Bo Winegard

Bo Winegard (1980–)[2] is an American hereditarian psychologist[3], nationalist[4] and pseudoscientist[5] associated with the online "race realist" community.[6] He writes discredited racialist pseudoscience articles for the right-wing online magazine Quillette[7][8][9] and surrounds himself with white nationalists and racists, but complains if he is labelled either these, instead preferring the terms "ethno-traditionalist", "cultural nationalist" and "racial realist".

Bo Winegard
The colorful pseudoscience
Racialism
Hating thy neighbour
Divide and conquer
Dog-whistlers
v - t - e
Style over substance
Pseudoscience
Popular pseudosciences
Random examples
v - t - e
“”It was nearly impossible for me to get a job in the first place. Do you think anybody would hire me now? RationalWiki follows me everywhere.
—Bo Winegard after his sacking.[1]

He was Assistant Professor of Psychology at Marietta College but was fired in March 2020.[10][11] Winegard believes that race is a biological reality, genetic factors predominantly explain group-differences in IQs and skull shapes and measurements can determine human races by continental ancestry.[9][12][13] He promoted these dubious to pseudoscientific ideas in a Quillette review with Noah Carl in June, 2019.[9][14]

Winegard spends most of his time on Twitter talking about race and the alleged evils of left wing bias in academia. He commonly retweets Steve Sailer, Nathan Cofnas, Charles Murray, Noah Carl, Emil Kirkegaard, James Thompson, A New Radical Centrism and other so-called "race realists". Winegard identifies as a member of the alt-center which is basically an attempt by white nationalists or alt-right to re-brand themselves as political moderates.[15]

Winegard is a supporter of so-called scientific racism, writing "empirical facts cannot be sexist or racist".[16] In November 2019, Winegard co-authored a paper with eugenicist Jonathan Anomaly.[17] Winegard has described white supremacist Arthur Jensen as his "intellectual hero".[18]

Bo Winegard's twin brother is Ben Winegard, an opponent of Black Lives Matter.

Making up his politics

Winegard is somewhat flip-floppy on politics, resembling typical "centrist" anti-SJW Internet figures such as Sargon. In June 2019, he claimed to be a political centrist and opposed to conservatism.

I generally don't share the political beliefs of conservatives, because I am too liberal on a number of issues, but I don't like progressivism either. So I float around somewhere in the center.[19]

In August 2019, however, he described himself as a conservative.

Agreed as a moderate conservative.[20]

In the same month he also identified as supporting the right:

Somebody needs to create the right-wing alternative to Rage Against the Machine, a band that rages about order and disciplined markets and Edmund Burke. That would be truly alternative and unique. And the band wouldn’t be making millions while calling for the Marxist revolution.[21]

And yet, Winegard still labels himself "alt-center". And despite his insistence that he is too liberal, his tweets often fall opposite of standard liberal positions (though they may try to imply moderation through advocating vaguely liberal-sounding ideas):

I am an immigration restrictionist in the Rich Lowry sense of the word.[22]

Winegard now identifies as both white and nationalist.[4]

It makes me white AND a nationalist.[4][note 1]

In February 2020, Winegard posted that he was leaving the Democratic Party.[24]

So, the left has become more and more alien to average Americans. It promotes ludicrous beliefs that even very liberal people who are not among the initiated find distressingly bizarre. Many of my older friends are completely astonished at how strange Democrats sound today.[25]

In March 2020, Winegard posted that he opposes political correctness.[26]

Racialism

Defence of Emil Kirkegaard
Winegard continues to re-tweet and support Emil Kirkegaard, as recently as 9 April 2020.

