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NancyB's avatar

Memory loss and lack of courage, yes. But I'm also distressed by what seems to be the seductive power of fascistic thinking on a lot of educated men who used to tout themselves as "classic liberals."

As if the script in their heads is: "If you lefties won't let us tell the truth about the race and IQ and the superior mathematical capabilities of men, then your stupidity is too dangerous to entrust with shared governance, and all the gains that the smartest humans have achieved are at risk like never before. In a state of emergency, domination is right and necessary."

These aren't the disenfranchised working classes or petite bourgeoisie; they are the wealthy and highly educated men and some women who seem to have suffered some kind of psychic wound that not enough people are affirming them as "thought leaders" or something.

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Robert Geroux's avatar

Who was BAP's advisor at Yale?

Also, reading this reminds me that I keep meaning to go back to a reading of Jakob Uexküll, who despite some interesting friendships (with Benjamin e.g.) had some (as the kids say) "problematic" ideas on race. People know his book Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, but they don't often know that he also wrote a book called Staatsbiologie and was also friends with Houston Chamberlain.

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