Substack, the right-wing scam (and Nazi bar)

One facet of the Subscam business model
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Allan Stromfeldt Christensen of Filmers to Farmers writes:

 According to a writer that goes by the name "Cow Girl" and whose publication Life at the Rodeo used to be on Substack but is now on Ghost, when they mentioned on Substack their plans to migrate one of their sites away from the platform "the subscribers started to pour in".

It's hard to prove that this occurrence was due to anything more than coincidence, but what can be more easily proven is the manner by which quite possibly all Substacks have highly inflated subscriber numbers. Because as many Substack writers have described it, their subscriber figures have become wildly inflated upon Substack having removed the option of requiring new signups to confirm their (free) subscription (also known as "double opt-in").

So Substack subscriber figures wildly inflated when Substack stopped making Substack account owners approve free subscribers.

Two years ago I speculated about another possible Substack scheme:

I mean, what do Razib Khan and Matthew Yglesias do for a living, other than express their unoriginal, monotonous, conservative opinions all day long?

The fact that they both have Substacks is one reason why I suspect Substack is an astroturfing scam, similar to the money-laundering scheme that Saul Goodman created for Walter White in "Breaking Bad."

If you saw "Breaking Bad" you know what I'm talking about: Walt's son created a crowdfunding web site savewalterwhite.com and a little later Goodman got a hacker to create thousands of fake accounts to make it look like regular people all over the world were sending money in. But it was coming from one very rich guy.

That the right-wing racist plutocrats who fund Substack are funneling money through fake accounts to their favorite courtier Substackers has never been proven. But I've never seen anything yet to indicate that they could not do that - and if there's a dirty trick available to the Right, I doubt they think twice before using it. As far as I know, paid Substack accounts have never been audited.

But as Christensen makes clear, paid-up subscribers are not the only subscribers of value to Substack authors or the Substack Nazi Bar:

For those unaware of what that term means, double opt-in implies that in one way or another a user must confirm that they did in fact subscribe and/or sign up to whatever it is you're offering. Those confirmation emails asking you to "click here" to confirm your subscription or email address or what have you? That's double opt-in, and that's what Substack jettisoned sometime in late-2022. What that means is that by discarding double opt-in functionality bots are readily able to carry out fake signups, regardless of what the motivation of the creators of those bots may be. Moreover, it's not even too hard to prove.

Because while subscriber numbers is one metric, another metric, which makes the first metric arguably meaningless on its own, is open rates. Open rates, which is self-explanatory enough, is a measurement of the percentage of interactions, which in this case means how many emails were opened. And according to several accounts, those email open rates on Substack have been plummeting.

Although current Substack writers brought to my attention – that had cratering open rates and of which a vast majority of their subscribers driven by Substack were said to be "garbage" – were said to not want to speak publicly about it all (reasoning explained in a moment), one former – and prominent – Substack writer who also didn't want to be named stated that they were getting hundreds of fake signups, often in blocks of 50-100 at a time. Although they couldn't be sure, they estimated that a third of their signups were fake. Regardless, they certainly aren't the only one whose Substack has been receiving hundreds of fake signups.

In regards to why current Substack writers/publications wouldn't want to speak about their deteriorating open rates – and certainly not to cull their subscriber lists of fake accounts – is for the simple reason of optics. Yes, your open rate may be an abysmal 20%. But if you've got 10,000 subscribers (a metric which Substack prominently displays on the splash page one sees upon visiting a Substack for subscribing purposes) and a similarly-oriented publication also has 10,000 subscribers, even though your open rate of 20% may lead you to believe that you could quite safely cull 50% of your email list due to them being bot signups, doing so would drastically reduce your public-facing subscriber numbers to 5,000, half of what your competitor has (who also has 5,000 subscribers they could probably cull but similarly won't due to optics). As a result, everybody involved is incentivised to keep up the charade...

 

...Meanwhile, using the existence of the so-called "Substack ecosystem" to claim ownership over subscriber numbers that may have otherwise eventuated is another easy way of creating that facade. Uri Bram, publisher of The Browser (which doubled Substack's paid subscriber base overnight when it became one of Substack's first publications, which was at one time Substack's second-biggest customer before it moved to Ghost, and which then spent years trying to recoup improperly charged fees after Substack kept charging The Browser – and wouldn't pay it back – after it had left the platform), described one way in which this might work earlier this year...

...So yes, go ahead and sign up to Substack where you can attain subscriber numbers beyond your wildest dreams and where Substack will tell you just how much your success is supposedly due to them, but don't pay any attention to the non-existence of that double opt-in, the possibility that your actual readership is nowhere near as large as you think it is, and that the genuine subscribers you do have aren't so much due to Substack itself as much as they're due to the efforts you've put in yourself. 

I may not have been right about exact (proven) scam tactics of Substack two years ago, but I was right that Substack is, fundamentally, a right-wing scam.

Ted Gioia is not a moral authority on anything

I had to laugh when I saw Substack stooge Hamish McKenzie citing Ted Gioia as some kind of moral authority in his response to the very valid concerns of Substack authors that Substack has become a Nazi bar. 

Via Mike Masnick at Techdirt:

Eventually, the Substack founders had to respond. They couldn’t stare off into the distance like Best did during the Nilay Patel interview in April. So another founder, Hamish McKenzie, finally published a Note saying “yes, we allow Nazis and we’re not going to stop.” Of course, as is too often the case on these things, he tried to couch it as a principled stance:

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.

We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts. As @Ted Gioia has noted, history shows that censorship is most potently used by the powerful to silence the powerless. (Ted’s note: substack.com/profile/4937458-ted-gioia/…) 

Ted Gioia was published in racist Quillette; by the intensely evil and right-wing Koch-funded City Journal; and by the queen of the right-wing grifters Bari Weiss.

Either Ted Gioia agrees with the racism of Quillette and the right-wing extremist positions of City Journal and the grifting sugar baby views of Bari Weiss, or he's such a feckless stooge he doesn't care if he publishes in evil media as long as they pay.

Either way Ted Gioia is not a moral authority on anything. 

But I guess he's the best that the Nazi-promoting freaks at Substack have.

The Masnick piece is very good - it ends like this:

Substack has every right to make the choices it has made, but it shouldn’t pretend that it’s standing up for civil rights or freedoms, because it’s not. It’s making value judgments that everyone can see, and its value judgment is “Nazis are welcome, sex workers aren’t.”

