debunking Crémieux, part II.

The majoritarian fallacy.

When Elon’s boy speaks, I sit my white ass down and listen.

tl;dr:

Crémieux states: "Exposure to the knowledge that races differ in intelligence doesn't promote discriminatory beliefs. Therefore, race realism is not socially corrosive, and should not be opposed on those grounds."

I respond: Race realism may not be dangerous to black people, but it is dangerous to white bureaucratic elites. Here’s an extensive history of how race has been a contentious issue, and how shifting attitudes on race resulted in violent coercion and political chaos. From this, we can reasonably assume that a future shift in racial beliefs could also result in social instability.

Crémieux replies:

“Organize in the opposite direction”? Sounds like elite conflict to me. Sounds… dangerous. Socially corrosive, even.

introduction.

Crémieux was recently featured in an article by the Atlantic:

Archive link.

Crémieux thinks I am a poor writer. As someone who could never be a social scientist, on account of my middling mathematical ability, verbal IQ is all I have. I have to do better. I don’t mind if Crémieux disagrees with me or thinks I’m strawmanning him, but I’ll be damned if I don’t provide him with a pleasurable, rhetorically-polished reading experience. I’m also going to attempt not to strawman him.

I respect Crémieux, which is why I’m giving this a second try. Anyone who is read by billionaires deserves some level of deference. Crémieux also does an adequate job of popularizing social science, even if I don’t always agree with his positions. He’s a good communicator, and that’s something I admire. Crémieux believes that I am engaged in “mere supposition,” but maybe that’s because I didn’t do a good job of explaining myself last time. At the risk of simply writing the same article twice,¹ I think it is worth the attempt for the sake of clarity. If this seems redundant to you because the first article was already cogent enough, feel free to skip this one, and my feelings won’t be hurt.

Since Crémieux is an anonymous account, I’m not sure whether he is actually French as the name implies, or if he is religious or atheistic, or if he is a libertarian or socialist. If I had to guess, I would say he is an American libertarian atheist based on the fact that he is followed by and appeals to American libertarian atheists.

As a former atheist anarcho-capitalist, I understand this perspective and would like to make some criticisms of it. I think it gets some things right, and some things wrong. I will make some arguments against libertarian atheism in this article, but if Crémieux is not actually a libertarian atheist, he can ignore those parts.

1. what does Crémieux claim?

If you can’t read the image above, I’ll reproduce it in text:

“One of the persistent features of anti-HBD talk is that it comes back to rhetoric: 'HBD will be socially corrosive if it's popular!'

I tested that experimentally by exposing people to the knowledge that there are group differences in intelligence.

No negative effects.”

What are Crémieux’s presuppositions, taken individually?

1. People attack HBD as socially corrosive. [I agree.]

   1. Specifically, people say that even if HBD is not currently socially corrosive, it will eventually become socially corrosive if it becomes popular. [I agree.]

2. It is possible to experimentally test future effects of HBD. [I tend to disagree.]

   1. Specifically, we can do a test of random Americans and ask them a series of questions. Depending on their answers, we’ll be able to confirm or deny the future potential effects of HBD on social cohesion. [I strongly disagree.]

my response:

Crémieux implies that HBD would not negatively impact black people. I would go a step further, and say that it is possible that HBD could improve outcomes for black people. As I say in my previous article,

Ironically, the most “genocidal” policy against black Americas has been abortion, which has been supported and upheld by liberals, not “race realists.” … black people would benefit from a hypothetical race realist government. Maybe such a government would be more effective at tackling crime and poverty.

However, HBD is socially corrosive for two reasons:

1. The social corrosion of HBD has nothing to do with its effect on black people. The main problem is white-on-white conflict: HBD delegitimizes the Civil Rights regime and the bureaucratic elites who are intertwined with this system. It would produce a crisis of authority, confidence, and identity, otherwise known as “social corrosion.”

2. Without an alternative mythology or civil religion for America, the country will fall apart, as all civilizations fall which lose their faith and identity. (Libertarian atheism does not count as an alternative mythology, sorry.) Destroying Civil Rights without providing an alternative mythos is equivalent to killing God and expecting people to live on as normal. That might work for a short time, but nature abhors a vacuum. Dawkins was surprised when the vacuum left by atheism led to wokism, but we should learn from his mistake.

   1. By the way, if Crémieux has an argument in favor of atheism, Christianity, or ecumenical Hindu-Judeo-Christian values as a good enough glue to hold the social fabric of the country together, I would be happy to hear it.

Besides these positive arguments I am making, I additionally am skeptical that it is even possible to experimentally test whether or not HBD could be socially corrosive with a short term study of random Americans. This is for four reasons:

1. Minoritarian theory: the opinions of the masses do not help us understand the future potential social impact of an idea. If we want to figure out what the impact of HBD will be, we need to study agentic minorities, not the average American.

2. Moral conformism: people’s moral opinions shift significantly depending on their moral context. In America in 2024, people are going to say they love black people, even after being exposed to race realism. If race realism was no longer low-status, this would have a huge impact on responses to moral questions.

