Bo Winegard really is a racist

I never believed "race science" was anything more than an attempt to, in the words of anthropologist Marvin Harris, "biologize inequality," but the Winegard brothers have been as careful as Steven Pinker not to say anything obviously, viciously racist, like using the N word, no matter how vigorously they defended the race science of The Bell Curve. They always maintained a little bit of plausible deniability, which could be convincing to those who haven't been tracking their careers for many years.

But a couple of tweets by Bo Winegard, a contributing writer and a member of Quillette's team, from July 30 of this year are about as racist as they come.

Bo Winegard thinks it isn't racist to "want to preserve a country's racial demographics."

But national race quotas is the essence of racism.

Just think for a moment what it would mean to attempt to "preserve" a country's racial demographics.

Once you determined the correct racial demographic mix you would have to restrict immigration by race. But what if a race increased or decreased too much via childbirth? Would the excess members of a race be expelled from the country? Or would the women of the decreased demographic race be forced to have more children? 

I'm sure the people who want to have an "honest negotiation in the political sphere" about racial quotas would have plenty of ideas for the final solution to that problem. 

Bo Winegard admits in his tweet that race quotas "can take ugly forms" - but when has such a race-based quota social policy ever not taken an ugly form? It's impossible for a race-based quota to be otherwise.

Then there is the issue of who counts as which race. As Bo and Ben Winegard and "biosocial criminologist" Brian Boutwell wrote in Quillette:

 ...racial categories are like film categories (e.g., drama, horror, comedy)...  The amount and the granularity of film categories depend upon the interests of the people using them. Your friend might use four (horror, comedy, drama, and science fiction), whereas Netflix might use an apparently limitless and startlingly specific supply 

In other words, anything goes, because racial categories depend on "the interests of the people using them." No matter how much people like Steven Pinker claim that race is a biological reality, there is no empirical race classification system. Even race science promoters can't agree amongst themselves which race categories are "real."

We can easily imagine the kind of interests of people who agree with Bo Winegard. Both he and his brother Ben consider "Western Civilization" and "the West" to be important enough to mention them as things they care about, in their Twitter profiles. Those terms are usually used to mean Europe, in other words, white people.

I've demonstrated many times how incoherent race "science" is, on this blog, and the Winegards' worship of "the West" is another case in point. Race science claims that "East Asians" are the smartest "race" although sometimes race science breaks Ashkenazi Jews into a separate race and then declares them to be the smartest race. You can watch white supremacist Stefan Molyeux and race science professional Linda Gottfredson defining and ranking races by intelligence in a Molyneux interview.

So why do Bo and Ben Winegard love Western Civilization so much, since by their own race science belief system, white people are at best the second most intelligent "race?" Why don't they align with Eastern Civilization, the civilization created by a smarter race? 

It doesn't make sense. But then, neither does race science, and people who promote it will inevitably be revealed as racist. As Bo Winegard has been revealed as a racist.

Two IDWs spread a lie to help Trump's Reichstag Fire campaign strategy

Vulture reports on two IDWs spreading a lie 

Joe Rogan Is Already a Headache for Spotify

The first involves a brush with misinformation. On Thursday, The Joe Rogan Experience published an episode with Douglas Murray, the conservative British political commentator, in which Rogan repeated a claim, derived from a conspiracy theory, that “left-wing people” have been arrested for intentionally causing wildfires in Oregon. That conspiracy theory had already been debunked by several mainstream news sources by the episode’s publication, and while Rogan’s citation of the claim seemed to be more of an aside contributing to the flow of the episode’s conversation on Murray’s “madness of crowds” ideas, the whole thing nonetheless added up to a situation where a piece of misinformation — which might be inflammatory or harmful, depending on how you interpret the impact mechanics of misinformation — ended up being spread further by an extremely popular podcast that’s now being paid for, hosted, and distributed by a major audio streaming platform.

Rogan’s recitation of the conspiracy theory turned out to be inadvertent, and to his credit, Rogan issued an apology over his social media accounts the next day, explaining that he had been misled by an article that he had read.

Here’s the version of the statement that went out over Twitter:

Pinkerite has never mentioned the activities of Douglas Murray, but he is a genuine named member of the Intellectual Dark Web, and certainly just as right-wing and sleazy as Rogan.

And it makes sense that two IDWs would spread a lie that helps Trump. I am convinced that many members or friends of the Intellectual Dark Web are working directly or indirectly with the Trump campaign.

Back in May I expressed my doubts about Rogan succeeding on the Spotify platform, due to his bigotry. So I wasn't surprised to read in Motherboard:

Some staff inside the company feel alienated by Spotify's hosting of certain The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) episodes, according to copies of some of the questions presented to the meeting obtained by Motherboard. The news signals how Spotify, as it moves into the podcasting space beyond music, is facing content moderation decisions more commonly associated with social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Spotify has already removed JRE episodes with some right-wing figures, including Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes.

Meanwhile Hillary hating extremist Glenn Greenwald defends Joe Rogan. The IDW and the far Left have much in common, as I have noted previously - in fact in the same article in which I discussed Rogan's deal with Spotify.

 

Andy Ngo's pro-Trump friends caught planning violence

 The Guardian published the story today:

z

Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies

Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend.

The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume a steady diet of online disinformation about protests and wildfires.

At times, rightwing activists discuss acts of violence at recent, contentious protests, which in some cases they were recorded carrying out. At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.

Where other members had previously suggested freezing the paintballs for maximum damage, Willis wrote: “They make glass breaker balls that are rubber coated metal. They also have pepper balls but they are about 3 dollars a ball. Don’t freeze paintballs it makes them wildly inaccurate” [sic.]

Andy Ngo and David Willis can be seen together in an image in this tweet.

The Claire mentioned in the tweet is long-time Andy Ngo enabler and employer, Claire Lehmann.

Here is Claire Lehmann pushing the lie about a "chemical attack" which I think was invented before the event, planned by Ngo and his enablers as part of the usual grift.

Ngo was caught making common cause with Patriot Prayer last year, reported in Rolling Stone:

The source told the Mercury that Ngo and Patriot Prayer have an “understanding” that the group offers him protection when he covers rallies in exchange for favorable coverage. While this has not been confirmed, and Ngo strongly denies these allegations, an audio conversation between members of the Proud Boys, released by Willamette Week seemed to confirm that such discussions between Ngo and the Proud Boys had occurred, as one man is recorded saying that Ngo was attacked on June 29th because he refused an offer of protection. “Andy Ngo was fucking told that if he wanted protection from the PBs [Proud Boys], he went in with us and he went out with us,” the man says.

When reached for comment, Ngo directed Rolling Stone to his attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who refuted the allegations made by the Portland Mercury. “There have been suggestions made by that story and others that he is part of that group or embedded in that group or took protection from that group, which is absolutely false,” she tells Rolling Stone.

Harmeet Dhillon is not only Ngo's lawyer, she is a Republican committee woman and a rabid Trump supporter.

Jerry Coyne railing against the 1619 project again

If there is one thing that race pseudo-science promoters of the Intellectual Dark Web and their friends absolutely hate, it's people talking about Black American history. And that's because history is the most important weapon against the claim of hereditarians like Coyne, that the reason for African American failure to thrive post-Emancipation is due to their genetic inferiority.

So race science promoters will grab at any excuse to attack the 1619 project as Quillette, the leading media outlet for race pseudo-science, has done. Coyne expresses his love for Quillette's race war yet again. And he even admits that his argument is nit-picking bullshit.

Now some will argue that this is a trivial change, and to that I’d say: “Are you kidding? July 4, 1776 is an iconic date in American history, and the NYT wants to change it to August 20, 1619, so that the founding of America coincides with the arrival of the first slaves.”

It's a perfectly valid argument that 1619 was a founding moment in the creation of the United States of America. And nobody thinks it is meant to literally replace July 4, 1776. 

Coyne's is a stupid concrete-thinker argument, but stupid arguments are the only kind that addled-brained creeps like Jerry Coyne and his IDW friends can come up with. 

They don't give a damn that many articles in the 1619 project provide extremely important information and perspectives on the history of African Americans as I have discussed on this blog. They just want to stop those damn Black people from talking about their history.

I do have one gripe with Nikole Hannah-Jones and friends, and it's that they seem oblivious to the fact that the Intellectual Dark Web is an organized and extremely well-funded project of the Right to attack Black Americans through race science, and the 1619 project would of course be one of their targets. And they are attacking it endlessly. I don't think Hannah-Jones & company were sufficiently prepared for the attacks.

The Intellectual Dark Web and its friends like Jerry Coyne are at war with civil rights and human rights defenders.

Anybody who does anything in support of Black Americans must be constantly aware there is a war going on, and make preparations for the inevitable attacks from the Koch-funded  Charles Murray to the Mark Carnegie-funded Quillette to the Peter Thiel-funded Eric Weinstein, to the Michael O'Fallon-funded James Lindsay. 

And their leader is Donald Trump.

Trump blasts 1619 Project as DeVos praises alternative Black history curriculum

So is this what Heather Heying meant by "we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom"?

Heather Heying made that statement in Bari Weiss's 2018 IDW article. 

It's been pretty clear since even before the article that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein and her brother-in-law Eric Weinstein are opportunistic grifters, and more recently they are probably working for the Trump campaign like so many other members of the IDW appear to be: Joe Rogan, James Lindsay, Andy Ngo and Bari Weiss herself.

