A global community of “race science” activists looking for to affect public debate with discredited concepts on race and eugenics has been working with secret funding from a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur.
Undercover filming has revealed the existence of the organisation, shaped two years in the past because the Human Variety Basis. Its members have used podcasts, movies, an internet journal and analysis papers to seed “dangerous ideology” concerning the supposed genetic superiority of sure ethnic teams.
The anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate started investigating after encountering the group’s English organiser, a former non secular research trainer, at a far-right convention. Undercover footage was shared with the Guardian, which carried out additional analysis alongside Hope Not Hate and reporting companions in Germany.
HDF acquired greater than $1m from Andrew Conru, a Seattle businessman who made his fortune from courting web sites, the recordings reveal. After being approached by the Guardian, Conru pulled his assist, saying the group appeared to have deviated from its unique mission of “non-partisan academic research”.
Whereas it stays a fringe outfit, HDF is a part of a motion to rehabilitate so-called race science as a subject of open debate. Labelled scientific racism by mainstream teachers, it seeks to show organic variations between races corresponding to increased common IQ or an inclination to commit crime. Its supporters declare inequality between teams is basically defined by genetics slightly than exterior components like discrimination.
Dr Rebecca Sear, the director of the Centre for Tradition and Evolution at Brunel College, described it as a “dangerous ideology” with political goals and real-world penalties.
“Scientific racism has been used to argue against any policies that attempt to reduce inequalities between racial groups,” she stated. It was additionally deployed to “argue for more restrictive immigration policies, such as reducing immigration from supposedly ‘low IQ’ populations”.
In a single dialog, HDF’s organiser was recorded discussing “remigration” – a euphemism for the mass removing of ethnic minorities – saying: “You’ve just got to pay people to go home.” The time period has turn out to be a buzzword on the exhausting proper, with Donald Trump utilizing it in September to explain his personal insurance policies in a publish on X that has been considered 56m instances.
In Germany, protesters took to the streets in February after it emerged politicians had attended a convention on “remigration” in Potsdam. Among the many delegates was an activist referred to as Erik Ahrens.
Already infamous in Germany, he has been designated a “rightwing extremist” by authorities, who’ve concluded he poses an “extremely high” hazard, significantly in regard to the radicalisation of younger individuals.
This investigation reveals Ahrens spent months working with members of HDF.
At a sold-out occasion in London final 12 months, Ahrens was recorded urging his viewers to affix a secret membership devoted to restoring the ability of “white society”. Later, he boasted of spending the subsequent 12 months “travelling around from major city to major city, just setting up these cells”.
‘Do you know the history of the SS?’
One night final October, 90 paying ticket holders arrived on the Little Ship, a crusing clubhouse on the Thames, for a YouTuber’s lecture on the supposed genetic decline of western civilisation.
First to handle the room was a younger man with a brief crop of sunshine brown hair. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” stated Ahrens. “I work for the Alternative for Germany party as a consultant.”
Various für Deutschland (AfD) is Germany’s main far-right get together, and assist for its hardline insurance policies on migration is surging. After reciting latest polling victories, Ahrens turned to European increased training. “The universities used to be where society – where western European, where white society – used to produce elites capable of exerting power,” he stated.
“The organisation which I am working with is taking more concrete steps towards the establishment of such an elite,” he went on to say. “We’re doing this partly through media outreach, partly through talking to people on the ground, and partly through networking, which is taking place more behind the scenes.”
An adviser to the AfD’s lead candidate on this 12 months’s European parliament elections, Ahrens, now operates exterior its ranks. The get together distanced itself from him after a collection of controversies.
The Brandenburg state workplace for the safety of the structure, a part of the area’s inside ministry, has put Ahrens on its watchlist. In an announcement to the Guardian’s reporting companions Der Spiegel and Paper Path Media, the workplace’s director, Jörg Müller, described him as having made “anti-constitutional” statements. “Due to his high reach in social networks and his considerable self-radicalisation, we estimate the danger he poses – especially with regard to young people – to be extremely high.”
Unknown to Ahrens, his speech on the Little Ship was being recorded. A researcher for Hope Not Hate spent greater than a 12 months undercover posing as a would-be donor, covertly filming a large circle of activists and teachers with an curiosity in race science and eugenics.
Additionally current on the occasion was Matthew Frost. A former trainer at a £30,000-a-year non-public faculty in London, Frost was till not too long ago editor of the net journal and podcast Aporia. He publishes underneath the identify Matthew Archer.