3. Flawed methodology: Not every social question can be determined by polling data. Imagine a clone of Crémieux with a time machine. He goes back in time with no knowledge of history but attempts to predict the impact of Schopenhauer’s ideas (who was opposed to German nationalism)² with mere polling data. He would not have been able to conclude, by exposing random Germans to Schopenhauer and asking them questions, that Naziism would be one of the consequences of Schopenhauer’s ideas.³ At the very least, Schopenhauer and his influence on the growth of atheism ended up having a very disruptive effect on society. Schopenhauer’s philosophy was ultimately socially corrosive, even if it is also true. But that’s not something you could deduce by asking a peasant how the concept of the world as will and idea affected him personally — he probably wouldn’t understand the question, would respond with some vague platitude he heard in church about “well, we just gotta trust in God, you know?”⁴ and would go back to farming. Another example would be the experiments of Copernicus and Galileo. The church correctly identified these experiments as threatening to the Christian religion at an elite level, even if heliocentrism didn’t immediately cause peasants to reject the church.

4. Time scale: A deep examination of history is much more relevant to predicting the socially corrosive effects of HBD than a short-term study that asks a few questions to random Americans. Ideas take time to germinate, process, and eventually affect society. Ideas affect society from the top down, by energizing and influencing agentic minorities, not by altering the attitudes of the masses from the bottom up. Finding “no negative effects” after a short-term study on isolated individuals in a controlled environment doesn’t tell us anything about the collective effect of de-stigmatizing HBD over time at the civilizational level. That would be akin to claiming “smoking doesn’t cause cancer” because you asked people if smoking was bad for them, before the cigarette was ever invented or popularized. Social change takes years, or even decades.

2. more bullet points:

1. You cannot claim an idea is not dangerous just because it didn't cause a randomly selected group of Americans to become genocidal racists against black people.

   1. Most people do not quickly change their moral positions, even when exposed to new facts. This isn’t logical, but most people are not logical, they are emotional and driven by social status and conformity.

   2. However, a small minority of people do change their moral positions when exposed to new facts.

   3. The average American does not change society. Small, dedicated minorities change society.

   4. In order to deduce the dangerousness of race realism, we must investigate its effect on small, dedicated minorities, not on a broad sample of random Americans. That requires an examination of history. For example, it would be useful to examine the nine supreme court justices who voted in Brown v. Board. To dismiss this as “mere supposition” and substitute a focused historical study with a broad contemporary study of popular opinion is not “more sciency” just because it involves more numbers and data.

2. Deconstructing the Civil Religion is corrosive, even if that Civil Religion is based on bad science.

   1. Religion is a stabilizing force, even if it is based on lies. Attacking the heart of America’s religion (Civil Rights) without providing an alternative (other than libertarian atheism, or Hindu-Judeo-Christian “Trumpism”) is very dangerous.

   2. Deconstructing the Civil Religion leads to political, social, and cultural instability.

   3. For example, the deconstruction of Catholicism led to the 30 Years War.

   4. More broadly, the deconstruction of Christianity led to the Holodomor; a collapse in fertility and birth rates; has reduced social trust and cohesion; has increased loneliness, isolation, and atomization; and has directly led to political polarization.

3. All large, complex societies are forged or held together by cults of humiliation.

   1. The military calls new recruits “maggots.”

   2. Christianity calls people sinners.

   3. Wokism calls people sexist/racist.

   4. Removing the Civil Religion and replacing it with nothing creates a moral vacuum which destabilizes society. Who is the new scapegoat or tribal outgroup by which we define ourselves?

   5. Suggesting we can remove the central pillar of our current civil religion, without replacing it with anything, is like removing the bottom piece on a Jenga tower.

4. Society is divided between aggressive, agentic minorities and a passive, gullible majority.

   1. When there is little conflict between agentic minorities, polarization is low.

   2. When agentic minorities disagree, this results in polarization.

   3. Race realism might have little effect on the broad masses, but would absolutely have a polarizing effect on agentic minorities. Calling this a “supposition” in the face of extensive historical evidence is not a serious response. Pretending that history doesn’t exist, or isn’t relevant to this question, is the hereditarian version of “blank slatism.” Let’s not pretend that history just started in 2024 and we have nothing to learn from the past.

5. Elites have changed since 1924.

   1. Elites in 1924 were more "dangerous," contrarian, independent-minded, wild, and free.

   2. For example, Teddy Roosevelt, an American warrior, led a third party revolt in the early 20th century.

   3. Woodrow Wilson was sympathetic to the KKK, and the KKK included many elites in its ranks. As I mentioned in my previous article, these very same elites, like Justice Hugo Black, switched from the KKK to voting for desegregation. Why?⁵

   4. Elite ideological shift resulted in FDR's victory in 1932, which created a massive federal bureaucracy.

   5. In the wake of FDR, JFK, and Johnson’s titanic reforms, the country was effectively re-founded with an entirely new mythology centered on “Civil Rights.”

   6. Elites today are selected as a result of success within a highly bureaucratic civilization. This is a very different environment of selection from the American frontier of Teddy Roosevelt, which was characterized by explorers, risk-takers, and adventurers.

   7. The result is that elites today are selected for by their adherence to soul-crushing bureaucratic systems, low-risk taking, and conformism.

   8. There are individual exceptions: Elon Musk, Trump, Andrew Tate, and Dan Bilzerian are rich men who are contrarian, disagreeable, and independent minded. However, the exception proves the rule. Musk, Trump, Tate, and Bilzerian have been opposed viciously by the vast majority of their "fellow elites."

