RACE REALISM ABOUT PYGMIES CATCHES ON!

At a time in British politics when no-one would dare call anyone a Nigger, Paki or Frog (even if the target were indeed a Negro, a Pakistani or a Frenchman), it suddenly became publicly fashionable to call British politicians "political pygmies". UK ex-Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, dished out the treatment in his memoirs to Labour Deputy Leader John Prescott and to UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw; and in Scotland the same abuse proved popular with Members of the Scottish Parliament for reference to Scotland's egotistical First Minister Jack McConnell. One wonders, has someone been reading what I said in November's "American Renaissance" of the genetic work of Bruce Lahn and colleagues in Chicago linking certain human genetic variations to larger brain size?

See also an earlier post on this blog. Excerpt:

"[Lahn et al.] estimated that one genetic variation ('microcephalin haplogroup D' O.K., let's call it V1) had spread since its appearance in humans of 40,000 BC to some 70% of humans; and it was more common in Europe, Asia, South America and Latin America than in Black Africa. It was especially infrequent (3%) in Congo pygmies, whom Black Africans commonly regard as markedly intellectually inferior to themselves"

IQ MENTIONABLE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES

Whereas the British press had entirely avoided mentioning the huge IQ differences between Whites and East Asians on the one hand and sub-Saharan Blacks, Congo Pygmies, Kalahari Bushmen and Australian Aborigines on the other (reported in January in Emeritus Professor Richard Lynn’s new book Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis), the far smaller differences between European countries and regions were treated to a colour spread in the Sunday Mail (26 iii) and to half-page coverage in the Scotsman (27 iii) and the new tabloid Times (27 iii). No matter that Scotland (with its huge population of Irish ex-dockers languishing in Glasgow) was only 3.5 IQ points behind England & Wales and that this difference had been known since the 1970’s and had the same explanation in 2006 as in 1976 – differential migration; no matter that the European figures were so unreliable as to switch Poland from IQ 99 in Lynn’s 2002 work to IQ 105 in his more recent survey; and no matter that most European countries in any case bunched closely around IQ 100. No such causes for boredom could be sufficient to keep usually peecee newsies off this story and its amusing possibilities for eliciting outrage from Scots and Romanians; whereas Lynn’s IQ estimate of 54 for Bushmen seemed fated to stay well and truly on the shelves.

PAEDOHYSTERIA SLIPS

Having come forward to denounce an uncle of hers for paedophilia when she was 5-9, ‘Desperate Housewives’ star Teri Hatcher (41 and mother of one) (who had wanted to help a woman having a hard time proving a case against the uncle) gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which she furnished an unusually revealing account of the psychology of the ‘victim of child abuse’:

“I remember once we were going from his house to pick up some other people and I remember trying to manipulate it so that we would be alone together. I knew that he would pull over in some deserted parking lot and do things to me. I feel such shame because it felt like I was special. I was being paid special attention to, told how fabulous I was; this was someone who was supposed to love me, but at the same time you know it’s wrong. I didn’t like looking at him ejaculate; I didn’t want to touch it. These are haunting things I’ve remembered all my life.” {One sometimes wonders where Freud got his idea of ‘the latency period.’}


PETITION FOR FREE SPEECH

An opportunity to sign up for freedom of expression was provided here -- by Peter Risdon, who successfully organized the Saturday, 25 iii, free speech rally (re Danish cartoons) in Trafalgar Square (attended by hundreds of people, including Liberal Democrat M.P. Dr Evan Harris). By the end of 25 iii, there were more than 1,000 signatures.