Your reputation is what you allow. Substack has hung out its shingle saying “Nazis welcome.”

Everyone else who uses the platform now gets to decide whether or not they wish to support the site that facilitates the funding of Nazis. Some will. Some will find the tradeoffs acceptable. But others won’t. I’ve already seen a few prominent Substack writers announce that they have moved or that they’re intending to do so.

These are all free speech decisions as well. Substack has made its decision. Substack has declared what its reputation is going to be. I support the company’s free speech rights to make that choice. But that does not mean I need to support the platform personally.

Your reputation is what you allow and Substack has chosen to support Nazis.

I think Masnick is missing something of the bigger picture though - although he focuses on feckless stooges Hamish McKenzie and Chris Best, they are not calling the shots, it's their funders like techno-fascist Marc Andreessen who are. 

Substack, the Nazi Bar

...what Substack is doing is not merely allowing Nazis to sit at their bar - they are giving them free drinks and telling other bar patrons that Nazis are "up-and-comers."

Back in February 2022 I noted the connection between Substack spokeswoman Lulu Cheng Merservey and the race pseudoscience gang:

The fact that Lulu Cheng Meservey, the vice president of communications for Substack is a member of Razib Khan's clubhouse as well as a member of the clubhouse of the anti-CRT grifting, IDW-riddled, far-right leaning FAIR, does not help dissuade me from the suspicion that Substack is simply a high-tech Donor's Trust.

Jonathan Katz provides additional info about Meservey in his November 29, 2023 The Racket post:

The arrival of the new right-wing Substackers was accompanied by an influx of new staff from Andreessen Horowitz. The combined company also hired its first full-time spokeswoman: Lulu Cheng Merservey, a noted fan of one of Substack's leading eugenics bloggers and the wife of a Heritage Foundation wonk.

I hadn't realized the Heritage Foundation connection in February 2022. 

But the line "a noted fan of one of Substack's leading eugenics blogger" links to an article from 2015 about Razib Khan being dropped from the New York Times, although Katz doesn't mention Khan by name in the text of his post. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one who has explicitly noted Meservey's fandom of Razib Khan, but maybe Katz has other sources who are not picked up by Google search.

Meservey's Heritage Foundation wonk husband is Joshua Meservey, although the Heritage website says he is no longer on staff. He's now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. Which receives money via Donors Trust.

As the Hudson Institute's website says:

With rare and very few exceptions for gifts whose donors prefer to remain anonymous, Hudson Institute publicly identifies the sources and levels of all outside revenue received each calendar year in its annual reports.

But of course we have to trust the Institute that the anonymous donors are rare and very few.

Meservey apparently left Substack for Activision and in October 2022 was profiled as a union buster and accused of pushing right-wing talking points:

Lulu Cheng Meservey has been on the job for less than a month and the Activision executive has already antagonized employees at the center of a long-overdue unionization push within the games industry. After over a dozen Blizzard quality assurance testers won the right to hold a union vote in November, Meservey warned staff via Slack that organizing could lead to lower raises and tough clashes with management. A screengrab of the comment reached Twitter, someone accused Meservey of pushing right-wing talking points, and she’s been posting through it ever since.

So yeah, Meservey is the kind of person you'd expect to be hired by a company with far-right leanings - like Substack.

Meservey is apparently leaving Activision now. 

It's important to note that Substack isn't merely allowing Nazis and other varieties of racists to exist on its platform, and allowing Nazis to monetize content on its platform, Substack has actively promoted Nazis and racists, as Katz notes in his Atlantic article:

In June, McKenzie hosted the Substack writer Richard Hanania on the platform’s flagship podcast, The Active Voice. On Twitter the previous month, Hanania, a political scientist with a law degree from the University of Chicago, had described Black people as “animals” who should be subject to “more policing, incarceration, and surveillance.”

Soon after Hanania’s appearance on the podcast, HuffPost outed him as having written under a pen name in the early 2010s for several white-nationalist outlets, including Richard Spencer’s AlternativeRight.com. In some of his older posts, Hanania called for the forced sterilization of those with “low IQ”—a group that he argued included most Black and Latino people. Hanania responded to the exposé with a Substack post in which he disavowed his past views, but in terms that raised significant doubts about his sincerity. “The reason I’m the target of a cancellation effort,” he declared in the post, “is because left-wing journalists dislike anyone acknowledging statistical differences between races.” 

 

Nevertheless, Chris Best, who is also Substack’s CEO, hailed Hanania’s non-apology as “an honest post on a difficult subject.” Within weeks, Substack was promoting Hanania yet again, trumpeting in one of its newsletters that his new book, The Origins of Woke—in which he calls for gutting the Civil Rights Act—“is in hot demand from reviewers,” and providing a link to preorder it. (One of those reviewers, writing for The Atlantic, observed: “Put plainly, Richard Hanania remains a white supremacist. A real one.”) 

 

In McKenzie’s recent post about “leaning into politics,” the Substack co-founder enthusiastically and prominently recommended a lesser-known Substacker, Darryl Cooper, as among the “up-and-comers” in political writing. Cooper’s podcast featured a complimentary interview with the white-nationalist magazine editor Greg Johnson—who, incidentally, published some of Hanania’s pseudonymous, more explicitly racist writings. Cooper has also used his personal Twitter account to claim that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2.” (That tweet and the interview with Johnson were subsequently deleted.)

There's no reason to promote racists and Nazis unless you have no problem with racist and Nazi ideology. 

This is what Substack is, and what it was always intended to be, or as Katz quoted Hanania: "Substack itself was created to explicitly push back against leftist suppression of speech"

I'm glad to see that Allan Stromfeldt Christensen of "Filmers to Farmers"  has the same basic analysis:

...while Katz himself stated on Substack that "I, for the moment, am staying", and that "I was here before the Nazis, and I think they should leave, not me", who was there first ultimately matters less than what the platform's co-founders and investors (originally?) had in store for the platform.

Because yes, the notion of Substack's "hands-off ... moderation stance" ostensibly being part of a 10-15 year Andreessen-aligned covert plan can be a bit too conspiratorial to swallow, but it nonetheless turns out that there's nothing covert at all about Substack's extremist machinations, and it's getting harder and harder to not admit that Substack is increasingly turning into something rather similar to what Musk has transformed his Twitter/X platform into.