   9. Race realism is threatening to bureaucratic elites. To suppose otherwise is to imply that these elites are stupid or “misinformed.” I call this the theory that you can “redpill Bill Gates.” If you show him IQ charts, then he will become based like Elon Musk! I don’t know if that is something that Crémieux thinks is possible, as he stopped responding to me when I asked him to clarify. He is very busy, but I am hopeful he will issue a response.

Now that I have laid out very specific and focused arguments, I will present some additional details and analogies to flesh things out.

3. zionism.

Suppose we conducted a study on Zionism. In this study, we ask a slate of Americans the following questions:

1. Should we have a Jewish president?

2. Should reparations be provided for victims of the Holocaust?

3. Should Jews be allowed to be dual citizens of America and Israel?

4. Should antisemitic speech be illegal?

5. Should the government work with companies that support BDS?

6. Should we limit Muslim immigration to protect Jews?

Then, after asking these questions, we introduced anti-Zionist material to random Americans. This material would attempt to persuade them on the following claims:

1. Israel is an apartheid state.

2. Israel uses genetic testing to determine citizenship.

3. Israel secretly sterilized African Jews.

4. Israel's founders allied with fascists.

5. Israelis believe that Palestinians (and Muslims broadly) are genetically inferior.

6. Ashkenazi Jews (from Europe) see themselves as smarter than Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East).

After exposing random Americans to these claims, the study would then ask them the same questions again: “Should we have a Jewish president?,” etc.

Let's say, in this experiment, that even after being exposed to anti-Zionist material, Americans still largely opposed antisemitism. Let's suppose that hatred of Jews did not increase at all, even after being exposed to anti-Zionist propaganda. Would this prove that anti-Zionism has no link to antisemitism?

No. Even if random Americans did not become more antisemitic in response to anti-Zionist propaganda within a short period of exposure to new information, that does not disprove a potential future relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Antisemitism is an attitude which develops slowly over time, often over generations. To exclude that possibility, and then dismiss the weight of historical evidence as “supposition,” without bothering to engage in historical counter-arguments, would be negligent.

4. the majoritarian fallacy.

Crémieux is engaged in the "majoritarian fallacy." He states that, because the vast majority of people are unaffected by new information that contradicts their worldview, this proves such information cannot be inherently dangerous, or socially corrosive. As I stated in my previous article, this would be equivalent to telling a Christian in 1920 that Jesus wasn't God, and expecting him to change all his moral positions. This isn't how the majority of people work.

The majority of people do not attempt to justify their moral viewpoints using logical facts. The majority simply accept their moral viewpoints as "facts" from on high. A Christian who grew up in a homophobic culture does not immediately adopt LGBTQ friendly attitudes after becoming an atheist, even if it would be logical to do so.

I applaud Crémieux for his study. I think it is useful, because it proves the "minoritarian hypothesis," that most people are like dumb sheep. People believe all sorts of crazy things, some of which may be true, and others are not. People believe in the flat earth; they believe the moon landing is a hoax; they believe Bush did 9/11. But none of these beliefs in themselves are as dangerous or socially corrosive as race realism.⁶

Beliefs become dangerous or socially corrosive when they motivate a moral shift among a small, dedicated minority. This is what differentiates "safe" conspiracy theories from race realism. While Alex Jones will claim that the elites are pedophiles, this is not as dangerous as if he had Jared Taylor on to have a civil and sane discussion of race realism. Joe Rogan will talk to and praise Alex Jones, but he will not talk to Jared Taylor. This is because Rogan understands (unlike Crémieux) that race realism is socially dangerous. I don’t think Rogan has a higher IQ than Crémieux, but he might be more educated in the field of history.

5. the history of Race Realism

America is a deeply racist country. It is not an exaggeration to state that America is the most racist country to ever exist in history. Conservatives will take issue with this statement, and point out that Nazi Germany was also racist, or that the British Empire was also racist, or France, or Italy, Portugal, Spain, etc. While it is true that all of these countries have their own dark histories with race and white supremacy, America is the only country to have ever been founded on racism.

Most European nation-states were founded on linguistic opposition to other white people, or for religious reasons. "I'm not an Englishman, I'm French! We’re not Catholics, we’re Dutch Calvinists!" The emergence of European nation-states and identities came about because of linguistic, cultural, or religious distinctions between other white people, not with other races.

A counter-argument would be that Spanish identity was founded in opposition to the Moors, who were racial aliens. Alternatively, many of the states of the Balkans were founded in opposition to domination by the Turks. However, in all of these cases, the opposition to the Moors or Turks was not based on the argument that they had inferior skin colors, or came from an inferior continent, but that they had an inferior religion (Islam, rather than Christianity).

America is the only state in history to have been founded by slave owners who believed they were surrounded by a continent of racial inferiors. America was not founded in 1776, but in 1619. Liberals are entirely correct in this regard, and denialist conservative arguments on this point are ironically derived from left-wing radicals like Emma Lazarus.

The founders wanted “wretched refuse”? Really?

