 |
| Another instance of a purveyor of white supremacism and eugenics promoted by the Libertinius page and Stefan Molyneux. |
UPDATED IN SEPTEMBER OF 2017 (Notes on the Revisions from September Are on the Bottom)
If you have been reading this blog regularly, you have probably noticed my series exposing Stefan Molyneux's propaganda for eugenics and government-imposed racial segregation. In his propaganda, Stefan Molyneux frequently cites a self-published book titled The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics by Michael Trust, then calling himself "Anonymous Conservative." You can read a 29-page summary by Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative himself over here. What I have written in this blog post should not be misconstrued as a review of the book. Rather, it is a review of Molyneux's repeated citations of it and also of Michael Trust's online writings to supplement the book's theme.
Yes, r/K Selection Theory is a model that biologists have consulted for explaining different routes that different types of species take to procreate. Unfortunately, some racist eugenicists -- who now call themselves "race realists," "White Identitarians," and explainers of "Human Bio-diversity (HBD)" -- misapply r/K Selection Theory to their asinine stereotypes about different human demographics.
What r/K Selection Theory Really Is
r/K Selection Theory has two models for how different types of species transmit their genes from one generation to the next. r-selected species go by this particular route: the mother sires many hatchlings at once -- in broods of twelve or thirty or even hundreds -- and there is a highly mortality rate among these offspring. These spawn hatch out of eggs completely able to take care of themselves. Lizards are r-selected. Species that are r-selected are normally fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
By contrast, K-selected species are able to procreate at a later stage in their life cycle, and they have few babies at a time, on account of so much physical energy being devoted to providing resources in the brain development of the baby. K-selected creatures are born highly vulnerable and must be raised by their parents before they are able to fend for themselves as adults. Large placental mammals are K-selected. In comparison with r-selected species, the K-selected have offspring much later in their life cycle. That the K-selected have babies later in life, and fewer of them in number, whereas the r-selected sire many more offspring during the breeding season, is of special interest to the neo-eugenicist movement.
Propagandists' Misapplication of r/K Selection Theory to Score Political Points
According to his own promotional material for the book, Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative proclaims that r/K Selection Theory is applicable to human society in that some demographics of human beings behave as an r-selected species whereas other demographics behave as K-selected, and he classifies them according to his stereotype views of the sort of people who hold particular political views.
First, he says that rabbits are the quintessential r-selected species. That is misleading, as rabbits don't sire as many offspring per breeding season as, say, a lizard. Lizards are the strong example of the r-selected model. Anyhow, Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative continues that left-wing people are similar to rabbits in that they are r-selected, and then he attaches this stereotype view that left-wing people are all mooches on welfare who only consume resources. After all, we hear the stereotype about young single (black) mothers on welfare having more and more babies to collect bigger checks. On account of agreeing with stereotypes in that broad category, eugenicist pseudo-Objectivist Onar Åm snipes, "If you could choose between being born to a single mother and having cancer, you should probably choose cancer." By contrast, continues the alt-right misapplication of r/K Selection Theory, right-wing people place greater value on a stable environment. Because they are more responsible, they have fewer children and tend to postpone sex until they have reached a time in their lives where they are able to take care of children.
The real point, as can be discerned from the online summaries the author supplied, is that this is Michael Trust's way of saying that left-wing people are bad guys and right-wing people are the good guys; that's pretty much it. 😑
That Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative fails at science does not stop cranks from citing him to bolster their cases for having the State forcibly obstruct immigrants from poor countries from entering the United States, other rich Anglophone countries, and Western Europe. Together with Bill Whittle, Stefan Molyneux has made Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics his go-to book to cite -- that is, when he is not citing the Pioneer Fund directly. Here is his video "The Truth About Gene Wars: r/K Selection Theory [P1]," which itself is cited by some very seedy characters (more about that below).
Note the dopey "CONFIDENTIAL" label on the thumbnail.