But even I could not guess how stupid and sleazy they would turn out to be. 

Per Business Insider:

Unity 2020 is the brainchild of former Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein, a charter member of the "intellectual dark web" (IDW) who is probably best-known for being the target of a student-led mob on campus in 2017. Unity 2020 isn't a party; it's "a grassroots presidential campaign to restore patriotic, courageous & capable leadership to the United States," according to its website.

Fundamental to the Unity 2020 ethos is the belief that the country faces certain doom if either President Donald Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins the election in November. The idea, then, is that a "patriotic" bipartisan ticket can save the day.

The "student-led mob" story was very likely one of the earliest free speech grifts of the Intellectual Dark Web, before they even decided on their little club's name.

Somehow, mysteriously, the IDWs of the Unity 2020 grift can't see a difference between Trump, a treasonous, corrupt, pussy-grabbing monster from hell and a middle-of-the-road standard politician like Joe Biden.

Heying could be seen hawking the "both sides are bad" on Twitter recently. It's so funny to see such a conscience-deficient sleazeball like Heying proclaiming anybody else to be guilty of playing to "basest instincts." 

The continuing dishonesty of Bret Weinstein was on display a little later in the Business Insider article:

A self-described "radical progressive," Weinstein said: "Economic inequality, growing past a certain point, tends to trigger revolts." But he added, "The focus on race on the BLM left is going to drive the entire nation to a place that it has been in the past, where race was a primary feature of how we viewed each other. And anybody who understands the United States knows that moving in that direction will be negative and not positive."

How stupid would someone have to be to buy Weinstein's story that he's a "radical progressive?"

I have to say, though, that Heying and the Weinstein brothers did get me to agree with an actual Libertarian:

The Libertarians and Greens have other ideas about Unity 2020's ambitions. 

"They're absolute f---ing morons," Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian Party chair from 2014 to 2020, said. "They don't have any plan for ballot access other than pretending it's not a thing."

Sarwark said Unity 2020's plan is to "transcend laws" by using a kind of magical thinking that he likened to Marianne Williamson's big-on-love and short-on-policy campaign.

"Who's your ticket? Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi Gabbard? And the runners-up were William McRaven and Andrew Yang. It's like the start of 'Street Fighter': Randomize your fighter and let's see how it goes," Sarwark added.

That was pretty damn funny for someone who admires Ayn Rand.

But I think it's extremely unlikely that they ever meant Unity 2020 to be on any ballots. The likely point of the whole thing is to help Trump by claiming to their idiot social media followers that Joe Biden, a vastly superior human being to Trump (as virtually all human beings are) is somehow on the same incomprehensibly psychopathic level as Trump, thus dampening their enthusiasm and likeliness of voting for Biden.

The IDW in general, and certain members in particular are soulless, corrupt, lying, sleazy grifting rat-fuckers. They do absolutely nothing in good faith and they have absolutely no qualms about it.

Rightwing Watch exposes the garbage Post-Millennial

From a recent article in Right Wing Watch

“They operate like a crime syndicate. They don’t operate like a normal paper where you can trace the money, you can trace the editorialization, where you can trace the ethics, where you can actually understand who is involved in the outlet at any given time and what their purpose is,” ​the former writer said​, wishing to remain anonymous given the publication’s record of attack stories. “It doesn’t work like that. And in terms of opponents, they absolutely would just rather take somebody out than admit that they did something wrong.”

As Pinkerite noted in March 2019, the Post Millennial was already absolute garbage. Only an Andy Ngo could make it even worse:

“Once Andy Ngo started, then it became much more editorial and much more like he was the one who set the tone and you had to write to his tone,” ​she said, speaking to RWW via Skype. “He would tell you to write a story on something, then you would write it, and he would go in and edit it to be crazy and extreme.”

Chotiner strikes again - Chotiner vs. AEI's Danielle Pletka

CHOTINER FOR 
THE WIN

When we last saw the New Yorker's Ian Chotiner, he was embarrassing free speech grifting stooge Thomas Chatterton Williams (to think I once admired Williams.)

Now Williams is, as far as I have been able to discern, only loosely connected to the wingnut welfare system funded foremost by Koch.

(UPDATE: Williams became an official member of the plutocrat funded wingnut welfare system by accepting a post at the AEI in December 2020.)

But in Chotiner's interview, published today, with Danielle Pletka, he strikes at the heart of the Koch plutocracy since Pletka is an American Enterprise Institute bigwig (like IDWs Charles Murray and Christina Hoff Sommers). 

Chotiner asked Pletka about her time working for infamously racist Jesse Helms.

You know things that were wrong. This isn’t a “may.”

But I worked for him on the Middle East and South Asia, and I was very proud of what we accomplished.

You know his record on South Africa, though, correct? [Helms opposed any sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela visited the Capitol in 1994, soon after he was elected South Africa’s first post-apartheid President, Helms turned his back on him.]

I didn’t work on South Africa. I worked on the Middle East and South Asia.

I understand that. But I’m saying you must know about the guy’s career? I mean, the Civil Rights Act, the Martin Luther King holiday, his interactions with Carol Moseley Braun, his ads, his comments about South Africa and African National Congress. This stuff isn’t completely unknown to you.

I’m not quite sure what this has to do with my article.

What a weasel. And then this part:

Most significant to me is that Pletka was a "never Trumper" who claims to have changed her mind about Trump. I think what likely happened was that the plutocrats yanked her chain and she fell in line.

...and I really am crushed by this cancel culture, by the bullying, and by the transformation of American political discourse. And, by the way, I have really been happy, actually, to in some ways blame Donald Trump for that. It started with him. What did Michelle Obama say? “When they go low, we go high.” That has not been the guiding principle here.

Trump is probably making cancel culture, however much significance you attribute to it, significantly worse. That’s why I was surprised a little bit by the op-ed, because it seems like his defeat would be good for some of the things you’re worried about.

Yes, except for the fact that I think the ship has already sailed.

The obsession with "cancel culture" is telling. I think it's probable the AEI is the original instigator of the Harper's letter. Certainly many of the Harper's letter signers have Koch connections.

The Koch-dominated branch of the Right promotes the Trump antifa smear campaign against Biden, a campaign possibly inspired by and coordinated with the IDW's favorite shameless grifter Andy Ngo. 

Who was nominated is irrelevant, you mean?

Yes. I think that that choice was irrelevant, because I don’t think that those voters are the people who are steering the direction of the Party.

You write, “Are there problems on the right—horrible nasties on a par with the violent protesters who have lately inflicted untold damage on many U.S. cities, businesses and lives? You bet. These execrable gun-toting racists have received too much tacit encouragement from Trump.” Would you say it’s tacit? Isn’t it more direct than tacit?

I have to think about my answer. I think Donald Trump has played an opposite and equal role in encouraging bad people in the destruction that we’ve seen this year.

I’m asking because he talked about liberating Michigan. And then what he said about Kyle Rittenhouse.

Well, again, Donald Trump’s reaction, for example, in the wake of Charlottesville was abhorrent. I find an unwillingness on the part of many to condemn the destruction that takes place. The shootings, the violence, the threatening that’s been taking place—I find that also extraordinarily troubling. Now, is it incumbent upon the President to behave better? Damn, yes. That is why, for the last three and a half years, I’ve done very little but condemn Donald Trump on these matters. I try to be fair in calling balls and strikes, as I tried to be fair with Obama. I’m a conservative, so my view of what a ball and a strike is is different from yours. Nonetheless, those things are abhorrent. The problem that I see and the problem that brought me to write this is that there is an almost equal and opposite reaction on the other side.

You follow up that last quote by writing, “But they do not represent the mainstream of the Republican Party or guide the choices of the vast mass of Republican members of Congress.” Can you explain this a little bit more? I was slightly confused, because Trump is actually the President. And so it feels like maybe that does represent the mainstream of the Party, since he is the nominee and extremely popular and the most powerful and important Republican.

So Pletka's argument is that while violent extremists do represent the Democratic Party in spite of its nominee's moderate positions, on the other hand violent Trump supporters don't represent the Republican Party even though its leader, Trump, openly defended their violence.

The mind-fuckery and SHAMELESSNESS is absolutely appalling.

And to demonstrate once again the wretched character of the people aligned with Koch and the IDW, like Pinker and his defenders and the IDW/GamerGate creeps, Pletka takes a stupid cheap shot at Chotiner.

I’m thirty-seven—no, no, I’m thirty-eight.

You can’t even add.

Pletka hates Chotiner for allowing her to reveal herself as the soulless toady and defender of racists that she always has been and likely always will be.

The continuing alignment between Trump and the Intellectual Dark Web

 Bari Weiss cheering on racist Trump's race pseudo-science promoting Department of Education and its latest scheme against Black Americans.

While Trump continues to attack the 1619 project.

Trump recently threatened to nix federal funding for California schools that teach the 1619 Project, while the White House issued a governmentwide directive to stop what it called “un-American propaganda training sessions" about race.

"The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans," Trump said. "That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools."

Trump assails 'toxic propaganda' amid racial unrest

During her remarks, DeVos acknowledged that the federal government can't dictate school curriculum. The education secretary said during a conservative policy panel that she thinks a 1776 Unites curriculum "sounds really wonderful."