All of the founding fathers were white supremacists. Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist. Conservative revisionism since the 1960s has sought to portray the founding fathers as egalitarian, race-blind meritocrats. This propaganda was originated by communists who claimed that America was founded on the principle of giving a homeland to the "huddled masses" of the world, of all races. By the 1960s, what was once a communist talking point became a conservative one. If Dinesh D'Souza was transported back 100 years, people would assume he was a communist.

I would like to hear Crémieux’s theory of why elites stopped being race realists and embraced racial communism. I’m not sure he believes that’s an important thing to figure out, but I am open to being surprised.

6. explaining elite ideological shift:

With the collapse of Christianity at an elite level, America's elites needed a new religion to believe in. Communism, as a secular form of Christianity, seemed like it was more "scientific," while maintaining the moral egalitarianism of the Christian religion. The Cold War was fought on three fronts: Soviet Communism, Maoist Communism, and American communism. Each of these three forms of communism opposed each other, and eventually the Maoists and Americans united to take down the Soviets.

This theory requires that we accept the principle of minoritarianism: even though the vast majority of Americans in 1950 were Christians, that is irrelevant to the process of elite ideological shift. Elite ideological shift was driven by the fact that elites in the first half of the 20th century openly embraced Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Mark Twain, Poe, Viking revivalism, Voltaire, the Enlightenment, Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler, Bruno Bauer, and many other critics of Christianity.⁷

In Europe, military elites chose a different path. General Ludendorff, for example, conceived of a form of "spiritual nationalism" as an augmentation to (and eventual replacement for) the Christian religion. This position was embraced by Mussolini (a former socialist) and Hitler. In Britain, Oswald Moseley saw "spiritual nationalism" as an addition to Christianity, which could help bridge the gap between Nietzsche and Christ.

There are advocates of fascism today who will claim that Hitler or Mussolini were Catholics, because these men made cynical public statements seeking the support of the church. However, it is easiest to know a man’s true intentions by examining his closest allies. The inner circles of Mussolini and Hitler were fierce opponents to Christianity. Giovanni Gentile, the leading philosopher of fascism, was a Nietzschean atheist. Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, and Bormann all detested the Roman church and sought its abolition, so that a racial religion could reign supreme.

Americans like FDR, and Europeans like Hitler, were both grappling with the same question: what religion will repair the death of God? FDR was sympathetic to communism, and Hitler preferred racialism. Race is not a question that can be ignored, either in America or Europe. But this is even more true in the case of America, where Civil Rights has a much more pervasive and powerful presence than it does in Europe.⁸

7. the myth of the founding.

America was not founded in 1776. The American Revolution was not the event of ethnogenesis, but of political independence. Saying that "American identity was founded in 1776" is like saying that "Indian identity was founded in 1946." No; political independence is not equivalent with cultural formation and ethnogenesis. The true American founding was built on the enslavement of blacks and genocidal wars against the Indians, such as King Philip's War. It was the deadliest war in American history.

We have all heard of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, and the men of the frontier. What were they famous for? "Exploring the frontier." What did that mean, in practical terms? Race war.

A statue of Simon Kenton, the frontiersman who organized a riot to free Wetzel.

Consider Lewis "Death Wind" Wetzel. When he was imprisoned for killing an Indian chief, an ally of the American government, a mob of 200 supporters surrounded the prison, threatening to riot unless he was released. In the face of a tremendous and fanatical frenzy, the government relented and released the murderer. What was his motivation for the crime? It was not religion, or culture. He was not attempting to civilize the natives, or to educate them, or teach them the ways of Christ. His motivation was racial revenge, and his intention was total genocide. His father and brother were killed by Indians. He dedicated his life to exterminating them. He was, for over a century, the archetype of an American hero.

The Searchers (1956), pinnacle of the western genre, mythologizing racial conflict.

8. an aside on libertarian atheists.

I am not sure where Crémieux is coming from when he declares that race realism is not “socially corrosive.” He might be a Catholic monarchist or Deleuzian post-liberal. This section, therefore, is not so relevant to him personally, but to his audience and the type of people who seem to be attracted to his line of argument.

I believe that Crémieux’s audience leans toward libertarian atheism.⁹ Even if his audience is not 100% libertarian or 100% atheist, I think the members of his audience (like Elon Musk) have significant personality traits which cluster strongly with libertarian atheists:

1. Libertarian atheists are high in personality traits like individualism, disagreeableness, and openness, and tend to have higher IQs than the average American.

2. Libertarian atheists tend to have lower levels of intuitive empathy.¹⁰ For example, they are comfortable with protecting property rights, even if that means poor people might go hungry.

3. As a result of their unusual personality traits and low intuitive empathy,¹¹ they have less “common sense” when it comes to the psychology of the average American. Libertarian atheists have a bias toward projecting their openness, individualism, and intelligence onto others.

4. This projection distorts their model of sociology, especially as it relates to moral reasoning.

Libertarian atheists might see a study in support of the idea that HBD isn’t “mean,” and conclude that it’s also not “socially corrosive.” They might not realize that most people do not base their morality on studies, data, or logical arguments. If the premise of a study is, “we showed people the data and they didn’t change their morals immediately. Therefore, these ideas have no moral consequences!”