And boy howdy is Twitter a shit show now - I just went there and I was hit with a solid wall of right-wing pro-Trump sludge - it's just relentless.

In his epic post, Christensen makes the connection between Twitter, Substack and Nazi bars by quoting a tweet thread, originally posted here.

The thread's point is that if you let one polite Nazi frequent your bar, they will bring their friends and they'll scare away non-Nazis and eventually you will have a Nazi bar.

Except what Substack is doing is not merely allowing Nazis to sit at their bar - they are giving them free drinks and telling other bar patrons that Nazis are "up-and-comers."

If you do that, you are, objectively, pro-Nazi.

Christensen has information about Substack's bot-driven membership inflation scheme, which I'll talk about soon.

Merry Christmas Pinkerites

 Enjoy this diagram of Peter Thiel's libertarian tech-fascist grinch network which I found at Magzter.

Meet techno-fascist Marc Andreessen

Techno-fascist Marc Andreessen and his Substack stooge Razib Khan
Like Thiel and Musk, Andreessen can easily afford thousands
of courtiers like Khan, ready to say whatever their liege desires 
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I have ignored Marc Andreessen on this blog for far too long. 

Mostly because the connections between Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web and race pseudoscience have been much more obvious for much longer. 

Thiel especially, has been a player in right-wing politics since he was in college. And it has been credibly claimed he "secretly" funded the admittedly hereditarian, racist rag Quillette. 

Steven Pinker is a big fan of Quillette, even writing for Quillette, which completes the third component of the race pseudoscience - Intellectual Dark Web - Steven Pinker Dark Triad.

So I've made a big deal about possible connections between Peter Thiel and Substack while ignoring the indisputable connection between Andreessen and Substack. 

And now, here from last week is Andreessen promoting a tweet by racist Razib Khan, whose career has been promoted by Steven Pinker for decades.

And like Peter Thiel, the indisputable fascist, Andreessen has a friendly relationship with infamous white supremacist Richard Hanania.

Andreessen is a libertarian megalomaniac, which has been public knowledge for at least the last decade, but recently that's been made more obvious by his famously unhinged rant, which the Washington Post called "a self-serving cry for help." And:

The venture capitalist’s grievances are many, as are his out-there pronouncements. Universal basic income “would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state.” Global population “easily” could grow to 50 billion (from about 8 billion today)— “and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets.” And he has a Fox News-ish fear of a grab-bag of hobgoblins: “the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable — playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.”

Vice points out the connection between Andreessen's beliefs and fascist beliefs:

Andreessen also calls out Filippo Tommaso Marinetti as one of his patron saints. Marinetti is not only the author of the technology- and destruction-worshipping Futurist Manifesto from 1909, but also one of the architects of Italian fascism. Marinetti co-authored the Fascist Manifesto in 1919 and founded a futurist political party that merged with Mussolini's fascists. Other futurist thinkers and artists exist. To call Marinetti in particular a "saint" is a choice. 

You can't be more obviously in love with fascism than that - to call a Mussolini-era fascist a "saint." To those of you unfamiliar with history, Mussolini was an ally of Hitler.

So should we really be surprised that Substack, a platform that Andreessen has heavily invested in, is not only platforming Nazis and profiting from Nazis, but unashamedly promoting Nazis?

A software developer on Github compared Andreessen to Karl Marx and Ted Kazinsky (the "Unabomber") - 

In the vein of Ted Kazinsky, Karl Marx, and others before him, Marc Andreessen has proudly penned a manifesto, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto . Or more properly, “a rant.”

I chose the word “rant” with care. He’s ranting against something, but it’s a terrible essay riddled with citations from racist writers (whom he admires), straw men, false dilemmas, and reads like a high school sophomore barely squeaked out a passing grade in a macroeconomics course.

Lucas Roper in Gizmodo, in an article entitled Marc Andreessen Is Wrong About Everything writes:

Here’s the bottom line: The techno-optimist tribe gives off the distinct impression of people who have been so ridiculously rich for so long that they’ve just completely lost the plot about how the real world works. To be fair, this is an apt description of most of Silicon Valley. These days, if you’re not vampirically using your teenage son’s blood to regenerate your own aging body, or torturing monkeys to death in the hopes of creating the Matrix, or trying to get a belligerent reality TV star elected president, you’re just not winning. The tech industry is fueled by people with bad ideas, and Jezos, Andreessen, and company are just some among many. What makes this crowd somewhat different (and a little more dangerous) is that they’re now writing Unabomber-style manifestos that give some pretense of intellectual legitimacy to their terrible ideas. They’re then using that legitimacy to push for a totally unregulated tech industry that stands to “disrupt” (i.e., potentially destabilize) large parts of society.

This makes it all the more ironic that Andreessen names as one of his so-called “enemies” those who are “disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.” Frankly, there’s no better description of the “techno-optimist” crowd—a gaggle of out-of-touch tech bros who think their wealth gives them license to chart a future nobody else wants.

It should be obvious to all by now that the United States - and the world - has a deadly-serious billionaire techno-fascist problem.

Now I want to take a moment to mention the epic post about Substack shenanigans by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen of the curiously named "Filmers to Farmers" website. This is the first time I've seen someone else discuss some of the issues about Substack that I have raised in the past couple of years. I will have more to say about this epic post soon, but for now I just want to quote this bit:

Because yes, the notion of Substack's "hands-off ... moderation stance" ostensibly being part of a 10-15 year Andreessen-aligned covert plan can be a bit too conspiratorial to swallow, but it nonetheless turns out that there's nothing covert at all about Substack's extremist machinations, and it's getting harder and harder to not admit that Substack is increasingly turning into something rather similar to what Musk has transformed his Twitter/X platform into.

As I said back in July:

With all the racists it is platforming (Hanania, Kirkegaard, Bo Winegard, Razib Khan, Indian Bronson - undoubtedly many more, those are just off the top of my head) and now promoting, it sure looks like Substack is going the way of Twitter - and if it's less obvious than with Twitter, that's probably because Peter Thiel is stealthier than Elon Musk.

Of course I should have said Marc Andreessen - but don't count Thiel out yet - he does indeed like to do things secretly.

Meet the ghouls, grifters, goons and stooges who support Nazi-platforming Substack

The three Nazi-platforming stooges

 So the other day I predicted:

Now Katz has drafted an open letter to the Substack ghouls, entitled Substackers against Nazis that I doubt will impress the Substack ghouls and their bosses...