Winegard has supported Emil Kirkegaard, an individual who has been described as "so toxic in mainstream academia that even being associated with him can sink your career."[27] Kirkegaard is a self-described eugenicist and white nationalist who claims Western governments should be paying white people to breed more. In a bunch of tweets, Winegard originally defended Kirkegaard, claiming he has seen no evidence Kirkegaard is a racist:

I have absolutely no evidence that he is [racist]. I consider him a friendly colleague. And I like him. But you welcome to ask him his views and to assess for yourself.[28]

His claim that he has seen no evidence that Kirkegaard is a racist is bizarre, considering that Kirkegaard's Twitter feed is chock full of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant propaganda (e.g. describing Muslims as "terrible immigrants to get"), alt-right memes and general white nationalist sentiments (such as wanting to increase white fertility rates). After this evidence was posted,[29] Winegard slightly tried to distance himself from Kirkegaard, now claiming he doesn't share all his views:

I think Emil is uninhibited, shall we say. I can understand if some people were offended. But, I personally generally like him as a human, although I do not agree with everything (or nearly everything) he says.[30]

I recall the time Bo said he saw no evidence Emil Kirkegaard harbored any racist views. Then @dbweissman posted these [proof].[31]

Make more white babies…

Similarly to Kirkegaard, Winegard frequently tells white people to breed more on Twitter:

If we owe the future a decent planet, don't we also owe it more children? So many people have been terrified into believing that more children will destroy the planet. But the opposite is likely true: When the population shrinks, it leads to many deleterious outcomes.[32]

Winegard clarifies his above comment and concern is specifically only countries below sub-replacement fertility (2.1 TFR), meaning (excluding a few countries in East Asia i.e. Japan, Singapore and Korea), the whole of Europe.[33] This a key obsession of white nationalists (such as Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch terrorist attacks, whose manifesto called for white Europeans to increase their fertility rates above 2.1).[citation needed]

In September 2020 Winegard criticised a OnePlanetOneChild advert that promotes one child families, writing:

“”Complete nonsense. If every family in the West had only had one kid, then the West would fall apart quite quickly. Do we really hate ourselves so much that want to disappear from the globe?
—Bo Winegard[34]

Winegard has no children of his own despite being 40 years old and has been criticised for hypocrisy by his own Twitter followers.[35]

Curiously Emil Kirkegaard out of psychological projection has criticised Winegard for his hypocrisy i.e. promoting pro-natalism views when Winegard has no children of his own,[36] yet Kirkegaard himself does the exact same thing and is childless.

Ethno-traditionalism
Bo Winegard, "cultural nationalist"

Winegard has defended white nationalism, albeit under a different name:

There are people who are what Eric Kaufmann calls ethno-traditionalists who fear rapid demographic change. I don't think it's useful or morally laudable to call them racists or white nationalists.[37]

Note what Winegard calls "ethno-traditionalists" are virtually indistinguishable to white nationalists.

After receiving criticism and being described as a white nationalist, Winegard further repackaged his ethno-traditionalism:

I made cultural nationalism because it sounds better than ethno-traditionalism[38]

1/ Thread. In defense of cultural nationalism.

Nationalism is a divisive topic. Many progressives view it as a moral failure, a lapse into atavism that we should strive to overcome. I disagree. Here's why.[39]

Re-labelling and repackaging white nationalism as "ethno-traditionalism" or "cultural nationalism" is a popular strategy among white nationalists since these terms are more palatable to the public, while there is a stigma attached to the term "white nationalism".

Human Biological and Psychological Diversity

Winegard with two other co-authors, including his brother Benjamin (aka Ben) Winegard, published a peer-reviewed paper titled "Human Biological and Psychological Diversity" defending race in Evolutionary Psychological Science.[40] The article section "Race and Human Populations" is rebutted below.

