De Human Diversity Foundation (HDF) (recent herdoopt tot Polygenic Scores) is een voortzetting van de Pioneer Fund, een organisatie die in 1937 opgericht werd in de Verenigde Staten. Eén van de eerste activiteiten van Pioneer Fund bestond uit het verspreiden van de Nazi-propagandafilm Erbrank. Ook na WO II bleven zij hun activiteiten verderzetten. Deze bestonden vooral uit het financieren van onderzoek naar eugenetica en de inferioriteit van niet-witte “rassen”. De organisatie presenteerde zichzelf als een “liefdadigheidsinstelling” met als centrale activiteit “rasverbetering (racial betterment)”. Zij zaten ook mee achter de oprichting van het pseudo-wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Mankind Quarterly, waarin veel eugenetische en racistische IQ-literatuur een plaats vindt. Eén van de leden van Pioneer Fund was Richard Lynn, wiens werk over ras, IQ en “dysgenics” in wetenschappelijke kringen verworpen wordt, maar die nog steeds een van de referentiepunten is voor wit-supremacisten en zogenaamde “rassenrealisten” die over de vermeende connectie tussen IQ en ras schrijven.
In 2022 wordt Pioneer Fund omgevormd tot Human Diversity Foundation. Aan het roer staat Emil Kirkegaard, een expliciet racist en extreem-rechts activist. Kirkegaard had nauwe banden met Richard Lynn en was ook betrokken bij Mankind Quarterly. Dat tijdschrift zou nu in handen zijn van HDF. Onderzoeksjournaliste Ashley Smart gaf volgende beschrijving van de figuur Kirkegaard:
“Kirkegaard is perhaps best known for his provocative writing on genetics and race. On his blog, he has asserted that Black Americans are less honest and less intelligent than their White counterparts; that affirmative action produces Black and Hispanic doctors who kill people with their incompetence; that Africans are excessively predisposed to violence; and that the hereditarian hypothesis of intelligence — roughly, the idea that races or ancestry groups differ in average intelligence in ways that are substantially attributable to genetics — is “almost certainly true.”
De anti-racistische journalistieke organisatie Hope not Hate slaagde erin om te infiltreren in HDF. Een journalist kreeg toegang tot besloten bijeenkomsten en maakte met een verborgen camera beelden van de gesprekken. In verschillende bijeenkomsten werd de werking en organisatie-structuur van HDF uiteengezet aan de journalist. HDF bestaat uit twee delen: een “onderzoekstak” en een “media-arm”.
De media-arm bestaat uit het online magazine Aporia en “The Jolly Heretic”, het YouTube-kanaal van Edward Dutton. Emil Kirkegaard is het hoofd van de onderzoeks-arm. Tijdens online meetings in de herfst van 2023 gaf Kirkegaard volgende uitleg:
In an online presentation to our undercover reporter in October 2023, Matthew Frost claimed that HDF has two arms. Emil Kirkegaard runs the “underground research arm”, a continuation of Pioneer’s main activity. It is a group of academics and independent researchers that convene weekly for a video call to coordinate ideas and share access to genetic data sets. The team aims to slip papers into academic journals with higher impact and circulation than their own publications. If unable to do so, HDF will publish the group’s papers in their print journal Mankind Quarterly or the OpenPsych website, which has been described as “a pseudoscience factory-farm”. Kirkegaard is associated with the management of both titles. During a research team meeting in November 2023, Kirkegaard told his researchers that an article on “international dysgenics” was unlikely to get accepted by a proper academic imprint unless their colleague Bryan Pesta, a former scholar at Cleveland State University, could “make the words soft and sweet”. HDF leaders discussed a “pipeline” whereby the underground research team would publish scientific racism articles that would then be promoted by HDF’s public operations like Aporia or Edward Dutton’s YouTube channel, “The Jolly Heretic”. (Bron)
Tijdens wekelijkse meetings worden “onderzoeksprojecten” verdeeld en plannen gesmeed om de papers binnen te loodsen bij gerespecteerde journals.