FUNDAY TIMES TURNS ON ELLIS

True to its longstanding trendiness, as when it odiously attacked the dead Sir Cyril Burt about IQ and heredity in 1976, the Sunday Times (26 iii) provided coverage of the Frank Ellis affair in which it volunteered that IQ tests were “discredited” and that students boycotting FE’s lectures {intimidated by ‘anti-fascist’ thugs} “trumped” FE’s academic record. – The wretched newspaper (Britain’s biggest broadsheet Sunday newspaper, slogan ‘The Sunday Times IS the Sunday papers’) did not even trouble to explain why it had not been able to obtain any comment from FE or any of his academic supporters. {Simply, it couldn’t be bothered to trek to his North Yorkshire home.} Such was Britain of 2006: a place of hysteria and tyranny, with even a complacent media ready to rubbish a brave academic outspeaker (though admitting FE was an excellent translator and had been a fine soldier).

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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CLOWNS CAVE IN re ACADEMIC FREEDOM

After two weeks pondering the readily available race-realist views (and a few swipes at yags, femininnies and the ‘too socialist for me’ BNP) of their Dr Frank Ellis, the LUniversity of Leeds suspended him (on full pay) and said they would carry out some more investigations which would take ‘months rather than weeks’ (BBC, 23 iii, 24dash.com, 23 iii). University Secretary Roger Gair was specially worried that "In publicising his personal views on race, Dr Ellis has recklessly jeopardised the fulfilment of the university's obligations under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000" – the first time this tyrannous piece of ‘liberal’-left legislation had been wheeled out to lay siege to a respected academic who had spoken his mind; but he also thought FE may have been guilty of some unspecified form of disobedience – and let’s hope it hurt!

Bleck Britain demanded that Leeds Luni should speed up its disciplinary proceedings (23 iii) but the LUni probably had other ideas, wanting FE on its books until the latest bureaucracy-backed ‘Research Assessment Exercise’ was completed in 2007.

After two weeks of feigned indifference the London Times (24 iii) deigned to mention the Ellis Affair and its links to the fore-running naughtinesses of Herrnstein & Murray (IQ and race), Brand (IQ, race and anti-paedohysteria) and Lynn & Irwing (possible male superiority in IQ). FE also got a mention in the leftist tabloid Daily Mirror, 24 iii, and in the Washington Times (24 iii) (which had a ‘Searchlight’ operative denounce him as ‘dangerous’} and in papers in India and Malaysia, and he had an Asian defend his right to free speech here.


It transpired that FE had declined to offer any assurance to the LUni that he would no longer speak out about race and IQ; and (The Statesman, India, 24 iii) that West Yorkshire Police were scaling back their enquiries into drug-fuelled rapes and burglaries in order to concentrate on the vital case of FE and his naughty thoughts contrary to the outrageous Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 – itself to be castigated by libertarians assembling in London’s Trafalgar Square on Saturday, 26 iii ("Rally in Support of Freedom of Speech" organised by Peter Risden of the group ‘March for Free Speech’).

FE was pictured twice by Leeds Today (See here or here). His North Yorkshire home and hide-out in Ampleforth intriguingly turning out to be very close the one-time home of the Reverend Roger Holmes, the Knicker Vicar’ of ‘Unholy Helmsley’ who was long the Chaplain of The g Factor NewsLetter); and his case was summarized and discussed along with those of the other British academic race realists Richard Lynn, Geoffrey Sampson and myself in Times Higher (24 iii, ‘Ellis case first test of race Act’, pp. 2-3; ‘Show a red card or just play on?’, pp. 58-9) – which amusingly pointed out how easily the word DEMOCRACY! could be converted into MEDIOCRACY. American Renaissance helpfully re-issued FE’s 1999 blast against PeeCee, ‘Multiculturalism and Marxism’:

IQ’s REVENGE

In its egalitarian haste to flood the universities with useless students who would go on gratefully to useless state-sector jobs and vote Labour, HMG increased its bribes to schools and universities to interest children from ‘poor’ backgrounds in 'higher education' from 22 million pounds in 1997-98 to a whopping 364 million in 2003-04 (Times Higher, 17 iii). The result? A measly increase in the wretched of the earth at British lunis from 25% of the student body in 1997-98 to a mere 28.8% in 2003-04 – and some put even that slight increase down to changes in the method of assessing ‘poverty.’ Educationalists (and journalistic hangers on) were of course baffled – as they are by most of the other faxalife about IQ and education.


