A former neo-Nazi defects from Emil Kirkegaard's neo-Nazi network

Could Erik Ahrens be the Hanfstaengl of the neo-Nazi movement?

Ahrens has published YouTube content critical of both Emil Kirkegaard and the International Society for Intelligence Research.

Ahrens was the main connection between Kirkegaard's Human Diversity Foundation and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) "often seen as chauvinistic, right-wing-populist, nationalistic, populist, right-wing, extremist, radical-right, or simply as Germany’s new Nazi party." 

According to the HOPE not Hate profile of the Human Diversity Foundation (now officially called "Polygenic Scores LLC) :

HDF has also enlisted Erik Ahrens, an Alternative für Deutschland communications worker, to expand its stable of influencers. With Frost, he has created an audiobook app called Liegent, which summarises texts by Charles Murray, Alain de Benoist, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The aim is to give far-right content creators an advertising partner, providing them with an additional source of revenue. In return, HDF expects an element of control of their editorial output. Ahrens, who has launched a similar scheme in Germany, calls the scheme “economics as coercion”. Edward Dutton and Thomas Rowsell (AKA Survive The Jive) have promoted Liegent adverts.

Last year the Irish Times published an article about Ahrens titled: The guru showing Alternative for Germany how to use social media to win votes and influence young people.

Ahrens has apparently had a change of heart since then, and is now opposed to race pseudoscience, homophobia and neo-Nazism.

So Ahrens published a video to his YouTube channel called Black people are NOT less intelligent. The "World IQ Map" is a fraud (PROOF) in which he argues against a race pseudoscience artifact promoted by Kirkegaard and his network. 

The World IQ Map is the usual Richard Lynn bullshit, the obvious slop of motivated reasoning and plain old racism, but it's good to have a former Kirkegaard associate say so.

The video is recorded in German, but provides an English-language auto-dub, which is not perfect, sometimes translating Kirkegaard's name as "Emil Kirkard" or "Meal Kirkegaard." Also the English translation auto-dub censors naughty words, so that the auto-dub voice says in English "when I was still pretty deep into all this Nazi." But even I know enough German to recognize that in the German captions he says "Nazischeiße' - or "when I was still pretty deep into all this Nazi shit."

Ahrens says he lived with Kirkegaard in Spain for a few months. He shows photos and a video clip of himself with Kirkegaard. He says "we often drank alcohol together" and that once when Kirkegaard was drunk he said he planned to do a new IQ study in which he would prove his racist beliefs. So I guess Kirkegaard does not have confidence that the Lynn World IQ Map sufficiently makes the racist case. 

Ahrens points out that Kirkegaard claims to already know the results of his study even before performing the study. But of course he does. That's how sociobiology/evolutionary psychology/behavioral genetics/eugenics/biosocial criminology/hereditarianism work - in my series on Adam Rutherford and the paper he co-authored that cites racists/hereditarians, I discussed Sam Harris giving the game away.

Ahrens says that Kirkegaard is "a leading figure or the leading figure in this international race and IQ research." Ahrens notes that Kirkegaard is not a data scientist or geneticist but rather has a bachelor's degree in linguistics. Also Kirkegaard has declared outright multiple times to Ahrens that he, Kirkegaard is a racist and hates Black people and "all his studies reflect that." 

I mean, that's a pretty obvious fact about Emil Kirkegaard, but it's good to have this personal testimonial to confirm it.

Next Ahrens discusses Kirkegaard's Human Diversity Foundation and the London Conference on Intelligence which no longer takes place in London - probably due to all the negative publicity it generated for ghouls like Toby Young - but now takes place in eastern Europe. 

Ahrens claims the conference took place at the Brody House in Budapest, August 16 - 18, 2024. Then Ahrens displays what he says is the time-table for the conference. Ahrens remarks: "professors and more or less well-known intellectuals from all over the world who of course travel there secretly so they don't get cancelled, and then they spread their basically racist theories together and present their pseudoscience to each other."

Next Ahrens discusses the 2022 annual meeting of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) in Vienna, saying:

...I was also in Vienna for another conference, again with Emil in tow. To be precise, the International Society of Intelligence Research conference in Vienna and Emil Kirkegaard was originally invited there but then disinvited. He came anyway and a secret meeting took place after the conference, where many of those present, including those you can see in this video including Professor Heiner Rindermann from TU Chemnitz, listened to a racist lecture from Emil Kirkegaard.

The Ahrens video shows silent video clips of race pseudoscience promoters, some I unfortunately know on sight by now, including Jonathan Anomaly (real name Jonathan Beres) and Gregory Clark. 

Ahrens claims that Jonathan Anomaly
attended Emil Kirkegaard's "secret lecture"
------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahrens claims that Gregory Clark 
attended Emil Kirkegaard's "secret lecture"
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Then Ahrens shows what looks like a clip from an official ISIR video listing Anomaly, Clark, Helmuth Nyborg, Jordan Lasker (aka "Cremiux), Anna-Lena Schubert, Camille Williams, Tobias Wolfram, Paulina Plinke and Andreas Demitriou.

ISIR board member Emily Willoughby denied that she had anything to do with a private meeting but does not deny it took place, in the comments section of a blog post defending her by race pseudoscience ghoul Jerry Coyne.