Aporia, het online magazine van HDF, begon in maart 2023. Intern werd de werking van het magazine als volgt voorgesteld aan de undercover journalist:
Central to the website is the concept that fixed racial groups exist, and that there is a discernible hierarchy between them based on genetic factors. It also said it would promote conversations around “The Darwinian Revolution”, the idea that humanity is not a single race but has meaningful biological differences that should inform social policy. “The point,” explained Frost to our reporter, “would be to take what they’re doing and try to tie it a bit more, where possible, to policy.” (Bron)
De toon van de website was initieel relatief gematigd, maar dit veranderde nadat Bo Winegard het roer overnam. Net zoals bij de onderzoeks-arm is het doel van de media-arm om geloofwaardigheid te verwerven door middel van associatie met instituten en figuren:
At the time our undercover reporter first met Matthew Frost, Aporia shied away from antisemitism, conspiracism and vulgar expressions of racism. Instead, the publication adopted a strategy perfected by the scientific racism movement. It hid its racist ideas under layers of statistics and jargon to give the semblance of academic rigour — but were in fact misinterpretations, misrepresentations, and manipulations of science.
Frost explained to our undercover reporter in September 2023 that he would play “publication tricks”, such as his plan to host Jared Taylor to “give the fluent, well-thought-out version of his ideology”, but doing so in a debate-style format “so it doesn’t look too one-sided”. In recent months, however, Aporia has dropped its pretence of balance, as evidenced by the interview that eventually took place with Taylor in May 2024. Taylor’s interlocutor was Bo Winegard, Aporia’s new executive editor, who, on the website, has called upon his readers to “embrace” white identity politics and believes racial stereotypes are “reasonably accurate”. (Bron)
Op hun website beschrijft Aporia één van hun doelen als volgt: “One of our tag lines is Widening the window — referring to the Overton window of acceptable political discourse.” In één van zijn bijdragen (“Whiteness and the West”, 19-06-2024) schrijft Winegard:
White identity is not sinister, and it is not some lamentable surrender to primitivism to be moderated by wisdom and tolerance. No. It is a reasonable, even laudable response to pervasive anti-white rhetoric and policy. Whites can and should organize to oppose the spread of an ideology that denigrates them while promoting their replacement in countries their ancestors built. If they do not, they will continue to watch their own history trampled underfoot like rubble in the path of a marauding army. Worse, they will be forced to celebrate while it happens.
Cooperation is commendable; but cooperating with a defector is not. Since progressive elites will not relinquish their anti-white antipathy, their anti-white rhetoric, their anti-white conspiracies, whites should stop playing the losing move in the game. White identity is necessary to fight against anti-white identity. Pleas for fairness are not enough. Game theory 101. As Sean Connery’s character Jim Malone put it in The Untouchables, “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
Ook op de site te vinden is een bijdrage van wit-supremacist Jared Taylor (America Must Have Race Realism: Without it, legitimate white interests will be undermined and racial tensions will roil the country, 12-09-2024). Taylor is de oprichter van de beruchte The New Century Foundation, dat achter het magazine American Renaissancezit. Dat magazine geeft geregeld een platform aan wit-nationalisten. Aporia zelf heeft een beleid om de meest extreme opvatting te verstoppen achter een paywall of op het einde van lange posts:
“In conversation with our undercover reporter, Matthew Frost said that he posted a long thread on X/Twitter highlighting the differences between the Israeli and Palestinian populations, at the end of which he wrote that the average Palestinian IQ is approximately 85, close to the borderline of mental disability. “I did that deliberately,” confessed Frost. He wanted his audience to understand that the reason accounting for Israeli-Palestinian differences was based in intelligence and genetics. “Palestinians are different,” he said. “They can’t be reasoned with, you can’t educate them.”(Bron)
Ook het verspreiden van de eigen opvatten in de vorm van een “neutraal debat” is een techniek die gehanteerd wordt:
“Frost explained to our undercover reporter in September 2023 that he would play “publication tricks”, such as his plan to host Jared Taylor to “give the fluent, well-thought-out version of his ideology”, but doing so in a debate-style format “so it doesn’t look too one-sided”.” (Bron)
Terugkerende thema’s op Aporia zijn de erfelijkheid van IQ, “rasverschillen” qua IQ, dys -en eugenetica, demografie, dalende vruchtbaarheidscijfers en pseudowetenschappelijke speculaties over virussen die homoseksualiteit veroorzaken.
Bronnen en verdere literatuur:
https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/history-pioneer-fund
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/richard-lynn
https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc
https://hopenothate.org.uk/case-files-edward-dutton
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/american-renaissance
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast