty years.

Another speaker scheduled is "Millenial Woes" identified as Colin Robertson. He is possibly an even bigger neo-Nazi than Emil Kirkegaard.

Millenial Woes is described on the Witan site as:

...a long running creator and one of the most quoted people on X. He is loved for his yearly community event Milleniyule and is respected for his commentary on culture, politics and the arts. 

But he is described on his Wikipedia page as:

...a proponent of the white genocide conspiracy theory.[4] He has claimed in interviews that "there are problems with the Jewish people".[5] According to anti-racism and anti-fascism research group Hope Not Hate, Robertson is known for supporting slavery, and has called for the bombing of refugees crossing the Mediterranean.[9]

Robertson has been accused of sexual harassment:

In late April, anonymous allegations began circulating in far-right ​online circles that Robertson ​sexually harassed women ​and that the behavior was part of a larger pattern.​ The allegations spread on anonymous forum boards including 4Chan​, where users shared what were alleged to be screenshots of explicit messages and photographs Robertson had sent to women​ as well as messages from a woman who was alleged to have interacted closely with Robertson. Soon after, the organizers of Patriotic Alternative, a far-right political group in Britain, banned Robertson from their events.

Unfortunately Robertson is Scottish and so cannot be denied entry to the UK. 

I wonder if Scyldings will ask Yiannopolus to fill in for Kirkegaard. That might have been a problem, back in the day, since another of the speakers scheduled, Harry Robinson, (no relation to Colin) who ranks higher on the Witan poster than Kirkegaard, is a hateful homophobe. But Yiannopolus is now "ex-gay."

Awww... poor Kirkegaard did not get his chance to promote higher fertility rates for Aryans.

De Standaard: The professor, his protégé, and their network: the international circle around Nathan Cofnas

The Belgian newspaper De Standaard has published an article about Nathan Cofnas and the racist ghouls who support his campaign for a race war. The article is is by Lotte Lambrecht and Nikolas Vanheck.

You know it's a good article because eugenics-grifting asshole Jonathan Anomaly is complaining about it.

Here is the original in archive format.

I could not find an English-language version online so I translated it via Google Translate. The highlight about Cofnas, testifying he is a friend of neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard, is mine.

Who is Bouke de Vries, the professor who brought Nathan Cofnas to Ghent—a move that has been causing a stir for months? In which circles do both philosophers move? A reconstruction of their connections leads to a network of pseudo-academics, entrepreneurs in embryo selection, and white supremacists.

(NOTE: the term "white supremacists" uses the English words in the Dutch original.)

April 30, 2024, 9 a.m. In a small room on the third floor of the Blandijn campus in Ghent, a handful of people gather to listen to American bioethicist Jonathan Anomaly. He is speaking at the invitation of Dutch professor Bouke de Vries, who conducts research on loneliness at the university.

The reason for the talk has little to do with loneliness. Anomaly is coming to discuss his book, *Creating Future People*, in which he speculates on how profoundly parenthood and society would change if parents could select their embryos based on intelligence, physical attractiveness, and health. Anomaly does not merely theorize about this; he is putting these ideas into practice—to the extent that science allows—through Herasight, a company that offers embryo screening and selection services to couples.

Genetic differences are among the interests of Nathan Cofnas, the philosopher who is the talk of the University of Ghent today. Yet that morning, the American researcher was not in the audience. In the spring of 2024, hardly anyone in Ghent even knew his name—with one notable exception: Bouke de Vries, the professor who would bring Cofnas to the city.

By April 2024, however, Cofnas’s name was already circulating widely within the corridors of the University of Cambridge. The researcher had caused a stir by writing that “the number of Black professors at Harvard University would be close to zero percent if the academic system were based strictly on merit.” Cofnas held the view that Black people could only secure a prominent position in sports and entertainment.

That controversy was raging when he came to Ghent in May 2024, more than two weeks after *Anomaly*. He was invited to give a lecture there on the “rise of liberalism”—an event also organized at the invitation of De Vries. This collaboration would culminate early this year in Cofnas’s appointment as a postdoctoral researcher.

