Note added on November 7, 2016: This blog post of mine receives more traffic than most. Even a white supremacist/eugenicist message board links to it (definitely not because the eugenicists agree with it, of course!). For that reason, I should inform people coming to this page that I have written a more formal essay on this topic titled "A Libertarian Icon's Descent Into Racist Pseudoscience," published by Robert W. Tracinski for The Tracinski Letter.
Note added July 19, 2017: When I first composed this blog post, I wrote "...except for the quotation about 'maltreatment' of Asian, white, and black children, I do not think any quotation I provide, in isolation, can be considered a smoking gun" (boldface in original). Since then, the situation has changed. Over the past year, Stefan Molyneux has made his white supremacism increasingly obvious. He has reached the point where now you can watch almost any random video and discern right away that he advocates white supremacism. Here is a second montage of clips, with his white supremacism being even more obvious than in the clips from the first montage.
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Now, the original post:
Note: This video was embedded in this blog post on August 23, 2016, not August 19 when this blog post was first posted. See the bottom of this post for more information on this video.
Introduction (Background Info on Stefan Molyneux and Why Anyone Should Care)
From 2007 to 2010, Stefan Molyneux became somewhat famous for doing podcasts titled Freedomain Radio (FDR), wherein he advocated the sort of anarchy most commonly associated with Murray N. Rothbard, Roy A. Childs, Jr., and Samuel Edward Konkin III. From around 2013 to 2014, he got embroiled in a controversy concerning a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” which was related to Molyneux notoriously urging adolescents and twentysomethings to cut off all contact with their parents and pledge their lives and fortunes to his cause. With good reason, critics likened Molyneux’s behavior to that of the Church of Scientology. In retaliation, Molyneux used a government-backed legal mechanism to try to silence “TruShibes,” thus disillusioning many of his hardcore fans. Libertarian anarchists abandoned Molyneux in droves; former associates of his from the anarchy movement and New Hampshire’s Free State Project publicly shamed him for his hypocrisy. It seemed that his days of being a professional dispenser of ideology on the Web were doomed.
From 2015, though, Molyneux underwent a sort of “re-branding.” First, Molyneux’s podcast switched to arguing in favor of various talking points from the “Men’s Rights Movement,” which combats feminism in various respects. The MRM is often considered part of the “Alternative Right,” or Alt Right. By the end of 2015, Molyneux took on another trend, the one most strongly associated with the alt-right: white nationalism. Once in a while, Molyneux will release a podcast on some other topic, such as anthropogenic global warming or even dating. For the most part, though, the recurring theme of Molyneux’s podcast has been the airing of talking points that are most favored by the alt-right.
To address doubts over my evaluation of Molyneux as a purveyor of (pseudo)scientific racism, eugenics, and white nationalism, I will provide quotations from him. The boldface indicates emphases I have added. Some of the quotations consist mostly of rambling, and I have placed the most brazenly racist sections in boldface. The reason I include the rest of the rambling is that it provides some context for why Molyneux aired the racist evaluations in the first place.
Also bear in mind that, except for the quotation about “maltreatment” of Asian, white, and black children, I do not think any quotation I provide, in isolation, can be considered a smoking gun. There is a special reason for this: Molyneux has adopted a tactic that has commonly been employed by eugenicists following the second World War.
From 2015, though, Molyneux underwent a sort of “re-branding.” First, Molyneux’s podcast switched to arguing in favor of various talking points from the “Men’s Rights Movement,” which combats feminism in various respects. The MRM is often considered part of the “Alternative Right,” or Alt Right. By the end of 2015, Molyneux took on another trend, the one most strongly associated with the alt-right: white nationalism. Once in a while, Molyneux will release a podcast on some other topic, such as anthropogenic global warming or even dating. For the most part, though, the recurring theme of Molyneux’s podcast has been the airing of talking points that are most favored by the alt-right.
To address doubts over my evaluation of Molyneux as a purveyor of (pseudo)scientific racism, eugenics, and white nationalism, I will provide quotations from him. The boldface indicates emphases I have added. Some of the quotations consist mostly of rambling, and I have placed the most brazenly racist sections in boldface. The reason I include the rest of the rambling is that it provides some context for why Molyneux aired the racist evaluations in the first place.
Also bear in mind that, except for the quotation about “maltreatment” of Asian, white, and black children, I do not think any quotation I provide, in isolation, can be considered a smoking gun. There is a special reason for this: Molyneux has adopted a tactic that has commonly been employed by eugenicists following the second World War.
The eugenicists in the orbit of the Pioneer Fund do not say directly, “The biology-based components of your race, such as your DNA, are the main factor that determine whether you are economically productive or violently criminal. And this is congenital; it cannot be changed over time.” If eugenicists stated that outright, then critics, such as myself, could immediately point to one or two sentences to prove that a particular person is promoting racism. Therefore, the friends of the Pioneer Fund argue for the racist eugenicist agenda in a roundabout manner. They put forth two related premises. They count on the fact that if you, the reader, accept both premises, you will deductively draw the specific conclusion that they want you to draw. Here they are:
Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your race causes you to have a particular IQ number. The race with the highest average IQ is Ashkenazic Jews. The race with the second-highest average IQ is East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans). That category excludes South Asians, such as Pakistanis and Indians, whom the the eugenicists are a little less sure about. In the middle are most whites; this category excludes Ashkenazic Jews and Hispanics. Lower than most whites are Mediterranean people, such as Arabs and north Africans. Lower still are Hispanics. Portuguese-speaking people are not technically Hispanic but they fall into this IQ area, too. Lower than them are black Americans. And lowest of all are African blacks, especially from West Africa.
