One of the least attractive phenomena in more than a decade of unattractive things is the re-emergence into what passes for polite society of eugenics and explicit white supremacy. Even in places and from people I once thought I knew. (If you’re wondering, then I probably do mean you.)
Trump is partly to blame. “By launching his campaign on a ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists’’ platform,” Donald Trump flushed these things back up from the sewers and made them safe to talk about again. Turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defense of western civilisation has flushed out many things you thought were long sunk, and many things even in friends (now former friends) you hadn’t realised existed.
But he’s only partly to blame for what was probably already latent. Also to blame is the phony equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious; the un-thinking that says if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – and anyone else is a “cuck” -- or the non-idea that the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.
With some it’s genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With Stefan Molyneux, it’s a career move. Who’s Stephan Molyneux? He’s one of the other reasons you’re seeing more and more of this stuff around. Molyneux is a dickhead with a following, that for some reason some of you keep recommending. For the record, Molyneux makes videos of himself talking. Talking interminably, often about himself. Hardly riveting. For many years he talked about anarchy, seeking to become a bigfish in this small pond. Then seeing a gap in the much bigger phony pastor market he began telling his young followers to abandon their parents and instead devote their lives, their honour and their sacred fortunes to his cause. Which was his wallet.
His arse very publicly handed to him by a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” he hunkered down to re-emerge as a promoter of white supremacy who, I Iament, has become unaccountably influential even with people I formerly knew and/or admired.
Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it.
Stuart Hayashi has researched Molyneux’s rantings, should you have any doubt this is what the wanker promotes, and I heartily recommend his post if you’re wondering why you’re seeing this stuff or Molyneux’s name around the traps so much. Hayashi identifies two premises the toerag promotes that are rarely heard together (a strategy of deniability, you see), but when combined form the argument, such as it is.
Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your racecauses you to have a particular IQ number….
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.
From those unprepossessing ingredients Molyneux makes a very unedifying stew: We should therefore deduce, at his behest, that a person’s race is what determines whether they are economically productive or criminally violent, therefore policies should be adopted to bar the many non-white “low-IQ races” from immigrating, from breeding, from generally being around.
This is not called out-and-out eugenics, these days, or even white supremacy – although that’s what it is. It’s called things like “race realism” or “human biodeversity,” which is they way you may have heard it promoted on websites and fora in which you once participated – or from people with whom you were once friends. And while Molyneux is just a vector for this disease, not the main source, he’s unaccountably influential.
One thing relied upon is an ignorance about the basic distinction between race and culture, about which Thomas Sowell has written so widely and so well. Culture, explains Sowell, should be understood as “the working machinery of everyday life” and like any machinery should be open to criticism and improvement. Some cultures are more productive than others, some less; this is true, but race itself is irrelevant.
One of the eugenicist’s aims is to collapse this distinction between race and culture, insisting instead that only race is relevant – that the two are deterministically entwined, with IQ being the measure of superiority.
Yes, it truly is this facile. As Robert Tracinski points out, these are people who understand Western civilisation “not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity.”
Hayashi briefly counters this odious nonsense, noting the very basic fact for example that even if you were to accept IQ as any measure of anything (about which there are huge problems) the causal arrow goes from wealth to performing well in IQ tests, not the other way around.
He then plunges into a veritable long-drop full of excreta on this topic that Molyneux has spewed out since his dramatic rebirth, leading to the conclusion that “because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities,” the only cure to the impending collapse of western countries is closed borders and racial separatism.
It’s like a prepper’s version of a national policy.
Why is this important? Because I keep seeing this stuff in places and around people I once frequented. And friends don’t let friends believe this stuff.
But if they do, there’s a very simple message for you, and it appears at the very top of this post.
Please take it literally.
Intellectual hygiene demands it.
MORE READING:
- “I take Stefan Molyneux to task for his promoting white supremacism. And I quote him to prove that, yes, that is what he is promoting.”
Quotations from Stefan Molyneux Showing His Promotion of Eugenics, Pseudoscientific Racism, and Bigotry Against Blacks – Stuart Hayashi, STU-TOPIA - “The fetid end of the political spectrum is rising up to support statism in the name of protecting IQ – on the basis, say the fetid-swamp warriors, that the “low IQs” will only destroy the culture and are too dumb to deserve freedom anyway. Vile enough, but does their chosen proxy even merit serious consideration? No.”
