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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Unz Foundation grants to Gregory Cochran, Steve Sailer and Razib Khan

I should have looked into the interconnections between Steve Sailer and the co-authors of the Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence hypothesis sooner. 

Hiding in plain sight online was the 2009 990 Unz Foundation tax form, which I found when doing a search on "Steve Sailer" and "Gregory Cochran." Apparently Ron Unz, founder of Unz magazine and friend of Steve Sailer, gave a grant of $600,000 to Gregory Cochran.


Cochran is a co-author of  the "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" hypothesis paper, published in 2005, which claims that Ashkenazi Jews are biologically more intelligent than other "races" because of various medical conditions that appear in a higher proportion among Ashkenazi Jews than other ethnic groups. 

It has never been tested, but many of the basic premises of the NHAI hypothesis have been debunked separately by anthropologist Brian Ferguson and geneticist Adam Rutherford.

But Steven Pinker is a long-time promoter of the untested NHAI hypothesis, which we will get to in detail when I review the speech Pinker gave entitled  "Jews, Genes and Intelligence."

But I could have found out about the Unz Foundation grant to Cochran much earlier had I not been blocked by racemongering Emil O. W. Kirkegaard - Charles Murray is a fan of his. But my new, additional Twitter account is not blocked (yet) by Kirkegaard. So I saw this, which not only confirms the validity of the tax form I found, but includes a link to a page on Unz where Unz admits to the grant.


Ron Unz is a rare bird even among rightwing cranks in that he is a Holocaust-denying Jew. But rightwing racemongers are happy to take his money. According to the tax form, Unz Foundation gave the following grants:

Khan got more Unz grants in 2012 and 2013.

I suspect that this was a bonus for Sailer over and above his regular Unz-related income - Sailer also takes money from VDARE which Unz also funds

The money Ron Unz gave to these racemongers was undoubtedly only one income stream for each, during the lengths of the grants, demonstrating how extremely lucrative racemongering is.

No doubt Unz funded Cochran because he was hoping Cochran would write another "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" paper and was not happy when Cochran failed to produce:

(Cochran's) a smart guy, but unfortunately he believes he’s far, far smarter and more knowledgeable than he actually is. This serious personal flaw leads him to make all sorts of grandiose claims regarding topics in which he knows absolutely nothing and therefore looks ridiculous.

Back about ten years ago, I’d given him a very large unrestricted five-year financial grant based upon his outstanding previous work. Unfortunately (as far as I can tell) that grant caused him to become very arrogant and lazy, and he did no subsequent work of any significance during that five year period. Therefore, I decided not to renew his very large grant for an additional five years causing him to become outraged.

Some time after that, he wrote a blogpost grossly insulting the intelligence of my old Harvard professor E.O. Wilson. This led me to point out some of the obvious flaws in his reasoning in a series of very polite comments on his blogsite. Since my analysis was clearly correct and his analysis was wrong, he immediately deleted my comments and also banned me from his blogsite so that my arguments wouldn’t “confuse” the flock of silly fanboys who foolishly worship his self-proclaimed brilliance.

Based upon this disagreeable history, the only circumstances in which I might allow him to join my webzine would be if he provided me an explicit personal apology for deleting my polite comments disputing his mistaken ev-bio analysis and then banning me from his blogsite. Given Cochran’s aforementioned personality, the likelihood of this happening is nil.

I won't lie - I enjoyed that, although Unz and Cochran are equally repellent cranks.

Also enjoyable was to discover that I'm not the only one who recognizes what a poor writer Razib Khan is. Here is a conversation of sorts between a couple of Unz regulars in the same comments section of the Unz post where Ron Unz bashes Gregory Cochran

But this being Unz, my enjoyment was diminished by the fact that these literary critics are also racist filth:


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Svigor says:

Dr. Thompson is eminently more readable than Razib Kahn. Kahn talked the talk but was very poor at explaining the meaning of geneticist’s specialized terminology in everyday language. 

Razib’s poor at explaining lots of things, not just genetics. His historical and archeological references were routinely impenetrable. And his prose was Rube Goldbergian.

Its Khan (as in Genghis), bud.

Strangely, he inspired no shortage of suckups.

This led me to point out some of the obvious flaws in his reasoning in a series of very polite comments on his blogsite. Since my analysis was clearly correct and his analysis was wrong, he immediately deleted my comments and also banned me from his blogsite so that my arguments wouldn’t “confuse” the flock of silly fanboys who foolishly worship his self-proclaimed brilliance.

Maybe Razib and Cochran can start a site together.

That’s why I found his very rancorish public statements towards you very unprofessional and ungrateful. Shall we say that Cochran is endowed with a very churlish personality.

Ben Franklin probably would have predicted Cochran’s behavior.

In reality, the superior mind can reduce complexity to relatively simple, readily understood concepts, but this requires that one set aside his ego.

I dunno, I’m egotistical as Hell, and I often leave people marveling at how interesting and understandable I can make topics that bored them stiff in school (I’m talking about normal IQ folks, here, or their kids, so it’s not like I’m explaining really complicated stuff). Dave Ramsey calls it “the heart of a teacher”; you get a kick out of enlightenment. Razib’s an arrogant South Asian (but, I repeat myself) type, they’re not into giving, they’re into getting. Hence, South Asia.

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Ugh, racists. Now I'm going to have to reconsider Khan's literary ability, since racists are agreeing with me about that. Maybe Khan is not such a bad writer after all.

This does answer a question I've had for quite awhile: Given how much in love the typical white supremacist is with whiteness and "Western Civilization," what do they think about racemongers who are not white, whose ancestry is not primarily European? 

Looks like, although Khan provides them with pseudo-scientific justifications for their racism, they have contempt for him as a person of color.

But with this Unz Foundation 990 tax form, we can see the kind of money that Khan has received from Ron Unz, just one branch of the racist-plutocrat-driven wingnut welfare system.

I'm sure Khan is crying all the way to the bank.

UPDATE: originally I said Emil O W Kirkegaard was an author in Quillette. That was incorrect, I got him mixed up with racemonger Noah Carl. 

However, Quillette's founder, Claire Lehmann, was apparently on friendly terms with Kirkegaard in 2018. Which should surprise nobody.





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