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent. The higher a population’s average IQ is, the more economically productive it is, per capita. Conversely, the lower a population’s average IQ is, the more prone it is to criminal violence. Furthermore, add the eugenicists, this is not a mere correlation. It is not the case that maybe people living in an area of high crime and frequent violence is what causes the average IQ score to be lower. No, the IQ is primary, and IQ is what causes a population to be economically productive or criminally violent.
Premise 1 is that your race is what determines your IQ number, and Premise 2 is that your IQ number determines whether you are economically productive or criminally violent. If we accept both premises, what is the conclusion we would deduce? From this syllogism we would deduce, Your race is what determines whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.
If the Pioneer Fund’s eugenicists wrote in their books simply, “Your race determines whether you are economically productive or criminally violent,” someone would point that out and the eugenicists would lose their academic careers. Therefore, they have taken to being sneaky. What they do is this. They will write very long, turgid treatises that are divided into two sections. One section of the book simply advances that a population’s average IQ number determines how economically productive or criminally violent it is. Then the other section of the book proposes that race-related genetics, more than anything else -- including the environment one grows up in -- is what determines a population’s average IQ. If you simply read one chapter, or even half of the book, you might come away without getting the point. But if you read the entire book and accept all of its premises, you end up deducing the conclusion that the eugenicists want you to deduce.
Stefan Molyneux has adopted this tactic. If you watch or hear simply one of Molyneux’s podcasts, it is very easy not to notice that Molyneux is pushing a race-related biological determinism. But if you are one of his young devotees who listens to every one of his podcasts -- and this is what Molyneux has expected of his most loyal fans since 2007 -- and if you accept Molyneux’s claims at face value, you will develop the conclusion about racial-related biological determinism that you are expected to develop.
That is why I only have one quotation that, in isolation, I think is a “smoking gun.” The other quotations, if heard or read separate from one another, may not seem to be proof that Molyneux is advocating (pseudo)scientific racism. But if you hear or read all these quotations together in context, I think that it is undeniable that Molyneux is pushing racialist determinism.
Why Pseudoscientific Racism Is Wrong (This Section Is Briefer Than I Would Like)
I cannot go into full detail, as that is beyond the scope of this blog post. But I will mention here that the Pioneer Fund’s eugenicists, and Molyneux with them, are being disingenuous. They claim that a consensus in the social sciences accepts all of their arguments as true and simply avoids admitting so publicly, for fear of being denounced as racist and politically incorrect. Here, the eugenicists resort to half-truths. It is true that a scientific consensus accepts that a population’s average IQ correlates with that population’s economic productivity or violently criminality. That is, IQ is a strong statistical predictor of someone’s economic productivity or criminality. And it is also true that an academic consensus has observed disparities in average IQ between separate ethnic groups. It is true that Ashkenazic Jews, on average, receive the highest scores on IQ tests, whereas West African blacks, on average, receive the lowest scores when taking these same tests.
However, the Pioneer Fund’s eugenicists expect you to accept their far-flung conclusions (1) that race-related genetics is the main cause of the IQ score, and (2) that IQ causes economic productivity or violent criminality.
For example, Klaus Eyferth did a study on the children of U.S. servicemen who served in Allied-occupied Germany following the Second World War. Some of the children were “all-white,” whereas some were the children of black Allied servicemen. When these children were grown up, there was no statistically significant difference in the IQ results of the “all-white” Germans and the part-black Germans. Moreover, James Flynn (who has actually expressed some sympathies for the eugenicists) has found that when three generations of blacks have taken the same IQ tests, and the youngest generation grew up in greater wealth than the previous generations, the youngest generation also had higher IQ test results.
Also note that American Indians, having descended from Siberians, are not that different, genetically, from East Asians. Yet American Indians are poorer than whites. If the eugenicists’ assumptions were accurate, this should not be the case. The likeliest explanation for this poverty is the way in which the federal government has impeded upon American Indian entrepreneurship.
The eugenicists normally cite twin studies to “prove” that genetics, more than environment, determines IQ. They cite studies showing that when IQ tests are given both to identical twins and to fraternal twins, the IQ scores match up more closely in a pair of identical twins than in a pair of fraternal twins. What the eugenicists overlook is that those studies were done almost entirely on families that were middle-class or wealthy. When Eric Turkheimer administered both to identical twins in poverty and identical twins in the middle class, the study found that there were wide discrepancies in the IQ test results between identical twins in poverty. That is, if a pair of identical twins are raised in poverty, there could be a huge mismatch in their IQ scores.
