IQ Is a Phenotype

Posted By Spencer J. Quinn On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

[1]1,598 words

I have confidence in the Right as the political entity we know today largely because Right-wing extremism has proved to be less insidious, murderous, and destructive than Left-wing extremism. This has been the case for the last 250 years. Nothing can compare to the hideous wake left by the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet terror famines and gulags, the mass starvations of Mao’s China, and the crimes committed by the North Vietnamese, among other atrocities. The Nazis at least waited until wartime to commit their acts of barbarism. The worst of the Left had no such compunctions, and were deadlier to boot.

Why is this? My armchair analysis concludes that the ideologies which prop the Left up rely more on demonstrable lies and unprovable dicta than Rightist ideologies. At the heart of the matter is the notion of equality. The Left claims against all evidence that people — regardless of class, race, or sex — are equal; that is, equal in mind and in potential. This is the Left’s original sin, the lie which begets all other lies. Agents of the Left are so invested in it that the truth becomes anathema to them, causing them to stamp it out wherever they see it. This explains many of the atrocities I mentioned above.

The Right, however, does not tell this lie. Instead, it accepts natural group differences and builds social and political hierarchies accordingly. The cruelty is baked in the cake, so to speak. Yes, slavery, racial exclusivity, ethnic tribalism, distinct gender roles, and other authoritarian constructs can be found in Rightist societies, both today and in the past. But these are most often based on group differences, which are in turn based on biological differences. Of course, injustice can appear in Right-wing societies; worthy individuals being overlooked because of their race or gender is a prime example. But this injustice pales in comparison to that found in societies which ignore racial differences.

It all boils down to unprovable dicta. Lying about biology requires the Left to resort to more unprovable dicta than the Right, and so Leftists have to do more work in order to make reality fit their dicta. For example, blacks commit more crime than whites. Why? Because of slavery and Jim Crow, according to the Left. Women cannot perform as well as men in STEM fields because of sexism and lack of opportunity. Jews gravitate towards usury and finance because in the Middle Ages they weren’t allowed to own land. Chinese-Americans outperform everyone in math because tiger moms make them study really hard. Each of these dicta are unprovable, but must be accepted on faith in order to preserve the lie of equality — and there is no end to these claims for as long as group differences continue to manifest.

The Right, on the other hand, relies at most on one unprovable dictum: God — or Zeus, Odin, ancestral spirits, or other such divinity. The Right essentially invokes some kind of heaven-sanctioned human hierarchy — with its concomitant views on good and evil — which cannot be questioned, only accepted. Everything else flows from that. Yes, this is also an unprovable dictum, but it’s only one. It makes Rightist thought more economical and easier to swallow.

Although Rightist thought can also rely on provable dicta for its politics, such as what is found in biology. Frank Salter pioneered such thinking in the final chapters of his 2003 classic On Genetic Interests [2], with the notions of Universal Nationalism and Adaptive Utilitarianism. His fitness portfolios are great illustrations of this as well. Basically, because each inherited trait is a “parliament of genes” that seeks to perpetuate itself into the future, and because DNA analysis reveals that ethnic groups share many phenotypes that are exclusive to them, the smoothest-running nations are those designed to promote or protect the genetic interests of a particular ethnic group or race.

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You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s Solzhenitsyn and the Right here [4].

Thus, in order to counteract the Left’s dicta, the Right must push its own: either God or DNA. And since DNA is the provable one, it makes sense to lead with that. This is where IQ comes in. Until recently, the Left had relied on our lack of research to establish IQ’s biological (and therefore racial) basis. In the resulting mist of ignorance, the Left could commandeer IQ as another one of their unprovable dicta (for example, IQ is a tool of white supremacy, IQ is a reflection of white privilege, etc.). But those days are over. To quote the opening sequence of The Six Million Dollar Man, “We have the technology.”

Thanks to advances in neuroscience, the Right now possesses the ultimate weapon with which to take back their kingdom. It is the Holy Grail and Ring of Power in one. It is the knowledge and certainty that IQ is a phenotype.

