00:00:02
It is a pleasure to welcome back to the
00:00:04
program Quinn Slovian. Quinn Leodian,
00:00:06
>> professor of international history at
00:00:08
Boston University. I mean I I guess I
00:00:11
one thing I would just add and maybe you
00:00:12
can use it or not but so if you think
00:00:14
that in some basic way humans are
00:00:16
hardwired and cannot be improved or
00:00:18
changed very much then a lot of the
00:00:21
programs of the great society
00:00:23
>> great society
00:00:24
>> and educational uplift and civil rights
00:00:27
in general affirmative action all become
00:00:29
worse than fruitless and worse than
00:00:32
impotent efforts at creating a different
00:00:34
world. They are actually just schemes by
00:00:36
bureaucrats to make jobs for themselves
00:00:39
and for less capable groups and minority
00:00:42
groups to try to seize assets and wealth
00:00:45
from the more capable and more uh high
00:00:47
functioning sectors of the population.
00:00:51
There you have in two sentences the next
00:00:53
15 or so minutes of your life. If you
00:00:55
want to leave now, you already basically
00:00:57
know how guys like Trump and Elon, but
00:00:58
also their media lackey like Ben
00:01:00
Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon, how
00:01:02
all these guys took over in the last
00:01:04
decade. This is how they protected
00:01:06
neoliberalism. By calling progressivism
00:01:09
a conspiracy and using race science,
00:01:11
they pretended to be populist enemies of
00:01:13
the elite. But once in power, they
00:01:16
dismantled the last thing standing in
00:01:18
the way of neoliberalism that Reagan and
00:01:20
Clinton couldn't get rid of. They are
00:01:22
not against the system.
00:01:25
They're its greatest assets. Okay, bye.
00:01:28
[Music]
00:01:31
Fine. If you if you want to stay, we can
00:01:33
actually do this, right? Because how we
00:01:35
got here is insane. These guys won by
00:01:39
bringing eugenics and neoliberalism back
00:01:42
from the brink of death. Those are not
00:01:45
popular things. But here's how they did
00:01:48
it.
00:01:54
Howdy friends, JT from the future here.
00:01:56
I just wanted to take a quick second to
00:01:57
do a shameless plug for Means TV. Both
00:01:59
because it's awesome and because being a
00:02:01
dirty communist on YouTube is looking
00:02:03
like more and more of a losing
00:02:05
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Means, it's a worker-owned cooperative
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Thanks for your support. All right, back
00:03:52
to the video.
00:03:58
[Music]
00:04:02
Let them call you racist.
00:04:06
Let them call you xenophobes.
00:04:09
>> Let them call you nivist.
00:04:13
>> Wear it as a badge of honor.
00:04:20
This is the bell curve. You've heard of
00:04:22
it before. It's Charles Murray and
00:04:24
Richard Hearnstein's book on IQ that
00:04:27
among other things became popular in the
00:04:29
'90s for saying that different races
00:04:31
have different average intelligence.
00:04:33
It's a book that gives its readers a
00:04:35
scientific, big air quotes there,
00:04:37
roadmap for building a racial hierarchy,
00:04:40
which is, and let me be clear that I'm
00:04:42
not exaggerating in any way, shape, or
00:04:44
form, literal Nazi It is literal
00:04:47
Nazi behavior to try and science out
00:04:50
that one race's blood is superior to
00:04:53
anothers.
00:04:55
>> You know, when they let I think the real
00:04:56
number is 15, 16 million people into our
00:04:59
country, when they do that, we got a lot
00:05:01
of work to do. They're poisoning the
00:05:04
blood of our country. That's what
00:05:05
they've done.
00:05:08
>> But we'll get to all that in a minute.
00:05:10
If you've ever heard guys like Ben
00:05:12
Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan,
00:05:14
Steve Bannon, whoever, talk about IQ or
00:05:17
how some cultures are more violent or
00:05:20
less intelligent or sometimes more
00:05:22
intelligent than white people. The
00:05:24
modern origin of those arguments is
00:05:26
almost certainly the bell curve.
00:05:28
>> The bell curve.
00:05:29
>> The bell curve.
00:05:29
>> Bell curve. It has been some time since
00:05:31
it's been a more controversial book.
00:05:33
>> They argue that about 60% of
00:05:35
intelligence is inherited.
00:05:36
>> As I understand the argument of it, I
00:05:38
disagree.