Today I see in the NYTimes:

Substack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech

When are people like Jonathan Katz going to admit that the entire purpose of Substack is to platform racist ghouls!

That's what all the racist freaks are talking about when they talk about "moving the Overton window."

Or as it says in the NYTimes article:

While Substack says it does not allow users to call for violence, even that distinction can be murky, Professor Braddock said, because racists and extremists can walk up to the line without overtly doing that. But their rhetoric can still inspire others to violence, he said.

Allowing Nazi rhetoric on a platform also normalizes it, he said.

“The more they use the kind of rhetoric that dehumanizes or demonizes a certain population,” Professor Braddock said, “the more it becomes OK for the general population to follow.”

THAT'S THE ENTIRE REASON FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SUBSTACK!!!

Don't believe me - believe the white supremacist, Richard Hanania, who has been promoted by Hamish McKenzie on Substack - according to Katz:

(Hanania has said that “Substack itself was created to explicitly push back against leftist suppression of speech” — another comment I’d like McKenzie to weigh in on.)

The Koch-funded, racist-supporting (they go waaaay back with Charles Murray) Reason Magazine of course supports Substack. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some Koch money invested in Substack too.

Katz responds to Matt Taibbi here - unfortunately Katz is still on Substack so I am not going to resubscribe so I can read all the content. But I will have to quote from the piece because it's so perfect - Taibbi is even more contemptible than Freddie deBoer, which is saying a lot:

And look, I don’t blame Matt. If I were a hack post-leftist overwriter who peaked during Occupy Wall Street and responded to sexual-harassment allegations by worming his way under the sweaty wings of Ted Cruz and Elon Musk—only to get hoodwinked into pushing neocon Sinophobic talking points that blew up on arrival—I might make up a strawman on a Tuesday night and torch him too. Certainly easier than engaging with anything I’ve ever actually said.

Business Insider makes a good point - it isn't just that Substack is platforming Nazis, it's that Substack has a profitable business arrangement with Nazis!

The Katz letter was bound to be countered by a letter from a bunch of right-wingers and stupid feckless stooges of the right. 

As I just recently said, signing this kind of letter is how the right does "virtue signaling."

Some of the people on this list are harmless nobodies who dabble in the arts or like to promote their religions or hobbies online, but there are many on this list who are rightwing ghouls, goons, and grifters. Just awful - and very much not harmless - people. Quite a few Quillette authors, anti-vax wackos, anti-trans fanatics and wingnut welfare recipients. At least one of them is a public Nazi sympathizer.

To my amazement, Steven Pinker is not on this list - but his influence is apparent...