That project was launched this week by the group 1776 Unites, whose founder, Bob Woodson, has said "low income blacks are just collateral damage" in efforts of "radical leftists" seeking to "demean and destroy the civic institutions in this country."

The 1776 Unites project is described as a way to offer "a more complete and inspiring story of the history of African-Americans in the United States" and is a direct response to the 1619 Project.

DeVos of course is a fan of "biosocial criminology."

The Intellectual Dark Web is clearly hoping for a Trump re-election to make all their anti-Black dreams come true.

The IDW has turned out to be more rightwing, racist and disgusting than even I imagined.

James Lindsay and his allies part 2: as cynical as they come

James Lindsay is as cynical as they come, publishing a book promoting "civil" discussions while being a complete asshole on Twitter, as I discussed here.

One of his allies is Christopher Rufo, promoter of "intelligent design" and a big Trump supporter.

And far from criticizing Lindsay and his reactionary, anti-science grift these alleged champions of science and atheism are supporting this clown.

Pinker and Sullivan are leading mainstream supporters of race science, Jerry Coyne is Pinker's leading flunky and also a supporter of race science. Peter Boghossian is one of Lindsay and Pluckrose's fellow free-speech grifters who appeared several times on white supremacist Stefan Molyneux's channel, and Andrew Doyle is a Koch toady.

I didn't realize Alan Sokal was a major-league idiot, but apparently he is.

TESTIMONIALS

Steven Pinker

Johnstone Professor Of Psychology, Harvard University, And Author Of Enlightenment Now

"Many people are nonplussed by the surge of wokery, social justice warfare, intersectionality, and identity politics that has spilled out of academia and inundated other spheres of life. Where did it come from? What ideas are behind it? This book exposes the surprisingly shallow intellectual roots of the movements that appear to be engulfing our culture."

Andrew Doyle

Comedian, Playwright, Journalist, Political Satirist, And Creator Of Titania McGrath

"Cynical Theories is a brilliant book, offering an incisive and much needed critique of the cult of social justice. The authors painstakingly trace its origins in postmodernism and, in doing so, expose the ways in which a once fashionable coterie of theorists infiltrated the mainstream with catastrophic consequences for liberalism, equality, and free speech."

Alan Sokal

Professor Of Mathematics, University College London, And Coauthor Of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse Of Science

"In this important and timely book, Pluckrose and Lindsay trace the intellectual origins of today's Social Justice crusaders. With clear prose and a fair-minded spirit, they argue forcefully that struggles for social justice are strongest when they are founded on respect for evidence, reason, and free and open debate. They deplore the harm that closed-minded Social Justice ideologues are doing to the cause of social justice (lower-case), and they offer practical strategies for doing better."

Jerry Coyne

Biologist And Author

I’ve now finished Pluckrose’s and Lindsay’s new book, and can recommend it to readers. ... It’s more academic than I imagined and less of a screed against Social Justice (which they capitalize to indicate the woke version against classical “liberal” social justice), but I found that emphasis refreshing. ... This book will help you recognize Theory when you see it, and then you’ll start seeing it everywhere: in the New York Times, in the Washington Post, in the petulant acts of cancel culture, and on most every college campus in America."
Full review.

Peter Boghossian

Author, Philosopher, And University Professor

"This is the most important book in the last quarter century. It's the unified field theory for economic, social, and political developments in Western civilization."

Andrew Sullivan

British-Born American Author, Editor, Blogger, And Political Commentator

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive. But liberals have nothing to be defensive about. What’s so encouraging about this book is that it has confidence in its own arguments, and is as dedicated to actual social justice, achieved through liberal means, as it is scornful of the postmodern ideologues who have coopted and corrupted otherwise noble causes.
This is very good news—even better to see it as the Number 1 Amazon best-seller in philosophy long before its publication date later in August. The intellectual fight back against wokeness has now begun in earnest. Let’s do this.
Full review.

Steven Pinker, Andrew Sullivan and the mainstream media gentlemen's agreement

Steven Pinker is even more ubiquitous in 2020 than he was last year, because this year he has a mission to portray himself as a free speech martyr.

And in all the interviews he has given since the Linguist Society open letter, the interviewers have abided by the long-standing gentlemen's agreement in the media to refrain from asking Steve Pinker about his support for Steve Sailer and race science.

