The Koch-funded City Journal ran a hit piece by "David Zimmerman" on Oliver Smith.
But who is David Zimmerman? According to his byline in the City Journal:
David Zimmerman is an independent writer who has worked as a producer in conservative talk radio.
When you click on the name it leads to this page, which lists Zimmerman's email address as the (also Koch-funded) Manhattan Institute's press communication email. And when you go to the Manhattan Institute's web site, there is only one reference to Zimmerman - and it's a link to Zimmerman's single piece at City Journal. Googling "David Zimmerman" and "conservative talk radio" was a bust. It seems that "David Zimmerman" prefers to remain anonymous.
I first became aware of Oliver Smith back when I had an active Pinkerite Twitter account. Smith alerted me to the fact that I was being attacked by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard and his gang of racist and misogynist goons. They lied about me, claiming I was responsible for some rando Twitter account. A lie also promoted by Steven Pinker's good buddy Razib Khan.
And in his little Substack celebration of the City Journal hit piece, Kirkegaard thoughtfully linked to my site:
Taking the broader picture, we can hope that this piece in City Journal helps people understand one of the bad aspects of the internet: The internet is fueled by obsessive people. Your influence on the internet is to a substantial degree a function of how much time you spend on it. And who has the most time to spend on the internet? Losers. They don't have jobs (Oliver is unemployed, living at his parents house), or families to spend time on. So naturally these people can spend all of their time on socially destructive behavior, akin to the Spiteful Mutant theory of Michael Woodley (naturally, Oliver Smith hates this theory). Cat lady Nancy McClernan who runs Pinkerite (a hate site against Steven Pinker) is another example of this unfortunate tendency. Historically, the response of civil society to such losers would be to excommunicate them, or send them to the nut houses. As these options no longer exist, they are essentially allowed free roam on the internet to everyone's detriment.
Although I don't think Kirkegaard has many real followers, the page on Pinkerite that he linked to barely got a bump.
It's too funny that someone who has devoted his entire life to promoting racism would claim other people are "obsessive." If racist freaks like Kirkegaard and Winegard weren't promoted and supported by miserable plutocratic monsters like Koch and Thiel, and "celebrity intellectual" idiots like Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, the rest of us could do other things.
Much like if the South had simply given up slavery, without invading the North, my great-great grandfathers would not have had to fight for the Union.
I discovered the Kirkegaard-defending, Koch-funded, pseudonymous hit piece via a tweet by Steven Pinker. Of course. Pinker loves to help out his low-life racist pals.
The main tactic of "David Zimmerman" is to smear Smith by mentioning Smith's right-wing past. The article is entitled The Cancel-Culture Troll with a Neo-Nazi Past.
First of all, good for Oliver Smith for changing his mind and quitting the far-right ("David Zimmerman" should consider it) and deciding to oppose race pseudoscience and racism.
But I admit, I am confused, because Bo Winegard is a neo-Nazi right now and that doesn't seem to bother "David Zimmerman" who moans:
In October 2019, when Smith’s article about Winegard had existed for about three months, Winegard presented a lecture about the evolutionary basis of human genetic variation for an evolutionary-biology group at the University of Alabama. Though the lecture itself went without incident, Winegard’s troubles began the following day, as he explained in an article about his experience:
[Winegard's blather, you can read it at the source.]
Following this incident, the University of Alabama student newspaper, The Crimson White, published an article attacking Winegard, claiming that his research “has been criticized for resembling the pseudoscience employed by eugenicists.” This statement apparently referred to Smith’s writings about Winegard at RationalWiki, because at the time when the student-paper article was published, Smith’s writings were the only other place that Winegard had been described in those sorts of terms. As Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, commented: “This claim was unsourced: who, exactly, has claimed this about Winegard, other than the author of the Rationalwiki article?”
The Christopher Ferguson citation is in Areo, run by race pseudoscience true believer Iona Italia.
Now the most important point here is that Smith did not lie about Winegard. Apparently the easiest way to smear Bo Winegard's reputation is to TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT HIM.
I was unaware of the Crimson White article. I enjoyed reading that. I loved this bit:
“We might disagree on what’s racist,” Winegard said after addressing McAlpin’s comment about his work, to which a student responded, “That’s because you’re racist.”
“OK, that’s fine,” Winegard said in response.
Good to see Winegard owning his racism, for once.
I also liked this bit:
Earl was referring to a student in the crowd who compared Winegard’s research with Hitler’s racist ideology, to which Winegard responded: Hitler’s regime was not informed by science.
“That’s definitely not true,” Earl said. “Hitler was certainly informed by science, and a lot of the race scientists were Americans. The Germans admired the American caste system, the racial system that we had.”
The students were not as stupid and ignorant as Winegard expected them to be. The Nazis were informed by the exact same "science" that Bo Winegard believes in.
But that isn't where the similarities between Bo Winegard and the Nazis end. Like the Nazis, Bo Winegard would like to see national racial quotas.
"Zimmerman" is so sympathetic to Winegard that he bullshits about the Crimson White article:
...the University of Alabama student newspaper, The Crimson White, published an article attacking Winegard, claiming that his research “has been criticized for resembling the pseudoscience employed by eugenicists.” This statement apparently referred to Smith’s writings about Winegard at RationalWiki, because at the time when the student-paper article was published, Smith’s writings were the only other place that Winegard had been described in those sorts of terms.
The Crimson White article was published November 7, 2019. Prior to that, the last iteration of the Winegard article at RationalWiki is August 2019 and it doesn't mention the word eugenics except in reference to Emil O. W. Kirkegaard.
And what about me? I was talking about Winegard's love of race pseudoscience in 2018. Like "David Zimmerman," Claire Lehmann was furious when I dared to tell the truth about Bo Winegard.
Speaking of that ninny, "David Zimmerman" is outraged that RationalWiki honestly describes race pseudoscience-loving Claire Lehmann.
But this City Journal article has so much that is idiotic, I will have to continue in another post.
But just remember three things about Emil Kirkegaard, besides that he's obsessive, racist filth:
- Charles Murray, who has been supported by Koch funding for decades, loves Emil Kirkegaard and Bo Winegard
