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Michael Lind, Eugenicons and the Motte.
Recently, Michael Lind, a notable political commentator and anti-immigration activist, took a stab at what he termed the "eugenicons". The most prominent of which being men like Charles Murray, Steve Sailer, Bo Winegard and guys like Richard Hanania, whose face is prominently plastered over the article.
Linds piece paints these "eugenicons" as being not just factually wrong and out of their element with regards to the science, but also politically ineffective. As Lind sees 'race realism' and the libertarian ethos it allegedly expresses itself through these men to be "utterly incompatible" with broadening the appeal of the modern Republican party to working class Americans of all races. Lind, being a bit of a ‘soft’ materialist in the old Marxist sense, has a preferred view of the public as being in a bit of an economic class struggle. Though his view is far more principled and sophisticated than what you generally find among big L Americans Leftists.
Lind’s article is worth a read, and so are the various responses. The two better ones being from Steve Sailer and Brian Chau
Charles Murray did not respond in length, but remarked after reading Linds article that
Sailer, like Murray, voiced his disappointment that the article by Lind was not composed of anti HBD arguments of higher quality. And took issue with the view Lind expresses with regards to the state of the scientific literature at this time. Maintaining that Lind is far behind the curve on just how heavily the evidence has been falling on the side of HBD in recent years and that he also mischaracterizes some of the HBD positions as strict determinism. Pointing out that social causes have a very clear effect, as he cites his new favorite chart of various fatalities rising in line with the 'happening' of George Floyd.
These are all familiar notes for HBD folks, but they focus on facts and details over the broad stroke narrative. Something Brian Chau points out and extrapolates on. And it’s a worthwhile endeavor, given that someone whose been in the game for as long as Lind is probably not going to have his broader political viewpoint or his fondness for the American working class dissuaded by, as he put it:
It’s a fair position to hold, I suppose, so where does Lind get his ideas from?
As Chau sees it, Lind is working from a presupposition of political representation. That is, Lind sees himself representing the American working class. To that end it is no surprise he dislikes the HBD creed, given it is inherently divisive to the multiracial America. Something modern day classical Marxists have been pointing at for a long while, to little effect as they continue to support mass immigration, unlike Lind.
On that note Lind ties Libertarianism and HBD together, showing just how these two ideas are compatible. As Lind puts it:
This is certainly an observation. I think it would be easy, like Chau does, to point out that of the 4 big “eugenicons” only Hanania is ostensibly libertarian and otherwise poke holes in it. But I think that draws us away from the truth value of the statement as it relates to Lind and his position as a representative of the working class American. In a broad class interest narrative, there is an obvious pathway where the notion of free market success correlates with ‘superiority’. At the very least, if we value success in modern society, and we place some stock in the notion of heritability of traits, we end up with an undeniable truth. The lower classes are inferior to the superior upper classes. But as it relates to the "eugenicons", again, it’s not necessarily a truth anyone of the 4 mentioned, Sailer, Murray, Winegard and Hanania, are guided by politically.
Lind goes too far then, or does he? You don’t have to to go full send Capitalist Darwinism or whatever. Most people have the self reflection to look at themselves as a less than perfect part of a greater whole. Or that would be my view. Except that is the minority view of a National Socialist. So I think, to the extent American politics exist as is represented in media, Lind might be more correct than not here. And if “eugenicons” are not viscerally racist in their soul, I’d argue they do have to contend with the old ghost of “Social Darwinism”. Merely pointing at The Bell Curve and HBD as a truth can’t qualify as just another feather of truth in the cap of HBD folks. In the words of Eric Turkheimer, this truth could rival the atom bomb.
Chau's criticism of Lind is that Lind is not seeking truth but instead seeking to represent a class of people. To that end, if there is a truth that can harm them it’s not his duty to have that truth guide him but to shield the people from it. They are stronger together, class solidarity and all that. And through that lens Chau contextualizes some of Lind’s more extravagant misrepresentations of HBD ‘truths’. It’s simply not Lind's job to represent this truth. Lind is representing a class of people. Protecting both its class interest as well as its dignity, at the very least.
Beyond this you will have to read Chau’s article as he takes broader issue with the worldview Lind expresses.
