Guilt by (tenuous) association smear tactic, right out of the Joe McCarthy handbook. Detestable.
The item above is a response I got recently to the latest version of Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right and hereditarian connections on Academia.edu. Suddenly the document is getting a lot of hits.
It isn't only the weird phobia that Pinkerites have about information presented graphically though - I also wonder about their definition of the word "association." Would it be wrong to link John Lennon and Paul McCartney because they "associated" with each other? What about Marx and Engels?
Steven Pinker didn't happen to be seen in the same restaurant as Steve Sailer, Pinker included a crappy piece of unscientific and badly sourced dreck from professional racist Steve Sailer in "the best" scientific writing volume of 2004.
That's hire and salary, not "association."
The Academia.edu commenter might be in denial about the Pinker-Sailer relationship, but Sailer certainly is not as we discussed last week.
And so that is why I include a direct link from Steven Pinker to Steve Sailer in the diagram.
When Steven Pinker got angry at Elizabeth Kolbert's negative review of Better Angels he called on Razib Khan to support him. Hence a direct line between Khan and Pinker.
And Steven Pinker has not only praised and frequently re-tweeted Quillette content, he's published an article in Quillette. That is literally hire and salary, not just a metaphorical HAMLET allusion since, I assume, Quillette paid Pinker for that particular "association." Hence the line.
Now unfortunately there isn't enough room to present Khan and Sailer's right-wing and hereditarian bona fides anymore since I had to delete Sailer's and Khan's connections to Unz (still very current for Sailer) and others to make room for the Koch connections. But I was able to leave in all the Quillette connections because it is extremely important to know that Quillette was founded by someone who contributed to far-right Rebel Media, which also used at the time - and uses again, Gavin McInnes as another contributor. And that three Quillette authors have shown up on Stefan Molyneux's YouTube channel to hawk their race science theories to a very receptive Molyneux. (And in fact eight Quillette authors have appeared with Molyneux.)
And it's important to know that some articles in Quillette are so congenial to white supremacist thought that they are reprinted by American Renaissance.
And even more important is the fact that Charles Murray gets funding from the Kochs via American Enterprise Institute and has also used race science work funded by the Pioneer Fund. And that Steven Pinker also has at least one connection to Koch money via his appearance in Spiked's Koch-supported "Unsafe Spaces" tour.
His long association with Sam Harris also important to know - and they are both identified by Bari Weiss as members of the "Intellectual Dark Web" as is Charles Murray. Thus the line connecting them. Pinker doesn't merely "associate" with these people he has worked with them and promoted them and praised them. What would it take for Pinkerites to acknowledge Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right and hereditarian connections, is he going to have to marry them?
His long association with Sam Harris also important to know - and they are both identified by Bari Weiss as members of the "Intellectual Dark Web" as is Charles Murray. Thus the line connecting them. Pinker doesn't merely "associate" with these people he has worked with them and promoted them and praised them. What would it take for Pinkerites to acknowledge Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right and hereditarian connections, is he going to have to marry them?
The problem is not that the information in the Pinker chart is inaccurate or tenuous, the problem is that it's information that some Pinkerites would rather not know about.
