A hereditarian revolution won't solve the right’s "stupidity problem"

Responding to Nathan Cofnas.

Written by Noah Carl.

Nathan Cofnas has written a brilliant essay: ‘Why We Need to Talk about the Right’s Stupidity Problem’. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Briefly, he argues that in order to defeat wokeness and win over elites, the right needs to expose the “Big Lie” that all races have the same innate potential.

I agree with 80% of what Cofnas has to say. For example, I agree with him that Christopher Rufo’s and Richard Hanania’s explanations for wokeness are unsatisfactory in that they beg the question: in Rufo’s case, of why woke activists managed to gain so much power within the academy; and in Hanania’s case, of why judges ignored the letter of the Civil Rights law and started discriminating against whites and Asians. I also agree with his main point that the taboo surrounding hereditarianism is good for the woke and bad for the right.

However, there are three points on which I disagree with Cofnas. The first is that cognitive elites are woke. The second is that the taboo surrounding hereditarianism (the “Big Lie”, as he calls it) is the most important cause of wokeness. The third is that cognitive elites’ belief in racial environmentalism is the most important reason why they don’t lean right. In the remainder of this essay, I’ll explain why I disagree on these points.