1. Elle Griffin, author of The Elysian - a fan of Steven Pinker - OF COURSE! ~ enthusiastic supporter of her plutocratic paymasters
2. Alex Kruger, author of Garden of Anxiety
3. Alexander Hellene, author of A. Hellene Author  - misogynist idiot
4. a. natasha joukovsky, author of quite useless - management consultant/conservative idiot
5. Angela Nagle, author of Angela Nagle - darling of Fox News
6. Abigail Shrier, author of The Truth Fairy - rabidly anti-trans crusader and Quillette author
7. Alberto Romero, author of The Algorithmic Bridge
8. Bari Weiss, author of The Free Press - OF COURSE the sugar baby of Harlan Crow, and very, very likely, Peter Thiel - and an absolutely contemptible human being supports Substack - I've no doubt she gets paid by the same people who support Substack - she also signed this letter
9. Ben Dreyfuss, author of Calm Down - rightwing idiot gloats about Substack platforming Nazis
10. Bowen Dwelle, author of An Ordinary Disaster
11. Bridget Phetasy, author of Beyond Parody - rightwing idiot, Quillette author
12. Cameron M. Bailey, author of Emeth - obsessed with being a Freemason
13. Charles Eisenstein, author of Charles Eisenstein - anti-vaxxer idiot
14. Christin Balan, author of Writer in Progress 
15. C.L. Steiner, author of Not Complaining - wants to ridicule Nazis, but not deny them a big mainstream audience
16. Colin Wright, author of Reality’s Last Stand - in a five-way tie with Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Konstantin Kisin and Michael Shermer for the most contemptible right-wing ghoul on this list - not only a former Quillette staffer, but an anti-trans obsessive and pal of right-wing uber-ghoul Christopher Rufo
17. Connor O’Brien, author of Regions
18. Contarini, author of Contarini’s Attic 
19. Damon Linker, author of Notes from the Middleground - dictator-appeasing idiot
20. Darryl Cooper, author of MartyrMade - Trump apologist idiot and Nazi-symp who reportedly used his personal Twitter account to claim that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2.”
21. david roberts, author of Sparks from Culture  
22. Dee Rambeau, author of Of a Sober Mind - conservative dummy, cites hereditarian Jonathan Haidt as an expert
23. Doomberg, author of Doomberg - idiot: "As a general rule, Doomberg has stayed clear of the direct debate over whether anthropogenic carbon emissions are warming the planet and whether such a trend represents an existential threat..."
24. DuVay Knox, author of Hard Knox Life
25. Dwarkesh Patel, host of Dwarkesh Podcast - promoter of racist idiot Razib Khan
26. Edward Snowden, author of Continuing Ed - Russian, traitor to the United States of America
27. Erik Hoel, author of The Intrinsic Perspective - OK I have to admit, he got off a pretty good slam on Steven Pinker: "I now must remind myself to be like Steven Pinker: expectant, assured, confident in the work my twenty busy bees of Harvard-educated research assistants have done"
28. Ethan Strauss, author of House of Strauss - creepy rightwinger
29. Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), author of FAIR Substack - LOL - nest of race pseudoscience promoters and wingnut welfare recipients, supported by Supreme Court corrupter Harlan Crow
30. Freddie deBoer, author of Freddie deBoer - former leftist, promoter of race pseudoscience, called Nazi freak Richard Hanania an "interesting thinker" - Jeet Heer had a great response to deBoer's friendship with Hanania - deBoer is so utterly pathetic - does anybody except racists and Nazis like him?
31. Freya India, author of GIRLS - internalized misogyny idiot, recommends Freddie deBoer AND Putinbot Konstantin Kisin AND racist Quillette author Rob Henderson on her Substack 
32. Glenn Loury, author of The Glenn Show - right-wing idiot, signed this letter too
33. Greg Lukianoff, author of The Eternally Radical Idea - works for Koch via FIRE
34. Gurwinder, author of The Prism
35. Heather Heying, author of Natural Selections - named member of the Intellectual Dark Web, evolutionary psychology idiot who promoted Ivermectin for Covid - big fan of game theory - also signed this letter
36. Jason Crawford, author of The Roots of Progress - idiot fan of Steven Pinker
37. Jay Bhattacharya, author of The Illusion of Consensus  - anti-vax idiot, "old college pal of Peter Thiel" also signed this letter
38. Jennifer Sey, author of Sey Everything - rightwing idiot, recommends Bari Weiss on her Substack
39. Jessica Reed Kraus, author of House Inhabit - supporter of crackpot RFK Jr.
40. Jimmy Doom, author of Jimmy Doom’s Roulette Weal 
41. Julie Bindel, author of Julie Bindel - anti-trans fanatic
42. Julie Gabrielli, author of Building Hope
43. Katherine Brodsky, author of Random Minds - rightwing idiot, ally of racist Razib Khan
44. Katherine Dee, author of Default Wisdom  - absolute asshole - calls Jonathan Katz' concerns a "temper tantrum"
45. Kathleen Sykes, author of The Charrette - declares herself a "deep thinker" so of course she recommends rightwing idiot grifters like anti-trans fanatic Jesse Singal (twice!) and anti-feminist Meghan Daum
46. Kent Peterson, author of Kent’s Substack
47. Konstantin Kisin, author of Konstantin Kisin’s Newsletter - Putinbot - signed this letter too
48. Lawrence M. Krauss, author of Critical Mass - utterly contemptible individual, author (of course) at Quillette
49. Lee Fang, author of Lee Fang  - ally of Glenn Greenwald, also signed this letter
50. Leighton Woodhouse, co-founder of Public - Publishes a bunch of grifters like Michael Shellenberger and Zaid Jilani
51. Li Kentgen, author of The 3 C’s of Belonging 
52. Lisa Kuznak, author of Mechanical Pulp
53. Luke Burgis, author of Anti-Mimetic - and author at racist Quillette
54. Lyle McKeany, author of Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble
55. Malcolm Cochran, author of Antheros - author at racist Quillette
56. Matt Taibbi, author of Racket News - awful, signed this letter too
57. Maurissa, author of RissaJean: Field Notes on Love, Life, and Loss 
58. Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable with Meghan Daum anti-feminist, author at racist Quillette
59. M. E. Rothwell, author of Cosmographia
60. Michaela McKuen, author of McKuen Musings
61. Michael C. Moynihan, host of The Fifth Column - racist idiot Andrew Sullivan considers him an "old friend"
62. Michael Mohr, author of Sincere American Writing - fake leftist who counts himself among a pack of right-wing idiots and Quillette authors:  "This, in turn, allowed many of us—including some very prominent writers, such as Ted Gioia, Glenn Loury, Freddie DeBoer, Ben Dreyfus, Bridget Phetasy, Matthew Taibbi, Richard Dawkins, and others—the opportunity to sign a pro-free speech letter written by Elle Griffin."
63. Michael Nayna, author of The Process - far-right promoter of Putinbot ghoul Konstantin Kisin
64. Michael Shellenberger author of Public - rightwing ghoul, also signed this letter
65. Michael Shermer, author of Skeptic magazine - blatant racist and Pinker's pal also signed this letter
66. Nellie Bowles, author of Chosen by Choice idiot wife of the contemptible Bari Weiss, also signed this letter
67. Nikita Petrov, author of Psychopolitica - apparently a Koch employee, works for the far-right Manhattan Institute's Glenn Loury
68. N.S. Lyons, author of The Upheaval - anti-feminist asshole
69. Paul Kingsnorth, author of The Abbey of Misrule - religious fanatic and anti-vaxxer nut job
70. Paul L Jordan III, author of The Taproot 
71. Peter Boghossian, author of Peter Boghossian - utterly contemptible, part of the Harlan Crow-funded FAIR grift. Signed this letter too.
72. Peter Clayborne, author of Anarchy Unfolds  - signed both the pro and anti-Nazi letters - JFC
73. Phisto Sobanii, author of The Partisan - aaaasshole who cites the ghoulish Matt Taibbi as a voice  of reason
74. Rachel Haywire, author of The Cultural Futurist 
75. Rav Arora, author of The Illusion of Consensus - right-wing anti-vaxxer
76. Razib Khan, author of Unsupervised Learning - racist idiot
77. Richard Dawkins, author of The Poetry of Reality - cranky old bigot, also signed this letter
78. Rob Henderson, author of Rob Henderson’s Newsletter rightwing idiot, author at racist Quillette
79. Ruth Gaskovski, author of School of the Unconformed  - Luddite
80. Sam Kahn, author of Castalia - aaaaaasshole - author at the asshole-infested Persuasion, another bunch of reactionary letter-signers
81. Samuel Lopez-Barrantes, author of if not, Paris
82. Sarah Haider, author of Hold That Thought - rightwing idiot also signed this letter
83. Sasha Latypova, author of Due Diligence and Art - anti-vaxxer nut job
84. Scott D, author of Moderately Offline
85. Dr Sharon Blackie, author of The Art of Enchantment 
86. Slavoj Žižek, author of ŽIŽEK GOADS AND PRODS - anti-trans reactionary also signed this letter
87. Tabitha Blair, author of Rudegal Tab Rants - anti-vaxxer nut job
88. Taylor Foreman, author of The Creativity Gap - idiot
89. Ted Gioia, author of The Honest Broker - author at racist Quillette, City Journal and Bari Weiss's Substack
90. Tomas Pueyo, author of Uncharted Territories - gender essentialist creep
91. Walter Kirn, author of Unbound - ally of the ghoulish Matt Taibbi and the even more ghoulish Christopher Rufo - also signed this letter
92. Zachary Davis, author of Wayfare

I knew it back in February 2022: Substack is racist, Nazi-platforming trash

As I wrote on Pinkerite in February 2022:

The fact that Lulu Cheng Meservey, the vice president of communications for Substack is a member of Razib Khan's clubhouse as well as a member of the clubhouse of the anti-CRT grifting, IDW-riddled, far-right leaning FAIR, (update: and as I know now, FAIR was dreamed up by Bari Weiss and her IDW stooges and funded by Harlan Crow) does not help dissuade me from the suspicion that Substack is simply a high-tech Donor's Trust. 

Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie has a Thiel connection. Thiel was an investor in PandoDaily, which McKenzie worked for.

Another Substack co-founder, Chris Best, appeared on a podcast for the race pseudoscience promoting, Thiel-funded Quillette. According to a description of the interview on Padverb, "Tech entrepreneur Chris Best talks about Substack, his self-publishing platform that is attracting journalists like Andrew Sullivan, Jesse Singal and Jen Gerson."

• Andrew Sullivan is famous for his promotion of the race pseudoscience of racist Charles Murray.
• Jesse Singal is best known for his antagonism against trans people. He's a defender of the race pseudoscience-friendly Steven Pinker. He also has a Quillette connection and a Koch connection.
• Jen Gerson has written for Quillette.

The Substack gang apparently has no problem with promoters of race pseudoscience, at the very least.

The fact that Substack founders had so many connections to right-wing hawkers of race pseudoscience was a huge red flag.

Then in July of this year Jonathan Katz wrote about Substack promoting Richard Hanania and I wrote:

With all the racists (Substack) is platforming (Hanania, Kirkegaard, Bo Winegard, Razib Khan, Indian Bronson - undoubtedly many more, those are just off the top of my head) and now promoting, it sure looks like Substack is going the way of Twitter - and if it's less obvious than with Twitter, that's probably because Peter Thiel is stealthier than Elon Musk.

It's certainly no stretch at all to connect the "Intellectual Dark Web" (Peter Thiel is alleged to fund the IDW mouthpiece Quillette) with the far-right racism of Richard Hanania - Steven Pinker, identified by Bari Weiss as the most mainstream of those associated with the IDW is a firm supporter of white supremacist Richard Hanania. And of course Peter Thiel blurbed Hanania's book with the most blatantly fascist statement this side of Donald Trump.

And lo and behold, I see a Katz piece in The Atlantic from last month, in which Katz notes that Substack is infested with Nazis, including those being promoted by Substack:

In (Hamish) McKenzie’s recent post about “leaning into politics,” the Substack co-founder enthusiastically and prominently recommended a lesser-known Substacker, Darryl Cooper, as among the “up-and-comers” in political writing. Cooper’s podcast featured a complimentary interview with the white-nationalist magazine editor Greg Johnson—who, incidentally, published some of Hanania’s pseudonymous, more explicitly racist writings. Cooper has also used his personal Twitter account to claim that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2.” (That tweet and the interview with Johnson were subsequently deleted.)

Substack's founders are race pseudoscience-loving Nazi-platforming ghouls. 

I guessed it almost two years ago.

I also guessed in July that Katz would eventually get sick of Substack. Now in this Atlantic article he writes:

The question is what kind of community Substack is actually cultivating. How long will writers such as Bari Weiss, Patti Smith, and George Saunders—and, for that matter, me—be willing to stake our reputations on, and share a cut of our revenue with, a company that can’t decide if Nazi blogs count as hate speech?

Although I find it bizarre that he thinks that Bari "Harlan Crow is my sugar daddy" Weiss would ever have any moral qualms about anything.

Now Katz has drafted an open letter to the Substack ghouls, entitled Substackers against Nazis that I doubt will impress the Substack ghouls and their bosses, a category that I am willing to bet includes Peter Thiel.

Just quit Substack already, Jonathan Katz - months ago I guessed you were going to do it, sooner or later.

Is Emil Kirkegaard taking refuge from the law in DAS LANDHAUS ADLON?

According to Oliver Smith, who is trying to collect money from Kirkegaard for a legal judgement, Kirkegaard had fled, address unknown.

Until a German media publication Zeit Online reported his whereabouts:

Nach Recherchen von ZEIT ONLINE ist Mathilda Huss eng in der rechtsextremen Szene vernetzt. In Potsdam betreibt die Unternehmerin zusammen mit ihrem Partner bereits ein Hotel, auf dem gleichen Gelände befindet sich auch ihre private Villa. Auf diesem weitläufigen Areal sollen sich in den vergangenen Jahren Politiker der AfD und Funktionäre der AfD-Jugendorganisation Junge Alternative, die WerteUnion oder die rechte Friedrich A. von Hayek-Gesellschaft getroffen haben. Seit drei Jahren unterstützt Huss zudem den extrem rechten Dänen Emil Kirkegaard, der auch auf dem Gelände des Landhaus Adlon genannten Gästehaus am Lehnitzsee lebt.

Or, per Google translate:

According to research by ZEIT ONLINE, Mathilda Huss is closely connected to the right-wing extremist scene. The entrepreneur already runs a hotel with her partner in Potsdam, and her private villa is also located on the same site. AfD politicians and officials from the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative, the Values Union and the right-wing Friedrich A. von Hayek Society are said to have met on this extensive area in recent years. For three years, Huss has also been supporting the extreme right-wing Dane Emil Kirkegaard, who also lives on the premises of the guesthouse on Lehnitzsee called Landhaus Adlon.

According to Google Translate's version of the Landhaus website:

The guest house on Lehnitzsee is your new refuge to discover the residential city of Potsdam and the Berlin area. We are bringing the tradition of the historic Adlon country house back to life and bringing back the ambience of the 1920s to Potsdam. Selected guests from the Adlon hotelier dynasty stayed in our hotel in a thoroughly dignified setting. Today, use our country house as a starting point to soak up the world-famous cultural and lake landscape around Potsdam.

With racist weirdo Emil Kirkegaard taking refuge there, I'd say it has more of the ambience of the 1930s, specifically 1933.

This music festival website identifies Landhaus Adlon as belonging to Mathilda Huss.

Huss can be found on this German website, aligning with the far-right AfD in opposition to a mosque in Potsdam:

What's new since Friday is that there are protests against prayer again. The right-wing populist AfD had placed an information stand on the footpath opposite the biosphere. The motto: “Islam does not belong to Germany.” The economics advisor in the AfD parliamentary group, Steffen Kotré, said that the reason for the stand was the fact that the city incurs 1,500 euros in costs per prayer. “As a taxpayer, I don’t want to spend that,” said Mathilda Huss, owner of the well-known Villa Adlon in Neu Fahrland, who supported the AfD stand. Kotré added that the Islamic association had to provide its own premises.