The only time I've seen any prominent media person mention Pinker's support for Sailer was when Malcolm Gladwell caught Pinker in the act, and mentioned it in a letter to the NYTimes and on his personal blog:

I wondered about the basis of Pinker’s conclusion, so I e-mailed him, asking if he could tell me where to find the scientific data that would set me straight. He very graciously wrote me back. He had three sources, he said. The first was Steve Sailer. Sailer, for the uninitiated, is a California blogger with a marketing background who is best known for his belief that black people are intellectually inferior to white people. Sailer’s “proof” of the connection between draft position and performance is, I’m sure Pinker would agree, crude: his key variable is how many times a player has been named to the Pro Bowl. 

The only media outlet that picked up on this story was Business Insider - Gladwell: Steven Pinker got his data from a racist. And this was 2009. Not a peep since then even though Pinker was declared by the NYTimes to be a "celebrity intellectual."

If you Google Steven Pinker and Steve Sailer the top hits are from Steve Sailer and me.

And even though the major impetus to Pinker's free speech martyr media tour is a petition against Pinker which mentions Pinker's race science connection, the boys of the media still cannot find a single reason to ask Pinker about his support for the career of professional racist Steve Sailer nor his ongoing support for various race science crackpot theories like the Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence hypothesis.

Sailer himself is not shy about mentioning the connection.

Pinker is not asked about race science nor Sailer by these media outlets:

• Unherd, July 8, 2020
• The Sunday Times, July 9, 2020
• The New Statesman July 22, 2020
• Freakonomics Steven Levitt, August 21, 2020
• Spear's August 24, 2020
• Reason Magazine, September 6, 2020

But this kid-gloves treatment is only for Pinker. The media is not afraid to ask Andrew Sullivan about his support for race science.

In a New York Times interview with Sullivan from August 30, 2020:

I tried out my most charitable interpretation of his view on race and I.Q. (though I question the underpinnings of the whole intellectual project): that he is most frustrated by the notion that you can’t talk about the influence of biology and genetics on humanity. But that he’s not actually saying he thinks Black people as a group are less intelligent. He’d be equally open to the view, I suggested, that data exploring genetics and its connection to intelligence would find that Black people are on average smarter than other groups. 

“It could be, although the evidence is not trending in that direction as far as I pay attention to it. But I don’t much,” he said. (He later told me he’s “open-minded” on the issue and thinks it’s “premature” to weigh the data.)
“I barely write about this,” he went on. “It’s not something I’m obsessed with.” 

But he also can’t quite stop himself, even as I sat there wishing he would. “Let’s say Jews. I mean, just look at the Nobel Prize. I’m just saying — there’s something there, I think. And I’m not sure what it is, but I’m just not prepared to accept the whole thing is over.” 

I’ve been reading Mr. Sullivan too long to write him off. I’ve been influenced deeply by him on marriage, torture and other big questions; and I’m aware of how deeply he shaped how we all write for the web. When I nodded along with much of Jamelle Bouie’s criticism of Mr. Sullivan in 2017, I also recognized in Mr. Bouie’s piece the style of fisking that Mr. Sullivan helped popularize almost two decades ago.
I wish Mr. Sullivan would accept that the project of trying to link the biological fiction of race with the science of genetics ought, in fact, to be over. 

When I said some of this to Mr. Sullivan, he noted that he had been born and raised in England, and he hasn’t always had perfect footing on American questions of race — though he has seemingly absorbed and mastered so much about American politics. 

But his exit out of big media is a very American story. His career, with all its sweep and innovation, can’t ever quite escape that 1994 magazine cover.

Sullivan's career can't ever quite escape one magazine cover, meanwhile Steven Pinker's career is untouched by his support, for about a decade, of the career of a toxic professional racist, Steve Sailer; and few in the media are interested in Pinker's continuing support for crackpot race theories.

Sullivan alludes to the "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" (NHAI) hypothesis when he says:

“Let’s say Jews. I mean, just look at the Nobel Prize. I’m just saying — there’s something there, I think. And I’m not sure what it is, but I’m just not prepared to accept the whole thing is over.” 

Instead of being criticized in establishment media, like Andrew Sullivan, Pinker and friends used a letter from a bunch of linguists complaining about Pinker's race issues to portray Pinker as Free Speech Martyr, and his beliefs - the same that Sullivan holds about race - are systematically ignored.

The gentlemen's agreement in action.

Evolutionary psychology is not hard to understand

Evolutionary psychology is not hard to understand.  PZ Myers explains it in this video, which also provides a good primer on actual evolutionary theory.

I've always thought its simplicity is why dullards like Quillette's Bo Winegard liked it. But maybe even evolutionary psychology seems hard to Bo Winegard and I've been overestimating him.



On the other hand claiming that objections to hereditarian beliefs are simply anti-rationality and over-emotionalism is a popular, if incredibly transparent, tactic of hereditarians, whether you're talking about evolutionary psychology or race science.