Citing Michael Trust/Anonymous, Stefan Molyneux says this applies to dark-skinned people from poor countries, whom he calls low-IQ cultures. And remember that Molyneux mostly attributes a person's IQ to his race-related genetics, unable to change his own IQ by will, which means Molyneux obfuscates the distinction between "race," which is unchosen and which a person cannot change, versus cultural customs, which are chosen and which people can choose to change. Molyneux declares, "Low-IQ cultures -- you know you can argue that they're r-selected as we've talked about in [the] 'Gene Wars' [video]." Then he twirls his head around and says, "They just have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids and have kids. And that's just the nature of the beast. This is one of the reasons why the countries remain poor other than the IQ -- they just breed like crazy."
What's Wrong With This Misapplication of r/K Selection Theory
Michael Trust's and Stefan Molyneux's characterizations are insipid for several reasons.
Firstly, the stereotypes about left-wing people and right-wing people barely apply. Many rich people who have very few children and who have those children late in life -- allegedly conservative in their domestic lives -- are politically left-wing; Bill Gates is an example.
Secondly, an entire species is either r-selected or K-selected; the purpose of the model is not to say that some members of a particular species are r-selected whereas other members of that same species are K-selected. Michael Trust and Stefan Molyneux would have you believe that blacks, left-wingers, and black left-wingers are all r-selected. That is insipid on its face. If they were r-selected, then their babies would not have to be raised by anyone; the babies would be completely able to fend for themselves. They would also be hatching out of eggs out of enormous litters; that is, an r-selected woman would sire an entire brood of twelve or thirty or a hundred hatchlings at once.
Thirdly, I don't want people to come to the fallacious conclusion that the nascent discipline of evolutionary psychology/sociobiology is about promoting old-fashioned eugenics or racism. The luminaries of evolutionary psychology have an open letter explaining that "race realism"/"Human Biodiversity" is inapplicable to what they study; evolutionary psychology is a discipline that should not be confused with this political propaganda.
It's the Foolish Citation of This Misapplication That's "Breed[ing] Like Crazy"
Michael Trust is not the first person to misapply r/K selection theory for a right-wing statist (yes, statist, not laissez-faire) agenda. He was preceded in this by the explicitly racist eugenicist J. Philippe Rushton, who served as president of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund until his death in 2012. This is the same J. Philippe Rushton uncritically cited by Onar Åm -- the same Onar Åm whom the Libertinius page enshrined for years (more about the Libertinius page below) -- to promote his own eugenicist arguments. Indeed, Anonymous Conservative follows in Rushton's tradition in more ways than simply misunderstanding and abusing the prestige of r/K Selection Theory.
Yet, in spite of the obvious foolishness of Molyneux's video, the longtime plagiarizing Norwegian Libertinius page -- run by the likes of Kjetil Knausgård and hailed by the likes of Emil Christopher Solli Melar and Tore Rasmussen and Carlo Nerberg and the rest of Norway's "Liberalistene" circle -- took the initiative to laud the insipid Molyneux video as part of the xenophobic and bigoted campaign that the Libertinius page had been running since 2014.
The "Denne MÅ dere se!" on the top means "This YOU MUST SEE!" Then "Libertinius" follows up with "Sosialisme ødelegger menneskets arvemateriale.😟" That means, "Socialism destroys human inheritance.😟" That's the usual eugenicism that has come to be expected of those who are influenced by Molyneux. Socialism can be justly blamed for many ills, but this misapplication of r/K Selection Theory says less about socialism than it does Michael Trust, Stefan Molyneux, and the Kjetil Knausgård-run page that made it a point to boost their bigotry.
Michael Trust Has the Same Talking Points As Stefan Molyneux on Race and Immigration
Amazon.Com lets us take a sneak peak inside the book over here. Right below the cover is the page with the usual legal disclaimers. Mr. Trust provides us his URL so that we can obtain more information about his works: www.anonymousconservative.com
 |
| The URL www.anonymousconservative.com is underlined in red on the bottom. Click on this image to see a larger version with the text more clearly visible. |
All right, let's take a look at [www.anonymousconservative.com]. This shouldn't surprise you at this juncture: on this website Michael Trust, the not-so-anonymous Anonymous Conservative, makes the same eugenicist claims about race and IQ that his ideological student, Stefan Molyneux, does:
Migrants From Muslim And African Nations Are Mentally Retarded
I love this link. It rates the IQ’s of various nations. It is a guaranteed SJW [Social Justice Warrior] trigger all by itself [he means it offends people who pride themselves on being politically correct and left-wing]. . . .
According to it, at an IQ of 68, the average Somali is well into the mildly mentally retarded range. Given the fact that the smart Somalis who throw the Somalian IQ curve are probably smart enough to meet their needs and be comfortable in Somalia, I would imagine the migrants are well into the moderate to severely mentally retarded stage. I mean if you look around a country of imbeciles, and feel like you are holding the shit end of the stick, you aren’t going to be the Einstein of the group. . . . Equatorial Guinea doesn’t even make it into the sixties, and that is the average, propped up by the smart Guineans. You know it is the losers and the morons who are flooding into the west. What are their IQ’s? 40? 35? What are they going to do in the first world beyond eat newspaper and find creative places to defecate that nobody would ever think of? No wonder they are all shitting on top of the toilet seats in Europe. ...once resources grow scarce, society begins to tighten its purse strings, and the third world scum begin to victimize the innocent, the urge to purge will be undeniable. I only hope the purge includes all the SJWs [pro-immigration, left-wing Social Justice Warriors] who fought to import all these migrants at the same time.
Note the blog post's convenient failure to acknowledge that when the living standards of formerly impoverished people improve, there is a corresponding increase in the IQ scores of their children and grandchildren. As late as the mid-1970s, Chinese-Americans scored, on average, IQ scores lower than the average for white Americans. That changed by the late 1990s. This indicates that a particular "race's" average IQ, in relation to the average for whites or any other "race," can change over the course of mere decades, as opposed to millennia, and is not confined primarily to genetics.
And then Anonymous Conservative/Michael Trust has this follow-up:
When Resources Are Free -- Importing Retards Edition
Think allowing low IQ third worlders to travel here on their own dime is a bad idea? [No, it's not a bad idea at all. --S.H.] Now we’re going to pay their travel costs...
We are paying the travel costs to reimport these mental retards and psychos. . . .
Rabbits [here, Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative means left-wing people, as Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative misleadingly cites rabbits as the great example of an r-selected species] are actively seeking to import two types of individuals. Psychos who will enter into conflict with real Americans, thus degrading the competitiveness of real Americans, and mental retards and idiots who will never pose any threat to the r-selected liberal’s status in the country. . . . [However, Michael Trust/Anonymous Conservative here offers what he considers a silver lining:] Once resources snap back and people begin wanting to win out over others who are seen as taking our “stuff,” the desire to import retards and imbeciles will abate significantly.
Actually, people from poor countries coming to the USA peaceably on their own dime, and supporting themselves after that, is a wonderful phenomenon that already occurs and should continue.
Conclusion
Never let it be forgotten how the "Libertinius" page of Kjetil Knausgård promoted Stefan Molyneux's racist misuse of r/K Selection Theory. Indeed, this gesture is consistent with the larger trend of the sycophantic circle revolving around Onar Åm and the Libertinius page promoting bigoted xenophobia for years. For an explanation of how foolish this misapplication is, you can see the YouTube video "The Alt Right Is Too Dumb for Sex."
On Sunday, September 17, I added the screen shot of the horrendous Libertinius page promoting Stefan Molyneux's disgusting pseudoscientific video, and I elaborated more on that. I also made it clearer that r-selected species are fish, amphibians, and reptiles, whereas placental mammals, including humans, are K-selected. And I embedded the "The Alt-Right Is Too Dumb for Sex" video that makes that very point. On September 18, 2017, I added the point about the average IQ of East Asian-Americans, in relation to the average for white Americans, changing. On September 18 I also added the "have kids and have kids" quotation from Stefan Molyneux. On January 26, 2018, I embedded and linked to a re-upload of "The Alt-Right Is Too Dumb for Sex."