But this isn’t true. The majority conform their morality to the reality of social status hierarchies, not to abstract thought experiments. Most people can’t even imagine what it would be like to be racist. If you asked them to imagine what it would be like to be racist, they would reply, “but I’m not racist.” The result is that the collective effects of race realism cannot be derived from the self-reported immediate effects on individuals. People with high IQ, high in individualism, disagreeableness, and openness, might have a difficult time understanding this fact on a “gut” level.

I don’t know if Crémieux is a libertarian atheist with high levels of individualism, disagreeableness, and openness. But I can say that I have these personality traits, and it was these personality traits that attracted me to anarcho-capitalism at the age of 14.

I truly believed at the time that if people were simply educated on the efficiency of the free market, we could live in harmony in peace. I believed that religions were outmoded superstitions that only caused war and discrimination. I believe we had evolved past the need for primitive religion, and the pleasures of modern capitalism and the NAP were enough to provide society with the cohesion to survive.

I still believe that most religious people are superstitious and dogmatic, and I still believe that economic collectivism and government bureaucracy is inefficient at best. However, I also realize that people are dumb, and they need mythological tribalism in order to cooperate at the scale of large societies. Race realism has deep religious and tribalistic implications, even if we wish that it didn't.

Can we have a society that is simultaneously race realist but also doesn't really care about race? One example of a functional and potentially "race realist" society would be Singapore. But Singapore is a majority Asian country, not a western one. My comments about the danger of race realism are directed toward western societies, not toward Asian ones. Asian culture and history are distinct, and the arguments I am making are contingent on specific historical facts.

9. moral conformity and expected outcome.

2024 is not year zero. We cannot destroy the Civil Religion and expect that people will go on living normally. But what about Crémieux’s study? Doesn't it demonstrate that people won't act any different once exposed to race realism? Let me make an analogy to polls and expected outcomes.

From the New York Times:

In the tight 2004 campaign, the polls that asked Americans which candidate they supported — all the way up to the exit polls — told a confusing story about whether President George W. Bush or Senator John Kerry would win.

But another kind of polling question, which received far less attention, produced a clearer result: Regardless of whom they supported, which candidate did people expect to win? Americans consistently, and correctly, said that they thought Mr. Bush would.

A version of that question has produced similarly telling results throughout much of modern polling history, according to a new academic study. Over the last 60 years, poll questions that asked people which candidate they expected to win have been a better guide to the outcome of the presidential race than questions asking people whom they planned to vote for.

The study in question is by Rothschild and Wolfers, Forecasting Elections: Voter Intentions versus Expectations (2013).¹²

The question, “who will you vote for?” is less predictive than "who do you think will win?" Why is that? Why is it that people's stated voting intention was less predictive than their expectation? It’s an interesting question. But instead of taking the time to answer it, since this article is already too long and meandering, I will take the conclusion as a given fact for the moment.

Consider this question: "if race realism were true, would you engage in more racial conflict?" Most people would answer no. However, change the question to be predictive: "If race realism became popular, would more people engage in racial conflict?" Most people would answer yes, according to Crémieux’s own study. Therefore, from Rothschild and Wolfers, this is evidence that actually, yes, race realism would have a socially corrosive effect, even if individuals protest that they would be an exception to the general trend of social corrosion.

One explanation for this is moral conformity theory. Imagine, for example, that you live in a highly religious society where divorce is taboo. You are presented with some information which contradicts or undermines your religion (the scriptures are forgeries; there's no archaeological evidence, your prophet was a pervert, etc). Then, you are asked, "given this evidence that your religion is wrong, will you get a divorce?" Most people, even when confronted with facts that undermine their religion, will still conform to the morals of the popular religion of their society.

This is a very cynical take on morality. This means that most people's morality is largely determined by their desire to socially conform. In other words, people are only moral (and they only feel guilty) when they are afraid that someone might see them, catch them, or that the majority of people would disapprove.¹³ This is because the average person (except for sociopaths) are highly motivated by a desire to conform and seek the approval of the majority. A small minority of people are contrarians, and go against the grain, but this is not normal.

Let's return to the question: "if your religion was false, would you get a divorce?" The answer remains no, but let's change it to a predictive question. "If people stopped believing in your religion, do you think divorce would increase?" The answer changes, and more accurately reflects the actual observed outcome. In fact, undermining a religion does change people's behavior, even if individually, they claim it would not.

The explanation for this is that most people's model of their own moral behavior is inaccurate. If you ask a white person, "why are you against racism?," they will give you a boilerplate, pre-programmed response: "everyone should be treated fairly, it hurts minorities, it's anti-American." In actuality, if most people were honest, they would say, "I am against racism because that is socially normal, and I have a desire to conform."

If moral conformity theory is true, then we should expect that societies reach "tipping points" where the effect of conformity becomes weak, and all of a sudden, masses of people convert from one religion to another. One example would be the massive religious shift which occurred after the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.

Another example: in the 1950s, barely anyone was an atheist, and atheism was associated with evil people. But in the last 20 years, there has been an extraordinary growth in both the "unchurched," and simultaneously an explosion of "woke" beliefs on gender, sexuality, and race. These phenomena are correlated. As the pressure to conform to Christian norms grew weaker in the 1990s, people experienced mass conversions away from Christianity and toward political forms of religiousness, like wokism.