De Vries, who—like Cofnas—declined to respond to questions from *De Standaard*, has been working at Ghent University since 2023. He arrived with a prestigious European research grant worth over a million euros, which he is using to conduct research into the ‘ethics of loneliness.’ At the time, anyone securing such a prestigious ERC grant was immediately offered a professorship. Concurrently, De Vries established a research group investigating how liberal states can deal with a growing number of religious citizens from countries lacking liberal traditions.

De Vries publishes extensively on a wide range of topics. He has authored papers in academic journals on subjects such as toilet height, the question of whether men should do more vacuuming, and dating apps. Recently, De Vries published a paper online advocating for embryo selection as a means to eradicate extreme poverty; in it, he references the work of Anomaly.

There are further connections linking Cofnas, Anomaly, and De Vries. In his book on embryo selection, Anomaly expressed his gratitude to "his friend Cofnas." Cofnas reciprocated this gesture in an academic paper published in 2018. "Cofnas is a good guy," Anomaly said in response to inquiries from *De Standaard*. "Bright, courageous, and willing to challenge prevailing views. Those are precisely the qualities of a great philosopher. My favorite quote from Cofnas is this: ‘The philosophical establishment claims to be the intellectual descendants of Socrates. In reality, they descend from the Athenians who killed him.’"
 

Made a scapegoat

It is no coincidence that Anomaly brings up that specific quote by Cofnas. Following his suspension and the disciplinary measures taken against him at Ghent University, Cofnas has become something of a martyr in certain circles—a man sacrificed by his own peers for allegedly speaking an uncomfortable truth. A month ago, Cofnas accused British educational psychologist Jason Arday of academic misconduct. The British press eagerly picked up the accusation, and the University of Cambridge launched an investigation. Arday resigned; in mid-August, he was found dead in his home.

Cofnas’s accusations against Arday were amplified via social media accounts, blogs, and websites linked to the controversial philosopher’s network. This network comprises researchers, ideologues, and opinion-makers who operate on the premise that Black people are generally less intelligent than White people—and that this is genetically determined. They call themselves "race realists." By criticizing hiring policies that prioritize people of color, they align themselves with the broader anti-woke movement. They receive support from advocates of absolute freedom of speech, even when that speech borders on hate speech.

The foundation of their ideology—the assumption that "races" exist and that one "race" is inherently more or less intelligent than another—has been scientifically debunked. There are no distinct genetic boundaries that allow the global population to be divided into biologically distinct races. Furthermore, there is significant genetic overlap between different population groups. Yet, this network continues to disseminate its outdated ideas through various channels. Adherents meet at conferences designed to resemble academic gatherings. Some attempt to build their academic profiles by publishing on other topics in reputable journals, such as *Social Psychological and Personality Science*. That lends extra weight to posts on their personal blogs (usually via Substack) or websites that bring their voices together.

The online magazine *Aporia* is a magnet for them. Its creators attempt to lend an academic veneer to controversial ideas regarding intelligence, heredity, race, immigration, and identity—themes that feature prominently on many a far-right bingo card. Last month, for instance, *Aporia* published an article on the "Great Replacement theory." This conspiracy theory claims that the European establishment intends to replace white people with Muslims. "Some versions (of the theory, ed.) go beyond the facts, but the replacement theory does have merit," reads the article's subtitle.

Cofnas first appeared as a guest on an Aporia podcast in March 2023, discussing the importance of debates on race. That same month, when a controversy arose regarding Cofnas’s appointment at Ghent University, one of the magazine’s two regular editors wrote an article defending him. In early July, the two debated the "future of woke" together on a podcast. In 2024, Aporia discussed a paper by De Vries; one of his doctoral students also published work there.

Conference in Budapest

Emil Kirkegaard is a key figure at Aporia. The Dane shares his surname—save for a single letter—with the founder of existentialism, yet he did not follow the same philosophical path. The far-right activist studied linguistics at Aarhus University. Subsequently, he wrote primarily about genetics, intelligence, and alleged racial differences. In January 2015, he posted an article on his personal website titled "Predicting migrant performance: does inbreeding have incremental predictive value over IQ and Islam?" In 2022, he addressed what he claimed was the average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa—70—and in March of this year, a "meta-analysis" of "racial differences in intelligence in America" ​​was published.

