One of the most serious critiques of mass immigration into the West concerns its dysgenic effects on advanced civilisation. Dysgenics is the genetic transmission of harmful traits, and these are thought by some to be encouraged by a decrease in infant mortality, by support for weaker peoples and larger family size. While many claim that intelligence is still broadly increasing, a number of academics focusing on comparative IQ scores believe that high intelligence peaked long ago and is now in decline due to dysgenics. A summary of national IQ averages (see, e.g. iq-research.info) shows Hong Kong and Singapore at 108, South Korea at 106, and a little lower down the UK at 100, USA at 98, and so on. But among the lowest scoring countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan are at 84, Syria 83, Bangladesh 82, and Somalia at 68. Most African countries sit towards the bottom of this table, which unfortunately parallels the parlous economic state of Africa today. In separate research, Ashkenazi Jews are found to have average scores of up to 115 (with excellence in the verbal and mathematical domain). The implications of these findings include the warning that continuing mass immigration into the West is importing low IQ and driving down intelligence, conscientiousness, health and industriousness (Levin, 2005; Lynn, 2011a, 2015). Of course, these findings based on averages are easily (and sometimes wilfully) misinterpreted to suggest that ‘all black (African-origin) people are stupid’ and this is clearly not the case.
Naturally such claims are heavily criticised, especially by left-wing academics in the social sciences, arts and humanities. To their enduring denial that race exists, most add the denial that IQ is meaningful, insisting that it is a culturally biased construct that ignores many attributes. However, many distinguished, mainstream academics publicly agreed with the representation of IQ advanced by Gottfredson (1997). While Saini (2018) trots out the usual, ill-informed, emotional indignation regarding race and IQ, it is clear among many mainstream psychologists specialising in intelligence research that real IQ gaps exist between ethnic groups that cannot be attributed to nutrition, education, racism and environment alone. Intellectual integrity compels researchers in this discipline to examine these claims and their nuances without regard to political pressures (Rindermann, 2018). On the relevant grapevine, I am informed that some eminent psychologists who agree with these findings decide they have to remain silent on the issue for fear of exposure, unjust recriminations and negative effects on their careers engineered by vicious SJWs who value anti-racist dogma above science.
The left consistently insists that environment not genes is responsible for intelligence-related performance; hence comprehensive state education (plus perhaps better nutrition) will level out differences. Given the right material benefits, people in all countries will flourish to the same extent. While almost nobody has any appetite for negative eugenics (the opposite of dysgenics in intervening in genetic distribution), the left are enthusiastic about decreasing competition and ‘unfairness’ by social engineering which includes affirmative action for minorities, non-competitive education, mass higher education, medical interventions to support life for people with a wide range of disabilities, and welfare and pacifist policies that maintain high populations. We do not recoil at dysgenics as we do at eugenics but both have real effects.
Now, what are we to do with the knowledge claims regarding dysgenics and lower intelligence? A typical SJW view is that even to entertain such ideas is racist, and some suggest that research in race and IQ should be banned. More commonly, any such research is simply pounced upon and declared racist, invalid white supremacy propaganda. Academics past and contemporary like Arthur Jensen, Hans Eysenck, Glayde Whitney, J. Philippe Rushton, Jason Richwine, Charles Murray, James Watson, Napoleon Chagnon, and Helmuth Nyborg have found their reputations attacked, and their careers in tatters or compromised following anti-racist attacks from SJW colleagues and activists. Rushton’s research on race differences according to evolutionary trajectory, brain size, and general intelligence has been savaged by name-calling academics who Gottfredson (2013) refers to as representing ‘mob science’. Hans Eysenck, a German who moved to the UK in the 1930s, became a prominent psychologist whose research led to the conclusion that IQ is largely hereditary, that IQs differ among races, and are lower among blacks. His book The Inequality of Man (Eysenck, 1975) stands against what some have called the ‘egalitarian fiction’. For these views he was vilified, and on one occasion at the LSE was punched by a protester, and his family received death threats. Yet Eysenck’s grandmother was Jewish and had died in a concentration camp, and he was vehemently opposed to the Nazi regime. Indeed, Eysenck observed that the radical left-wing students involved in violent demonstrations reminded him of the Nazis he had encountered in Germany. He also believed that psychology was a breakthrough science that would inevitably be rejected by many until finally accepted as having a factual foundation.
Similarly, science writers like Nicholas Wade (2014) have been subjected to scathing ad hominem criticism for his informed views on race, IQ and the dominance of the West (Cohen, 2014). Even the American Psychological Association found it necessary to evaluate the IQ claims and could not entirely dismiss them (APA, 1996). Snyderman and Rothman (1988) challenged the media’s biased and inaccurate reporting of IQ science; and Thomas (2003) provides a realistic but hopeful summary of the issues. We can, however, also point to the successes of blacks who have excelled in academia, in science, literature and the arts, in politics and so on. Barack Obama is clearly a figurehead for this. We can also point to the failure of many whites who despite advantages struggle to achieve. What this line of reasoning suggests is that on average people from certain countries or races have higher IQs. If this is untrue, however, conclusive repudiation should be presented. It may be that over a sufficient time span more African-origin individuals will thrive in white majority countries. But it could also be that the high IQs of Ashkenazi Jews, followed by east Asians with high IQs (and some other Westerners) will persist for generations to come. Farron (2014) believes that despite many unjust affirmative action strategies against whites, blacks are not catching up. It could also be that the outstanding performances of blacks in sports and certain genres of music attest to their different competencies (Epstein, 2014). As in all these matters, however, dedicated anti-racist academics deny biological relevance (Kerr, 2010).
Why can we not have such conversations without rage and censorship? Why must even Jews deny their own apparently superior intellectual gifts in order to maintain the belief that no races exist and everybody has equal abilities? Hard and embarrassing as these questions are, we must surely ask them rather than pretending they don’t exist, or suppressing them. Let us agree that hardline, militant racists do exist, on the one hand, and hardline, militant egalitarians exist on the other. The scientific quest for objective truth can operate independently of political pressure, provided we agree that social science is valid and worthwhile. If by some miracle research was conducted that found conclusively the inferiority of one ethnic group or race, at least according to agreed characteristics and criteria, what would that mean? I think I can accept the idea that Ashkenazi Jews and many eastern Asians have higher IQs than me. Indeed, I have always observed that some people are more and less intelligent than me, more attractive, athletic and so on. I might wish it were otherwise but it isn’t. Education has allowed me across my lifetime to progress from my working-class roots, but only so far: I can see that many more confident middle-class peers have got on better, made more money, enjoyed better health. This disadvantage is observable too in my white adult children, born with more advantages than me but still hampered by transgenerational lack of confidence and social contacts. However unjust it may seem, deep changes for most of us take many more decades than we would like, and this applies naturally to many (though not all) migrants. Sometimes referred to as ‘cognitive privilege’, higher IQ overall bestows life advantages whether we like it or not (Williams, 2017). The account of one impressively honest black man challenges most of the ripostes to
so-called white supremacy regarding intelligence (Smith, 2017). See also Larry Elder’s (2008) take on how American blacks too often portray themselves as victims, in a book that would be vilified were the author not himself black. Sowell (2013) also takes up similar themes. Perceptive Americans who have travelled extensively in Africa and concluded that the liberal Western take on racism is incorrect include Braun (1990) and Richburg (1997), the latter himself being black.
Let’s ask another question here about a matter concerning race, colonialism, supremacy, cruelty and culpability. First, we know that Holocaust denial is in extremely poor taste, pointless, and often illegal. No academic would be able to make such a counterfactual claim without losing his or her job, to my knowledge. But take the case of Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, who wrote a polemical paper titled ‘The case for colonialism’, which was initially accepted for peer-reviewed publication in the journal Third World Quarterly. His article argued that colonialism was not all bad, that it had benefited many countries, that the dictators who replaced colonial rule ran their countries down, and those countries in many instances would be better off under colonial rule. He was partly inspired by the writings of Chinua Achebe on the positive contributions of British colonial rule of Nigeria (Gilley, 2016). The article was petitioned against, threats of violence were made, and it was subsequently retracted by the journal’s editors for allegedly poor scholarship on many grounds (Flaherty, 2017). There was some support for Gilley’s teaching and his article. One commentator, however, insists that Gilley’s piece was absurd, abhorrent, and ‘morally tantamount to Holocaust denial’ (Robinson, 2017). Someone called him a white supremacist — these days the go-to coup de grâce in the SJW’s armoury. Such statements are calculated to end an academic’s career. Gilley may not have realised how badly some would react but it raises again the question of what can and cannot be said and written in academia (Gilley, 2017/2018).
The case has been made for subverting the idea of the West and modernity as superior. Dussel (1993), for example, writing from an Argentinian position, argues that 1492 marks the claim when Westerners defined a geographical hierarchy with their ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’, with the Reformation, Enlightenment and French revolution leading the way to Eurocentric arrogance via slavery and colonialism. In plundering the ‘Global South’, Westerners enriched themselves and labelled others as barbarous, weak and backward. Citizens of the Global South (not the Third World or developing world) are innocents, while Westerners are guilty of massive violence and irrationality. The moral case against the West is therefore regarded as unassailable. But where can this lead practically except to further resentment and conflict, calls for reparations, mass immigration and open borders? Meanwhile, do those in the Global South — and their Western SJW advocates — really want to deny and disown the scientific, medical and social order benefits of the West?
It probably is the case that a majority of the British public is uninformed about or uninterested in the dark details of the British Empire and many approve of Britain’s imperial past (Stone, 2016). Some regard it as a mixed blessing, bringing progress to many parts of the world in spite of its downside. Indeed, some have exposed the highly influential negative spin placed on it by SJWs, even in institutions such as the National Archives (Leach, 2009). Equally, more writers are exposing the horrors of colonialism, including Winston Churchill’s role in it (Tharoor, 2018). We have to ask at what point it becomes clearly unacceptable, unforgivable or even illegal to refer to historical events in ways that are proven to be at odds with demonstrated, documented truth. But we must divorce the factual elements from philosophically disputable interpretations: for example, are today’s Germans bound to feel guilty about the Holocaust indefinitely, and decades after the end of colonialism are ordinary white British people morally obliged to apologise and atone (and if so, for how long)? Ben Affleck, Barack Obama, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Cameron and Richard Dawkins all have ancestors who owned slaves, and were embarrassed by it, but how many of us, white or black, if exposed to forensic examination of our distant pasts would not have some skeleton in the closet to feel ashamed of?
The Social Mobility Commission, a UK government-funded body, sponsored a study to investigate young Muslims’ perception of their position in British society, their education, work prospects and so on. A team of seven academics headed by a sociology professor conducted and wrote up qualitative research using focus group methodology and involving 58 participants (many more females than males) across six cities in the UK. This means that young Muslims were asked for their subjective views, and the findings were then packaged into a nicely organised 90-page publication with a few graphs, tables and references (Stevenson et al., 2017). Unfortunately, nothing surprising or useful comes of such exercises. This simply confirms subjective beliefs about life’s struggles, unfair treatment, alleged discrimination, and repeats dubious hyperboles found in feminist literature about having to work ten times harder than others to get anywhere. Among the conclusions are: ‘Islamophobia, discrimination and/or racism is ever present and pervasive’ and the British media portrays Muslims in an unfavourably stereotypical way. It is surmised that surnames are seized upon to exclude Muslim candidates from job interviews and that headscarves are noticed and this is used discriminatorily. An uncritical article supporting these views asserts that Britain ‘is an Islamophobic country’ (Aziz, 2017).
The academic world is divided about qualitative research, which is often regarded as lacking rigour. In this case, there is no attempt to compare these Muslims’ experience with others’, for example young white working-class people, or professionally successful Muslims. Where a gap is reported between doing well in education but not in gaining employment, this is tacitly attributed to discrimination and the possibility is not explored that affirmative action can provide an easy entry into higher education that employers (especially in small businesses) may not buy into; and that prospective small business owners do not relish the idea of having to provide a prayer room, or religious holidays, or to feel obliged to watch their every word for fear of causing offence or being reported for casual racism or microaggressions (MCB, 2005). The assumption from the outset in research like this is that ‘disadvantaged groups’ must be believed. Yet as Goodhart (2014) points out from evidence in a 2006 poll of Muslims, ‘the perception of victimhood is pervasive’ and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Among the predictable recommendations in the above research report is that the educational curriculum should be ‘de-colonised’ and ‘training in unconscious bias’ should be encouraged for employers. Use of such clichés sounds suspiciously like typical SJW-oriented confirmation bias. Heaven forbid that left-wing academics should have any unconscious bias in their research design and findings that would need corrective right-wing training!
The pejorative term SJW tends to refer to political activists but should also include the armies of the naïve and gullible useful idiots, and chronically left-biased academics. At least since the days of the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 1920s, and the University in Exile, with prominent Jewish figures like Franz Boas, Theodore Adorno, and later Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, there has been a Cultural Marxist drive (not a conspiracy) to persuade us all that race does not exist, that capitalism is evil, no superior cultures exist, nation states are in decline, and so on. Understandably, fearful Jewish academics have criticised strong leaders, national identities, racial stereotypes, and some Western cultural norms. Only very recently has it become acceptable for some social scientists to critique the ‘paranoid’ element in academia (Winegard & Winegard, 2018). Eminent anthropologists like Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Ashley Montagu have been considered left-wing radicals, and as one British anthropologist has said, ‘Obviously, we anthropologists are all quite left-wing’ (Buxton, 2016). Sociology can boast many Jewish socialist opinion-formers, including Emile Durkheim, Max Horkheimer, Ralph Miliband and Zygmunt Bauman. P
sychology includes many influential Jewish academics like Abraham Maslow, Joseph Wolpe, Leon Festinger, and Martin Seligman (Heinze, 2004). A clear majority of psychotherapy leaders have been Jewish. These have not only pushed an agenda attacking traditional values they deem authoritarian but more generally have subtly pushed political correctness.
Peter Singer is a world-renowned ethicist, whose Jewish parents emigrated from Austria to Australia in 1938, and whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. Singer has taught in many world universities and championed pacifism, abortion, environmentalism, anti-poverty charitable giving, veganism and animal liberation. In his book One World (Singer, 2004), he argues that our global interconnectedness environmentally, economically and communally obliges us to think, act and legislate as an increasingly unified people. For Singer, American pollution contributing to climate change and related deaths across the world is a much more serious moral concern than the 9/11 attack and the deaths resulting from it. He dismisses arguments in favour of a ‘preference for our own’, partly by citing a Nazi speech from Heinrich Himmler on the German duty to fellow nationals, and also by reference to the distinguished moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick who, writing 110 years ago, almost took it for granted that we should favour our own race over ‘black or yellow men’. On global inequality, Singer argues that ‘we have duties to foreigners that override duties to our fellow citizens’. In other words, sacrifices that cost us so little can make a huge difference to the world’s poor and sick, and are therefore morally imperative. But Singer’s globalised thinking logically demands increasingly global government bodies and laws (crimes against humanity being one example), and he expects to see the EU set an example. Singer’s ethics are superficially compelling yet similar to the doorstep salesman whose opening pitch is about how important something is to you, how little it would cost you on a daily basis to secure that thing, and how crazy you would have to be not to buy it. But in the case of a globalised ethics, you find you have signed up by small steps in guilt induction to a borderless world: ‘the diminishing significance of national boundaries’ is merely one of Singer’s axiomatic asides. Needless to say, philosophical challenges to his views are available (Asma, 2013; Scruton, 2017) as well as political (Kaufmann, E. P., 2017) and ecological challenges (Hardin, 1995). And for someone who claims admiration for Darwin (particularly for the concept of evolved altruism), Singer seems remarkably indifferent to the vast weight of struggle, competition, kinship and inequality underpinning evolutionary mechanisms.
Excessive Immigration Page 17