Between October and November final 12 months, Frost and Ahrens have been filmed pitching plans for what they referred to as a “gentlemen’s club”, with members paying for networking and coaching programs. Whereas the plan now seems to have been deserted, Ahrens appeared to recommend that recruits could possibly be reworked into an elite group modelled on the SS, the Nazi get together’s paramilitary wing. On his telephone display, he pulled up a video of muscular males punching one another in a subject, overseen by a drill teacher. “This is what we want to build as well,” he stated.
“Do you know the history of the SS?” he requested. “They didn’t have IQ tests and stuff like that … they had, like, certain outward characteristics. But the principle is the same. You take the elite.”
Ahrens stated he held ambitions to hunt political workplace himself. “My vision is actually to one day run in Germany, in a Trump-like fashion. It hasn’t been done for 100 years. To run a populist movement centred around a person.”
In the direction of the tip of the dinner, Ahrens boasted of his dedication to his trigger. “It’s all in. We live for the race now.”
In response to written questions, Ahrens stated the lads within the coaching video have been engaged in “peaceful and legal activities” and that he had been suggesting “week-long retreats for character development and network formation among highly selected participants”. As an alternative of the SS, he stated he may “just as well have referenced any other ‘select inner circle’ with high entry requirements as a historical example”.
Legitimacy through affiliation
Frost started publishing on Substack in April 2022. Since his first publish – titled “The Smartest Nazi”, about IQ assessments administered on the Nuremberg trials – his e-newsletter, Aporia, has turn out to be one of many platform’s hottest science publications, with greater than 14,000 subscribers and a whole lot of posts and podcasts.
“We’d rather be read by a few billionaires than 10,000 new normies,” Frost stated. “Judging by our email lists, this is already happening. I can look down, I can see academics, entrepreneurs, journalists … I can see very important people, and that’s what we want to grow further.”
The weblog was offered to HDF early in its improvement, and was the important thing a part of its media arm, Frost stated.
Aporia presents its output as neutral exploration of controversial concepts. Nevertheless, a few of its content material seems to have steadily turn out to be extra nakedly political, with headlines corresponding to “What is white identity?” and “America must have race realism”.
Frost described his aim as to affect wider society, saying he wished to “become something bigger, become that policy, front-facing thinktank, and bleed into the traditional institutions”. Mainstream writers had been commissioned by Aporia for “legitimacy via association”.
Aporia’s attain is proscribed, however a number of the concepts it publishes are gaining floor.
Trump, who has promised mass deportations ought to he win a second time period as US president, informed an interviewer final month: “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” In June Steve Sailer, credited with rebranding scientific racism as “human biodiversity”, was given a platform by the previous Fox Information journalist Tucker Carlson on his podcast.
The language of race science is filtering into UK politics. A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform get together was disavowed this summer season after he was found to have claimed: “By importing loads of sub-Saharan Africans plus Muslims that interbreed the IQ is in severe decline.”
Along with Aporia, Frost claimed the group managed output from a YouTuber referred to as Edward Dutton, the keynote speaker at October’s Little Ship occasion, who has greater than 100,000 subscribers to his channel.
Recognized for diatribes on “dysgenics”, a time period for the supposed deterioration of genetic inventory, Dutton’s latest movies embrace one titled: “You’re more related to a random white person than your half-African child.” In one other, he toured Clacton-on-Sea carrying a cravat, describing it as “one of the most dysgenic towns in the UK”.
Dutton stated he didn’t assist eugenics and had by no means signed any contract with HDF. He instructed it was utilizing his identify to impress others.
Frost informed the Guardian he didn’t maintain far-right views. He introduced his departure from Aporia in August. The e-newsletter continues to be revealed underneath a brand new editor.
‘Remigration’
The US Nationwide Institutes of Well being describes scientific racism “an organised system of misusing science to promote false scientific beliefs in which dominant racial and ethnic groups are perceived as being superior”.
The ideology rests on the false perception that “races” are separate and distinct. “Racial purity is a fantasy concept,” stated Dr Adam Rutherford, a lecturer in genetics at College Faculty London. “It does not and has not and never will exist, but it is inherent to the scientific racism programme.”
Prof Alexander Gusev, a quantitative geneticist at Harvard College, stated that “broadly speaking there is essentially no scientific evidence” for scientific racism’s core tenets.
