Written by Noah Carl and Bo Winegard.
You may have seen that the Guardian recently published a big exposé on “race science”. Then about a week later, Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast an hour-and-a-half-long documentary on the “far right”. Much of the material for these two offerings came from footage obtained by an undercover journalist who works for the left-wing activist organisation Hope not Hate. Posing as an investor, he secretly filmed himself talking to various individuals, including our former editor-in-chief Matt Archer.
For readers who aren’t familiar with Hope not Hate, it’s essentially Britain’s equivalent to the SPLC. Courageously standing against the emotion of “hate”, they paint anyone expressing an opinion that’s even slightly right-wing as “racist” or “far right”. Earlier this year, they published an article on the “State of Hate” that characterised Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party (which oversaw record levels of immigration) as harbouring a “Radical Right insurgency”. And in the midst of England’s anti-immigration riots, their CEO falsely claimed that a Muslim woman had been doused with acid.
As for the Guardian’s “criticisms” of us, none of them comes close to a serious scientific or philosophical argument. Their exposé is basically one long point-and-sputter, featuring all the usual epithets: “dangerous”, “discredited”, “far right” etc. They couldn’t even get basic things right. For example, they claim we believe in the “genetic superiority of certain ethnic groups”. Yet Bo wrote an article last year saying the exact opposite.1
They do quote several “experts” to attack the bogeyman of “scientific racism”. As you may have noticed, this is a wholly bad-faith tactic.2 Redefining your opponents’ views as something negative doesn’t actually qualify as refuting them. It would be like us labelling the views we disagree with as “scientific communism” and then pointing out that there’s no good evidence for “scientific communism”. In terms of Paul Graham’s disagreement hierarchy, they barely progressed beyond name-calling.
