Does Sam Harris want you to become a Nazi without realizing it?

Q: Is there anything worse than SJW’s? A: Actually, Yes. Nazi Eugenicists are worse.

I first became aware of Sam Harris not through his own podcast, but through his appearance as a regular guest on the Joe Rogan podcast. I am a regular listener. Its a good fit for me. Like Joe I am 5'8" and a bit of a meathead, also like Joe,I sometimes read books. Over the years I have been exposed to the ideas of some amazing thinkers, such as Brian Redban and Aubrey Marcus. I always skip it when Sam Harris is on, though. I just find his quiet monotone voice, very sanctimonious. He seems to talk to everyone as if they are a small child and he is talking as slowly and patiently as he can. Also “new atheists” bug me. I prefer the old atheists.

So Harris was below the radar for me, but spending an inordinate amount of time online, as I do, his name would come up, usually in relation to the controversy, surrounding his view of Muslims, that they should be profiled etc. Most often its the more right wing among us, championing him on twitter and in youtube videos.

As you may be aware, there is an ongoing feud on social media between the “Alt right” and the “SJW’s.”The “alt right” is a term coined by Richard Spencer, but I didn’t know that initially. I just thought it simply referred to members of the “alternative media” who were of the more right wing persuasion.

“SJW” stands for “social Justice Warrior” and describes left wing activists who seem to operate primarily on twitter.

Initially I thought it was hyperbole when SJW’s referred to the “alt right” as being synonymous with Nazi’s. I have to say SJW’s often strike me as being drama queens. I think other people were confused about this as well. Caitlin Johnstone was excoriated on the far left for months, after somewhat aligning herself with social media personality Mike Cernovich, by mentioning him in one article, for the purpose of uniting left and right in an antiwar stance. I think she, like me, just thought “alt right” meant “alternative media right.” After time though, it seemed to be a label those types rejected, and was held onto, only by actual Nazis. Then later, as I said,while reaserching this article, I discovered it was originally coined by Richard Spencer. So some things are starting to make sense now. I can see why leftist SJW’s would be incensed by the idea of aligning with anyone considered “alt right.”

As Far as the SJW’s go, I mean, obviously I think racism is bad too, but they seem to throw accusations of racism around, a bit too cavalierly. Its like the story of the boy who cried wolf. So often when I see SJW’s on twitter accusing some one of being racist, it doesn’t really have the punch, they intended it to have.

Things on twitter seem to be really polarized by these two camps. But like I said Harris was under the radar because his voice makes me want to commit violent suicide.

There have been some fights, not just online but also in real life with controversial speakers being shouted down by groups aligned with BLM and antifa, when they come to speak on college campuses. Joe has had several such guests such as Brett Weinstein, Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Sommers, and the more well known personality, Jordan Peterson. . Milo, however is so deliberately provocative and trolling, it struck me that he got what he deserved. But some other guests seemed less deserving of this infringement on their free speech. Brett Weinstein is a person who was shouted down by rioting SJW’s on his campus and he seems like a pretty reasonable liberal minded guy.

I started to get the impression that these SJW’s are out of control. I got this impression not just from the JRE zeitgeist, but in personal interactions I have had on social media, through my support of Bernie Sanders. I was, even very recently, accused of being vaguely sexist and racist for supporting Bernie over Hillary, because many black people voted for Hillary instead, and as a “priviledged” white guy, I should listen to “black voices.” Seemed like uiquely twisted logic.

So when I saw Sam Harris being criticized for being a racist on twitter, I didn’t take it too seriously. I assumed it was related to his stance on Muslims, which is a religion, not a race, and thus more complicated, and probably not accurate. It was those over zealous SJWs at it again.

But then, a JRE spin off podcaster, I listen to, Christoper Ryan, kind of a mellow, hippy intellectual type dude, mentioned something on his podcast about there being a “dust up” between Ezra Klein, editor of Vox and Sam Harris about “race and IQ.” So that piqued my curiosity. Skeptical, as I had been, about SJW’s fighting actual Nazis, and not rather just throwing around accusations of racism will nilly, there seemed to be something possibly to this if Sam Harris was now defending scientific racism.

So I googled the debate between Ezra Klein and Sam Harris. Harris had had “Bell Curve” author Charles Murray on his podcast, sparking controversy, back and forth arguments, counter articles being published on Vox and eventually a debate.

It turns out Sam Harris is actually defending Scientific racism.

People don’t want to hear that a person’s intelligence is in large measure due to his or her genes and there seems to be very little we can do environmentally to increase a person’s intelligence even in childhood. It’s not that the environment doesn’t matter, but genes appear to be 50 to 80 percent of the story. People don’t want to hear this. And they certainly don’t want to hear that average IQ differs across races and ethnic groups.

