Ben Winegard

Benjamin Mark Winegard[2] (1980–),[3] best known as Ben Winegard is an American far-right psychologist whose political views align with the alt-lite. Winegard took his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Missouri. He was previously an assistant professor at Carroll College. He is currently assistant professor of psychology at Hillsdale College.[4]

Ben Winegard
The colorful pseudoscience
Racialism
Hating thy neighbour
Divide and conquer
Dog-whistlers
v - t - e
“”I hate wokism and believe BLM is a cultish movement based upon falsehoods
—Ben Winegard[1]

Winegard is a proponent of HBD ("human-biodiversity") pseudoscience and opponent of Black Lives Matter. He writes articles for Areo Magazine and Quillette.[5][6][7] He claims his main interest is "Western Civilization",[8] and he opposes political correctness and multiculturalism.[9][10]

Winegard has a twin brother, Bo Winegard. Of the two, Bo Winegard seems to hold more extreme views. For example, Winegard (unlike his brother) doesn't support eugenics.[11] Nevertheless, both brothers have co-authored papers with eugenicist Jonathan Anomaly.[12]

Race realism

Similar to his brother, Winegard supports controversial far-right and HBD figures such as Charles Murray, Emil Kirkegaard, A New Radical Centrism and Steve Sailer on Twitter.[13] Winegard once commented he was going to have his racialist work published in one of Kirkegard's controversial OpenPsych journals. In 2019, Winegard posted:

I plan to publish there because there aren’t many outlets that will publish articles on HBD. But I’m not a serious scholar so what would I know??[14]

Winegard admits he has a problem publishing his papers on race in mainstream journals, so looks for fringe publishers. OpenPsych publishes racist pseudoscience and its journals are widely considered to be pseudojournals because they don't use formal peer-review.

Concerning his "race realist" views, Winegard has stated:

Like many individuals loosely affiliated with the HBD (human biodiversity) community, my motives have been repeatedly impugned and I have been accused of proffering unsavory, even incendiary, views (I’ve also been attacked for working at Hillsdale College!!)

I’m interested in HBD for the simple reason that I think the Darwinian paradigm is the most powerful paradigm in the biological and social sciences. To dodge the ramifications of Darwinism is intellectually dishonest. And human variation is inherently fascinating to me.[15]

Opposition to Black Lives Matter

Winegard has criticized Black Lives Matter (BLM) on his Twitter as a movement based on falsehoods.[1] In July 2020 he posted "There’s a good case to be made that the sacred tenets of Christianity are more plausible than those of Black Lives Matter. I am certainly open to the argument".[16] Winegard opposes BLM protests, "Frankly, if this is how people are going to behave, shutting things down was moronic." Winegard has described BLM as a "quasi-religious cult founded on demonstrable bulls**t.[17]

Religious beliefs

Winegard is an atheist, and has flirted with the Christ myth theory, claiming "there’s a reasonable case that Jesus did not exist".[18]

RationalWiki

He's not a fan of RationalWiki.[19]

Winegard denies being far-right or even particularly right-wing.Do You Believe That? One of his dubious arguments for this is the fact he voted for Biden[20] seemingly ignoring there are white nationalists such as Richard Spencer who voted Biden too.[21][22]

gollark: Are you sure?
gollark: He said something about vaccines not being useful for young people and something about ivermectin, so now everyone is annoyed at him.
gollark: Joe Rogan is a "podcaster" on "Spotify".
gollark: Try turning your brain cells off and on again.
gollark: When people complain about things being politicized, they probably don't mean "oh no, people are solving this as a group" but that the suggested solutions are driven more by political manoeuvring than what would actually be good, and also partisanship.

References
  1. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 25 July 2020.
    Replying to @curiouscalvin00 1) reluctantly pro-choice 2) I don’t have a strong position on gun control 3) I hate wokism and believe BLM is a cultish movement based upon falsehoods
  2. Benjamin Mark Winegard. ResearchGate.
  3. Benjamin M. Winegard CV (archived from July 30, 2020).
  4. Hillsdale College Welcomes 11 New Faculty Members for 2018-19 Academic Year
  5. Benjamin Winegard. Areo Magazine.
  6. Why Racists (and Liberals!) Keep Writing for Quillette. "Quillette contributors Ben Winegard, Bo Winegard, Brian Boutwell, and John Paul Wright have all either said they are part of the HBD movement or used the term to describe their own research."
  7. Bo Winegard. Quillette.
  8. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 24 June 2020.
    Replying to @chuckdavenav @MerlinPsychSage I am at Hillsdale College, yes. But I do not care about psychology anymore. I care more about Western Civilization and academic freedom.
  9. Ben Winegard on Twitter,15 June 2020.
    Replying to @eigenmacht "The College values the merit of each unique individual, rather than succumbing to the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called “social justice” and “multicultural diversity,”..."
  10. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 8 March 2020.
    Replying to @antihero_kate Imprimis? It seems like everyone I know in Michigan knows someone who gets it! Yeah. One of the few schools not to buckle to multiculturalism and political correctness.
  11. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 14 June 2019.
    Replying to @m3anderthal I do not embrace eugenics.
  12. For example, Dodging Darwin: Race, evolution, and the hereditarian hypothesis, by Bo Winegard, Benjamin Mark Winegard, and Jonathan Anomaly. Personality and Individual Differences, February 2020.
  13. Ben Winegard on Twitter.
  14. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 9 August 2019.
    Replying to @PsychRabble @PamelaParesky and 9 others I plan to publish there because there aren’t many outlets that will publish articles on HBD. But I’m not a serious scholar so what would I know??
  15. Race Realist college prof. Ben Winegard endorses Elizabeth Warren for President. subspecieist.com, 23 June 2019.
  16. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 24 July 2020.
    There’s a good case to be made that the sacred tenets of Christianity are more plausible than those of Black Lives Matter. I am certainly open to the argument.
  17. http://archive.is/tur1I
  18. Ben Winegard on Twitter, 23 July 2020.
    I think there’s a reasonable case that Jesus did not exist. At the least, the quest for a historical Jesus is a futile enterprise.
  19. https://twitter.com/BenWinegard/status/1320044390631473158
  20. https://twitter.com/BenWinegard/status/1320036459336826882
  21. https://www.newsweek.com/richard-spencer-reiterates-support-biden-disavows-useless-traitorous-gop-1527555
  22. https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/biden-campaign-forcefully-denounces-endorsement-of-white-nationalist-richard-spencer-1.9102452
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