It was understandable to be suspicious of Willoughby since she has a history of friendly communications with race pseudoscience freaks like "HBD Chick" and, yes, Emil Kirkegaard. And her long history of promoting the trashiest of race pseudoscience under the nom de Nazi "Ferahgo the Assassin" can be seen in Wikipedia archives. Twitter user Magnus Pharo testified to Willoughby's connection to Kirkegaard in 2022.

Kirkegaard has not responded yet, as far as I can tell, to the Ahrens video in spite of someone asking him to in the comments section of a blog post in which Kirkegaard practices the antique pseudoscience of physiognomy. 

Is Matt Yglesias a more or less well-intended heterodox-type thinker or just a great big racist?

Since we were talking about the racist extremist Crémieux (Jordan Lasker) recently, I couldn't help noticing that "centrist" political pundit Matthew Yglesias was, right in the middle of the NYTimes controversy involving Crémieux, promoting a tweet by Crémieux over at the Bad Place.

I had been aware of Yglesias' alliance with racists before. I wrote about his support for Razib Khan, and his defense of Richard Hanania.

While promoting and defending racist ghouls, Yglesias claims to be concerned about racism and bigotry.

On his Substack (of course) Yglesias ponders:

But I also think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to worry that stereotyping will lead to discrimination. And parsing the difference between “taste-based” and “statistical” discrimination doesn’t really change the fact that people are individuals, and they reasonably do not want to be discriminated against. Conversely, I think there is a broadly accurate stereotype that people who roam around the world articulating unflattering statistical observations about ethnic groups they don’t belong to mostly are, in fact, bigots with bad intentions. And the classic postwar observation that this kind of behavior can lead to extremely dark places with terrible results for everyone strikes me as pretty much correct. It’s not a coincidence that movements that want to destigmatize racism also want to do World War II revisionism.

But in this very same Substack post he includes extremist Curtis Yarvin, calling him "an influential and well-regarded voice on the MAGA right" while failing to mention his racism.

Yglesias appears to be doing all he can to normalize racists while claiming to be opposed to racism.

This has been Steven Pinker's strategy for a quarter of a century. Culminating most recently in aligning himself with and helping to mainstream the neo-Nazi organization run by Emil Kirkegaard.

Behavioral genetics promoter Eric Turkheimer responded to Yglesias:

Coming back to Yglesias’ concern with the manners of discussing group differences, I have a rule: All discussions of black-white differences in athletics are really about cognitive ability. If we accept that it is obvious that the predominance of Black people in the NBA is somehow the result of genetic differences, then it opens the door to having a similar discussion about why Black people have historically scored lower on IQ tests. This, I think, it the ultimate reason why Yglesias is uncomfortable with the topic, and I agree that he should be.

But genetic differences in cognitive ability are even more implausible than genetic differences in spelling or ping pong, for an obvious reason: there are massive environmental effects that compete with a genetic hypothesis. It isn’t especially easy to specify exactly how sports programs in Jamaica might go about producing top sprinters, but only bad-faith racists can deny the history of racism in the United States and around the world, beginning with slavery 500 years ago and proceeding through Jim Crow, segregation, and all of the reverberating cross-generational effects in the modern world. It is not possible to “control for” such massive environmental effects, and without doing so speculation about genetic causes is pointless.

I don’t mean to be too tough on Yglesias here. He is just trying to be reasonable about a very complex subject, and he doesn’t mention cognitive ability, although I think it is implicit in his concerns. There are many more or less well-intended heterodox-type thinkers, from Yglesias to Andrew Sullivan to Sam Harris to Jon Haidt, who try to establish their heterodox, pro-science, academic freedom bona fides by giving a fair shake to genetic explanations of race differences in behavior.

The last paragraph is the most telling -  "I don't mean to be too tough on Yglesias here..."

The "more or less well intended" Andrew Sullivan, Sam Harris and Jon Haidt have all demonstrated their devotion to race pseudoscience and to what I call the "American hereditarian assumption" which goes like this:

In spite of 250 years of slavery, followed by more than one hundred years of anti-Black terrorism, including organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, periodic "race riots" such as the Tulsa Race Massacre, and lynchings, Jim Crow, voter suppression, redlining,[143] segregation and theft of Black property and wealth,[144] the most plausible explanation for Black inability to thrive in the United States is the Black genome.

Andrew Sullivan is clearly a racist, promoting and defending the absolute racist Charles Murray for the past thirty years, but even Ezra Klein refuses to call Sullivan a racist.

Not long ago Sullivan was promoting neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard.

The bar to being called a racist is very high for hereditarians, especially establishment white male hereditarians who make a living as opinion-havers.

Sam Harris promoted the hard-core racist rag Quillette while defending Charles Murray. The Quillette article he linked to, written by (now) Kirkegaard employee Bo Winegard and his equally racist brother Ben, contains an example of the American hereditarian assumption in the wild:

Of course, there are other possible explanations of the Black-White 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.

This is evidence-free bullshit, but it impresses morons like Sam Harris.