The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology – Jeffrey Tucker, NOT PC - “It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]”
The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition – NOT PC - “Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists…”
“White Sheets and Red Golf Caps” – NOT PC
NB: From now on, I shall be taking this post’s conclusion as my policy on commenting here at NOT PC. The principle of free speech does not demand that I supply eugenicists with a microphone. If you insist on promoting ordure with mine, then fuck off and get your own.
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19 comments:
Thank you very much for writing about this. Noticing what I had noticed over the past year, it broke my heart every time an otherwise-wise person would post one of Stefan Molyneux's videos on Facebook. I take it that that person had only seen a few such videos. It broke my heart still worse when an otherwise intelligent commentator appeared as a guest on Molyneux's podcast, again, because this commentator had not looked into what Molyneux was about. When a respectable person condones Molyneux in such a manner, it elevates Molyneux's reputation while diminishing that respectable person's. It is something of a fraudulent redistribution of credibility from the more-respectable to the less.
Every falsehood is usually built on a grain of truth. Is the grain of truth in this instance that certain human characteristics are influenced (but not determined) by our genetic heritage? What else explains that almost every athlete on the Olympic running track is black? Or that most Asians are not good drivers? Or closer to home for me, that many Italians are hot heads? Every human being can apparently trace our lineage back to a single woman born in Africa 65,000 years ago. In evolutionary terms thats hardly anything. Compared to other species we are virtually identical genetically, and that's why eugenics is flawed - but it's still conceivable that environment, culture, and isolation could combine with evolution to produce some genetic differences beyond just the physical, and influence the behaviour we might be predisposed to. For instance it's been theorised that the Polynesians who reached NZ across a vast uncharted ocean must have had a greater willingness to take risks and were more aggressive than most, and that trait is therefore over represented in Maori of today. In political terms this means nothing because we are all human beings with a rational faculty and free will - but It seems plausible that you could get statistical differences between races that aren't entirely explained by the culture the individual grew up in.
Thanks for that PC and Stuart. Like many I found Molyneux through "The story of your enslavement" which,while extremely condescending to the reader, still had some good "libertarian-ish" arguments.
Falling into his Free domain radio however, I realised that the bad far outweighs the good, and gave up on his ramblings. I haven't listened to him in a while, and had not realised he'd gone this far down the rabbit hole.
If a race was empirically dumber and/or more aggressive would it be acknowledged? Absolutely not - it's the biggest worldwide taboo. Just look what happened to DNA pioneer James Watson.
Wait: but your friend, Barry, is saying exactly that. Are you acknowledging by your "if" statement that your friend hasn't the evidence?
Barry - please don't take the 'grain of truth' I've noted as support for Molyneux or the direction you seem to be headed. In terms of explaining human behaviour, free will comes first, and culture comes second. I'm acknowledging genes may have some influence on our behaviour, but it comes a distant 3rd in terms of significance. An empirical study that focused on race and ignored culture would be flawed in it's conception - and even if it did find a connection along the lines you suggest, it would have no implications for politics or the rights of man.
What would that evidence look like to you PC? Hypothetically.
Why would it even be relevant? (I mean, you're aware of the Mises/Ricardo Law of Association, right?)
And thank you too, Stuart, for taking the time to compile the evidence.
What breaks my heart is seeing otherwise intelligent folk fall for this foulness. People I thought I once knew. :-/
If you really believe it's all irrelevant then that explains the naivety in your other post regarding the banana throwing incident.
Banana throwing at black athletes is common. Especially in European soccer. Join the dots.
Yes but PC said we were allowed free speech. Even Trump. So here come the Nationalists and the Social Conservatives.. We know we shouldn't be allowed to vote but we are.
I read a libertarian over there on the U.S. East coast. He said :
1/ Anyone [ thats anyone, including Syrian Islamists ] who wants to emigrate to USA,or fake refugee status should be able to do so.
2/ That the country USA did not have the right to regulate its borders, and this because of his superior intellect and ownership of a little piece of property.
3/ The State USA should say sorry to the raping, pillaging, destructive terrorist colonisers.
4/ Too bad for those who do not wish to pay the price for this ludicrous idea
Bozo. Bonkers.
Kind of gives the libertarians a freaky rap, or rep.
Now if we think Molyneux is challenging, I advise the next grade up is Black Pigeon videos .
No shagging around here with intellectual treatises, just the published facts, and the photos ..
Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, is associated with IQ level
This is no longer a premise but completely well established in research onwards from the 1930’s.
Not individually but group specific. There are still some who do not accept fundamental genetic science
The question is rather why genetic inheritance would not affect intelligence and IQ., when it determines just about everything else
But it does, and quite obviously so. See Olympic games. White men can’t run fast ..
To live within a socially cushioned belief system of equality and sameness is tooth fairy in the gardens.
Premise Two: IQ iis an indicating factor whether your ethnic group is economically productive
This is no longer a premise in a general sense that there is an established correlation between IQ as measured and the economic performance of that ethnic group.
I don’t know about criminal violence. I thought it was largely a learned behaviour
My observations are that Thai people are much less prone to aggression than Westerners,[ in the absence of drugs].
Barry - I'm pretty sure an empirical study would show that blacks are over-represented in Olympic running events. Would you regard that as relevant to how the Olympic sport should be conducted, and if so how?
To be consistent, the left should be supporting a quota on blacks to give other races an "equal opportunity". To be consistent the alt-right should be supporting the exclusion of non-blacks from Olympic events, on the basis that it's "their" sport.
Presumably you too would fall into that latter camp, if you were trying to apply a principle consistently that is, and not just a tribalist.
In this example, and more broadly, what both the left and alt-right have in common is an irrational fear of open competition. The only difference is which side they stand on when the promote this ridiculous race war.
You only have to look at how many Mensa alumni cannot run a business to know that IQ is a poor indicator of productivity. I'd rather employ an ace salesman with an IQ of 90, then an engineer with an IQ of 130 who focusses on nothing but minutiae.
Are you freaking kidding me?? Stefan hasn't said a lot of this stuff you claim he has. Also just because a race has a lower average IQ does not mean that everyone in that given race has that exact IQ. It's all based on averages. There are some blacks like Ben Carson with very high IQ's and some Ashkenazi Jews who have very low IQ's etc. You need to look up what the definition of average in the dictionary. You also need to stop calling facts "racist". There are things in this world that are actually racist. A fact that shows one race is different on average than another is not racist it's reality, wrong R world my friend.
Just because you are intelligent doesn't mean you are a good business man. Other factors are involved as well. However the higher the tax bracket the higher the average IQ of that tax bracket. IQ matters and is a very accurate measure of intelligence however it's not everything. There's still a good work ethic, knowledge, common sense, good instincts etc. that are important as well.
For the record just because you acknowledge the fact that different races have different average IQ's. Does not mean you support eugenics. Lastly a big reason for races that live in the northern hemisphere (Caucasians and Asians) have a high IQ is because of the long winters which weeds out the high IQ from the low IQ. The winters end up being a natural eugenics process as opposed to forced eugenics progressives developed in the late 19th-early 20 century.
It's a shame you only care about feelings. Just because something is offensive doesn't mean it's wrong. Nor does it make someone a bad person. What's wrong is judging a person for simply acknowledging the truth and facts even if the truth doesn't necessarily make people feel good. For the record it's not like these facts show that white people are superior. I"m not exactly sure how you can call this white supremacy. If anything the facts show that ashkenazi Jews are intellectually superior on average. A group the Nazis called inferior. It shows that Asians are the 2nd most intellectual of all the races and have the lowest rate of crime etc. Since statistics for Jews doesn't seem to be available. Anyways where is the white supremacy there?? If anything it shows that Caucasians are inferior to some races.
It's also the inverse of how affirmative action works. If affirmative action was scraped Asians would make up an even more disproportionate amount in colleges. Instead Asians are screwed when it comes to enrollment, whites are screwed much less and hispanics and Black people are given special treatment to make colleges more equally divided among race. That's not to say that without affirmative action there would be no blacks and Hispanics in college there would simply just be less. Very intelligent black people do exist. An average doesn't mean a set IQ for every single individual in that given group. A great example of this is Dr. Ben Carson. A hero of mine and a great man.
1. There is no such thing as "race".. That is a modern concept, that was created to justify certain treatment, of other people. Going back to ancient Greece, and Rome.. People did not look at it, the way we do.. It is culture that is whats important, and the only thing we have is different ethnicity, different nationality (if you are from United States, you are American), and finally again, different culture.
Culture is what determines your behavior, your thought, We have learned it even has certain effects on your genetics. Waaay back in the day for example....
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