RACE REALIST BY-PASSES GAGGING ORDER

Faced with a ban on his outspeaking about race and IQ, Leeds LUniversity’s Dr Frank Ellis resorted to ‘friends’ who relayed his (alleged) feelings of outrage to the Sunday Telegraph (19 iii). Friends said:

"He feels the fact that a university can threaten one of its academics with disciplinary measures for raising crucial issues on race, feminism and multiculturalism supports his assertion that on these themes universities are craven and corrupt."

RACE REALIST TO BE GAGGED

Desperately seeking to prevent further public mention (before its hypersensitive `students') of the realities about IQ, race, feminism, political correctness, multiculturalism and Britain's neo-Bolshevik media, the LUniversity of Leeds resorted to demanding public silence from its star academic Frank Ellis (a high contributor to the university's status in national ratings), adding that his views "jeopardise our responsibilities" under the Race Relations Act (Guardian, 16 iii). At the same time, the hypocritical LUni did nothing to impede the free speech of 300 screaming `anti-fascists' - mainly its own staff and students -- who called for FE's sacking at an on-campus meeting (BBC, 16 iii). Campaigning against FE and the "theory" that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks was said to be "spreading to campuses around the country" (Education Guardian, 17 iii).

"Times Higher" (17 iii) carried three letters hostile to FE (though only one wanted him sacked) and making the following remarkable claims and suggestions. (The first five come from "a black member of academic staff" in Derby University, the next two from a student "of dual heritage" at LUniversity of Leeds; and the last is from a researcher in "therapeutic education" and the unheard-of Roehampton University.)

1). "Leeds University should seek to improve the quality of the research he engages in. ..[It] should get him to enage in a a peer-review process before publication." - This writer was plainly under the dual misapprehension that (i) FE himself had carried out research on race and IQ (ii) that FE's research had not been peer-reviewed, when it fact it had been judged of high quality and FE himself had a prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship two years ago.

2). Intelligence should be tested before children start school; and such testing in Birmingham has shown "black boys were second only to white middle-class children in achievement." - No reference was supplied for this unlikely claim (unless perhaps Indian children were being counted as `black,' as beloved of `anti-racists.'

3). "Intelligence at the age of five is more a product of parenting than genetics." - Another unreferenced and unlikely claim. And how could it help make sense of the alleged finding in Birmingham?

4). There could be doubts "if babies of a few weeks or months were tested." -- IQ testing long been known to be impossible till children are about age 2; but developmental tests at much younger ages invariably put Black children somewhat ahead.

5). "..there are many who will cite Ellis's findings as evidence for their views, thinking: "ees a yuniversiti professor, ee must be rite." - A patronizing view of those who are likely to refer to the findings about IQ used by Dr Ellis, let alone of those able to work out that the findings came from London School sources (most lately from the work of Arthur Jensen, Phil Rushton, Richard Lynn and myself) and not from work by FE himself in Leeds.

6). "Freedom of speech is a concept outlined by classical Libertarian writers who stipulated, along with the positive freedoms, a moral obligation not to cause offence to others intentionally." - A farrago of nonsense, for all classical liberals were well aware that free speech would not need defending in cases where it gave no offence.

7). "I struggle to see what expertise [FE] can possess in the field of the sociology of education." - Again, this writer fails to understand that FE was only repeating the findings of others and is not himself a sociologist or, more relevantly, a psychologist.

8). FE's "positivistic claims" have a "Eurocentric ideological nature" and involve "spuriously self-fulfilling results" reflecting "the West's disreputable imperialist history of exploitation." - `Nuff said. Except perhaps to point out the world's highest IQs come from Western-bombed-and-post-war-directed Japan and Korea; and the lowest IQs are from Africa's pygmies and Bushmen who both kept well out of the way of Western imperialists (respectively in the Congo Basin jungles and in the Kalahari desert).