Winegard et al. 2017Rebuttal
The same basic principles apply to humans. Evidence from a variety of disciplines, including genetics, anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, indicates that human populations evolved distinctive features after spreading from Africa and settling in different ecological and climatic niches (Bellwood 2013; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Molnar 2006; Wade 2014). Although such human biological variation is often ignored by social scientists, it is not really a matter of dispute among researchers in the relevant disciplines.One would have to ask what any of this has to do with race. The fact there are different human populations with "distinctive features" (in terms of disparate frequency e.g. population x has >70% blue coloured eyes, but population y, <1%) has never been denied by anyone; in terms of genetics, see ancestry-informative markerFile:Wikipedia's W.svg. As was noted by a biological anthropologist decades ago: "There are undoubtedly no two genetically identical populations in the world; this has nothing to do directly with the validity of race as a taxonomic device."[41]


And because human populations do vary, they can be clustered and classified. The construct of race allows researchers to do this.Curiously at least one source Winegard et al. quote disagrees, see above (meaning they probably never even read the literature they cited); Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes reject clustering populations into large race groupings e.g. "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise" (p. 19); the eminent population geneticist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza was an outspoken critic of race.


One can begin with broad, continentally based categories: Caucasians, East Asians, Africans, Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines (Wade 2014). They are broad, general categories, but they have some predictive value. Importantly, there is nothing real in some metaphysical sense about this categorization. It is simply a pragmatic classification system that captures some differences in the world and allows researchers better to make sense of the pattern of human variation (Wade 2014).Winegard et al. don't provide a single example of a broad continental race category being useful to a field of science or having some predictive value. This is because continents are too diverse e.g. "If you're doing a DNA study to look for markers for a particular disease, you can't use 'Caucasians' as a group. They're too diverse."[42] Similarly, Tishkoff & Kidd (2004) warn: "it is imperative to move away from describing populations according to racial classifications such as 'black', 'white' or 'Asian'… there can be considerable genetic heterogeneity within a region, it is most useful to be as specific as possible about geographic origins, ethnicity or tribal affiliation."[43]


Evolution Working Group seminar

On October 24, 2019 Winegard gave a controversial seminar "The Evolution of Human Diversity" for the Evolution Working Group at the University of Alabama. His research was criticized as racist and for "resembling the pseudoscience employed by eugenicists."[5]

Thomas Tobin, co-chair of the Evolution Working Group, released a statement that apologized for the event and admitted it was a "mistake to invite this speaker".[5] Part of the statement read:

We, the members of the Evolutionary Working Group (EVOWOG), want to make clear that we do not endorse the views expressed by Dr. Winegard, which are non-scientific. We want to apologize to anyone who attended the talk, as well as anyone in the campus and local community who felt unwelcome because of the subject of the seminar.[5]

A student at the seminar called Winegard a racist. “OK, that’s fine,” Winegard said in response.[5]

Fired from Marietta College

In March 2020, Winegard was fired from his job as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Marietta College. He later threw a tantrum on the right-wing Internet rag Quillette, stating that "many people disagree with my views about human population variation, about conservativism, about immigration, about economics, indeed about almost everything," and complained his sacking was an attack on academic freedom.[11] Yeah, right.

Winegard has alleged that an anonymous person sent emails to his college department containing screenshots of some of his offensive tweets. He blames these emails for his sacking.[44] This person AfroSapiens (an anti-racist activist) later posted a screenshot of one of the emails he sent to Marietta College.[45] Winegard's associate Emil Kirkegaard controversially posted that he would pay a $200 "bounty" to anyone who can identify AfroSapiens.[46]

Various alt-right, conservative and white nationalist bloggers have supported Winegard and attacked the college: Kirkegaard, Rod Dreher, Steve Sailer and Toby Young.[44][47] Dreher incorrectly stated that "Marietta College fired him because he had become the target of a woke mob."[48]

The college has not released any public statement.

RationalWiki

Winegard dislikes RationalWiki, claiming this page is mendacious and somehow contains lies and misrepresentations, despite not actually pointing out what these are.[49][50]

As an example, Winegard complains that RationalWiki describes him as a pseudoscientist:

“”To the best of my knowledge, I do not promote “pseudoscience.” I am certain that I am wrong about a number of things. But I am open to evidence. And I would never willingly promote something that I knew was false.