Could it be that hereditarians are so stupid in general that they can't grasp the arguments against their pet theories and so conclude the only reason others could object to those theories are "feelings and preferences"? Or as Steven Pinker suggests, because they want to get people "riled up" for the sake of moral outrage.

Trump, the IDW and investigating the 1619 project

People associated with the Intellectual Dark Web are on the record as hostile to the 1619 project.

The IDW is associated with many people who promote race science, from Charles Murray to Sam Harris to Steven Pinker to the many authors at Quillette.

I've been noting the hostility of race science promoters to the history of African Americans for years.

We see Sam Harris expressing that hostility in his debate with Ezra Klein (my highlights):

Ezra Klein

...(Charles) Murray does say he thinks that some combination of genetic and basically immutably environmental characteristics make it so we can’t do much about this and there just are big differences between the groups, and it’s just going to remain that way, and American politics need to rearrange itself around that reality. 

Yeah, I strongly disagree, and I disagree because of American history. That is why my fundamental criticism of that conversation was that you needed to deal more with the history of this conversation and the history of this country. 

Sam Harris
Okay, but even in this conversation you are unwilling to differentiate scientific fact and scientific data and reasonable extrapolations based on data, from past injustices in American history, these are totally separate things — 

Ezra Klein
No, we disagree on what a reasonable extrapolation from the data is.

Harris believes that scientific data should be considered "totally separate" from American history as an explanation for African American failure to thrive, post-Emancipation. The late Michael Brooks had an excellent response to Harris's position.

The attitude of race science towards African American history is perhaps most succinctly expressed by race science promoter Razib Khan, on his blog, when he took offense at Carl Zimmer in the New York Times pointing out that many African Americans have European genetic ancestry and that a significant number of white Americans have recent African ancestry.

Khan wrote (my highlight):

What genetics is showing is that in fact white Americans are shockingly European to an incredibly high degree for a population with roots on this continent for 400 years. If we removed all the history that we take for granted we’d be amazed that the indigenous peoples had so little demographic impact, and, that the larger numbers of people of partial African ancestry did not move into the general “white” population. 

Yes, if we could create a context-free scenario that eliminated all knowledge of the one-drop rule and slavery and systemic racism and the collapse of indigenous populations due to European diseases and expansion we would be amazed and baffled and perplexed. That's what lack of information will do to you.

So why even consider this context-free scenario? Because if race science promoters could eliminate knowledge of African America history it would clear the way for an explanation based on genetic inferiority. And then contemporary anti-Black racism could be declared not the result of centuries of systemic racism but rather the fault of Black people themselves.

In Sam Harris's debate with Ezra Klein over Charles Murray, Harris linked to an article in Quillette, A Tale of Two Bell Curves, which demonstrates how extreme are race science beliefs in the genetic explanation of African American failure to thrive. Authors Ben and Bo Winegard claim, using race pseudo-science as justification, that the only explanation is genetics (my highlight):

Of course, there are other possible explanations of the Black-White (intelligence test) gap, such as parenting styles, stereotype threat, and a legacy of slavery/discrimination among others. However, to date, none of these putative causal variables has been shown to have a significant effect on the IQ gap, and no researcher has yet made a compelling case that environmental variables can explain the gap. This is certainly not for lack of effort; for good reason, scholars are highly motivated to ascertain possible environmental causes of the gap and have tried for many years to do just that.

When I asked Ben Winegard about this on Twitter, before he blocked my Pinkerite Twitter account, his response was to claim the Asian American and Jewish American experiences were comparable to the African American experience. He tweeted:

Asian Americans were treated abysmally. And I don't think we need to tarry over the historical treatment of Jewish people.

This bogus equivalence is only possible if you know nothing about the Black experience in North America since 1619 - or you are doing your best to deny the significance of that experience.

One of the things I discovered from doing this blog is how little I knew of the many attacks on African American communities since Emancipation. I did not know about the murder of Blacks and the destruction of "Black Wall Street" in the Tulsa massacre. And that was one of many ignored and under-discussed incidents of African American history.

James Lindsay is obsessed with suppressing 

knowledge of systemic racism.

Not all violence and looting of black wealth has happened on a grand scale, but it has occurred systematically and with impunity as one of the articles in the 1619 project documents:

Elmore Bolling, whose brothers called him Buddy, was a kind of one-man economy in Lowndesboro, Ala. He leased a plantation, where he had a general store with a gas station out front and a catering business; he grew cotton, corn and sugar cane. He also owned a small fleet of trucks that ran livestock and made deliveries between Lowndesboro and Montgomery. At his peak, Bolling employed as many as 40 people, all of them black like him. 