The author Angela Saini, writer of a e-book on the return of race science, has described the way it traces its roots to arguments initially used to defend colonialism and later Nazi eugenics, and as we speak can typically be deployed to “shore up” political opinions.
In a number of conversations, HDF’s organisers instructed their pursuits have been additionally political. Frost appeared to precise assist for what he referred to as “remigration”, which Ahrens had informed him could be the AfD’s key coverage ought to the get together win energy.
“Imagine: a new German state,” he stated. “Imagine if they got this through. It wouldn’t be nice. It’s like you’re a bouncer in a nightclub. It’s your job. You didn’t invite these people in. You’ve just got to pay people to go home, whatever. Take two battleships to the coast of Morocco, and say you’re going to do this. We’re smarter than you, we’re bigger than you, you’re going to do this.”
AfD leaders have denied any plan for mass expulsions, which have been prohibited because the Sixties underneath protocol 4 of the European conference on human rights. The legislation requires courts to individually contemplate every particular person case.
In the identical dialog, which passed off shortly after the beginning of the Israel-Gaza battle, Frost stated the Israeli political class “understand it instinctively, that the Palestinians are different. That they can’t be reasoned with. You can’t educate them. They have to be contained. They understand that. Likewise the Hamas leadership understand certain things about Ashkenazi Jews, whatever. Like we all do.”
Frost stated he rejected any suggestion of utmost beliefs. “Unfortunately, in reality, it is sometimes necessary to engage with undesirable people to secure funding for essential scientific research intended to benefit humanity,” he stated. “However, I am not politically aligned with any ‘far-right’ ideology, nor do I hold views that could reasonably be characterised as such.”
He stated he was not affiliated with HDF and had parted methods with Ahrens in December 2023 after changing into conscious “of our divergent political views”.
Underground analysis wing
HDF’s proprietor, Emil Kirkegaard, has made comparable feedback about “remigration”, saying of households settled for 2 or three generations: “I generally support policies that pay them to leave.”
Kirkegaard, who additionally seems to make use of the identify William Engman, is an writer of greater than 40 papers revealed by Mankind Quarterly, a British race science journal established within the Sixties.
Initially from Denmark and now dwelling in Germany, he heads what Frost described as an “underground research wing” for HDF consisting of about 10 passion researchers and teachers.
Ongoing HDF tasks, mentioned in a video name between the group final 12 months that was led by Kirkegaard, included research into “international dysgenics”, whether or not courting apps alter human breeding, whether or not individuals with progressive opinions are mentally unwell or whether or not Wikipedia editors are too leftwing.
Kirkegaard responded by saying: “The HDF is not involved in politics. It’s not affiliated with any political party or group. If one must attribute some company values to the HDF, these are those of the Enlightenment: reason, science, open mindedness, and free speech.”
The principal benefactor
Andrew Conru based his first web enterprise whereas finding out mechanical engineering at Stanford. In 2007, he hit the jackpot, promoting his courting web site Grownup FriendFinder to the pornography firm Penthouse for $500m.
In recent times, the entrepreneur has turned his consideration to giving freely his cash, declaring on his private web site: “My ultimate goal is not to accumulate wealth or accolades, but to leave a lasting, positive impact on the world.”
His basis has given tens of millions to a large and typically contrasting vary of causes, together with a Seattle dramatic society, a local weather thinktank and a pet rehoming facility, in addition to much less progressive recipients: an anti-immigration group referred to as the Heart for Immigration Research, and Turning Level USA, which runs a watchlist of college professors it claims advance leftist propaganda.
Conru’s contribution to HDF has solely emerged because of the recordings. He’s described as HDF’s principal benefactor, having invested $1.3m, exchanged for a 15% stake. “Andrew realised at the tail end of last year [2022] that this needed to be scaled up, systematised, and this was how the HDF was born,” Frost claimed throughout one filmed encounter.
Approached for remark, a spokesperson for Conru stated in an announcement he had “helped to fund the HDF project at the beginning” however that it “now appears that it has deviated from its initial objective, and the motivation for his funding, which was to promote free and non-partisan academic research”.
They stated Conru rejected racism and discrimination, and he was unaware of Ahrens’s involvement. “In response to the information you’ve provided, he has cut ties with the Human Diversity Foundation, ceased his funding, and ordered an immediate review of governance processes across all of his philanthropic activities to ensure such a situation does not arise again.”