We should expect the same thing to occur as a result of race realism. Today, racism is associated with evil, similar to how atheism was perceived in the 1950s. But imagine that the taboo around race realism became weak. The result would be mass conversions away from egalitarianism. What would the result be?

10. the Dawkins to woke pipeline.

When Dawkins promoted atheism, he had no clue that it would result in wokism. He thought that by removing Christianity from society, people would simply persist in their current worldview: men were men, women were women, western culture is good, white people are just like everyone else. He was in for a rude surprise when atheism led directly to transgenderism, anti-white hatred, and the worship of oppressed cultures. If we remove racial egalitarianism from America, would everything proceed smoothly? A study of the opinions of average Americans is not convincing evidence.

11. black crime and behavioral conformity.

Or take another example which might appeal more to Crémieux: black crime. Imagine a lonely black person who lives in an all-white neighborhood in rural Wyoming. Everyone around them is white. Now, imagine 100 such towns with only 1 black person, and the rest are white. What would the black crime rate be? It might be slightly higher than the white crime rate, but it is obvious (if you have ever driven through Ferguson, Memphis, or Baltimore) that when blacks are concentrated together, their crime rate increases.

This is an example of behavioral conformity. When individuals are isolated, they tend to conform to the group mean. When individuals are concentrated together, they also conform to the group mean. This is why the per capita black crime rate is highest in the areas with the highest percentage of blacks. [Note that I am differentiating between total and per capita.]

Similarly, if you take a person into an office building or controlled study, show them some IQ charts, and make them quietly fill out some paperwork, they are going to act very differently from when you take a person and you throw them into an angry mob. Human beings are social creatures. We are constantly asking ourselves, "how will this be perceived? What will people think of me? What does this say about my social status? Is this left-coded or right-coded? What would Jesus do? What would my friends think?" In other words, people are status-obsessed conformists.¹⁴

When race realism is low-status, and you introduce it to an individual, the responses that you get about the political implications of those beliefs will change drastically once race realism becomes less low-status. Asking people to imagine how they would feel if racism was actually high-status is like asking them how they would feel if they didn’t eat breakfast this morning.

Maybe the average American is slightly more advanced than this, but not by much.

Race realism doesn't necessarily need to become high-status to have this group-level effect, just less low-status. Because morality is determined by social conformism, people's moral opinions will change once a taboo subject becomes acceptable. You simply cannot expect the average person to hypothetically game out an alternative world and predict their future moral positions in that hypothetical world. This is putting far too much faith in the ability of regular people to engage in moral speculation, which is as much a subject of philosophy as it is of psychology.

As elites normalized racial equality from the top down, this eventually became the default moral position of the majority of Americans. This also occurred in relation to Hollywood and religion, homosexuality, divorce, polyamory, and marijuana use. Why wouldn't race realism also eventually produce moral, social, and cultural changes, or corrosions, downstream from its normalization? You could argue that these wouldn’t be corrosions, because they would be good, or these corrosions would be justified by a greater good, but at least acknowledge that some change would occur in America’s moral fabric.¹⁵

12. This already happened.

We already had a massive shift in this country on the topic of race. We changed from a country that was racist to one that was anti-racist. That process did not go smoothly.

Desegregating the country was a military operation. It required guns filled with live ammo pointed at American citizens. It required shiny, pointy bayonets, poised to stab teenaged protestors. It required bully clubs, beatings, arrests, imprisonment in cages, stormtroopers in uniforms and helmets, frog-marching down the street — all just to get black girls into white middle schools!

It resulted in political chaos. People were pissed. In a number of extremely embarrassing third party revolts, millions of Americans chose to "throw their vote away" in a big middle finger to the establishment rather than vote for Republicans or Democrats. Keep in mind this was in the middle of the Cold War, when America was touting itself as the champion of “democracy.” Forcing people at gunpoint to integrate was not exactly democratic, and the Wallace campaign made that fact readily apparent. The Soviet Union had a propaganda field day with this.

The protest vote against desegregation was the most powerful and effective third party movement in American history after Teddy Roosevelt. Desegregating the country was dangerous. It threatened both physical tranquility and political stability. It required the largest military occupation of American territory in American history outside of the Civil War (only comparable with Biden’s inaugural occupation of DC in response to January 6th). It was not normal or easy. It was very socially corrosive.

Re-introducing race realism to America would be similarly disruptive. Just as Richard Dawkins was unable to predict how atheism would turn woke, I cannot predict with certainty how race realism would change the country. It might even benefit black people. But it would not be safe, easy, or casual. Just as anti-Zionism leads to antisemitism, race realism would be an extremely destabilizing force for American elites.

When I was a teenage anarcho-capitalist, I confronted a PhD in psychology directly about race realism. He was well established and cited in his field. I thought I was going to redpill him. Instead, he calmly explained that he was already aware of the relevant research, and he was concerned about the socially corrosive effects of popularizing it. Crémieux’s study would not have impressed him, unfortunately. This isn’t because he wasn’t very smart, or because he was cowardly, but because the methodology employed ignores the weight of historical evidence.

You cannot disprove the history of race with opinion polling, which is subject to both external deception (distorting one’s opinion to appear moral) and internal self-deception or ignorance (individuals are unable to predict how their opinions might change over time in a new social context). If the average person was able to predict the effect of a new idea on society, there would be no need for any sociological theories, because we could just run an opinion poll and people would tell us what would happen.

