Group promoting ‘dangerous’ scientific racism ideology teamed up with rightwing extremist, recordings reveal
An international network of “race science” activists seeking to influence public debate with discredited ideas on race and eugenics has been operating with secret funding from a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur.
Undercover filming has revealed the existence of the organisation, formed two years ago as the Human Diversity Foundation. Its members have used podcasts, videos, an online magazine and research papers to seed “dangerous ideology” about the supposed genetic superiority of certain ethnic groups.
The anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate began investigating after encountering the group’s English organiser, a former religious studies teacher, at a far-right conference. Undercover footage was shared with the Guardian, which conducted further research alongside Hope Not Hate and reporting partners in Germany.
No serious scientist (who values his reputation and doesn’t want to end his career or become a pariah) is going to do real research on this topic, so even the best-intentioned attempt to recruit researchers is going to end up finding only crackpots. This is fairly obvious so attempts generally will not be well-intentioned.
The problem is that policy is rarely influenced by serious scientists