00:05:39
>> The author's premise reinforces the
00:05:41
racialist eugenics theory of African
00:05:44
inferiority. When the bell curve came
00:05:46
out, it was in every bookstore, in every
00:05:48
magazine. And it made it admissible,
00:05:51
maybe even unavoidable, for reasonable
00:05:53
people to have open political
00:05:55
discussions about eugenics, to just ask
00:05:58
questions about the idea that society
00:06:00
should suppress inferior people's
00:06:02
reproduction and promote superior
00:06:04
people's reproduction. The first step of
00:06:06
all that being figuring out just who is
00:06:09
superior.
00:06:10
And to do that, the book used IQ tests
00:06:12
to claim that some racial groups are
00:06:14
more intelligent than others on average.
00:06:17
And it presented this data as an
00:06:18
indisputable scientific fact. While the
00:06:21
authors hedged their language a bit, and
00:06:23
they say they don't know exactly if it's
00:06:26
mostly nature or nurture that's
00:06:27
responsible for IQ differences, their
00:06:30
conclusions betray that they think there
00:06:31
is such a thing as fundamental racial
00:06:34
inequality in intelligence that you can
00:06:36
observe directly through tests. This
00:06:39
difference is something that they think
00:06:40
you can at best only mask temporarily
00:06:44
but never actually resolve. At the top
00:06:46
of the pecking order, the book puts East
00:06:48
Asians and Ashkanazi Jews just above
00:06:51
whites. And then other Asian, Hispanic,
00:06:53
and black people are on the bottom. And
00:06:55
already you can imagine how this book
00:06:57
might be useful for a whole bunch of
00:06:59
far-right debate bros.
00:07:01
>> They say if we're racist, why is it that
00:07:03
we're placing uh other people above
00:07:05
whites? We're not white supremacists. So
00:07:08
that's a kind of cheeky way for them to
00:07:10
try to turn the tables on their critics.
00:07:13
But I think it also it also spits out in
00:07:16
two other more meaningful ways. One is
00:07:19
it then allows for that IQ science to
00:07:22
support what's called ethno
00:07:24
differentialism. So the new right in
00:07:27
general often has this principle of a
00:07:29
space for every race quote unquote. So
00:07:31
an idea that it's actually fine for
00:07:34
there to be Hungary for the Hungarians,
00:07:36
Africa for the Africans, Japan for the
00:07:38
Japanese, and that's actually the ideal
00:07:41
world for a reactionary internationalist
00:07:43
position. So the fact that East Asians
00:07:46
had higher IQ is not a threat if you
00:07:49
believe that East Asians will remain in
00:07:51
East Asia and not be, you know, active
00:07:53
competitors inside of the majority white
00:07:55
future you imagine.
00:07:58
But that's skipping a few years to the
00:08:00
present. Before we get there, I want to
00:08:02
be clear that The Bell Curve is a bad
00:08:05
book, and not just for its conclusion.
00:08:07
There's a dozen leaps of logic and
00:08:09
methodology problems behind it and the
00:08:11
sort of race science it upholds. This
00:08:13
video won't be a thorough debunking
00:08:15
since we're focusing on the political
00:08:17
consequences of this rhetoric, not the
00:08:19
book specifically. But suffice to say
00:08:21
that the idea that IQ or ethnic culture
00:08:24
or however conservatives are branding
00:08:26
this stuff now could give you a
00:08:27
scientific explanation of or
00:08:29
justification for racial inferiority is
00:08:32
I've left a few links in the
00:08:34
description for those of you who want to
00:08:35
see the thorough debunking for
00:08:37
yourselves. But just to be clear, there
00:08:39
is no such thing as a superior race. But
00:08:43
back to our topic. These guys, guys like
00:08:46
Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Lex
00:08:48
Freiedman, bunch of people in the
00:08:49
far-right media ecosystem have either
00:08:51
platformed Murray or referenced his work
00:08:53
indirectly, and it's had its
00:08:55
consequences. Explicitly pro- eugenics
00:08:57
people are staffing the government. But
00:09:00
for Murray's work to ever get that
00:09:02
popular, race scientists first had to
00:09:04
form alliances with other people of
00:09:06
influence, like neoliberals, whom we've
00:09:08
talked about here before. And nothing
00:09:10
makes that alliance clearer than this.
00:09:13
Charles Murray, Friedrich A. Hayek,
00:09:16
Cherammeritus at the American Enterprise
00:09:18
Institute. How does a race scientist get
00:09:21
the title of head named after
00:09:24
the most influential neoliberal thinker
00:09:26
at a think tank for neoliberalism?
00:09:29
Well, do you remember the '90s?
00:09:31
The '90s was supposed to be a victory
00:09:33
lap for neoliberalism.
