Some Context
One hundred years ago, things were a lot more racist than they are today. Like, a lot a lot. ‘Race Realism’ was normal. People ‘knew’ that blacks, Jews, Chinamen and Aryans had very different psychologies, interests, skills, and, of course, intelligence. The U.S. was segregated. The overseas empires of Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and so on were justified in part by race realism: if the Hindoo and the Musselman and the Australian savage could not defend his lands, it was the way of things for the superior race to take and rule them.
Many liberal imperialists hoped and believed that their rule could be enlightened and beneficial for their uncivilized subjects. Through education and example, the primitive and barbaric practices of their backward subjects could be improved. Perhaps, eventually, Indo-China or Burma could govern themselves like Canada and South Africa.
But the race realists viewed this as a naive and foolish hope. The murderous cannibals of the New Guinea highlands would never become civilized: they were inferior by blood. Just as the wild dingo supplants and exterminates the Tasmanian wolf when it is brought to the antipodean shore, so too the inferior races are doomed to perish in the crucible of selection. That is the natural mechanism by which the species is improved, and a prudent man will not oppose the law of Nature with a foolish compassion that must ultimately and harmfully fail.
This race realist worldview saw its fullest culmination in German National Socialism. While the Holocaust was its most famous expression, perhaps more revealing was the Nazi treatment of the Slavs of Poland and Russia. There was no role for Slavs in the Third Reich except as slave labour for the German economy. They were permanent second-class citizens by virtue of their inferior race, required to step aside and bow to their Aryan masters lest they be beaten for insolence. They would not be educated once the war was won: why throw pearls before swine? Over time they would decline and vanish, as the hearty Aryan stock spread across the Lebensraum earned by their superior bravery, will, diligence and intelligence.
This Race Realism Will be Different Though
So anyway, I was reading this essay by Nathan Cofnas where he writes:
“The prospect of a hereditarian revolution strikes some people as inconceivable and/or even more terrifying than wokism itself. Here I argue that, without hereditarianism, the fight against wokism is futile, and that a hereditarian revolution is both feasible and desirable. “Race realism” is the best term to describe the scientifically correct position. When the elites accept race realism, we can construct a better world.”
Hmm.
Okay, Cofnas has anticipated that some people have been “told that belief in race differences goes hand in hand with Nazism and genocide.” But “actual genocidal racist movements were and are based on myths and pseudoscience, not accurate information about group differences.” So no worries, bro. The Nazis thought that Slavs and Jews and blacks were inferior based on bad science by losers like Arthur de Gobineau. They didn’t even believe in IQ testing! But modern racists scientists can properly prove that blacks are inferior (and that Jews and Asians are superior! Suck it up, red-pills!). Therefore nothing will go wrong with sorting people into hereditary groups and constructing a new political movement based around the central importance of race for social and political identity.
Aren’t Wokists the True Nazis?
Now this new race realism isn’t about making race a whole big thing. Cofnas says he feels “no need to quarantine myself from nonwhites (or non-Jews). And the historical record suggests that white nationalism is invariably expressed mainly as negativity toward other races and perceived enemies within the “white” race, which is not something I find attractive.” I feel like he might be underselling white nationalism a little there: ‘negativity’? Curb-stomping a Pakistani immigrant; lynching a black man who sullied a white woman with his lustful gaze; bombing a church: these are described better with words like ‘brutal violence’, ‘homicide’, or ‘lawless terrorism’. ‘Negativity’ is really not the key feature here.
In any case, race realism is important because those darn wokescolds keep trying to affirmative action us, but science tells us that’s not gonna work. If we want to ever convince people that structural racism isn’t real, we will have to teach them proper scientific racism.
Because the thing is, systematic differences in outcomes for blacks in the US are not because of culture or environmental factors. That’s just what the woke want you to believe. It’s because Africans have lower IQ due to genetics, poor fools. Some races are smarter than others because maybe growing rice is more cognitively demanding than hunting big game? Although maybe we shouldn’t say it exactly like that — the messaging might be a little harsh. And also, technically speaking we don’t have any good evidence that IQ differences in America between blacks and whites are really genetic. As Murray and Herrnstein say “the evidence does not justify an estimate” about what the genetic versus environmental contribution is, let alone any systemic biases in the testing. But we know what’s really up, am I right?
Now, it is possible that some low-IQ inbred JQ types might think that ‘smarter’ means ‘better’ and conclude that blacks are racially inferior. Some people might suggest that we shouldn’t bother wasting educational resources on congenital morons with African ancestry. Pearls before swine, you know. Segregated schools would be a logical solution. Might inferior races be best suited to manual labor and simple clerical tasks? In the long run, perhaps we could look towards improving the racial stock with some sort of program to encourage the genetically superior to reproduce. Conversely, we could incentivize the inferior races to sterilize themselves via gifts of costume jewelry and watermelons. Seems like it might be beneficial in the long run.
Some might argue that ‘race realism’ might cause deep hostility, dysfunction and injustice in the context of a multi-racial society. I suppose we could look at the history of the Jim Crow south, or of South Africa, or of British India to examine this question. Because race realism was so ubiquitous for so long, there’s lots of information about what it was like living in societies where the people in power believed that race was important and racial differences are real. Did racist beliefs cause social disharmony, violence or injustice? Maybe we should look into that at some point, but I doubt it will end up being relevant to the race realist program. Who can really say? And remember, those guys based their racist beliefs on bad evidence, whereas our evidence now is good, and that will make all the difference to the social consequences of those beliefs.
And as for racially homogenous societies, it seems pretty unlikely that anything could go wrong in international relations if states define themselves in racial terms and endorse race hierarchies. That stuff at the beginning of this essay was a really long time ago and things are different now. Why, there are only two or three racially motivated genocides happening right now, that I can think of off the top of my head. Besides, the “empirical evidence shows that, for the vast majority of people, there is no clear psychological connection between viewing someone as less intelligent and hating them, let alone wanting to discriminate against or murder them.” Now, whether it makes a difference when those people viewed as less intelligent are identified as different ‘outgroup’ that is ancestral and unchangeable might well be a separate question. However, I think we can agree that this one semi-relevant fact is more informative than the many historical examples of racist societies and the genocides and atrocities they produced.
But the key point is that spreading the scientific fact that races are real is how we can stop having to listen to boring DEI lectures and save freedom of speech from the woke lefties. Wokism has made “Meaningful art of any kind… almost impossible” and “is ruining everything that matters except (for the time being) GDP”. So the course is clear. By persuading America (ok, well, maybe just white America) that race differences are real and important, we can fix the one bad thing in society in a way that is both certain to work and very unlikely to backfire horribly.
Agree. To add to this: Africa has the most genetic diversity than any continent on earth. To lump all sub-Saharan Africans together and say they share the same genetic qualities because of the color of their skin is not supported by empirical evidence. It's more bad science.
And everything you said, too, about the dangers of this kind of thinking.
I wasn't aware of this other side of SubStack until I read your essay---I just looked into it---and, oh boy.
I appreciated this article. Substack has a propensity to attract the most fringe viewpoints, and I remember being disheartened about reading some of the stuff that's gained traction here. I'm glad to see someone engage in this conversation without agreeing!
Best line:
"Some races are smarter than others because maybe growing rice is more cognitively demanding than hunting big game?"