Jonathan Haidt has flown under the radar more than Harris and Sullivan have, but he has demonstrated his race pseudoscience beliefs in talks; he's a defender of the garbage "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" paper written by a couple of racists although never proven or tested; and in the Jeffrey Epstein-funded Edge, in 2009 Haidt said:

Recent "sweeps" of the genome across human populations show that hundreds of genes have been changing during the last 5-10 millennia in response to local selection pressures. (See papers by Benjamin Voight, Scott Williamson, and Bruce Lahn). No new mental modules can be created from scratch in a few millennia, but slight tweaks to existing mechanisms can happen quickly, and small genetic changes can have big behavioral effects, as with those Russian foxes. We must therefore begin looking beyond the Pleistocene and turn our attention to the Holocene era as well – the last 10,000 years. This was the period after the spread of agriculture during which the pace of genetic change sped up in response to the enormous increase in the variety of ways that humans earned their living, formed larger coalitions, fought wars, and competed for resources and mates. 

 

The protective "wall" is about to come crashing down, and all sorts of uncomfortable claims are going to pour in. Skin color has no moral significance, but traits that led to Darwinian success in one of the many new niches and occupations of Holocene life — traits such as collectivism, clannishness, aggressiveness, docility, or the ability to delay gratification — are often seen as virtues or vices. Virtues are acquired slowly, by practice within a cultural context, but the discovery that there might be ethnically-linked genetic variations in the ease with which people can acquire specific virtues is — and this is my prediction — going to be a "game changing" scientific event. (By "ethnic" I mean any group of people who believe they share common descent, actually do share common descent, and that descent involved at least 500 years of a sustained selection pressure, such as sheep herding, rice farming, exposure to malaria, or a caste-based social order, which favored some heritable behavioral predispositions and not others.) 

 

I believe that the "Bell Curve" wars of the 1990s, over race differences in intelligence, will seem genteel and short-lived compared to the coming arguments over ethnic differences in moralized traits. I predict that this "war" will break out between 2012 and 2017.

There are reasons to hope that we'll ultimately reach a consensus that does not aid and abet racism.

Like all respectable promoters of race pseudoscience Haidt would never use the N word, so most people will miss what he's getting at - although maybe his mention of "Bell Curve" will be a clue to some. 

But I understand what he's saying after all these years of reading the claims of race pseudoscience promoters: in 2009 Haidt believed that genetics studies would prove that there are fundamental genetic racial differences and that racists had been right all along - that Black people as a group have fewer "virtues" than other groups.

But instead of evidence for Haidt's version of the American hereditarian assumption, what we got from genetics studies was evidence of the utter failure of the claims of genetic behavioralists, as recently discussed by Jay Joseph on his (unfortunately Subtack) blog called The Gene Illusion:

Missing heritability is a term that human genetic researchers invented around 15 years ago to acknowledge unexpected causal gene discovery failure, and to describe the large discrepancy between heritability estimates derived from twin studies versus those derived from DNA-based (molecular genetic) methods such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Importantly, as behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer emphasized in his recent book (see my review here), GWASes of psychiatric conditions and behavioral characteristics such as educational attainment (EA, often seen as an IQ “proxy measure”) identify (potentially spurious) gene-behavior “associations” (correlations), not causes.

Later in the post, Joseph writes: 

Most likely, future commentators will tell a similar story about behavioral polygenic scores, GWAS, GREML, RDR, and Sib-Regression. Alexander’s post merely continues (1) the 100-year fallacy of assuming that behavioral twin (and adoption) studies are based on sound assumptions and should be interpreted genetically; (2) the 55-year fallacy of assuming that twin studies are sound, so let’s spend billions of dollars trying to find the genes; and (3) the 15-year fallacy of believing that twin studies are sound while DNA-based methods failed, so “heritability must be missing.” It’s time to abandon behavioral and psychiatric research based on twin studies after a disastrous and harmful 100-year run. 

The "Alexander" mentioned in the paragraph above is Scott Alexander, real name Scott Siskind, yet another self-impressed dumbass who promotes race pseudoscience. His Slate Star Codex is a comfortable place for Steve Sailer to hang out and promote his racist extremism. 

And speaking of Steve Sailer:

Turkheimer may have done some good work, and may be publicly anti-racist, but he's a goddam fool to quickly absolve these pernicious ghouls of their racism.

As a result of Turkheimer's hands-off attitude towards racists, you can see Sailer is all over the comments section of the Turkheimer post about Yglesias. Turkheimer makes no response to Sailer, he just allows Sailer to promote his bullshit.

Also in the comments: "Slowly Reading" provides links to neo-Nazi Aporia and yes, of course to a tweet by Crémieux.

This acceptance, by people who should know better, of race pseudoscience promoters, as "more or less well-intended heterodox-type thinkers" is why I have to keep doing this blog.

Is Joe Rogan the king of morons?

What "Happened" to Joe Rogan? is the title of the most recent Some More News channel video and it's great. 

Joe Rogan, like Candace Owens, is a member of the Intellectual Dark Web that I have rarely mentioned over the past six and a half years that I've had this Pinkerite blog. And Rogan was even one of those who had his photo taken lurking in the dark, like the other grifters. 

From left to right:
Racist Michael Shermer, Thiel-tool Eric Weinstein, Ivermectin-shilling Heather Heying,
king of the morons Joe Rogan, grand arch-duke of the morons Dave Rubin, queen of the
free speech grifters Christina Hoff Sommers, race pseudoscience-shilling Sam Harris
and Game Theory fan Bret Weinstein

This Some More News video traces Rogan's journey from being a sort-of outsider to being part of the American fascism power structure. 

The host, Cody, keeps coming back to the fact that at one time Rogan referred to Trump as the "king of morons" long before he endorsed Trump. This video convinced me that Rogan is king of morons. 

