Toby Young has been mired in controversy this year, with the latest revelation being that he attended the London Conference on Intelligence, where several pseudoscientific arguments on the superiority of white and male genetics have been made over recent years.
I’ve decided to discover a memo written while constructing a speech delivered to the LCI. It might be real for all you know.
Lynne,
I’m sending you a draft copy of the speech I’m going to give to the secret eugenics conference, just to check on the scientific accuracy of my speech. [I’ll see what I can do. Though I’m not keen on the phrase ‘secret eugenics conference’.]
Welcome ladies and gentleman. And welcome also to the not so gentle men, such as the the guy in the third row with the swastika tattoo on his forehead. (Wait a moment for people to turn around.) I’m joking of course, there are no members of the working class here.
I’m here to talk to you today about eugenics, an area of science that has a negative reputation as the result of some misapplications in the 1930s and 40s. Because of these…unfortunate uses of eugenics – the whole genocide thing – many people reject the idea entirely out of hand. I personally have been no-platformed by Teach First, who deleted my blog on eugenics. [That’s not what no-platforming means. I’ve been rejected by many journals, you don’t have a right to be paid for your words in whatever publication you want.]
This conference has a long legacy of brave speakers, willing to challenge taboos. One of my predecessors at this podium, Emil Kirkegaard, argued that paedophiles should be allowed to rape sleeping children provided that they’re unaware of what’s done to them. Many of the ideas expressed at this conference and those like it will be considered controversial to mainstream ivory tower elites. But the development of new ideas requires debate. Without an in-depth discussion, can we really say for certain that it’s wrong for a paedophile to rape a sleeping child?
The scientific theory of eugenics, of course, dates back to Francis Galton. [This is untrue – Plato encouraged a policy of selective mating, and William Goodell was a less ambitious forerunner to Galton.] Galton built on the genius of Charles Darwin, and was arguably even braver in going against the preconceptions of the age. His ideas meant that he was not a popular man. But we all have our knockers, which the young lady in the front row is especially aware of. (Pause for laughter, and possible audience interaction, if I can find a fit piece of totty.)
The Darwin-Galton family are an example of how talent – in this case intelligence – can often occur disproportionately in a single family. [They were also quite wealthy at their time, and were part of a society that valued the concept of intellectual feedback and ‘gentleman scientists’. Shared cultural factors are at least a significant factor in the pair’s successes.]
I know a lot about merit – my father invented the term meritocracy. But the fact is that some family lines are genetically superior to others. [Not a fact.]
But not all families follow as positively as the Darwin-Galton family. In some cases, the intelligence of the child falls far short of their parents. [Imagine that.]
As genetic technology progresses, parents will be able to eliminate the more disappointing possibilities as simply as one might prune a tree on a gentle summer afternoon.
Eugenics has a bad press, probably because its most notable supporters introduced forced eugenics. But I propose a wholly different take on the concept – progressive eugenics. Whereas in the Victorian era and Nazi Germany the concept was that eugenics would be used to sterilise the poor, in my version the poor would be placed under social pressure to abort individual babies, over and over again, until they have a baby with a sufficently high IQ. [This isn’t fundamentally different, Toby.]
This is a fundamental difference. [I probably should have carried on reading.]
The aim of progressive eugenics would be to empower the working classes to take control of their destinies. Just as cutting welfare frees the proles from the teet of the welfare state and allows them to thrive, [Citation needed] progressive eugenics will make sure that only the best of the working class make it to birth. Of course take-up on this policy will not be universal, but in time market pressures will ensure that parents either get sign up or risk being left behind.
I identify as a classical liberal – that’s my twitter bio in its entirety. And I’m sure anyone who knows my reputation will realise how much importance I place on Twitter!
Classical liberalism, for those who are unaware, means that individuals should be entirely free to make their own decisions without outside influence. So in an ideal classical liberal world, there would be no benefits system, no regulation, and people would influence the world around them by their own actions, rather than relying on the nanny state to ensure that drinking water doesn’t kill them.
However, I believe that working classes should be actively encouraged to abort their children. (How do I square this contradiction prof?) [It’s beyond me.]
I’m coming to the end of my time, so I’ll just say what a privilege it is to be here, among so many brave thinkers. I’m saddened that Richard Lynn – who has previously called for incompetent cultures to be phased out – won’t be able to make it to this year’s conference. I disagree with him, of course, but it would make for a fascinating discussion. It’d be just like being back at the Oxford Debate Society!
Is the author who argued in 2015 that ‘skin brightness’ is a factor in global development present? (A pause for interaction.) And the proponent of the idea that ‘racial admixture’ negatively affects population quality? (Pause) How about the three gentlemen who presented separate papers in 2016 arguing that women are innately less intelligent than men?
These authors are far bolder than I am. [They’re idiots.] And I’m sure that the lady with large breasts in (wherever there’s a lady with nice honkers) would disagree with them. I imagine it’s quite the engineering achievement to keep those things in place!
We should remember that whatever our critics say, any ideas expressed here are only words. [Until they’re used to justify actions.]
As our organiser James Thompson has argued, “No idea is shocking. An idea is only something you investigate whether it is true or not.”
I particularly enjoyed the investigation ‘Female Humans or Male Gorillas: Who Really Belongs in a Zoo?’ It had some provocative and surprising analyses.
Having been the victim of several politically correct Twitter lynch mobs, I can admire your bravery, ladies and gentlemen. I have to say, it’s a relief to be somewhere that I’m considered relatively tame!
Social conventions don’t change overnight, they change gradually. Every eugenics article I write on a blog with a mid-sized audience pushes the subject closer to the mainstream. And by the way, don’t you think it’s likely that I’ve been expressing these views in private, with my chums the Foreign Secretary and Education Minister?
The one thing we can know about the future is that it will be different to the present. Over the last two decades acceptance of the concept of gay marriage has become more and more mainstream. Who can say what the next two decades have in store?
Gentlemen and ladies, we are all allies here. Mega allies, super allies, uber allies.
Thank you for your time.
SciFiFootball 