00:09:37
Global capitalism had won. The largest
00:09:39
communist project in the world had just
00:09:41
been dissolved. And the IMF, the World
00:09:43
Bank, and the US were all beating the
00:09:45
drum of free trade and infinite growth
00:09:47
on every continent.
00:09:50
If you were one of these guys, the world
00:09:52
had just proved you right. You could
00:09:54
kick your feet up, watch society crumble
00:09:56
around fewer and fewer mega monopolies,
00:09:58
waiting patiently for your no red tape
00:10:00
chemical runoff utopia. Or so you'd
00:10:02
think. they must be feeling, you know,
00:10:05
flushed with optimism and victory. But
00:10:07
in fact, if you read their um the
00:10:10
articles they're publishing, the
00:10:12
speeches they're giving in the 1990s,
00:10:14
it's the opposite. They fear that they
00:10:16
actually lost the Cold War. After
00:10:19
spending 40 years building a world for
00:10:21
global free trade, building the
00:10:23
institutions that would protect and
00:10:24
force it open, getting neoliberals into
00:10:26
power, advising presidents, these guys
00:10:28
thought it wouldn't actually work.
00:10:30
Quote, "Were we tomorrow to have the
00:10:33
political forces to dismantle the
00:10:34
welfare state, and should we set about
00:10:36
dismantling it, we would face a
00:10:38
frightening but unavoidable fact behind
00:10:41
the welfare state, there is almost
00:10:42
nothing.
00:10:44
The fuzzy and attractive promise that
00:10:46
the private sector and the free market
00:10:48
will fill the gap instantly, like Athena
00:10:50
sprung fully born from Zeus, thus
00:10:52
replacing the welfare state and making
00:10:53
the new order acceptable to our
00:10:55
citizens, is an utter chimera."
00:10:58
They won. And yet they knew they
00:11:01
couldn't do anything. People liked the
00:11:04
New Deal. Social Security and Medicaid
00:11:06
were good things. And if they started
00:11:08
taking them apart, everyone would
00:11:10
immediately see how destructive the
00:11:12
neoliberal project actually was. So they
00:11:16
deflected. The current office of
00:11:19
management of the budget, Russ VA,
00:11:20
describes the US government as being
00:11:22
overtaken by Marxist leftist radicals.
00:11:25
They fear and they say so directly that
00:11:28
the red menace has now gone green. The
00:11:32
environmentalists have now picked up
00:11:34
where the Marxists left off. Feminists,
00:11:36
um, gay rights activists, anti-racists,
00:11:39
these were all now the new enemy. And
00:11:41
they had, this is the important part,
00:11:43
taken over that stratum of organizations
00:11:47
that sit above the nation. They think
00:11:49
that the woke elite, as they would be
00:11:51
called later, have um taken over the
00:11:54
global governance structure. And in the
00:11:56
minds of the new right, these are the
00:11:58
people who are the real enemy.
00:12:00
Conservatives thought that even though
00:12:02
socialism was probably not popular
00:12:04
anymore after years of the cold war,
00:12:06
things like 401ks, civil rights, and
00:12:09
environmentalism still made the thought
00:12:11
of a government that's actually useful
00:12:13
politically viable. To make it
00:12:15
unpopular, then they latched on to the
00:12:17
two narratives of their time. One, the
00:12:20
government is getting bigger, meaning
00:12:22
wealthy bureaucrats and college-educated
00:12:24
socialist sympathizers. And two, new
00:12:27
science is showing how all these efforts
00:12:28
at making society better and more equal
00:12:31
is maybe headed in the completely wrong
00:12:33
way because some people are just
00:12:34
inferior and therefore deserve to stay
00:12:36
that way. This meant that the war on the
00:12:39
poor that neoliberals wanted to lead no
00:12:41
longer needed to be justified on the
00:12:43
grounds of efficiency or economic theory
00:12:46
because thanks to works like the bell
00:12:47
curve, anything short of total corporate
00:12:50
takeover was essentially an affront
00:12:52
against nature. People are fundamentally
00:12:54
unequal. Let the free market decide or
00:12:56
you're in the pocket of the woke elite.
00:12:58
And to be clear, that's just not true.
00:13:02
spending money on programs that keep
00:13:04
people out of poverty, giving them
00:13:06
better access to food, to shelter, work,
00:13:08
transportation, education. These things
00:13:10
are not an affront against nature, or
00:13:12
subsidizing stupidity. Intelligence is
00:13:15
relatively equal personto person. And
00:13:17
the things that make your life harder,
00:13:19
like not having access to those things,
00:13:22
is a way better explanation of why your
00:13:24
test results might be on the lower end.