These letters were a dismal reflection on British academia in 2006. But one good complaint was made, that there had been "no response" to FE from "the Afro-Caribbean Students society, nor from any other body that claims to represent black students at Leeds University." Why indeed? (One guess should do the trick.) (In my own case in Edinburgh, too, Blacks were far from noticeable in coming forward - as were the alleged victims of paedophilia - so most of the work against me was undertaken by feminists.)


"TIMES HIGHER" BACKS RACE REALIST TO KEEP ACADEMIC JOB

Update:

Outright demands for FE to be sacked for his disagreeable views came from a `Liberal' Democrat MP, from the Leeds LUniversity Union (which planned a full-scale demo on 16 iii, with rabble rousers from the Anti-Nazi League [which had been most influential in terrifying luniversity authorities in Edinburgh as my own case began in 1996]), from the Observer's notoriously hysterical columnist Mary Riddell [who, however, interestingly maintained there was - to her distress -- no clause in FE's contract forbidding him to bring Leeds University into disrepute] (`This bigot has no place in the lecture hall,' 12 iii) and from the left's barmy army, the Socialist Workers (14 iii). FE was condemned as homophobic, racist and misogynistic by Pink News (15 iii), which added that he had been said to `pose a threat to student safety' by LU's `Education Officer, one Ruqayyah Collector. The Yorkshire Post took the trouble to announce the date of a rally against FE - though it did not give the time or place and it did give some of FE's rejoinders to criticism, e.g. "Multiculturalism is doomed to failure and is failing. I see no evidence for the view that all cultures are equal, but vast amounts against it."



NORWAY MOVES RIGHT

Having come under attack from Muslims, as had Denmark, in the Cartoon Wars, Norway shifted its poll preferences to the (right-wing, anti-immigrant) Progress Party - giving it 32%, ahead of Labour and 10% higher than PP's share of votes at the last parliamentary election (in September) (American Renaissance, 10 iii). {At the same time, Belgium announced that, with bribes of 175 pounds per adult plus travel fare, it had in 2005 persuaded some 4,000 illegal immigrants to leave - though mainly for Brazil and Eastern Europe, since the Belgian bribe was presumably not big enough to tempt Blacks and Muslims back to their own godforsaken countries (American Renaissance, 10 iii).}



FAMILY SUPPORTED

A fine article appeared from columnist Tom Utley pointing out that the essential socialist attack of modern times has been not so much on employers or owners as in the past but on the nuclear family - aiming to make individuals' chief relationships (including employment, obedience and dependence) be with the state (Daily Telegraph, `Brown won't rest until the state has replaced the family, 10 iii - drawing on new work by Jill Kirby for the Civitas think-tank).



BRAND RE-BRANDED

An unusually fair account of the Brand Affair appeared on the net at http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Chris_Brand.

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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TIMES HIGHER BACKS RACE REALIST TO KEEP ACADEMIC JOB

Responding to the brouhaha at Leeds University, an editorial in Times Higher concluded that, despite the monstrous nature of Frank Ellis’s misdemeanours, “Leeds must endure Ellis” (11 iii). A news article in the paper linked FE’s case to the cases of myself and computer professor Geoffrey Sampson (U. Brighton – and also a Queensman) – though readers possessed of memories would have been mystified to hear that I had “left” my university job [rather than being sacked and compensated in a three-year battle] (Claire Sanders, ‘’I won’t be silenced,’ says race tutor’, p. 4).

FE also achieved support from one brave student who came forward to say his teaching was not biased or threatening to anyone’s amour propre; and the British National Party was apparently one of several ‘right-wing organizations’ which had given support. Less encouraging was an editorial in the ‘Independent’ which declared it was “distressing” that FE had “found work on a multicultural campus such as Leeds” (11 iii); and the National Union of Students called for a full inquiry, as did the blog http://www.pigdogfucker.com/.

Outright demands for FE to be sacked for his disagreeable views came from a ‘Liberal’ Democrat MP, from the Leeds LUniversity Union (which planned a full-scale demo on 16 iii, with rabble rousers from the Anti-Nazi League [which had been most influential in terrifying luniversity authorities in Edinburgh as my own case began in 1996]) and from the Observer’s notoriously hysterical columnist Mary Riddell [who, however, interestingly maintained there was – to her distress -- no clause in FE’s contract forbidding him to bring Leeds University into disrepute] (‘This bigot has no place in the lecture hall,’ 12 iii).

The far-left Sunday Herald (perhaps produced especially for Scottish ‘socialist workers’) carried a pathetic piece about a Black female reporter who, after a sheltered education of peecee piety, was so shocked to hear FE’s views from his own mouth that she broke down in tears and needed six Bacardi breezers to restore a semblance of equanimity (12 iii).

THE ELLIS INTERVIEW

BBC Radio 4 invited Frank Ellis for interview on its flagship ‘Today’ programme, 7 iii, 7:30 – 9:00a.m – where he did an excellent job in the 3-4 minutes allowed. Leeds LUniversity’s ‘Unite Against Fascism’ group was due to meet c. 6 iii to discuss how to give Professor Ellis a hard time.

The Daily Telegraph’s Education Correspondent, Liz Lightfoot, front-paged FE and said the Commission for Racial Equality (the equivalent to British PeeCee of Canterbury Cathedral to the Church of England) was trying to get involved; FE was given a good run for his money though he “denied that his views amounted to racism, saying his views were based on scientific evidence.”

A fine defence of FE against the CRE and “the modern Marxist tyranny of political correctness” was mounted by the British National Party, 7 iii. However, apparently stung by criticism from the CRE, Leeds LUni ‘called FE in to explain how his pronouncements fitted with luni policy on respect, diversity and equal opportunity’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 iii).

The BBC carried more from FE – though now demoted to being a mere “Russian tutor”, albeit still credited with a doctorate, and apparently having 500 student signatories screaming for his resignation (Radio 5 Live, ‘Tutor defends ‘racist’ stance,’ 8 iii).

FE rather engagingly called IQ “psychology’s dirty little secret” – correctly in so far as psychologists of the past 40 years had indeed moved heaven and earth to talk of ‘cognition’ rather than ‘intelligence, though “dirty big secret” would have been more apt for, as I wrote in 1987, “g is to psychology what carbon is to chemistry” (in Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy);

and the BBC found one Dr Munira Mirza, a tutor in multiculturalism and community relations at the University of Kent, who, though a monster-raving-loony environmentalist herself, was prepared to say FE’s views on the Black-White difference were *not* just a caricature and that she defended FE’s right to academic free speech.


LYNN (2006) ROCKS AND ROLLS OFF THE PRESSES

Emeritus Professor Richard Lynn’s new book Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis (see this Diary for comment and review, February) was published in America – including a paperback edition. Details: Atlanta, Georgia: Washington Summit Books (PO Box 3514, Augusta, GA 30914) ISBN 1-59368-020-1, pp. 318., US$37.95 HB), $20.95 (PB) (plus $6 for overseas orders).

A helpful forthcoming summary and review by Professor J. P. Rushton in Personality and Individual Differences was given at Richard Lynn’s homepage (though the review, presumably written quite a few months previously, was sadly marred by insistence on a male advantage in intelligence, for which notion Lynn had long been reproved by me and was lately thoroughly mauled by psychometric whizz Steve Blinkhorn in November (‘A gender bender’, Nature 438, 3 xi, 31-2)). Lynn’s work engagingly adopted as its races the ten “genetic clusters” developed (euphemistically, Lynn observes) by top genetics guru L.L.Cavalli-Sforza et al. in 1994 (Princeton University Press) and provided a summary of 500 IQ studies relevant to them.

Perhaps the most novel feature of Lynn’s work was that Lynn accepted that East Asians show, as well as high intelligence, a higher level of conformity and conscientiousness that helps account for their relatively limited philosophical, political and scientific achievement: this view was first articulated by the historian Hugh Thomas in 1979 (An Unfinished History of the World, pp. 75-87) and was drawn to the attention of readers of Personality and Individual Differences by me in 1990 (10, 9, p. 1016) and reiterated in 1996 (The g Factor, p. 147), so it was good there was now wide agreement about the likely evolutionary origins of the Caucasoid – Mongoloid differences in intellect. But, if the media ever got around to acknowledging Lynn’s volume’s existence, it would doubtless be Lynn’s new low estimate of sub-Saharan Negroid IQ at 67 that would understandably captivate attention.

MORE LEFTIST HYSTERIA OVER IQ AND RACE

Just ten years after lefties began pestering Wiley DePublisher to withdraw and pulp my book on IQ, The g Factor, 180 students at Leeds LUniversity, backed by their ‘leaders,’ called for the sacking of a professor of Russian, Frank Ellis, who had the temerity to applaud The Bell Curve and criticize PeeCee as a Communist invention (cf. Brand, 2001, Occidental Quarterly) (Observer, 5 iii).

AMREN CONFERENCE HOSTS NICK GRIFFIN

Fully 250 race realists turned out for the annual conference of American Renaissance in Northern Virginia where they heard talks from BNP leader Nick Griffin and Pioneer Foundation president Phil Rushton. Convener Jared Taylor made a nice point when asked if he was a hate-filled racist. `Just because I prefer my own children to yours,' he replied, `that doesn't mean I dislike yours.' But the media were able to make some mischief when they noticed that, though this right-wing group had probably become less hostile to Jews over the years (and indeed had some Jewish members), it still contained some unreconstructed anti-semites like the brave David Duke who had not yet felt able to focus their disfavour on the low-IQ in general and Muslims in particular.



OPPORTUNITY FOR NATIONAL LIBERALISM CREATED

In the best news for British politics for some while, Britain's `Liberal' Democrats voted to put a sweet old age pensioner at their helm, leaving them free to pursue their mainly socialist agenda while pretending to be a moderate/centrist party (in fact they are pacifist, green and pie-eyed on issues of crime, immigration and Britain's bloated welfare state). With Daft `Dave' Chameleon leading whatever may remain of the Tory Party he inherited so far toward Blairite territory that the Opposition was to support New Labour in Parliament against its own leftist backbenchers on the issue of `top up fees,' an opening was being created for a party that would free British families (and give them tax breaks) to provide the effective powerhouse of liberty-loving, multiple-choice Britain - though whether the British National Party would be able to modernize itself quickly enough to fill the gap remained a question. (The BNP had rightly decided to make a big issue out of whether British Muslims should scream for White beheadings and the "extermination" of the West as a response to a few cartoons published in Denmark which said nothing worse about Islam than was said every day in scores of Muslim on Muslim killings in Iraq, Nigeria and elsewhere; but the BNP probably remained committed to socialist/protectionist economics and whether they could appeal more widely to women needed to be considered. To offer a mixture of kindly patriarchy with respect for classical women's lib issues was what was necessary - but that was easier said than done.)



EGALITARIANISM MAY BE GENOCIDAL

I found on the internet an interesting new political article by an Oxford art historian, Malcolm Bull: One of the books considered, by Oxford-trained historian Michael Mann, seems to argue roughly that self-proclaimed socialistic, egalitarian democracies are more likely to engage in genocide; whereas hierarchical societies which incorporate their enemies at the bottom of their societies never end up killing their slaves. An engaging quote from the review is: "Egalitarianism did not arise spontaneously but had to be rigorously enforced by sanctions, expulsions and executions of potential upstarts and free-riders." Another is: "....having duties without rights appears to be the best defence against genocide. One sentence rarely found in the annals of human history is: `And then they killed all their servants.'" To sum it up: "Slavery or genocide may be the ultimate political choice...." (Don't ask me how an art historian gets involved in considering all this; but Malcolm Bull would need to be jolly clever to get invited to review for London Review of Books! He is head of Art History at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St. Edmund Hall.)

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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