Kirkegaard also held bizarre views regarding child abuse. In 2012, he suggested on his website that "having sex with a sleeping child (using a sedative) could be a compromise. If they don't notice, it's hard to see how it could harm them, even if it is rape." The Dane did not respond to questions from *De Standaard* regarding his views on child abuse—views he had previously described as "hypothetical." There was also no response to questions regarding Cofnas and Aporia. In March, Cofnas confirmed in an interview with *De Standaard* that he and Kirkegaard are friends.

The network does not push its ideas solely from behind keyboards and computer screens; its members also try to meet in person. Kirkegaard is a co-organizer of the London Conference on Intelligence, where eugenicists and race scientists gather to discuss their ideas. Apache revealed that De Vries was scheduled to speak at the August 2024 conference in Budapest. De Vries declined to tell Apache what the speech was about. When his academic department asked the same question, he did not answer them either.

Two years ago, an activist from the British NGO Hope not Hate managed to infiltrate this network. Posing as a potential investor, he gained a glimpse into its inner workings. Kirkegaard told the activist that he had met Peter Thiel, the German-American investor who made a fortune with PayPal and subsequently founded the data and AI company Palantir. “I went there,” Kirkegaard said. “And afterwards, he [Thiel] was so pleased with the meeting that he asked me to introduce him to a few other people. So I introduced Noah Carl [an Aporia associate] and Nathan Cofnas as well.” According to our information, Thiel never actually met Cofnas. 

 Cofnas did, however, find his way into the broader American circle surrounding Thiel. In a photo published in July 2024 by right-wing conservative author Richard Hanania, Cofnas poses arm-in-arm with Hanania and Curtis Yarvin. For years, Hanania wrote under a pseudonym for far-right and white supremacist publications—views he later disavowed. Yarvin is an influential ideologue who views democracy as a failed system and advocates for an authoritarian state run like a corporation by an autocrat-CEO. He also defended the idea that white people are innately more intelligent than Black people. His software company received financial backing from Thiel’s investment fund.

The campaign by Hope not Hate shone a spotlight on the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF)—the organizational and financial vehicle behind research and media activities, with *Aporia* serving as the primary outlet. Kirkegaard founded the organization; last year, he changed its name to Polygenic Scores.

The HDF is viewed as a successor to the American Pioneer Fund, established in 1937. The organization later described its mission as "promoting scientific research into heredity and human differences." One of the fund's early projects involved distributing the Nazi propaganda film *Erbkrank*, which targeted people with mental disabilities. While engaging with Kirkegaard’s HDF, the undercover activist from Hope not Hate also came into contact with Erik Ahrens, a German national. Ahrens positioned himself as a political and digital strategist within the organization and spoke of his vision for a homeland for "white, Christian people." Ahrens had previously been involved with the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), where he developed its social media presence on platforms like TikTok. 

In addition to *Aporia*, the HDF network manages other publishing outlets such as *Mankind Quarterly* and *OpenPsych*. Many articles on race, intelligence, and genetic group differences appearing there are highly controversial from a methodological standpoint, fall outside the mainstream scientific consensus, and are frequently written, peer-reviewed, and cited by the same small circle of authors.

Crowdfunding for Cofnas

The controversy surrounding Cofnas in Ghent, which has been ongoing for months, follows a similar affair in Cambridge. After it emerged in 2024 that Cofnas held disparaging views regarding Black academics, several investigations were launched. Ultimately, Cofnas retained his position as a paid researcher, though—as far as is known—he no longer performed any teaching or examination duties.

During those proceedings, Cofnas received support from the British organization Free Speech Union (FSU), founded by the Conservative Toby Young. "Cofnas is one of 47,500 paying members," Young commented. "We provided him with legal assistance and helped raise funds for his legal costs through a crowdfunding campaign. We supported him because he is a member who ran into trouble for exercising his right to free speech." A campaign launched by Cofnas on the crowdfunding platform Donorbox, featuring the Free Speech Union logo, raised at least 98,000 euros.

Young states that there is no connection between the Free Speech Union and *Aporia* or the HDF. However, British corporate records show that he and a regular editor for *Aporia* are part of the same company, Skeptics Ltd.

UPDATE: Anomaly admits he's a shameless eugenics grifter.