And so is Trump but all non-morons knew that long ago.

I especially like this because I think there's likely some cross-over between Rogan's audience and Some More News' audience, and Rogan's audience needs to hear this - there may be hope for the percentage of Rogan's audience who are not morons.

 

The Far Right & the International Society for Intelligence Research

The Atlantic published an article by Ali Breland yesterday, The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ. Thanks to Maxine Margolis for the heads-up!

I have an issue with the title though. The far right has long been obsessed with Race and IQ. The important issue, which is what the article is really about, is that the Republican Party is being infected by race pseudoscience: 

The gospel of race science has not fully caught on with the broader MAGA masses yet, but you can see how it’s starting to trickle out. Race science is wrapped up in the right’s attack on Kamala Harris as the “DEI candidate.” The implication is that Harris’s success can only be attributed to her race and gender, not her intellect or experience. To a race-science proponent, that’s just what the data say.

And it's been going on since at least Bari Weiss's infamous glorification of several hardcore race pseudoscience promoters among the "renegades" of the Intellectual Dark Web including Michael Shermer, Douglas Murray, Charles Murray, Sam Harris and of course Steven Pinker.

I don't think the article really has a good handle on Steve Sailer's career though, whatever Sailer may claim:

In June, (Sailer) also appeared on Tucker Carlson’s web show. “Somehow you became a mysterious outlaw figure that no one is allowed to meet or talk to,” Carlson said from inside his barn studio in Maine. Sailer chuckled in agreement. “For 10 years—from 2013 into 2023—you basically couldn’t go see Steve Sailer give a speech anywhere,” he said. Now he was free to speak.

Sailer’s move into the spotlight, though significant on its own, marks something larger: Race science is on the rise. 

I have long noted on this blog that 2012 was the last time Steven Pinker mentioned Sailer in public after a previous decade of promoting his career, so I assume that's why Sailer picked 2013 as the year he was allegedly pushed out of the spotlight. And 2023 was when stochastic terrorist Elon Musk took over Twitter and invited all the racist ghouls back on. 

But New York Magazine had an article all about Sailer in 2017, The Man Who Invented Identity Politics for the New Right. So Sailer was hardly in hiding. 

The article does not mention the International Society for Intelligence Research, of course, but it does mention Stefan Molyneux, who had Linda Gottfredson, one of the most prominent members of ISIR on his show and together they ranked races with Black people on the bottom. 

The ISIR chugs along, year after year, almost completely unnoticed by the mainstream media, platforming many many proponents of race pseudoscience at its conferences. In 2023 it featured Michael Woodley of Menie, Gregory Clark, Rosalind Arden, Richard Haier, Emily Willoughby and Steven Pinker. 

This year they allowed one of the most extreme racists back in to make a presentation - Emil Kirkegaard.

There's a reference to "Bronze Age Pervert" in the Atlantic article and as outrageous as he is, his message per Breland is a perfect encapsulation of the ISIR ethos from Arthur Jensen to Linda Gottfredson to Richard Haier:

Much of his message essentially boils down to this: Some people are better than others, there is a natural order, and Black people are definitely at or near the bottom of it. 

I've created a spreadsheet to keep track of the participants of the annual Racist Rodeo - AKA the annual conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research. 

You can see the spreadsheet here.

Below are the top ten most frequent participants in the annual conferences since the first one in 2000. 

Note that participation is determined by mention in the annual conference program either for the inclusion of their work, or as an organizer or advisor or various administrative functions like interviewing the participants. But identification as a participant doesn't necessarily mean the individual was at the conference in person.

I haven't completed the 2024 conference since they haven't released the program yet, so these numbers are based on a timespan from 2000 to 2023. There was no conference in 2020. The right column is the number of times each has participated.

Lubinski, David	20
Bates, Timothy C.	18
Benbow, Camilla P.	18
Plomin, Robert	18
Deary, Ian J.	17
Haier, Richard	17
Johnson, Wendy	17
Detterman, Douglas K	16
Gottfredson, Linda	16
Colom, Roberto	14

So let's meet these most enthusiastic ISIR racist rodeo participants.

• David Lubinski is married to Camilla Benbow, and is currently at Vanderbilt University. In addition to being the most frequent ISIR conference participant, he received a "Lifetime Achievement" award from ISIR along with Benbow in 2019. Lubinski was one of the signatories of the Linda Gottfredson paper defending the race pseudoscience view in The Bell Curve, and as of 2022 was the director of the Institute of Mental Chronometry, which accepted money from the Pioneer Fund under the name Institute for the Study of Educational Differences. In 2023 the Institute of Mental Chronometry gave a grant of half a million dollars to two ISIR associates, Emily Willoughby and James J. Lee. 

Lubinski has not published anything directly about race, that I was able to discover so far, but his dedication to the cause of race pseudoscience seems certain via his various Jensenite associations and his apparently warm relationship with people like Linda Gottfredson and Steven Pinker. When Pinker was at the 2017 conference, Lubinski interviewed him and asked him, in effect, what made him come over to his side, the race pseudoscience side:

How did someone with your background, someone who at one point in his career and I'm not putting him on the spot because Steven said this publicly, said early on, he found individual differences "uninteresting" how did someone at that stage of development become so interested in human psychological diversity that you developed expertise in individual differences and wrote a book like "Blank Slate."

