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An awful lot of people believe that low intelligence logically implies moral inferiority. That if you are unintelligent, you are a bad person. It is a moral failing to not be smarter.
Progressives seem to believe this more strongly than conservatives, and use it as one of their primary attacks against the right. If you take "stupid = bad" as an axiom, then HBD forces you to conclude that less intelligent races are bad, and progressives who don't even question the "stupid = bad" axiom automatically equate HBD with "some races are inferior". But because the "stupid = bad" axiom is unstated, and probably not consciously endorsed, they can't quite articulate this chain of reasoning. The embarrassment that would come if it were incontrovertibly proven that some races were inferior on a genetic level is that it would be revealed that they are bigots. They have always been bigots against unintelligent people, but by restricting their bigotry to unintelligent white people, manage to convince themselves that that doesn't count. But if colored people are even less intelligent, and it wasn't society's fault it was inherent to the individuals themselves and their genes, then the progressives would either have to admit to being racist, or change their worldview to account for good but unintelligent people. Who, in my opinion, exist in multitudes. I've met quite a few. But a lot of people aren't ready to admit that.
You don't have to see unintelligence as a specific moral failing or believe it impossible to be both unintelligent and righteous in order to recognize the fact that, broadly speaking being intelligent is better than being unintelligent
Better in the sense of being more competent and thus better able to enact ones will on the world and accomplish desired outcomes. Not better as in "this person tries to make the world a better place instead of being selfish". Intelligence is comparable to being physically strong, or talented at piano, or a skilled actor. It can be impressive, and can accomplish more good things if used for good, but it doesn't actually make you a good person and if you use it for evil then it just makes you a more impressive villain who accomplishes more evil.
I agree that the intelligence axis is for the most part orthogonal to the evil/good axis but i still think you're downplaying just how important intelligence is. Intelligence is the primary quality that seperates men from beasts. It was a necessary part of nearly every societal advancement ever made. Almost everyone would be better off if they, their neighbors and their countrymen were more intelligent. If one group is on average less intelligent that reflects very poorly on that group and that's true even without adding any mythos about intelligent being equivalent to moral virtue. Now that doesn't mean we should stick our heads in the sand to avoid truths that are offensive but i don't think pretending they're not offensive is helpful either. Personally I think the best way to make the truth of HBD more palatable instead of downplaying the importance of intelligence is downplaying the importance of race. A white man with an IQ of 80 is less intelligent than a black man with an IQ of 120. Population means mean nothing when evaluating individuals.
"Better off" is not "morally superior". Neither is "healthier", "safer", or "more productive". Not even "less prone to addiction". Generally, crime rates are used as a proxy for morality, but this is a foolish thing to do: there are a lot of ways to be an absolute shit to your fellow humans without breaking the law. And sure, crime is a more immediate problem, and lower-IQ people commit more of it, and that's a problem that has to be managed... but it wasn't low-IQ people who built the current race-war narrative into the memetic hazard it's become, or who make effective law enforcement impossible.
You completely missed my point. My point was that intelligence is important enough for reasons outside of "moral superiority" that even if we all make it very clear that intelligence is not the same as morality that acknowledging one group is more intelligent than another will still not be easy in the same way that acknowledging one group is more athletic is.
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