00:13:26
The best thing for society isn't leaving
00:13:28
a bunch of people out to dry. It's
00:13:31
giving everyone as high a living
00:13:32
standard as possible. That's what
00:13:34
civilization is supposed to be about.
00:13:37
But that's just not the neoliberal or
00:13:39
the race scientist project. Their
00:13:42
project begins with finding ways to cut
00:13:44
government spending in ways that help
00:13:45
the 1% and ends with making sure that
00:13:48
the first victims of that project are
00:13:50
minorities. And when you strip
00:13:52
everything away and leave only nature
00:13:55
and nature turns out to be the chaos of
00:13:57
global markets, what can people hold on
00:13:59
to? Turns out not a lot. So times are
00:14:04
rough. They're volatile. What do you do?
00:14:06
Well, in the financial markets, you buy
00:14:08
US dollars or you buy gold. You appeal
00:14:12
back to something that seems to have
00:14:13
either a natural or a quasi natural
00:14:15
value to it.
00:14:16
>> Gold. I'm rich. I'm I'm
00:14:22
And I think whiteness, I think the
00:14:26
territory of the United States, the
00:14:28
territory of Germany or Austria in those
00:14:30
cases have offered themselves as sort of
00:14:33
rocks of stability in times of
00:14:35
uncertainty. The attraction of Trump and
00:14:38
the United States has been similar.
00:14:40
>> I am with you. I will fight for you and
00:14:44
I will win for you.
00:14:47
you know, you feel the pressures of
00:14:49
everyday price rises and, you know, the
00:14:53
insecurity of jobs. Then instead of
00:14:55
saying, "Hey, let's build out the care
00:14:57
economy and make it easier to organize
00:15:00
the workplace so that you'll have less
00:15:02
uncertainty." Now, instead, it's saying
00:15:04
we're going to create a new system where
00:15:05
there's loyalists who are inside who are
00:15:07
going to get some of the spoils and then
00:15:09
there's other people who we're going to
00:15:10
punish and extract those spoils from. He
00:15:13
wanted to accelerate processes of
00:15:15
neoliberal globalization.
00:15:17
>> The destruction of the welfare state
00:15:19
wasn't going to actually help people
00:15:20
suffering under neoliberalism.
00:15:22
Obviously, affirmative action, civil
00:15:24
rights, social spending were never the
00:15:27
reason people's lives got worse in the
00:15:28
first place. So to make up the gap,
00:15:31
nationality, one heavily equated with
00:15:33
the culture and ethnicity of the
00:15:35
superior people, became the solution
00:15:37
that worked for both neoliberals and the
00:15:40
race scientists in their coalition.
00:15:42
>> We're now in the business of maximizing
00:15:45
citizenship value.
00:15:46
>> You have a green card. This is a gold
00:15:48
card. We're going to be putting a price
00:15:50
on that card of about $5 billion and
00:15:53
that's going to give you green card
00:15:54
privileges plus
00:15:56
>> to imply that Americanness is in itself
00:16:00
uh an asset that can be um monetized and
00:16:04
given a given a cash value. And that
00:16:07
part of the attraction of the far right
00:16:10
or the right in general now is that it
00:16:13
offers a certain set of things as haven
00:16:16
assets in moments of uncertainties.
00:16:22
So, here we are. Trump won on a program
00:16:24
that not only pretends to be for the
00:16:26
working class in spirit while actively
00:16:28
making workingclass life more
00:16:30
unbearable, but is based on the
00:16:32
irredeemable idea that some cultures and
00:16:34
ethnicities and races are superior to
00:16:37
others and can exclude anyone who isn't
00:16:39
assimilated or controllable. to try to
00:16:42
make this pretty terrible pill go down a
00:16:45
bit smoother, they're now acting like
00:16:46
citizenship is going to save you from
00:16:48
the rest of the horror coming down the
00:16:49
pike. But if the last few months of
00:16:52
accidental deportations and
00:16:54
denaturalizations have shown us anything
00:16:56
is that it's just another fig leaf.
00:16:58
American belonging is little more than
00:17:00
blind filty to Trump and the fictional
00:17:03
white American ideal. Whether that
00:17:05
protects you or not from the price
00:17:06
hikes, detentions, and welfare cuts
00:17:09
isn't a question. It won't.
00:17:16
If you liked this episode, please check
00:17:18
out Quinn's book, HX Bastards. Quinn was
00:17:20
kind enough to give us early access to
00:17:22
it and let us interview him. And if
00:17:23
you've ever wondered why conservatives
00:17:25
are so obsessed with buying gold, the
00:17:27
last third of the book is all about
00:17:28
that, and I can't recommend it enough.
00:17:30
See you in two weeks.