"Human psychological diversity" is a term indistinguishable from Steve Sailer's "human biodiversity." And clearly Lubinski is using the term "individual differences" as a synonym for "human psychological diversity." 

Lubinski published an obituary for Jensen in American Psychologist that paints Jensen as compassionate towards Black people while failing to mention Jensen's alliances with hard-core racists like American Renaissance; that he was supported by the Pioneer Fund; and that he was on the board of the neo-Nazi publication Neue Anthropologie.

👉 Signer of the Gottfredson-authored defense of Bell Curve pseudoscience, Mainstream Science on Intelligence.  

• Timothy C.  Bates is a member of the editorial board of Intelligence, the publication associated with the ISIR. Bates' far-right, racist political views are apparent on his X/Twitter feed, where he retweets the likes of techno-fascist Trump-funder Elon Musk, Steven Pinker, and Razib Khan. He was the president of ISIR in 2017 and 2018.

On the Facebook page for the ISIR, Bates posts a reminder of how much the ISIR gang loves the incredibly racist Charles Murray. 

 

• Camilla P. Benbow, like her husband David Lubinski, underplays her race pseudoscience beliefs, but is clearly an enthusiastic participant in the ISIR race pseudoscience project. She is also at Vanderbilt. She's coauthored with extreme Jensenite Richard Haier and with extremist David C. Geary who has published in racist Aporia and racist "hereditarian" Quillette. I think that like Pinker, Lubinski and Benbow are too careful to make blatant racist statements, but they are clearly allies with those who do. They let those allies take the heat, while they continue to benefit from the financial legacy of the Pioneer Fund and who knows how many racist plutocrat donors.

• Robert Plomin - David Gilborn explored the perniciousness of Plomin:

‘… the idea of innate group inferiority is still on the table, despite all the progress blacks have made in this society … the last great battle over racism will not be fought over access to a lunch counter, or the right to vote, or even the right to occupy the White House; it will be fought in a laboratory, under a microscope, on the battleground of our DNA.’ Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2008) 

Why write a paper about racism and genetics in the second decade of the Twenty-First century? Surely arguments about race, intelligence and genetics are dead and buried? A Black man has been President and, in both the US and UK, bold assertions about racial minorities’ supposed intellectual inferiority have led to public condemnation for the speaker. Part of my answer lies in the main title of the paper, which quotes Professor Robert Plomin, one of the principal figures in contemporary writing about genetics and education. 

As I explain (below), Plomin has become something of a celebrity-academic in the UK; his claims make headline news, his views are sought by policy-makers, and he features in pop-science radio shows. In one such show, hosted by Jim Al-Khalili (Professor of Physics and Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, UK) he was challenged on the topic of race. Plomin described his approach as follows:  

‘In general I’ve felt softly softly is a better way to go…’ (BBC Radio 4, 2015).[1]  

Until recently many in the field of behavioural genetics have been far less reticent about airing their views. The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) is the most famous, but by no means the only, example of such work (see Eysenck, 1971; Gottfredson, 1986; Jensen, 1969; Lynn, 1991 & 2001; Rushton, 1997). This paper shows how, in recent years, a softly softly approach (that avoids explicit reference to race) has become more common. I argue that this inexplicitness should not be mistaken for an absence of racialized thinking and does not signal that the current work is free from possible racist consequences. Indeed, if anything, the new softly softly version of hereditarianism may be even more dangerous than the outspoken version of earlier periods. 

👉 Signer of the Gottfredson-authored defense of Bell Curve pseudoscience, Mainstream Science on Intelligence.   

 

😱 Plomin published an article with Deary that was included in the manifesto of the racist Buffalo mass-murderer. 

• Ian J. Deary - curiously, Deary is quoted for the anti-hereditarian side in the Guardian: 

No one has successfully isolated any genes “for” intelligence at all, and claims in this direction have turned to dust when subjected to peer review. As the Edinburgh University cognitive ageing specialist Prof Ian Deary put it, “It is difficult to name even one gene that is reliably associated with normal intelligence in young, healthy adults.” Intelligence doesn’t come neatly packaged and labelled on any single strand of DNA. 

So it's strange that he spends so much time with people convinced of the hereditarian hypothesis, and, let's be real, hard-core racists and neo-Nazis who show up at ISIR conferences. 

 

😱 Deary published an article with Plomin that was included in the manifesto of the racist Buffalo mass-murderer.   

 

• Richard Haier - I wrote the first iteration of the new version of the Rational Wiki article (NOT the one discussed here) exploring the extreme Jensen-infused racism of Richard Haier, the most devoted member of the Jensen race cult.

👉 Signer of the Gottfredson-authored defense of Bell Curve pseudoscience, Mainstream Science on Intelligence.   

 

• Wendy Johnson - appears to be a Jensenite, but did not make a good case for racism when she appeared in an online interview. However, she has published with blatant racist Jan te Nijenhuis. And of course has no problem hobnobbing with all the racist extremists who show up at ISIR conferences.

• Douglas K. Detterman - according to his Wikipedia entry: "Among his achievements, Detterman founded the scientific journal Intelligence in 1977, and was editor in chief from 1977 to 2016 where it was taken over by Richard Haier. He also founded the International Society for Intelligence Research and was its president until 2011." 

The entry doesn't mention that Detterman is also vice president/director of the Jensenite, Pioneer Fund grantee organization the Institute of Mental Chronometry. It is likely that Detterman is just as racist as Gottfredson is and Jensen was, but is more careful to downplay the racism at the heart of his belief-system. 

 

👉Signer of the Gottfredson-authored defense of Bell Curve pseudoscience, Mainstream Science on Intelligence.    

 

• Linda Gottfredson is hideously racist, shamelessly so - possibly the equal of Jensen and J. P. Rushton. She can be heard ranking "races" with perfect confidence on white nationalist Stefan Molyneux's program. Her career is propped up by her lack of shame and the Nazi money of the Pioneer Fund. Gottfredson introduced Charles Murray to race pseudoscience. Of course this horrific racist ghoul is a long-time and highly admired member of the ISIR klan. They gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. 

👉Author of the defense of Bell Curve pseudoscience, Mainstream Science on Intelligence. 

• Roberto Colom is a huge fan and defender of the race pseudoscience of political operative and life-long recipient of wingnut welfare Charles Murray. He's also chummy with Murray on Twitter/X. Likes to cite all the biggest race pseudoscience ghouls in his work. Published in ultra-racist Mankind Quarterly.

Five of the top 10 ISIR conference participants signed Gottfredson's "Mainstream Science" claim. 

Another signer was R. Travis Osborne - pro-segregationist, director of the Pioneer Fund. His article "Racial Differences in Mental Growth and School Achievement" was included in a collection of race pseudoscience essays edited by Robert Kuttner, another segregationist. That collection was a big influence on Arthur Jensen.

The race pseudoscience obsession with school achievement has continued from the days of segregationists like Osborne through the Institute of Mental Chronometry, which was originally called "Institute for the Study of Educational Differences" through to Kathryn Paige Harden and "behavioral genetics" arguing that educational attainment is the result of genes, to Richard Haier arguing for manipulating genes to raise IQ.

From the Majority Report: Dave Rubin And Russell Brand Have An Idiot Contest

Dave Rubin was named in the infamous Bari Weiss article as a member of the Intellectual Dark Web - and even had his photo taken in the dark:

“I’ve been at this for 25 years now, having done all the MSM shows, including Oprah, Charlie Rose, ‘The Colbert Report,’ Larry King — you name it,” Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, told me. “The last couple of years I’ve shifted to doing shows hosted by Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Sam Harris and others. The I.D.W. is as powerful a media as any I’ve encountered.”

Mr. Shermer, a middle-aged science writer, now gets recognized on the street. On a recent bike ride in Santa Barbara, Calif., he passed a work crew and “the flag man stopped me and says: ‘Hey, you’re that skeptic guy, Shermer! I saw you on Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan!’” When he can’t watch the shows on YouTube, he listens to them as podcasts on the job. On breaks, he told Mr. Shermer, he takes notes.

“I’ve had to update Quillette’s servers three times now because it’s caved under the weight of the traffic,” Ms. Lehmann said about the publication most associated with this movement.

Even so, I have rarely mentioned Rubin on this blog.

But I had to share this Majority Report episode - just the title alone is perfect but the debate about exactly HOW Rubin lied is hysterical.

Kathryn Paige Harden at International Society for Intelligence Research conferences

I've found that Kathryn Paige Harden has participated in at least two ISIR conferences.

At the 2009 conference she delivered a paper "Why Don’t Smart Kids Have Sex? A Twin-Control Study." Also at that year's conference were Michael Woodley and Charles Murray. Harden claims she's not an hereditarian but by any standard, she absolutely is.

2009 was the year that Woodley published "Is Homo sapiens polytypic? Human taxonomic diversity and its implications" which was included in the manifesto of the monster who committed mass murder in Buffalo in 2022. 

The mass-murdering freak found other people inspiring, several of whom, like Woodley, have appeared at ISIR conferences. More about that soon.

This image, including part of a Michael Woodley paper (on the left)
 appeared in the manifesto of the 2022 Buffalo mass-murderer

In 2018 Harden delivered the keynote “The Genetic Lottery: Genes, Education, and Egalitarianism." Also at that conference were Woodley, again, and Emil Kirkegaard and Emily Willoughby and the usual mob of race pseudoscience true believers.

Harden can be heard promoting Emily Willoughby in this podcast in 2021:

Paige: It obviously doesn't stop at the neck and most people already know that. I talk about this study in the book where Emily Willoughby, who is a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, She and her colleagues asked a sample of lay Americans, not academics, to estimate the genetic influence on diseases like diabetes or breast cancer, mental illnesses like schizophrenia, but also psychological traits like intelligence or personality.

Richard Haier can be seen using a Harden article to defend Charles Murray and Sam Harris against Ezra Klein. More about Richard Haier soon. Talk about true believers in pure race science. Haier literally believes that the cause of poverty is bad genes, a position I like to call the "hereditarian equation."

Is Bo Winegard ready to teach at Williams College? What about the University of Chicago?

Bo Winegard has a Substack, dedicated to racism, called Aporia

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Naturally Aporia is on Substack because Substack is run by a bunch of Thiel-connected ghouls who find racism perfectly acceptable to publish.

***

Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago and Luana Maroja, of Williams College recently co-wrote a reactionary political screed in the Skeptical Inquirer, in which they presented racist neo-Nazi Bo Winegard as a victim of Marietta College - although they don't mention the college by name:

But the central question about genetics in the culture wars involves behavioral characteristics of different populations and ethnic groups, with differences in intelligence being the subject deemed most taboo. In light of the checkered history of this work, it behooves any researcher to tread lightly, for virtually any outcome save worldwide identity of populations could be used to buttress bias and bigotry. Indeed, even writing about this subject has led to sanctions on many scientists, who have “found themselves denounced, defamed, protested, petitioned, punched, kicked, stalked, spat on, censored, fired from their jobs and stripped of their honorary titles.” A well-known example is Bo Winegard, an untenured professor in Ohio who was apparently fired for merely suggesting the possibility that there were differences in cognition among ethnic groups. This is why most biologists stay far away from this topic.

They must both be aware of Winegard's long career of supporting "race realism." So why would they dishonestly present him as "merely suggesting the possibility that there were differences in cognition among ethnic groups"?

Marietta College never released a statement on why it declined to invite Winegard back, but it seems that Coyne and Maroja are convinced Winegard was a victim of political correctness. 

So here's my theory: Jerry Coyne and Luana Maroja want "race realism" taught at University of Chicago and Williams College and they'd like Bo Winegard to do the teaching.

I assume neither Coyne nor Maroja would agree to work for their respective colleges if they believed they were too woke to teach race realism. And Coyne, in particular is obsessed with any signs of wokeness. 

As P.Z. Myers noted, Coyne and Maroja are academic insiders:

It’s somewhat peculiar to read the complaints about a dogmatic stranglehold from these people. Coyne is a well-known, established, and successful scientist — he is a graduate of Harvard, and is now an emeritus professor of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious institutions of evolution research in the country. Maroja is a full Professor of Biology, and Chair of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Program at Williams College. I don’t see how they can complain that their careers have been “strangled” by the Left.

Coyne and Maroja are the establishment.* Their careers are built on convincingly supporting the dogmas of biology (which is not necessarily a bad thing at all.) They have immense amounts of academic power and influence, and have far more potential to be the strangler, rather than the strangled. Yet somehow they have the idea that science is being politically purged by progressive social justice, which they claim doesn’t care about truth.

I am no expert on the politics of academia, but it appears to me that both of them have the clout required to get Bo Winegard a job at their colleges. Much like Steven Pinker manages to hook up his fellow proponents of sociobiology/evolutionary psychology.

And after all, if "race realism" is good enough for Marietta, it must be good enough for Williams and UChicago.

Along with multi-decades-long professional racist Steve Sailer, Bo Winegard is an absolute true believer in the essential inferiority of Black people. Which is why he's a defender of The Bell Curve's claims about the innate inferiority of Black people. And why Sam Harris used Winegard's article in racist shitrag Quillette to defend Murray. Sailer and Winegard are in perfect harmony with racist troll Amy Wax.

Of course Bo Winegard has "demographic concerns." You know, like the Nazis.

As long as Bo Winegard promotes the notion of white superiority himself, he will refute the notion of white superiority. What a pathetic racist loser.

UPDATE Bo Winegard is very chummy with Emil. O. W. Kirkegaarrd, who was too embarrassing, finally, even for the International Society for Intelligence Research.

Chat GPT spills the tea about Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web

Since ChatGPT told me that Bari Weiss received a quarter of a million dollars from Peter Thiel in 2017, it occurred to me that perhaps her 2018 article for the New York Times about the splendors of her fellow travellers, Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, was a public announcement of who had agreed to be on the Peter Thiel payroll. In addition to all those associated with Quillette.

In the article there were twenty-five individuals named by Weiss as connected to the Intellectual Dark Web, including Steven Pinker, Kanye West, Milo Yiannapoulos, Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones. 

But the most significant of the IDW bunch are those who were photographed for the article, standing in the dark in the bushes. 

I guess the photographer wanted to make a point by posing these Intellectuals in the Dark, but drew the line at literally portraying them in a Web and so had to stick them in some bushes instead.

The eight bush skulkers include Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin and Eric and Bret Weinstein.

So what does ChatGPT have to say about them?

NOTE:  this must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

        Has Peter Thiel ever funded Sam Harris?

Yes, Peter Thiel has provided funding to Sam Harris in the past. In fact, Thiel was one of the early supporters of Harris' podcast and helped fund the creation of the Waking Up app, which was later renamed to the Sam Harris app. Thiel and Harris have also engaged in public conversations and have expressed mutual respect for each other's work in various fields.

----------------------------------------

Supposedly Harris says he's done with the Intellectual Dark Web.

I came up empty on a Thiel funding source for Michael Shermer, but ChatGPT did have this info, which is not even available at SourceWatch.

Has the Skeptic magazine received funding from Donors Trust?

Yes, according to public records, Skeptic magazine has received funding from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that provides support to a variety of conservative and libertarian organizations. Specifically, tax filings from Donors Trust show that they provided funding to the Skeptics Society, the organization that publishes Skeptic magazine, in both 2014 and 2015. It's worth noting that Donors Trust supports a wide range of organizations across the political spectrum, and the fact that an organization receives funding from Donors Trust does not necessarily imply any particular political alignment or agenda. 

----------------------------------------

Donor's Trust is the infamous right-wing funding vehicle that also gives millions to racist monsters VDARE.