On the whole I find Lind’s position to be stronger than I had suspected after seeing the "eugenicons" pile on him for the various errors and factual misrepresentations made. So long as Lind is accurately representing the people he feels with, his position will remain strong. Particularly since it is dealing with immediate problems that are likely to result from the HBD 'atom bomb' being released on the public. I had always assumed that biological truths would lead people towards something like ethno-nationalist 'democratic' socialism. But I’m now more willing to believe that America could surprise me if the bomb was dropped on them.
On that note it is not clear to me if Lind’s representing of the multiracial American working class is for its protection or ours.
The article starts with so much sneering and name-calling that I wasn't sure if it was worth continuing. But I find a rare opportunity to defend a progressive (not woke but the more financially-focused ones) claim, so that's something unusual.
Eh, that's almost a tautology. There's no reason to control for that. Nobody who finds it a problem that blacks have less wealth would find "well, that's because they're more likely to be lower-class" to make it better. Controlling for (e.g.) age makes sense. Controlling for class controls out something you're looking for.
Now on to other things.
"Unscientific" is just a boo-word here. But "arbitrary"? No. They have fuzzy boundaries, yes, but in practice they are not arbitrary. Chances are very good that a Spanish-speaking immigrant from a Spanish-speaking country, or their Spanish-speaking children, will call themselves "Hispanic". As for the racial categories, we know from this astounding study that they (at least white, black, and Asian) correlate incredibly well with something physical and pervasive -- race can be determined from medical images of different parts of the body even when either the detail or gross structural information is removed.
Four, actually, he forgot Adriatic. But these were considered sub-races of Caucasians, so even if the beliefs of the scientific racialists were relevant (which they aren't), the gotcha doesn't work.
He then goes on to more sneering, taking an exchange between Razib Khan and Steve Sailer in VDare (which has no pretensions of being a scientific journal) as being somehow representative of 'race-realist “science”'.
It won't be done by "actual scientists" because it's taboo, which leaves plenty of low-hanging fruit to be picked up by "right-wing shock jocks poring over statistical". Because some of this stuff isn't subtle at all. Sailer's prediction (that Lind sneers at) that "Eurasian" kids in the future would do very well on the SAT-M and would thus prosper in the technology-dominated economy was made in the year 2000; it could be tested NOW by serious scientists. But they won't, because it's taboo. Especially if it turns out to be true.
I'm not familiar with the historical Nordic/Alpine/Mediterranean/Adriatic classification system, but it corresponds pretty well to the clear pattern of differences between Germanic, Romance, and Balkan (and Slavic more generally) countries. The North Germanic and West Germanic distinction is a bit more subtle, but it's still there.
I don't have a strong opinion on how much of this is genetic and how much is cultural or otherwise path-dependent, but if you look at HDI rankings, there is almost a complete disjunction between Germanic, Romance, and Balkan countries.
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I think your last paragraphs sum it up for me, it would be a fascinating topic for me if you had visibility of scientists arguing science at the individual issue level, so that you could get a sense of the thing. Instead you have people many levels up with their understanding and particular biases and material is locked into that frame, which actually limits inquiry and learning.
The same goes for global warming, there is actually a real world phenomenon of global warming (to whatever degree, causes and impact that it is) and funnily enough reality doesn't care about what the left or right happens to think about the issue. But the debate is culture warred out - people tend to start with their politics and build out from there and so we don't really progressed, it gets frozen in time.
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It's a shame Lind carries all these low quality anti-HBD viewpoints and sneers into his article. A guy like him genuinely has inroads with "eugenicons" like the ones he mentions due to his well fought anti-immigration effort.
Even as a soft Marxist materialist he has salient arguments backing up his anti-immigration position that could easily be leveraged into a critique of 'blind' HBD promotion.
The most obvious point he could hammer home would be the fact that a lot of the anti-immigration rhetoric from the right in general revolves around it being bad for the working class. Well, can't we, for the sake of argument, assume that dropping HBD on the working class might also, potentially, be bad? That seems to be a belief of Lind's and I wish he would spend more time on expanding on it rather than fumbling the ball on HBD.
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I mean in fairness ‘academic success of hapa children’ is totally the sort of thing that could be studied if it was framed right(paens to ‘unintentionally benefitting from white supremacy’ or whatever).
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