The AfD is Alternative für Deutschland ("Alternative for Germany") a German far-right political party, so you just know there's going to be a connection to Nazis:

Over time, a focus on German nationalism, on reclaiming Germany's sovereignty and national pride, especially in repudiation of Germany's culture of shame with regard to its Nazi past, became more central in AfD's ideology and a central plank in its populist appeals.[22][23][24] Petry, who led the moderate wing of the party, said that Germany should reclaim völkisch from its Nazi connotations,[167] while Björn Höcke, who is an example of the more right-wing or national conservative ideology, regularly speaks of the Vaterland ("father land") and Volk ("nation" or "people", but with a strong ethnic or racial connotation).[22]

In January 2017, Höcke in a speech stated, in reference to the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, that "Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital" and criticized this "laughable policy of coming to terms with the past".[168][169] Höcke continued that Germany should make a "180 degree" turn with regard to its sense of national pride.[22]

According to German Wikipedia:

The Villa Adlon is an upper-class villa built in 1925 in the neo-baroque style in the Neu Fahrland district of Potsdam on Lehnitzsee (address: Am Lehnitzsee 1) and has been a listed building since 1994.[1]

The villa was built on behalf of the hotelier Louis Adlon. The complex consists of a single-storey central main building, a cavalier house and a boathouse on a 5100 square meter plot.[2]

After Adlon's death in 1945, the villa briefly served as accommodation for Soviet naval personnel during the Potsdam Conference. In the GDR it was used as a children's clinic and later as a school for civil defense. After 1989, the State Academy for Public Administration of the State of Brandenburg used the complex until it moved out in 2008.[3][1]

The property had since been transferred back to the Adlon heirs. The villa was sold in 2011.[4]

The villa was used for exterior shots for the third season of Babylon Berlin.

Thanks to Oliver Smith for the alert. 

HAHAHAHAHAH! Apparently there are some consequences to treason

Trump Ballot RulingTrump Is Disqualified From the 2024 Ballot, Colorado Supreme Court Rules

Of course two minutes after the news was reported, miserable party-poopers on social media were saying: "No it's going to be overturned by the US Supreme Court."

SHUT UP AND LET ME SAVOR THIS FOR A LITTLE BIT!

Some More News focuses on Mike Johnson

This post doesn't have anything to do, directly, with the "Intellectual Dark Web" or Steven Pinker or race pseudoscience. But this "Some More News" video hits a point I was just thinking about recently.

What makes right-wingers different from the rest of us? I think it's lack of an empathetic imagination.

As Cody Johnston says:

It's a common problem with bigots. Specifically that they live in a bubble and only gain empathy once they meet someone outside of that bubble. I guess they can't imagine another world view unless it's right in front of them.

I also posted this because it's good - I always laugh out loud at least a few times at "Some More News" videos - this Cody Johnston guy is just so amusingly random.

And he makes a very good case that yes, indeed, Mike Johnson is a scary little freak.

Quillette publishing "Shuichi Tezuka" promoting Betty Wills' "Justapedia"

One of the things that makes "Shuichi Tezuka" angriest is the fact that Wikipedia does not accept race pseudoscience as science, and removed its article on the untested and sketchy "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" hypothesis, dreamed up by two hardcore racists.

The article is now on a Wikipedia wannabe, "Justapedia." according to "Shuichi Tezuka" writing in racist rag Quillette.

The founder and CEO of Justipedia is Betty Wills, who has apparently been a busy Wikipedia editor under the name "Atsme."

"Shuichi Tezuka" sees Justapedia as a virtual religious crusade:

Betty Wills, with her initial attempts to reform Wikipedia and her subsequent founding of a competitor, has stepped into the role of Martin Luther, who initially tried to stop the Church’s financial abuses via internal Church processes, and went on to become the founder of Protestantism. The initial backlash against Luther’s ideas led to him being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church and condemned as an outlaw by his government, but his eventual success provides an image of the type of outcome can be optimistically hoped for in Wills’s case. Not only did Protestantism go on to become one of the major branches of Christianity, but the Roman Catholic Church eventually implemented its own set of internal reforms known as the Counter-reformation, which included better training for priests and an end to the selling of indulgences.

Somehow the Quillette article fails to mention that Rational Wiki does have an article on the Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence (NHAI) (by yours truly) that is far more informative than the one at Justapedia. For example, although the Justapedia article mentions Steven Pinker's support for NHAI, it does not discuss how important both Pinker and the NYTimes' Nicholas Wade were in promoting the untested and sketchy hypothesis based on race pseudoscience assumptions.

The Rational Wiki NHAI article also quoted Pinker claiming that NHAI would be "easy to test." And yet for some reason Pinker and his hereditarian gang haven't ponied up the money to get it tested. Why is that exactly?

Also in Rational Wiki is the information that "Shuichi Tezuka" was a pseudonym used by Emily Willoughby's boyfriend Jonathan Kane:

Kane and Willoughby have defended Emil Kirkegaard and they all edited race and IQ related articles with overlapping edits as a sort of 'tag-team' with the same point of view.[53][54][55]

Kane was permanently banned on January 9, 2020.[56] On October 22, 2020 Kane and Willoughby published an article, "The left-wing bias of Wikipedia", in The Critic, complaining about a lack of "viewpoint diversity", including on the race and intelligence article. Deceptively, neither used their real names; Willoughby used the pseudonym Linda A. Ashtear, and Kane, Shuichi Tezuka.[11] Despite claiming Wikipedia has a left-wing bias, neither mentioned their own right-wing bias and problematic edits.

Emily Willoughby is a bigwig in the International Society for Race Pseudoscience Intelligence Research, which has always been happy to publish the work of creepy weirdo racist Emile Kirkegaard 

ISIR is an organization founded by hard-core racists like Linda Gottfredson and associated with the Institute for Mental Chronometry, an organization founded by racist Arthur Jensen to promote his racist ideas. The organization recently gave Willoughby and fellow race pseudoscience promoter James J. Lee a sweet payday.

Speaking of things taking a long time, the International Society for Race Pseudoscience Intelligence Research still has not published artifacts from its 2023 conference. So far the only artifacts I've been able to find is the sausage fest video featuring a whole bunch of racist goons published by the racists at Aporia; and an interview with Frank Worrell on YouTube. 

It should be noted that unlike both Wikipedia and Rational Wiki, Justapedia is not editable by just anybody, you must have an account with Justapedia or you can't add anything. The better to control the message, I assume.