He does it in kind of a coy way, though. He pretends that he has no idea that this subject is part and parcel with the history of slavery, segregation, and yes, Nazism. I quote a segment here of his dabate with Ezra Klein, editor of Vox:

Ezra Klein

Something you brought up a couple times is something I wrote in my piece, and I am actually very happy to talk about this. I say that the belief that African-Americans are genetically less intelligent than whites, and then also inferior in szaother ways, which I’m not saying you guys said, is our oldest, most ancient justification for racial inequality and bigotry. Do you disagree with that? When you look at American history, when you look at what we said at the dawn of this country and all the way through the 1950, the 60s, when I say that, am I wrong?

Sam Harris

In a sense you’re wrong. I agree with the spirit of it. I think you could say the Bible is just as much of a justification, the notion that the race of Ham came under a curse and that these races have a separate theological stature. You had Bible-thumping racist maniacs defending slavery and without any reference to science. That’s a great American tradition.

I think tribalism is at the bottom of it and perceiving other people who look different and sound different from yourself as ineradicably different. I think that is a problem we must outgrow, and I fully agree with the social concerns that follow from noticing how far we have to go in outgrowing that.

But actually it is linked to those things. Inextricably in fact. Harris’ controversial podcast guest Charles Murray wrote a controversial book called the “Bell Curve” with a controversial chapter on race and IQ. Harris says that the differences among racial groups on IQ scores is “50–80” percent genetic and that this is not controversial, that there is more or less complete consensus among smart brain scientists like he.

This is completely false. Here is the kicker:

The studies Murray relied on in his book, were funded by a literal Neo Nazi Eugenics organization called “The pioneer fund.” The pioneer fund was founded by a literal eugenicist, Wickliffe Draper, who started the organization to improve the white race and sterilize people believed to be unfit. He went to Germany and met with actual Nazi scientists. The purpose of the fund was give research grants for people to propagate the study of Scientific racism

I urge you to read this Wikipedia entry.

Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 “to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences”. The organization has been described as racist and “white supremacist” in nature,[1][2][3] and as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[4]

Seeing as I, unlike Sam Harris, am not a super dooper smart scientist, but just a regular guy, able to use google and find articles on Wikipedia-I have to wonder how could Sam Harris not know this? To speak authoritatively on this issue on behalf of all scientists, saying its not in dispute, that racial differences in IQ scores are mostly genetic, and therefore innate, you would assume Sam Harris would have to be fairly well read on the subject at least. He would be aware of the controversy, the lack of consensus, and the need for people like Murray, to rely on reserch funding from racist organizations.

Three other cognitive scientists wrote a piece for Vox disputing Harris claim about genetic basis of IQ differences. I was also able to find vigorous refutations of the same brand of Scientific racism, being peddled by other right wing pundits, like Murray. In this case a man named Jason Richwine.

There is no Scientific consensus on this and the only ones pushing these theories are reactionary right wing policy guys Like Murray.

I find it impossible to believe that after a few days of googling I am more well versed on the subject than Harris is. So I must conclude that Sam Harris deliberately chose to give Charles Murray a platform on his popular podcast, to promote racist ideas.

Harris promotes these white supremacist ideas in a very sneaky way, which seems to go with his creepy, whispery voice. He says that he only follows the facts and that data. As a scientist, he is cooly objective and unemotional in his thinking. He frames all of his critics as being intellectually dishonest and in a “moral panic.” He claims to be brave and tough minded. He purports to have no bias, no agenda. He has been criticized for missing a huge gap in philosophy between facts and values. Because it is such a fundamental and obvious problem in philosophy it is often referred to simply as“the gap” By framing all his opinions as facts, and denying he has a point of view at all, much less a Eurocentric, right wing one, he seems to try to slip in unnoticed, some pretty reactionary right wing ideas.

The problem with the cult of personality is that it enables people to be intellectually lazy. You just find a guy you agree with on some major thing, like there being no god, and then you see what his views are on other things he pontificates on and then adopt that as your opinion, in arguments you get into on twitter.

In defense of Joe Rogan, this doesn’t appear to be his approach to intellectual discourse. He has a liberal intellectual on, one week, and then Brendan Schaub on the next. The idea is to have a diverse intellectual diet and not just eat bacon. Have a kale shake once in a while with your intellectual elk meat.

By lazily following the cult of Sam Harris, you might be led to believe that differences in IQ between racial groups have been proven to be mostly genetic and not due to environmental causes such as poverty, trauma, nor from a legacy of slavery, segregation and oppression. You may may believe that Sam Harris, as an objective scientist, has no bias or agenda, and just follows established Scientific fact. You might believe that, but you would be wrong.