Jared Taylor, head of the white nationalist American Renaissance
As some may have heard, Arthur Jensen, the infamous psychologist who became known as the father of race-based IQ studies and theories, passed away on October 22. Following the recent passing of another figurehead of race science, Jean Phillipe Rushton, the eulogies that have flowed forth from the circle of quote-unquote intellectuals within the white nationalist world were predictably glowing.
Jensen’s worked allowed career racists to proclaim with something like legitimacy that, yes, blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. One tends to fire off the canons and lower the flag when an actual scientist arrives and stumbles into offering a broad world of racists some bits of data and fancy language with which to tailor their hate for mainstream permeation.
Such was the case with Jared Taylor, who penned a 2,000 plus word tribute to Jensen. And in another case of the white nationalist/anti-immigrant world supporting its own, the racist website VDARE.com and its head editor Peter Brimelow saw fit to cross-post Taylor’s yarn of admiration for a man whose life and work were opposed by critics of myriad stature and qualification.
As of late VDARE has generally been less-and-less reserved about so openly putting forth the work of fellow virulent racists like Taylor, but for those who know the history of VDARE and its writers, Brimelow, and their collective connections to John Tanton and the established anti-immigrant movement, such comradery will come as no surprise.
Taylor begins his piece with a first-person narrative introduction, relating the story of him, at the time “an arrogant young lefty,” attending a Jensen talk at Yale. As Taylor tells it, “cowardly and shameful” thugs managed to pressure the administration, and Jensen’s talk was cancelled. Taylor sympathizes and reflects with regret on his young self, as he now has his own history of bringing controversy to college capuses. Most recently he accepted and delivered talks at two separate universities at the respective behests of a white nationalist and a neo-Nazi.
Taylor goes further:
“The goons who shut down Jensen’s talk may have had an influence on my life. It took me 15 years to realize that Jensen was right, and that I and the goons were wrong. Surely, my eyes would have been opened sooner if Jensen had been able to speak, and I had heard the calm, factual, [sic] talk he would have surely given.”
Taylor continues by flashing beyond that 15 years, and on to 1992, when he first met Jensen in person. Jensen agreed to be interviewed by Taylor, who at that time was seeking to establish American Renaissance as an emerging force within the white nationalist scene. Taylor writes:
“When we were not recording, we talked of many things [….]”
One can’t help but wonder if they discussed Jensen’s long relationship with the Pioneer Fund and Rushton, who at the time of his own recent death was president of that organization. The pair once published a long paper together. All one can do is wonder because, as it seems, most pro-Jensen eulogies focus on his misunderstood genius and his mal-interpreted work—completely avoiding the $1 million in funding he received from the Pioneer Fund over a three decade period of his career.
Like other points of mention in this piece, such omissions are also unsurprising, as the acceptance of support from Pioneer is a sincere dark-mark on one’s legitimacy or that of one’s organization.
The white nationalist Pioneer was founded in 1937 with a singular vision and subsequent mission—the funding of any and all scientific research that might establish the legitimacy of a theory of the genetic superiority of some races over others, particularly that of whites over nearly all others and especially blacks (i.e. the study of eugenics). And since 1937 Pioneer has done just that here and in Britian, supporting the work of some of the biggest names in race-rooted science of the 20th Century. As the Southern Poverty Law Center summarizes:
“In recent decades, the Pioneer Fund has supported mostly American and British race scientists, including a large number of those cited in The Bell Curve, a widely criticized 1994 book that claimed that differences in intelligence were at least partly determined by race. According to Barry Mehler, a leading academic critic of the fund, these race scientists have included Hans Eysenck, Robert A. Gordon, Linda Gottfredson, Seymour Itzkoff, Arthur Jensen, Michael Levin, Richard Lynn, R. Travis Osborne, J. Philippe Rushton, William Shockley and Daniel R. Vining Jr.”
This is gross company, indeed.
Taylor concludes his eulogy by underscoring “that [Jensen’s] death should follow so soon upon that of his eminent colleague and friend, Philippe Rushton [who Taylor also eulogized], only compounds the terrible loss that science—and mankind—have suffered.”
Others have chosen to underscore the potential dangers of Jensen’s work. Importantly educational psychologist and critic of Jensen’s work Sonja C. Grover reminds all of the following:
“I would make the point that you cannot separate social science from human rights, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on.”
For those on Taylor, VDARE, and Brimelow’s side, all that matters is the loyalty one applies to the social-hygiene and up-keep of the white race and Western culture.