This basically means that IQ is a genetic trait like any other, and is an expression of gene frequencies found in an individual’s DNA, also known as that individual’s genome. Once this is established, then IQ differences among ethnic groups and races must also be established. This shatters the one great lie upon which all Leftist edifices must be constructed: the lie of equality.

But if DNA and IQ are part of the Right’s provable dictum, then where is the proof?

Neuroscientist Richard Haier offers much by way of proof in his 2017 work The Neuroscience of Intelligence [5]. In this slender, yet densely-packed volume, Haier uses neuroimaging data to link IQ test scores to observable, tangible, and mappable structures and functions of the brain. This correlation proves the biological etiology of intelligence.

From my 2022 review [5]:

Haier moves on to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). When used in conjunction with computer technology called voxel-based morphometry (VBM), three-dimensional images of the brain can be created and studied. A voxel is essentially a 3D pixel, and lowering the voxel level within regions of interest in the brain allows researchers to accurately correlate test scores with physical structures. Here is a brief list of brain structures which correspond directly with IQ:

  1. Cortical thickness and surface area (which correlates with the number of neurons in a major part of the brain associated with memories and reasoning).
  2. White matter in the parietal lobe (which corresponds to the speed of signals sent between brain cells).
  3. Gray matter in the anterior cingulate cortex (which is associated with attention allocation and impulse control).
  4. N-acetylaspartate measurements (a marker of neuron density and viability).
  5. Shorter path length of frontal-parietal connections (a measure of communication efficiency between crucial parts of the brain).
  6. Inter-hemispheric connectivity between parallel brain structures (an inverse relationship with IQ).
  7. Basal ganglia volumes (subcortical nuclei associated with cognition and learning).
  8. Volume of the thalamus (“an important hub of brain circuit connectivity”).

Here is Haier in his own words:

All these early MRI studies of gray and white matter were exciting because they found correlations between various psychometric test scores of intelligence and quantifiable brain characteristics both in specific locations and in the connections among them. This increased optimism for the potential of discovering not only “where” in the brain was intelligence, but also “how” intelligence is related to brain function.

Extrapolating from this, we can reason that temperament and other mental characteristics are also phenotypes. Nicholas Wade makes this very point in his 2014 book A Troublesome Inheritance [6]:

As it happens, the promoter for MAO-A is quite variable in the human population. People may have two, three, four or five copies of it, and the more copies they have, the more of the MAO-A enzyme their cells produce. What difference does this make a person’s behavior? Quite a lot, it turns out. People with three, four or five copies of the MAO-A promoter are normal but those with only two copies have a much higher level of delinquency.

So the more MAO-A gene copies a person has up to a certain point, the greater his impulse control will likely be. Wade writes further:

If individuals can differ in the genetic structure of their MAO-A gene and its controls, is the same also true of races and ethnicities? The answer is yes. A team led by Karl Skorecki of the Rambam Health Care Center in Haifa looked at variations in the MAO-A gene in people from seven ethnicities — Ashkenazi Jews, Bedouins, African pygmies, aboriginal Taiwanese, East Asians (Chinese and Japanese), Mexicans and Russians. They found 41 variations in the portions of the gene they decoded, and the pattern of variation differed from one ethnicity to the next, revealing a “substantial differentiation between populations.”

Wade also refers to a 2012 study led by Michael Vaughan of Saint Louis University which demonstrates that 5% of the black men they observed possessed only two MAO-A promoters, compared with only 0.1% of white men.

I believe there is an unhealthy amount of IQ disparagement on the Right these days. Some of this is understandable. IQ worship, like any other form of focusing exclusively on a particular human characteristic, is silly and counterproductive. At worst it can undermine any ethnonationalist project. High-IQ outgroup members are still outgroup members, and need not be invited into nations that wish to preserve and protect their genetic interests. Further, IQ becomes close to irrelevant when discussing the various European nationalisms. IQ does not make a Frenchman French or a Swede Swedish.

Regardless, in smashing the lie of equality, IQ undercuts the Left’s ideological foundations like nothing else. Neuroscience and genetics have now made IQ the most potent weapon the Right has ever had. Yes, it must be used with caution — but if the Right wants to win, it must be wielded.

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