So the real question here is how far-right and racist is Betty Wills? Although Wills, like all the far-right, complains about Wikipedia's "left-wing bias" she claims to want neutrality:

While Wills indicated that she is aware Wikipedia’s left-wing bias as something Justapedia must avoid, in her interview she strongly resisted the notion that she or Justapedia should therefore be classified as right-wing. She indicated that political bias is only one of many aspects of Wikipedia that Justapedia seeks to improve upon.

But the fact that "Shuichi Tezuka" and Quillette are promoting her project is not a good sign.

Steven Pinker fights to maintain his title of "World's Most Annoying Man"

I was not the one who dubbed Steven Pinker "The World's Most Annoying Man" - that was Nathan J. Robinson in "Current Affairs."

Robinson gave a good explanation for his position, in the article:

Pinker is supposedly “such a nice guy,” a person who is restrained and moderate and reasonable, who laments that politics has gotten so vicious and tribal. And yet in his books, you find him comparing environmentalists to Nazis and campus anti-bigotry initiatives to Stalin’s purges. Those he disagrees with are “quasi-religious,” “authoritarian,” they push “emotionally charged but morally irrelevant red herrings.” Al Gore and the Unabomber belong together. When anthropologist Jason Hickel critiqued Pinker’s theses in the Guardian, Pinker snapped that Hickel was a “Marxist idealogue” while leaving many of Hickel’s arguments unaddressed. Is this what the Chronicle called Pinker’s “relentless friendly persuasion, a kind of indefatigable reasonableness”?

I do not mean to dwell too much on the tone of Pinker’s writing, but it’s important to see how dishonest centrist critics of social justice rhetoric can be. Pinker treats the left as hysterically overstating its case, of calling everybody racists and despoilers, even as he brands them Nazis and Stalinists. One of the common themes I see in critics of social justice politics is engaging in the very thing they’re accusing the left of doing. There are countless examples of this in Pinker’s work. For example, in The Blank Slate, which is strongly critical of mainstream feminism, he cites Gloria Steinem saying: “What you need is people who see through literature like Andrea Dworkin, who see through law like me, to see through art and create the uncompromised woman’s visual vocabulary.” Pinker concludes from this quote that Steinem is “oblivious to the danger inherent in a few intellectuals’ arrogating the role of deciding which art and literature the rest of society will enjoy.” This is an incredibly audacious remark for a book with entire sections on which art is the Good Art and which art is “ugly, baffling, and insulting art”:  

“In this chapter I will diagnose the malaise of the arts and humanities and offer some suggestions for revitalizing them… Once we recognize what modernism and postmodernism have done to the elite arts and humanities, the reasons for their decline and fall become all too obvious.”

When you say it, it’s dangerous elitism. When I say it, it’s Science! 

Robinson gives an excellent demonstration of what a jerk Pinker is, but I don't buy that Pinker is a centrist. He seems pretty damn far right to me.

And the fact that Pinker has an interview in Quillette this week tells you two things:

One - Quillette's racism - or as editor Claire Lehmann herself admitted, "hereditarianism" - does not bother Pinker, he's happy to publicly align with a media outlet said to be funded by Peter Thiel, and in which Pinker's buddy Razib Khan gave a glowing review of Charles Murray's racist screed "Facing Reality."

Two - this is probably just my own wishful thinking, but the fact that Pinker is giving an interview to Quillette could mean that better, more reputable media aren't interested in interviewing Pinker as much as in the past.

But let's jump to prime Pinker weaseling in the interview:

Q: There seems to be growing hostility to the concept of merit. Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit was published in 2020. One expression of this hostility is the rejection of standardized tests, which were once regarded as tools for making university admissions more egalitarian. Where does this animosity toward merit come from, and what do you think about it?

SP: I just debated Sandel at the new undergraduate Harvard Union Society, inspired by the Cambridge and Oxford debating societies. Part of the animosity comes from the current ideologies of social justice, equity, critical race theory, Diversity-Equity-Inclusion, or, derogatorily, wokeism, in which any disparity between groups in the distribution of privileges and powers is ipso facto proof of bigotry. This ignores the possibility of historical, geographic, cultural, and economic differences among groups, as Thomas Sowell and others have long pointed out. It’s an embarrassment when standardized tests expose differences in the possible causes of social outcomes which are not obviously racism or sexism, like academic preparation, and the question of where the differences originate has become taboo. Therefore, the tests themselves are denigrated as biased, even though research specifically addressed to that question has shown they are not.

Pinker cites Thomas Sowell, of the right-wing Hoover Institute the right's favorite Black white supremacy apologist, even more than Quillette author John McWhorter.

And it turns out Putinbot Konstantin Kisin, who I never heard of until my previous blog post, is a big fan of Sowell. No surprise there.

But on what planet do ideologies of social justice ignore "the possibility of historical, geographic, cultural, and economic differences among groups."

Those are all the things that social justice does talk about!

Or to be more exact, the interaction of history and economics.

As usual with Pinker, you have to read between the lines because he's much too weaselly to come out and state his actual beliefs. Anybody who spends two seconds looking can refute Pinker's claim, that social justice beliefs ignore historical or economic differences.

What's really interesting is "geographic" and "cultural" differences. What does Pinker mean by "geographic" differences? Who even talks about geographic differences? 

History, economics and culture are already mentioned - so what significance does an individual's longitude and latitude have in determining test scores?

None - unless you are familiar with race pseudoscience hypotheses.

There's no link provided in the Quillette article, so I don't know what Sowell actually said, but I think that what Pinker means by "geographic" differences is the "cold winters" hypothesis of race pseudoscience, promoted by Richard Lynn, but which had been around since at least Schopenhauer.

Pinker's hero E. O. Wilson used the term "geographical" as a synonym for "racial" in his book On Human Nature.

And Pinker's race pseudoscience ally Andrew Sullivan was rehashing the "Black cultural differences" trope not long ago, a trope which implies that there's something peculiar about Black people that makes them create a "culture" of unemployment and poverty. 

Pinker's allies are happy to tell you what that peculiarity is (see the "cold winters" hypothesis above) but Pinker won't come right out and admit it. So Pinker is forced to keep mum and let his allies do the talking for him: Razib Khan, Linda Gottfredson and the rest of the gang at ISIR and Richard Hanania. 

That's Pinker for you in a nutshell - the world's most annoying man and the world's most annoying weasel.