What the evidence suggests is that it is actually being raised in a wealthy environment that drives up IQ. When blacks and Hispanics are raised in wealthier environments, they get higher IQ test results than they would if raised in poverty. And IQ and economic productivity do correlate, but it does not follow that the IQ caused the economic productivity. Rather, it is most likely that living under relatively greater freedom is what causes a population to produce more wealth for its children, and those children being raised in greater wealth causes these children grow up to have higher IQs and to be more economically productive.
That is, it is not a population having a low average IQ that causes it to be poor or for it to suffer from a high crime rate. Rather, when a population is poor and suffers from a lot of crime, something about those conditions inhibits the population's performance on IQ tests.
However, the Pioneer Fund’s eugenicists expect you to accept their far-flung conclusions (1) that race-related genetics is the main cause of the IQ score, and (2) that IQ causes economic productivity or violent criminality.
For example, Klaus Eyferth did a study on the children of U.S. servicemen who served in Allied-occupied Germany following the Second World War. Some of the children were “all-white,” whereas some were the children of black Allied servicemen. When these children were grown up, there was no statistically significant difference in the IQ results of the “all-white” Germans and the part-black Germans. Moreover, James Flynn (who has actually expressed some sympathies for the eugenicists) has found that when three generations of blacks have taken the same IQ tests, and the youngest generation grew up in greater wealth than the previous generations, the youngest generation also had higher IQ test results.
Also note that American Indians, having descended from Siberians, are not that different, genetically, from East Asians. Yet American Indians are poorer than whites. If the eugenicists’ assumptions were accurate, this should not be the case. The likeliest explanation for this poverty is the way in which the federal government has impeded upon American Indian entrepreneurship.
The eugenicists normally cite twin studies to “prove” that genetics, more than environment, determines IQ. They cite studies showing that when IQ tests are given both to identical twins and to fraternal twins, the IQ scores match up more closely in a pair of identical twins than in a pair of fraternal twins. What the eugenicists overlook is that those studies were done almost entirely on families that were middle-class or wealthy. When Eric Turkheimer administered both to identical twins in poverty and identical twins in the middle class, the study found that there were wide discrepancies in the IQ test results between identical twins in poverty. That is, if a pair of identical twins are raised in poverty, there could be a huge mismatch in their IQ scores.
What the evidence suggests is that it is actually being raised in a wealthy environment that drives up IQ. When blacks and Hispanics are raised in wealthier environments, they get higher IQ test results than they would if raised in poverty. And IQ and economic productivity do correlate, but it does not follow that the IQ caused the economic productivity. Rather, it is most likely that living under relatively greater freedom is what causes a population to produce more wealth for its children, and those children being raised in greater wealth causes these children grow up to have higher IQs and to be more economically productive.
That is, it is not a population having a low average IQ that causes it to be poor or for it to suffer from a high crime rate. Rather, when a population is poor and suffers from a lot of crime, something about those conditions inhibits the population's performance on IQ tests.
Eugenicists and (Pseudo)Scientific Racists Now Call Themselves “Race Realists” and “People Who Recognize Human Biodiversity”
Before I get to Stefan Molyneux’s quotations, I add a few more notes. First of all, the Pioneer Fund’s eugenicists don’t call themselves “eugenicists” or “scientific racists.” No one who has advocated (pseudo)scientific racism ever called himself a “scientific racist.” Scientific racism is a term coined by historians who studied the history of this pseudoscience and wrote very disapprovingly about it following the Second World War. People did call themselves eugenicists very proudly. When the New Deal official and philanthropist Mary Harriman Rumsey -- W. Averell Harriman’s sister -- advocated eugenics, other eugenicist nicknamed her "Eugenia," much to her delight. But after historians studied the Holocaust, the entire field of eugenics became so thoroughly discredited and stigmatized that no one wanted to be called a eugenicist anymore, lest one be thought of as a Nazi.
That is why, since the 1990s, eugenicists have developed new labels. Some of them call themselves race realists. Others have adopted the term that Molyneux prefers -- they say they recognize what they call Human Biodiversity.
They say we should recognize that because different clans of people had to adapt to different environments -- say, northern Europeans received less sunlight and produced less Vitamin D than their southern counterparts -- it follows that when human beings adapted to those different geographic environments, they developed different customs to cope. I do not doubt that part, but the Human Bioiversity people add that these different customs and behaviors are not simply chosen and taught across generations. Rather, the different behaviors are instilled at the genetic level. For example, if East Asians are stereotyped as having a culture of “thrift” -- if they put more emphasis than other ethnic groups on saving their money -- it is not as if this is a custom that is chosen or taught. It is not as if East Asians choose to maintain this practice, or that many East Asians could choose not to be thrifty. It is that the tendency to be thrifty exists at the genetic level and that, to the degree that East Asians are frugal, they are acting in accordance with their genetic programming.
Mind you, add the eugenicists of the Human Biodiversity movement, that is not to say that all East Asians are thrifty. Some East Asians will be wastrels who spend all their money. However, those East Asians, too, are acting in accordance with their own genetic programming, and they are in the minority. It is simply that, on average, an East Asian will be statistically likelier to be thrifty than a black man, and, in both cases, it is due to how the genes for “thriftiness” are distributed throughout the populations.
This is one excuse that Molyneux and other eugenicists offer for in attempt to exonerate themselves from the charge that they are racist. When they say that genetics causes blacks to be more violent than whites and East Asians, they aver, they do not mean that all blacks are violent. Of course you can find a black man who is very peaceful and an East Asian who is very violent. But those are statistical exceptions, add Molyneux and the eugenicists. Then they maintain that, on the whole, when you look at entire populations, the general trend is for blacks to be more violent than East Asians, and the main cause of this is genetic programming.
If you doubt me about the “Human Biodiversity” movement, I shall refer you to what the Human Biodiversity movement says about itself.
If you google "Human Biodiversity," most of the results will be websites written by people very unsympathetic to that movement; the majority of the websites will be unflattering depictions of Human Biodiversity made by people who want to make it look bad. Human Biodiversity proponents like to claim they are being misrepresented. Therefore, I will link to some members of the Human Biodiversity movement speaking for themselves (I think that when Human-Biodiversity eugenicists speak for themselves, it is ultimately more damning than anything critics could say of them):
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/category/what-is-human-biodiversity/
http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/
No, Molyneux Does Not Make a Distinction Between “Race” and “Culture,”
Or: When Molyneux Has a Conservative Non-Eugenicist On As a Guest, He Uses “Culture” As a Dog Whistle
For a long time I noticed -- with great distress -- that some of my favorite psychologists and conservative commentators were appearing as guests on Stefan Molyneux’s podcast. Since these people themselves did not advocate Molyneux’s racist eugenicism, why did they insist on going on an openly racist podcast?
The first reason is that these people have not bothered to listen to the Freedomain Radio episodes on which they did not appear. They are not addicted fans who listen religiously to every podcast. That is how they fail to recognize what has been the recurring theme of Freedomain Radio since 2015. Secondly, I notice that when Molyneux has non-eugenicist experts on his podcast, any time he mentions his overall eugenicist theme, he slyly disguises it by saying he is concerned about “culture.”
I began to notice this when I watched Molyneux's interview with Duke Pesta. Molyneux mentioned to Duke Pesta at the 0:36:44 spot that he believed that the reason why Asian-Americans are successful in academics and commerce whereas black- and Hispanic-Americans are poor is a difference of “culture.” Pesta agreed with that and they moved on. Pesta assumed that Molyneux was using the word culture in the way that conservatives normally use the word.
The first reason is that these people have not bothered to listen to the Freedomain Radio episodes on which they did not appear. They are not addicted fans who listen religiously to every podcast. That is how they fail to recognize what has been the recurring theme of Freedomain Radio since 2015. Secondly, I notice that when Molyneux has non-eugenicist experts on his podcast, any time he mentions his overall eugenicist theme, he slyly disguises it by saying he is concerned about “culture.”
I began to notice this when I watched Molyneux's interview with Duke Pesta. Molyneux mentioned to Duke Pesta at the 0:36:44 spot that he believed that the reason why Asian-Americans are successful in academics and commerce whereas black- and Hispanic-Americans are poor is a difference of “culture.” Pesta agreed with that and they moved on. Pesta assumed that Molyneux was using the word culture in the way that conservatives normally use the word.
When conservatives say that a difference in “culture” explains why Asians are richer than blacks and Hispanics, what they mean by culture is a set of customs or practices that people voluntarily choose to observe and teach. If a conservative says that it is part of “Asian culture” to be thrifty, but that this is not part of “black culture,” that conservative means that Asians are choosing to be thrifty and choosing to teach this virtue to their children, whereas blacks are not choosing this. Part of this idea is that this can be changed. There could come a day when Asians might choose not to be so thrifty anymore. More importantly, there is hope that blacks can choose to be thrifty and teach this to their children. However oversimplified the conservatives’ interpretation of culture may be, at least it recognizes a distinction between culture and race, as culture is changeable -- even if the change is not easy and takes decades to accomplish --whereas race is unchangeable (Rachel Dolezal notwithstanding).
By contrast, Molyneux and other eugenicists make no fundamental distinction between “race” and “culture.” For them, “culture” is ultimately decided by race-related genetics. If thriftiness is part of “Asian culture,” it is because its race-related genetic makeup programmed the Asian population so that, on average, Asians will be thriftier than Hispanics and blacks, even if you do come across the occasional Asian who is reckless with his money.
When Molyneux interviews fellow eugenicists in the Pioneer Fund's orbit, such as Jason Richwine and Linda Gottfredson, he is much more explicit about the belief that race-related genetics determines culture. But when he interviews conservatives who are not eugenicists, it happens that when the different economic and criminal-justice circumstances of Asian-Americans and black-Americans are brought up, Molyneux says the difference is due to “culture.” And the conservatives accept that. Molyneux counts on their assumption that he is using the term culture the same way they do -- that he recognizes that culture is the result of choices and therefore can change. The conservative guests don’t know what is going on because they haven’t listened to all of Molyneux’s eugenics-related podcasts. And when Molyneux says culture to his conservative guests, it is a dog whistle to his longtime listeners.
I have to stress this because, every time I have pointed out to people that Molyneux has been spreading stereotypes about blacks and Asians, these people have replied to me, “Are you sure that Molyneux isn’t just talking about the results being different for blacks and Asians because of blacks and Asians having different cultures?” The implication buried in that question is the assumption that Molyneux is allowing for the possibility that Asians and blacks have some capacity to choose to behave differently -- that if poverty among blacks is related to poor choices among blacks, blacks can still make different choices in the future. No, Molyneux is not even allowing for that possibility. When Molyneux says that blacks and north Africans and Arabs come from a culture of violence, he does not mean that these people can choose to reduce this culture of violence. He is saying that for this generation and the next several generations, that tendency to violence is inborn and congenital.
Now that that is clarified, I can show you Molyneux’s quotations.
Stefan Molyneux on Race Determining IQ and IQ Determining Bad Behavior
What I can do is connect the dots -- I can show the deductive chain of reasoning where, if you follow Stefan Molyneux's logic, the conclusion the audience is intended to draw is ultimately that race-related genetics determines whether you turn out economically productive or a violent criminal.
At the 0:01:34 mark of his YouTube video "The Death of Europe | European Migrant Crisis," Molyneux asserts,
Looking at human beings as one species is not biologically valid [Stefan Molyneux is not being facetious here]. We are a variety of subspecies -- politically, ethnically sometimes, definitely in terms of gender, in terms of IQ, in terms of culture. These produce differences that are physical but hard to remediate [remedy?] as you get older. So we are a cluster of genetics getting ready to reproduce their own particular genetics.
At the 0:22:47 mark of the same video, he says,
And all of this [saving Europe from destruction] requires that the IQ can be raised. The [average] IQ of a lot of these countries [that north African immigrants are from] is 85. That is a full standard deviation below the [average] IQ of Europe. . . . Now, if there's any genetic component to that, and I believe that there is -- nobody knows for sure; it's just a belief, but it's a belief with quite a bit of data and we're just about to put out an interview with Dr. Jason Richwine about this -- but if there's any genetic components, or if the culture is so insular that it's equivalent to genetics in the transmission of low intelligence, then you cannot run a high-IQ society with low-IQ people. . . .
Now, if there are genetic components to the low IQ of the people coming in [to the West, from non-Western countries], I will tell you exactly what's going to happen, and it's really obvious. And if it is genetic or equivalent to genetic -- their low IQ -- I can tell you exactly what's going to happen: they're gonna fail. These immigrants are going to fail, and they're not gonna just fail a little bit; they're gonna fail hard. You are importing a radicalized, low-IQ population into a high-IQ society, and capitalism pays for intelligence. That's what it does; you get paid for your intelligence. And so you are importing a huge bunch of people into Europe, who are going to fail. They're not staying on welfare because they're lazy; they're not. That's like saying somebody with an IQ of 80 hasn't applied to graduate school because they're [sic] lazy. No! They're doing what is economically the best option for them. . . . But you are importing a gene set that is incompatible with success in a free-market economy. Now, because no one can talk about IQ and no one can talk about any potential genetic relationship between ethnic communities and IQ, what that means is that the only way that anyone will ever explain the failures of these Africans in European society -- you know as well as I do -- how is anyone going to explain that? . . . [Mockingly, here:] White racism.
Near the end of his video, "The Impending Collapse of Western Civilization," Molyneux touts racial separatism as a solution to what he judges to be the self-destruction of the welfare state. From the 0:32:45 mark:
When you have a largely homogeneous society -- right, let's say, um, Haiti, right? Haiti has a lot of blacks and so on, right? -- if there's a big change to be made in society, say, Haiti runs out of money, or, as you said, right, New Zealand ran out of money until the giant Hobbit resurgent economy hit them with the Peter Jackson money bombs -- if you have a largely ethnically homogeneous society, when the shit hits the wall and people gotta change, there isn't really that much in-fighting. There's a sense of, 'OK, we've all got to pull together. We all kind of have the same color eyes and there's no point turning on each other, because we all kind of got into this together, and so we've all got to pull together to get out of it together.'; When you have an ethnically homogeneous society, when the shit hits the wall, you don't dissolve into massive race-baiting wars, which is, you know, a problem that happens because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities, and what that means is that when the shit hits the wall, it hits some ethnicities a lot harder than others, you get endless screams of 'racism!';. This is one fundamental reason why America is having a hard time solving these problems. If you cut spending, which [racial] community is it going to hit the hardest? Hint: it's not Korean. If you cut spending in America, it's the black community it will hit the hardest.
The 0:35:05 mark:
This is another reason why multi-ethnic societies is a problem. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if all ethnicities acted the same, roughly. . . . The Germans came over, the Irish came over, and they kind of ended up acting pretty much the same after a certain amount of time -- a generation or two. But the problem is that among the blacks and the Hispanics, they don't end up acting the same as the white population or the Asian population, and the white population doesn't even act as well as the Asian population in terms of murder rates and income and unemployment and so on and single motherhood and family stability and so on. So we all need to turn Japanese; that's my first point. [Stefan Molyneux is joking there.] My second point is that when the shit hits the wall and the government runs out of money, it doesn't end up affecting ethnicites in the same way.
The 0:37:17 mark:
Because you've got the Racist-in-Chief [President Obama] currently manning the helm, and the media, of course, compliant, and willing to scream 'racist' at anyone who points out basic fact-based differences between ethnicities, you've got a problem. You can't deal with the situation until Obama's out, or until people understand ethnicities in America and all around the world tend to act differently collectively -- individuals are always different -- but collectively ethnicities around the world tend to act differently. They tend to have different incomes, they have different rates of marital stability, they have different rates of criminality, they tend to have different rates of accumulations of assets, they have different levels of education. Go on and on and on. Until people accept that and say, ‘OK, if we cut spending, government spending, it's going to affect the black community the worst, it's going to affect the Hispanic community the second worst, it's going to affect the white community the third worst, and I think Asians will heave up a giant sigh of relief at not being taxed with a giant suction hole through the butt.’ Until these facts are either dealt with, or until people give up race-baiting -- I'm not sure which one I consider more likely -- trying to deal with these problems is a real challenge. And because you have a Race-Baiter-in-Chief in charge of the White House, the Republicans, I think, have been very loathe to cut spending, because it will hit the black community and you've got this giant klaxon who will amplify it through the mainstream media to the point where society will probably hit a revolution.
Stefan Molyneux Letting Linda Gottfredson, a Leader of the Eugenics Movement, Say What He Wants Said
After several months, Stefan Molyneux decided that he would get more well-known Human Biodiversity advocates, such as Linda Gottfredson, to do the speaking for him. This is the pattern with his video "Race, Evolution and Intelligence: Linda Gottfredson."
At the 0:25:45 mark, Molyneux says,
At the 0:25:45 mark, Molyneux says,
And this is something that, again, is well-known within the professional literature and professional periodicals [of people measuring IQ] and so on, which is simply not making it out [into the popular culture] for a variety of reasons we can discuss. . . . that there is a hierarchy that is apparently recognized -- and I think you gathered together fifty or so experts who repeated all of this stuff ad infinitum . . . -- which is that you could equate what is roughly a five-part split or divergence of IQs among particular groups, which, as Charles Murray pointed out: Ashkenazi Jews sort of at the top -- 110 and 115 -- and if you just focus on verbal, 120-plus. . . . And then I've heard a variety for Asians -- um, 103, 106, and so on, but very strong in visual-spatial -- the sort of the myth or the stereotype of the Asian engineer, versus the Jewish engineer; Ashkenazi Jews actually score a little bit below the norm in visual-spatial but, of course, in language skills they are through the roof, which is why you see a lot of writers and directors and so on. . . . Then you have whites -- Caucasians -- normed around 100. And then, if I remember the number rightly, the low 90s for Hispanics and then 85 -- which is a full standard deviation below whites -- for blacks, and these differences have persisted for as long as these tests have been going on. And the more g-loaded the tests are -- the more they are trying to measure general intelligence, which is directly associated with physical structures in the brain -- the more they tend to reaffirm this five-point spread.
In the same Linda Gottfredson video, Stefan Molyneux then disingenuously says he does not want to accept Linda Gottfredson's conclusion. For me to believe that he is truly disturbed by that conclusion, I would have had to have avoided watching the previous videos: the videos where he had already wholeheartedly endorsed Linda Gottfredson's conclusion. At the 0:43:12 mark:
Here is where it comes together: In the video "Does Angela Merkel Want to Destroy Germany?," Stefan Molyneux uses the term "low-IQ culture" because he expects his listeners to know his conclusion that race-related genetics determines IQ and IQ determines culture. Hence, for Molyneux, there is no distinction between race and culture. In the Molyneux philosophy, "customs" and "culture" are not subject to choice; they come from congenital biological traits. 25:25 mark:
I have this emotional resistance to the genetics [determinism]. I'm sure I'm speaking for a lot [of people]. I feel like a stick insect climbing a waterfall. I'm sure I can do it but then this data [from Linda Gottfredson allegedly supporting race-related genetic determinism, which Stefan Molyneux expects the viewers to interpret as overwhelming] keeps knocking me away and putting me back down in the pool, because we all like to think it's a solvable problem -- the disparate average intelligences between ethnicities, because we've got this multicultural society . . . . But if, overall, there's kind of a doomed underclass or two, and a bunch of overlords in a free society. But I feel the evidence [in favor of genetic determinism] cannot be resisted. [That sentence is the real message that Stefan Molyneux wants to convey to the audience.] . . . None of these things are final but together they accumulate -- to me, at least -- to portray a worldview that is emotionally difficult -- which is not something you can guide your conclusions by -- but I am having a tough time getting up that waterfall on the environmental side [meaning environment influencing someone's productivity or violent criminality].
Here is where it comes together: In the video "Does Angela Merkel Want to Destroy Germany?," Stefan Molyneux uses the term "low-IQ culture" because he expects his listeners to know his conclusion that race-related genetics determines IQ and IQ determines culture. Hence, for Molyneux, there is no distinction between race and culture. In the Molyneux philosophy, "customs" and "culture" are not subject to choice; they come from congenital biological traits. 25:25 mark:
Low-IQ cultures -- you can argue that they're R-selected [this is Stefan Molyneux citing Anonymous Conservative's misinterpretation of r/ K selection theory] -- we've talked about in [the] 'gene wars[' video]: they just have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids. And that's the nature of the beast. That's one of the reasons why the countries remain poor, other than IQ [which Stefan Molyneux insists is congenital, determined by racial genetics]. They just breed like crazy. No resources -- not enough to go around. . . . We started doing IQ years ago. It's hard for people to grasp. Human Biodiversity [this is the modern euphemism for eugenics] is a challenging topic. . . . Both the Left and the Right reject the Human Biodiversity that comes from 50- to 60- to 70,000 years in wildly disparate environments which is exactly the kind of evolution that you would expect. So there's this weird unity between the Left and the Right to reject Human Biodiversity -- [congenital, inborn, biology-based] differences in strengths and weaknesses and abilities and limitations between races or ethnicities. It's one of those weird ways in which both the Left and Right agree for vastly different reasons.
No, Praising Asians Doesn’t Preclude Someone From Being a White Supremacist
Molyneux even did a sycophantic interview with Jared Taylor, the founder of the white-separatist propaganda magazine American Renaissance. At the 27:40 mark, Taylor says,
The way we find north Asians living in terms of illegitimacy rates, per-capita income, crime rates, in all of those respects they have built societies that are, frankly, objectively superior to those of whites, which does not necessarily mean that we wish to turn Japanese or be replaced by Japanese or Koreans. But along those lines they can be described as different and superior to us.
Molyneux does not challenge that; he approves.
Note that Jared Taylor agrees with Molyneux that “culture” is ultimately determined by “race.” Therefore, when Jared Taylor says that Japanese are culturally superior to whites on those measures, what he really means is that Japanese are racially and genetically superior to whites on those measures -- and, by implication, racially superior to Taylor’s enemies: Hispanics and blacks.
That, by the way, is a common trick for white supremacists such as Jared Taylor and Stefan Molyneux. They start by praising Asians, only using that as a preface to their denunciations of Hispanics, blacks, Mediterraneans, and north Africans as congenitally inferior. They expect people to assume that if they give lip service to admirable Asians, that somehow precludes them from being recognized as racist. I do not know who they are trying to fool, other than themselves. Jared Taylor and Stefan Molyneux remain white supremacists, as their agenda has become the emphasis of whites holding supremacy over Hispanics and blacks. (If they are not white supremacist, they are “black/brown-inferiorist,” mostly denigrating Hispanics and Africans.)
Stefan Molyneux Says Genetic Programming Means Spanking Will Make Black Boys Grow Up to Be Violent But Spanking Won’t Do That to Asians
Stefan Molyneux ends his first interview with Jason Richwine saying that when he proclaims that there are congenital behavioral differences between races, he is not saying that one race is better than any other. That is, he concludes by telling the audience that he considers the races separate but equal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x-tYmyJSVo
That proved disingenuous, as Stefan Molyneux then did an interview with Kevin Beaver to say that genetics is what makes you a criminal or not. In that video, "Genetics and Crime," at the 15:44 mark, Molyneux tells Kevin Beaver about his having previously mentioned a causal link between race-related genetics and violent crime. He mentions an older video called "The Truth About Crime," wherein he cites Kevin Beaver.
At the 40:00 mark of “The Truth About Crime,” Molyneux at first says that he does not know if crime is caused by genetics. But then at the 40:46 mark, he says that IQ is linked to race and it is about race-related genetics after all. At 41:53 he ends up saying, "Genetics components [are] often considered to be between 50 to 60 to 80 percent of one's final IQ."
At the 40:00 mark of “The Truth About Crime,” Molyneux at first says that he does not know if crime is caused by genetics. But then at the 40:46 mark, he says that IQ is linked to race and it is about race-related genetics after all. At 41:53 he ends up saying, "Genetics components [are] often considered to be between 50 to 60 to 80 percent of one's final IQ."
At the end, Stefan Molyneux says there are several reasons for believing that there is an inborn biological basis for blacks having a greater tendency toward crime in the USA than other races. His first reason for saying this is that he thinks IQ inversely correlates with violent criminality, and blacks have average IQ scores that are lower than those of other races. He also thinks that the main cause of this is genetic (around the 40:46 mark he says genetics accounts for somewhere "between 50 to 60 to 80 percent of one's IQ." Second, he says, blacks have more testosterone than other races, and testosterone makes men more physically aggressive. Then he adds, finally, that blacks have a greater tendency to carry the "warrior gene." He says that having the warrior gene, by itself, is not enough to make you violent, but that if you have this gene and experience corporal punishment as a child, that will trigger you and the "warrior" inside you will be expressed in the form of violent criminality.
Therefore, at the 53:25 mark he offers:
Say to the black families, 'Look, when you abuse your children [he considers all corporal punishment, such as spanking, to be domestic abuse], you are setting events in motion -- if they have this genetic susceptibility [to violence, due to the 'warrior gene'] , when you look at these ratios, it's huge -- you are setting events in motion that are going to result in increased criminality, in your population.' You already have higher testosterone according to many measures. If you have this genetic susceptibility to being triggered by [parental] violence into becoming a violent person... You know, maltreat an Asian child-- I don't know -- what do you get? I don't know -- a great pianist? I don't know. Maltreat a Caucasian kid -- I don't know -- you get some Goth. But maltreat a black kid, and the prevalence of this 'warrior gene' sequence -- particularly this 2-repeat -- and you're going to get a very different kind of person.
Those cracks about Asian musicians and white Goth kids are intended as morbid and sardonic humor. Yet Molyneux is indeed being serious in proclaiming that, on account of genetic programming, being spanked as a child will trigger a black man into being violent whereas it will not trigger the same in a man of East Asian descent.
Then, at the very end of “The Truth About Crime,” Stefan Molyneux denies he is racist. He says he is the one who truly cares about blacks because people acknowledging these beliefs is what will save blacks. He cries that the real racists are unnamed Powers That Be who suppress this "information."
Why I Am Making a Big Deal Out of This
To this day, I continue to see intelligent and wise people on Facebook recommend Stefan Molyneux videos. I think what is going on is that they are not loyal listeners; they saw only one video and were unaware of what is the main theme of Molyneux’s podcast. In some cases, a favorite political/cultural commentator was a guest on that podcast.
That brings me to a more serious issue: some wise and intelligent cultural commentators -- some left-wing psychologists, others conservative or free-market writers -- appear as guests on Molneux’s program. Again, my interpretation is that they are unaware of what has been the recurring theme of Molyneux’s program since 2015. And if the topic of a disparity between blacks and Asians is brought up, Molyneux refers to this as being caused by blacks and Asians having different “culture,” and these commentators are misled on what Molyneux means by that.
Sadly, Molyneux has placed himself in the same territory as David Duke and David Irving. It does not matter that when you go on Molyneux’s program, you talk about something unrelated to his racism and eugenics, such as, say, GMOs or anthropogenic climate change. When you, a respectable person, go on Molyneux’s program, it makes it seem as if Molyneux’s podcast in general is respectable, and it helps legitimize, in the eyes of the public, Molyneux’s rationalizations for racism and bigotry.
________
UPDATE from August 23, 2016: Inspired by this blog post, here is a video compilation of clips showing that since 2015, Stefan Molyneux's Freedomain Radio (FDR) podcast has regularly promoted white supremacism, eugenics, and even racial segregation.
The video relies on YouTube "Annotations" to provide the context for each clip. Therefore, the video will make more sense if you have "Annotations" switched on. If you don't know what that is, then, as the video plays, place your cursor over the video image. On the bottom of the image, there should appear controls for Volume control and such. Near the right on the bottom, there is a Gear symbol. If you place the cursor over the Gear symbol, a menu of options will appear. One of those options is whether to have "Annotations" switched on or off.
It is to be expected that Molyneux and/or his minions may flag the video falsely to have it removed from YouTube. Therefore, if you could download a copy of this for yourself, it would be very helpful.
That brings me to a more serious issue: some wise and intelligent cultural commentators -- some left-wing psychologists, others conservative or free-market writers -- appear as guests on Molneux’s program. Again, my interpretation is that they are unaware of what has been the recurring theme of Molyneux’s program since 2015. And if the topic of a disparity between blacks and Asians is brought up, Molyneux refers to this as being caused by blacks and Asians having different “culture,” and these commentators are misled on what Molyneux means by that.
Sadly, Molyneux has placed himself in the same territory as David Duke and David Irving. It does not matter that when you go on Molyneux’s program, you talk about something unrelated to his racism and eugenics, such as, say, GMOs or anthropogenic climate change. When you, a respectable person, go on Molyneux’s program, it makes it seem as if Molyneux’s podcast in general is respectable, and it helps legitimize, in the eyes of the public, Molyneux’s rationalizations for racism and bigotry.
________
UPDATE from August 23, 2016: Inspired by this blog post, here is a video compilation of clips showing that since 2015, Stefan Molyneux's Freedomain Radio (FDR) podcast has regularly promoted white supremacism, eugenics, and even racial segregation.
The video relies on YouTube "Annotations" to provide the context for each clip. Therefore, the video will make more sense if you have "Annotations" switched on. If you don't know what that is, then, as the video plays, place your cursor over the video image. On the bottom of the image, there should appear controls for Volume control and such. Near the right on the bottom, there is a Gear symbol. If you place the cursor over the Gear symbol, a menu of options will appear. One of those options is whether to have "Annotations" switched on or off.
It is to be expected that Molyneux and/or his minions may flag the video falsely to have it removed from YouTube. Therefore, if you could download a copy of this for yourself, it would be very helpful.
UPDATE from November 7, 2016: This blog post of mine receives more traffic than most. Even a white supremacist/eugenicist message board links to it (definitely not because the eugenicists agree with it, of course!). For that reason, I should inform people coming to this page that I have written a more formal essay on this topic titled "A Libertarian Icon's Descent Into Racist Pseudoscience," published by Robert W. Tracinski for The Tracinski Letter.