One December day in 1947, a group of white men showed up along a stretch of Highway 80 just yards from Bolling’s home and store, where he lived with his wife, Bertha Mae, and their seven young children. The men confronted him on a section of road he had helped lay and shot him seven times — six times with a pistol and once with a shotgun blast to the back. His family rushed from the store to find him lying dead in a ditch. 

The shooters didn’t even cover their faces; they didn’t need to. Everyone knew who had done it and why. “He was too successful to be a Negro,” someone who knew Bolling told a newspaper at the time. When Bolling was killed, his family estimates he had as much as $40,000 in the bank and more than $5,000 in assets, about $500,000 in today’s dollars. But within months of his murder nearly all of it would be gone. White creditors and people posing as creditors took the money the family got from the sale of their trucks and cattle. They even staked claims on what was left of the family’s savings. The jobs that he provided were gone, too. Almost overnight the Bollings went from prosperity to poverty. Bertha Mae found work at a dry cleaner. The older children dropped out of school to help support the family. Within two years, the Bollings fled Lowndes County, fearing for their lives.

This is the knowledge that the race science promoters of the Intellectual Dark Web want to suppress. And they have found an ally in Donald Trump.

Trump says Department of Education will investigate use of 1619 Project in schools

President Donald Trump is continuing to wage battle against interpretations of history which he claims are un-American.

In a Sunday morning tweet, the President said the US Department of Education would investigate whether California schools are using the New York Times' "1619 Project" in public school curriculum. The Pulitzer-Prize winning collection reframes American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on America's shores. 

"Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!" he wrote on Twitter, citing a message from an unverified account saying it was being taught in schools there. 

The message came after the President on Friday night banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training related to "white privilege" and "critical race theory."

Trump's Department of Education is headed by Betsy Devos, who is a fan of race science as evidenced by her citation of the work of "biosocial criminologists" John Paul Wright, Kevin Beaver, J. C. Barnes, Michelle A. Coyne and Mark Alden Morgan. She used their work to make claims about Black children.

In making the latter point, DeVos' commission cited several times a study in which researchers argued that the discipline discrepancies between black and white students are "likely produced by pre-existing behavioral problems of youth that are imported into the classroom, that cause classroom disruptions, and that trigger disciplinary measures by teachers and school officials...

...Early misbehavior is tied to later misbehavior and, in turn, that misbehavior is tied to school suspensions," the researchers concluded. "These findings highlight the importance of early problem behaviors and suggest that the use of suspensions by teachers and administrators may not have been as racially biased as some scholars have argued."

The paper's claim that there is no racial bias in the punishment of Black children seems extremely implausible. But I don't think it's impossible that there could be a bit more discipline problems with Black children, because Black children are more likely to come from poor homes and poverty is associated with bad behaviors.

And if you know African American history, which involved not only discrimination but terrorism and looting and practices like housing discrimination that continue right up to the present day, you know why Black children are more likely to come from poor homes.

The actual problem is that John Paul Wright and friends consider Black misbehavior not the result of socio-economic conditions but a sign there is something innately more criminal and less intelligent about Black people due to their own genetics.

As John Paul Wright bluntly explains in his chapter "Inconvenient Truths: Science, Race, and Crime" in Biosocial Criminology: New Directions in Theory and Research edited by Anthony Walsh and Kevin M. Beaver (my highlight):

Page 149: 

...Areas afflicted by crime and other social pathologies are more frequently black than white, and even less frequently Oriental. Part of the reason for these visible and dramatic differences may have to do with the differential abilities of races to organize socially. 

Page 150: 

From the available data it would seem ludicrous to argue that "race" is a construct devoid of a biological or evolutionary backdrop. That evolutionary forces have produced biological variance across races is now scientifically undeniable. That many of the characteristics that define races appear to be universal and time stable is also undeniable. Evolution can produce many forms of adaptations, but it cannot produce equality.  

The connection between race and criminal behavior is clearly complex and involves a range of historical, social, psychological and individual variables. Evolution however, provides a powerful mechanism to understand the development of human races and the distribution of traits and behaviors within and across races. It helps explain why races would appear and under what conditions races would appear. It helps to explain why certain traits would be beneficial and why these traits such as higher IQ, would be unequally distributed across races. Moreover evolutionary theory helps explain why race-based patterns of behavior are universal, such as black over-involvement in crime. No other paradigm organizes these patterns better. No other paradigm explains these inconvenient truths.

Just like Bo and Ben Winegard in Quillette, John Paul Wright declares that there is no other explanation other than "evolutionary theory" for Black crime rates.

Wright has also written for Quillette and appeared as a guest on white supremacist Stefan Molyneux's channel.

The Intellectual Dark Web and Donald Trump want to suppress the 1619 project, because it runs contrary to the race science narrative that there is no other explanation for African American failure to thrive besides "evolutionary theory."