13. implications for the future.

Now that I have fully addressed Crémieux, I would like to turn my attention away from him and address race realists more broadly. I will make some remarks which may not apply to him, but which reflect broader trends that I have observed.

If race realists want to convince American elites to change their mind, they should consider my arguments carefully and give an honest response, rather than dismissing and ignoring them. My Substack isn’t read by Elon Musk, but my skepticism of the effects of race realism is shared by a large majority of PhDs and academics in the social sciences and humanities. I’m not your audience; they are.

If you’re afraid to respond to me, and pretend the history I cite is irrelevant, non-sequitur, or not worth addressing, you will never win. It makes you appear like you are running and hiding from inconvenient facts (as you accuse your opposition of doing).

With a few exceptions, I do not believe most public race realists (outside of white nationalists) are willing to have an honest conversation about American history and the importance of racial identity in the American mythos. This is because for a large number of them, history is inconvenient. They wish it didn’t exist.¹⁶ In that sense, they are true liberals, in the vein of Fukuyama. Yes: race realists are the real liberals! Now you can lose with pride!

Perhaps with a few billionaires, it is possible to tip the election in Trump’s favor, and then … ??? … Profit! Race realism becomes common knowledge, and nothing bad, scary, or “socially corrosive” happens as a result. And we all lived happily ever after!

Trump fans bow their heads to ecumenical deism.

My prediction, however, is that Trump is not pushing the country toward race realism. Actually, his crime bill reversed the Republican position, making the argument that “Democrats are the real racists” for successfully fighting black crime in the 1990s. His immigration plan is to give every Indian and Chinese student with a 2-year degree a free green card. His Vice President is in an interracial, intercultural, and interfaith relationship. Are his kids white, are they Catholic, are they Hindu? Instead of addressing these questions, he has attacked anyone who questions his wife’s “Americanness” as a racist. He has invited a Sikh to give a prayer at the RNC, and the crowd bowed their heads to Waheguru.

None of this is a criticism of Trump or Vance, but evidence that America is moving further away from race realism, not toward it. Musk is clearly aware of, supporting, and following both Trump and Crémieux. It seems that Musk acknowledges that race realism isn’t necessary to include in the platform, as other issues take priority. With lukewarm allies like that, it seems that it doesn’t have a future in the popular consciousness.

Some race realists claim that Trump’s liberal universalism is compatible with their views on biology. While that might be a tenable position for a quirky individual to hold, historically, that is not how race realism has ever affected civilization at a collective level.

Even if it is possible to reconcile race realism with liberal universalism, what would be the point, except to win points in a trivia contest? The moral, political, economic, and social outcomes would be exactly the same.

For race realists, there are two honest positions:

1. Race realism will never become popular or socially acceptable without a “Gobineau solution,” and you are not prepared for that.

2. Race realism is better off remaining an esoteric fact discussed in obscure terms by geneticists and psychometricians. There is nothing to be gained by trying to popularize it on social media or make it “mainstream.” It won’t work, and if it did, the cost would be greater than the benefit. Claims that we can “mainstream race realism with no social corrosion” can be classified as time-wasting, self-deception, grifting, or LARPing.

My position on this matter is fairly simple. I believe that the key pet issues of most race realists, like black crime or black educational achievement, are relatively irrelevant¹⁷ in their budgetary impact and civilizational significance.¹⁸ Clinton was an extremely effective president in defeating black crime, and he didn’t need race realism to do that.

But the preeminent crisis of civilization isn’t found in black literacy or violence, but in a struggle for the soul of America. Who are we? What exactly are these “our values” I keep hearing about? What is democracy? Do we even care about democracy, or should unelected scientists run everything? Should we abandon our European heritage in favor of millions of Chinese and Indian immigrants, just because they have high IQ? What is our religion? What binds us together?

These are complicated questions with no easy answers. Whichever way we go, there will be some degree of danger and yes, social corrosion. Being honest about that is a characteristic of a serious political movement. Being unwilling to accept the danger inherent in political shifts betrays a lack of seriousness. Without that seriousness, politics devolves into astrology for incels. It’s a fun hobby, sure, but nothing more.

That’s why I am hesitant to “pull out the Jenga block” on Civil Rights and turn the clock back to 1953. The biggest “race realist” victory in recent years has been affirmative action, which has only further worsened America’s identity crisis by granting extra seats to Asian students. Some race realists seem to think that you can hold an empire together with high IQ and “the economy.” The Bronze Age Collapse would like to have a word with you.

Maybe I’m wrong; maybe it would work. Perhaps a global superpower with hundreds of millions of citizens can be run in the same style as a tiny city-state like Singapore, which is effectively a colony of the FPDA. Or maybe if Asians take over, they will have no cultural or historical hang-ups about popularizing race realism, and the question will be solved as a result of mass Chinese and Indian immigration seizing control of our tech companies and presidency.

But either way, the only way to survive a rough transition like that is to be prepared for the instability that would accompany it. Denying that race realism presents a social challenge would not ease that transition, but would only make things worse. Successful revolutionaries, whether on the extreme left or right, were at least honest in their willingness, hardened in their nerves of steel,¹⁹ and ready to confront and overcome violent opposition by any means necessary. The early Christians were willing to die for their beliefs. Such fanatical idealism is necessary if you truly want to deconstruct the Civil Religion. Anything less is a still-born idea.