ChatGPT had nothing about Thiel or Donors Trust funding for Christina Hoff Sommers, but it's not a secret that she's taken money from Koch-funded organizations for decades. ChatGPT agreed:

Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative writer and critic of contemporary feminism, has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on policy, education, and advocacy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Sommers     include:

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Bradley Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, civic engagement, and free markets.
• The Charles Koch Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research and education programs on a variety of topics, including economics, political science, and civil liberties.
• The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a conservative organization that advocates for policies and initiatives that promote economic freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on policy research in areas such as urban policy, energy, and education. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)

Here's what ChatGPT had to say about Heather Heying:

Heather Heying has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on science, education, and policy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Heying include:

• The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank that promotes free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses.
• The John William Pope Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, healthcare, and public policy.
• The Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research on science, spirituality, and human purpose.
• The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes intelligent design theory and critiques of evolutionary biology.
• The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on political philosophy, constitutionalism, and American exceptionalism.

I'm curious what The Discovery Institute hopes to get from Heying for its money, since it promotes intelligent design and critiques of evolutionary biology.

We do know that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein have promoted junk science during the Covid pandemic. But that's Game Theory.

When I asked ChatGPT about Dave Rubin it said:

Rubin has expressed support for many conservative and libertarian ideas and causes, and he has collaborated with a number of individuals and organizations in these spheres. Some of the individuals and organizations that have expressed support for Rubin or his ideas include:

• Peter Thiel: As mentioned earlier, Thiel has expressed support for Rubin and his work, but there is no clear evidence that he has provided direct financial support to Rubin.
• PragerU: Rubin has collaborated with PragerU, a conservative educational organization that produces videos promoting conservative and libertarian ideas.
• Turning Point USA: Rubin has also worked with Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization that promotes conservative and libertarian ideas on college campuses.
• The Federalist Society: Rubin has expressed support for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that promotes originalist interpretations of the US Constitution.
• Republican politicians: Rubin has expressed support for several Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul.

Eric Weinstein of course works for Thiel Capital, but I did not know he and Bret had been Thiel Fellows:

Bret and Eric Weinstein were both fellows at the Thiel Foundation, which provides funding to young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The Weinsteins have also been associated with the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose network of public intellectuals who are known for challenging mainstream narratives on a range of topics. While the IDW is not a formal organization and does not receive direct funding, many of its members are supported by conservative and libertarian donors who share their views.

Curiously ChatGPT wouldn't say that Bret Weinstein was funded by the same organizations who fund his wife, Heather Heying, which makes no sense. It did say about Weinstein:

Weinstein has also been critical of what he calls "woke ideology" and the progressive movement, and has spoken out in support of free speech and academic freedom. These views have earned him support from some conservative and libertarian organizations and donors. For example, he has appeared as a guest speaker at events hosted by the National Review Institute, a conservative think tank, and has been praised by conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro was another person named in Weiss's NYTimes article as IDW.

I came up with bupkis for Joe Rogan.

So according to ChatGPT,  Sam Harris has taken money from Thiel, and Eric and Bret Weinstein were fellows at the Thiel Foundation, and all the others, except Joe Rogan have connections to lots of other far-right funders.

And since Thiel has funded Quillette we can infer these people have received Thielbucks due to Quillette authorship (my annotations in parentheses):

Quillette is an online magazine that publishes articles on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Some of the individuals who have written articles for Quillette include:

• Jordan Peterson: Canadian psychologist and author (IDW member per Weiss article)
• Claire Lehmann: Australian psychologist and founder of Quillette (Quillette is the primary publication of the IDW per the Weiss article)
• Sam Harris: American philosopher and author (see above)
• Christina Hoff Sommers: American philosopher and cultural critic (see above)
• Jonathan Haidt: American social psychologist and author 
• Heather Mac Donald: American political commentator and author
• Gad Saad: Canadian evolutionary psychologist and author
• Bret Weinstein: American biologist and evolutionary theorist (see above)
• Douglas Murray: British author and political commentator (named member of IDW)
• Andrew Doyle: British comedian and writer (or "comedian")
• Cathy Young: Russian-American journalist and author
• Debra Soh: Canadian sex researcher and science writer (named member of IDW)
• Conor Friedersdorf: American journalist and writer
• Peter Boghossian: American philosopher and professor
• Toby Young: British journalist and author (also was Quillette associate editor)
• Maajid Nawaz: British activist and writer
• Meghan Daum: American author and columnist
• Yascha Mounk: German-American political scientist and writer
• Helen Pluckrose: English author and editor of Areo Magazine
• James Lindsay: American author and mathematician
• Bruce Gilley: American political scientist and professor
• Claire Fox: British author and commentator
• Jamie Palmer: British writer and commentator (Quillette editor)
• Heather Heying: American evolutionary biologist and writer (see above)
• Ed Husain: British writer and commentator
• Coleman Hughes: American writer and podcaster
• Frances Widdowson: Canadian academic and writer

This is not an exhaustive list, as many other individuals have also written articles for Quillette.

----------------------------------------

It's important to note that Peter Thiel is a democracy-hating far-right funder of monsters like Donald Trump, and has been called both a psychopath and a sociopath. And he's a babbling, Bible-quoting crackpot, with billions to spend on his far-right agenda. 

And those people have taken his money.

Or as David Bertoli, one of the admirers of the Anna Krylov/Jerry Coyne grift might say:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”