So it looks like the hit piece I've been writing about for the past couple of weeks has disappeared.
I first learned about the City Journal/Manhattan Institute hit piece, "The Cancel Culture Troll with the Neo-Nazi Past" when I took a peek at Steven Pinker's Twitter feed and saw Pinker promoting the article.
If Pinker was promoting it, I knew it was likely bad, and likely very pro-race pseudoscience.
The article was written by the pseudonymous "David Zimmerman" - and you can see why the author would not want to associate their real identity with the piece, it's dreck, a collection of speculations and bullshit combined with either an ignorance of the way that Wikis operate, or deliberate dissembling.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, the article used a pseudonymously-authored Substack "Cancel Watch" as its source, a Substack dedicated to intimidating critics - or even just reporters - of race pseudoscience.
And as if THAT wasn't bad enough the Substacker appeared to have a direct connection to "David Zimmerman" and the article appears to be the culmination of a blackmail campaign against the subject of the piece.
The piece was so bad that the subject had begun to take legal actions against the Manhattan Institute.
And then, suddenly, the article went poof.
But thanks to the piece, it's clearer than ever that "intelligence research" is code for "race pseudoscience."
The Hall of Shame of right-wing race pseudoscience ghouls promoting this trashy article
The question is, what did they know about the blackmail attempt.
Is anybody really surprised that Steven Pinker is on the same side of this issue as filthy racist Steve Sailer and White Supremacist Castle VDARE?
The site appears to be mainly a platform for Peter Brimelow's anti-immigration views, which veer frequently into playing footsie with overt white nationalism; the other topics are window dressing. Brimelow has admitted that VDARE does publish people who are white nationalists.[4] VDARE has carried articles by fringe "academics" Jared Taylor, J. Philippe Rushton, Edward Dutton and Kevin MacDonald, who more than just flirt with overt "scientific" racism (or "racial realism", as they like to call it). It also carried articles by Sam Francis until his death in 2005.VDARE takes its name from Virginia Dare, purportedly the first "white" child born in the New World. They apparently don't realize that this makes her the original "anchor baby."[note 1]
Other obsessions
Although tEh juice jOoOoOz and their malevolent machinations are arguably número uno on Sailer's list of way-past-unhealthy obsessions, he still finds plenty a-time in his sorry existence to squirt bigot-venom at African-Americans, the LGBT community, the Hispanic community, undocumented migrants, feminists and, in general, everyone and anyone who isn't a white heterosexual able-bodied male like himself. Yet even in his ideal Hitler wet dream, he'd still have a big problem with all the whites from 'mixed bloodlines'; his real ideal world is basically just him and all his friends and family, no one else stealing his oxygen. A particular fixation of his is with the author Ta-Nahesi Coates, about whom he has written at least ten op-eds in the Unz Review.[15][16]
Fame?
Just enough to be persona non grata on any respectable message board or sub, not that he shows any signs of desisting from his self-appointed task of pumping hate-memes into the willing minds of his on-line acolytes. Think of him as a dead cat under the floorboards of the internet: worthless, repulsive and raising an unholy stench. But, sadly, also very difficult to get rid of.
Steve Sailer has been this way for decades - but that didn't stop Steven Pinker from promoting his career.
UPDATE: speaking of Richard Hanania, Jonathan Katz has a piece on how lucrative it is these days to be a professional racist: Hanania backers include sex site mogul and Tyler Cowen.
To recap: Last Friday, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie hosted former academic Richard Hanania on “The Active Voice,” a podcast that promises talks with “great writers” about how they “how they find the space for themselves to create great literature and journalism.” The Substack team either did not recognize or actively covered up Hanania’s prolific record of anti-Black racism and a eugenicist obsession with race and IQ. McKenzie described Hanania’s calls to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act as “gutsy.” McKenzie then sat back as Hanania’s recommended the writings of Steve Sailer — a columnist at the white supremacist blog VDARE — and of Emil Kirkegaard, a notorious Danish white nationalist and antisemite who advocates for incest and reducing the age of consent for girls to 13. (McKenzie has avoided repeated requests for comment over both email and Substack Notes.)
This inspired me to do a little more digging into Hanania’s current setup. I quickly discovered the real way Hanania “finds the space” for his “work”: a scammy nonprofit, apparently based out of his home outside Los Angeles, that he has used to funnel himself at least $297,500 over the past two years. The question was: Who was funneling the money into the nonprofit? Thanks to the help of some of your fellow readers, including The Informant’s Nick Martin, I’ve found some answers.
...
Hanania also received a $50,000 donation from the Mercatus Center, the right-wing Koch brothers-funded think tank at George Mason University headed by libertarian economist (and blogger) Tyler Cowen. Emails sent to the Mercatus media desk also went unanswered. But Cowen has been outspoken in his support for Hanania, sitting down at least once to be interviewed by Hanania on the CSPI YouTube channel. (Cowen unsuccessfully tried to disabuse Hanania of his obsession with IQ.)
The combined $250,000 from Conru and Meracatus represents less than a quarter of the $1.2 million that Hanania has raised since 2020, according to his federally required tax reports. The identity of his most lucrative benefactor is hidden behind one, and possibly two, charitable trusts: Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab. Specifically, in 2021 he received $600,000 from a donor hiding behind the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Funds and $100,000 from the Schwab Charitable Fund. It is possible those are the same donor drawing on two different accounts, and possible that they represent two different donors — it’s impossible to say.