This ironic attitude toward race realism and its consequences (“it wouldn’t change anything! No conflict at all!”) reminds me of January 6th. Conservatives simultaneously claimed that “Qanon predicted this, the storm is coming, we’re arresting all the traitors,” but also that “it’s just a peaceful protest! We’re harmless! It’s all just jokes and memes!” Revolutionaries who pretend to be house cats won’t trick anyone into thinking you’re harmless. You’ll just attract unserious people who will dilute your vanguard, and you will lack the determination to achieve victory.

I will make a final comment that, when faced with the collapse of Rome, Marcus Aurelius retreated into the “secular” and “objective” contemplation of Stoicism. He was not a forward-looking Christian fanatic, or a backward looking pagan reactionary, but a very lame “third thing,” a conservative, yelling “stop!” at history. Which path will race realists choose? For my part, I’m looking forward.

Thanks for reading.

I apologize that this was 8,000 words. No one wants to read all that. Seriously: no one has time for all that. Hopefully the tl;dr was enough to get the point across. I’m sure I made some errors or typos; feel free to correct me and I will edit where appropriate. If you did get this far, I thank you for your service. You are a champion. You are a survivor.

I am not popular enough to be sponsored by companies advertising their products. Instead, I have you, my small base of loyal readers. If you liked this piece, and would like to see more, please re-stack, comment, and like. Just like all other social media, Substack has its own “algorithm,” and the more you “engage,” the more visibility this post receives. Thank you for all that you do. -DL

1. For those of you who missed it, here’s my original article:

2. “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms.

3. I’m not saying that Schopenhauer was a secret Nazi, and this esoteric fact was later revealed by Hitler. I’m saying that Hitler could not have existed without Schopenhauer. We cannot always predict how a philosophy or idea will be perverted or misused by demagogues, but unfortunately, this does not mean there is no relation of causality between the two.

4. Ach, Gott mit uns, jawohl?

5. I will explain this in the article, sub-chapter 6, “explaining elite ideological shift.”

6. This is a relative statement with regard to race realism. Obviously Qanon is a socially corrosive force, but in relation to race realism, it is much less disruptive to the main pillars of the civil religion.

7. It is worth mentioning that Freemasonry was a transition between theistic elites and atheist elites. Freemasonry allowed for “non-dogmatic” forms of theism.

8. In 2010, German banker Thilo Sarazzin explained that "All Jews share a certain gene; Basques have certain genes that differentiate them from others.” His book became a best-seller, and he won the support of 18% of the German public. Not a winning formula, but much better than the American scene.

9. I believe that my audience leans toward financially successful, generous, and charitable personality types. But in case your means are limited, I would like to offer you the “good reader” discount for taking the time to comb though these footnotes. I know it’s a lot to read, and I appreciate your careful attention.

10. By intuitive empathy, I mean “gut level empathy,” like a sick feeling in your stomach when you see someone who is suffering. This isn’t to say that libertarians aren’t “logically empathetic” or moral utilitarians. They generally believe libertarianism will result in less human suffering overall.

11. I think openness, individualism, and disagreeableness used to be much higher in America’s past. In this sense, the libertarian atheist personality type harkens back to an archaic form of American, the kind that founded the country and made it what it is today. Although I sound critical, I have deep respect for these people.

12. https://users.nber.org/~jwolfers/Papers/VoterExpectations.pdf

13. Freud’s theory of the superego is relevant here, but I must only whisper his name in the footnotes, as otherwise, social scientists everywhere will start screaming, “empiricism?? testable results?? Freud was debunked!! CBT is the only valid therapy!!”

14. Not to hate on the default human, but they are also narcissists, as sebjenseb notes:

Narcissism and selfishness are the human default

15. The semantics of the term corrosion here are somewhat subjective. One man’s improvement is another man’s corrosion. I am specifically referring to the original questions in Crémieux's study: "dislikes blacks, helps blacks, interracial marriage, spending, black president, integration." He argues there would be no change in public opinion on these questions with the popularization of race realism. This is what he defines as “no corrosion,” and that is the definition I am ultimately working with.

16. At the risk of over-psychoanalyzing my opponents: if you look into the personal background of the leading libertarian atheist race realists, it is easy to understand why they don’t fit into the historical American nation. Many of them are anonymous, so this isn’t always possible to verify, but “high IQ nationalism” is a form of wishful thinking. In practice, empires require some form of ethnic or religious cohesion to remain solvent. High IQ alone is not enough. As an unchurched ethnic mix myself, I empathize with their wishful thinking, but it is ultimately motivated reasoning. If we’re committed to the truth at any cost, this is a concession we must make.

17. The biggest budgetary issue is the international value of the USD, which largely depends on geopolitical events, not black graduation rates. Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan are much more important to the overall economy than affirmative action.

18. The impact of crime is huge on the budget, but if black crime is biological, race realism isn’t going to solve it any better than Clinton did as a Democrat in the 1990s. Race realism is neither a necessary nor sufficient precondition for being tough on crime.

19. This is where Stalin gets his name, man of steel.