However, Winegard's views on race are rejected by mainstream science and are highly dubious, using flawed methodologies, so pseudoscientist is hardly an inaccurate description.

Winegard further complains, "I have made no attempt to “surround” myself with “white nationalists”. Most of my friends are liberal to progressive." However, this claim appears to be contradicted by a glimpse of his social media: most of his tweets fixate on race and he commonly retweets individuals associated with the HBD online movement who hold alt-right political views.

List of alt-righters/homophobes/racists/race realists Winegard retweets

White nationalism?

Winegard complains RationalWiki equates "ethno-traditonalism" with "white nationalism", but these are the same thing, just a different label; Winegard provides the following definition of "ethno-traditional nationalism" by linking to an article by Eric Kaufmann:

...seeks to protect the traditional preponderance of ethnic majorities through slower immigration and assimilation but which does not seek to close the door entirely to migration or exclude minorities from national membership.

Most white nationalists however don't want to stop all immigration or exclude minorities from national membership, in other words, the latter seems to be the most extreme variant of white nationalism and a minority view among white nationalists. Wikipedia for example, sums up white nationalismFile:Wikipedia's W.svg as the viewpoint: "white people should maintain their majority in majority-white countries, maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their cultures should be foremost". This appears to be virtually identical to "ethno-traditonalism".

gollark: Where's that from <@319753218592866315>? I kind of want to complain.
gollark: Discord ❤️ Other People's Open Source
gollark: https://osmarks.tk/wsthing/admin/reports, put in the key IgjuLVkKGYiyDIckqY_7
gollark: Also, I set up a system on the Minecraft server potatOS is on to monitor chat for blasphemy about potatOS, and report it to the potatOS incident report logs.
gollark: The osmarks.tk file dump only generally has random binary files and text, not markdown.

See also

Notes
  1. You made me become a Nazi![23]

References
  1. No. I didn't want to be fired. However, I *did* realize that it was possible. Still, I really thought I could avoid it. It was nearly impossible for me to get a job in the first place. Do you think anybody would hire me now? RationalWiki follows me everywhere. by Bo Winegard (6:51 AM - 7 Mar 2020) Twitter (archived from 7 Mar 2020 18:32:46 UTC).
  2. Benjamin M. Winegard CV of Bo's twin (archived from July 30, 2020).
  3. Quillette Podcast 19 – Assistant Psychology Professor Bo Winegard on Hereditarianism, Centrism and the Great Awokening. Quillette. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  4. Bo I’m a nationalist not because I think nationalism is necessarily great, but because I think all the alternatives are worse. by Bo Winegard (Nov 7, 2019) Twitter (archived from 13 Nov 2019 19:01:58 UTC).
  5. Evolution Working Group on hosting Bo Winegard: ‘It was our mistake’. "Winegard’s research, which discusses psychological differences across human populations, has been criticized for resembling the pseudoscience employed by eugenicists."
  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, Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  8. Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard. Quillette. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  9. When Quillette’s Latest Attempt to Legitimise Race Science Met Actual Scientists. Uncommon Ground. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  10. Bo Winegard. Marietta College. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  11. "I've been fired.", Quillette. Retrieved 7 March 2020
  12. Noah Carl and Bo Winegard in Quillette in 2019 folks - whites have superior IQs and can be distinguished by *skull measurements* I wonder why they fixate on heritable 'white' (superior) difference? 3rd pic - a Quillette reader comment. Let's get real about this project please. by Bo Winegard (2:51 AM - 5 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from June 8, 2019).
  13. 1/ Do you dispute the overwhelming evidence from forensic anthropology @dylanmatt? This appears an attempt to besmirch Quillette by making a vaguely true but misleading claim. First, it was an article. Not articles : )] by Bo Winegard (5:44 PM - 9 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  14. Superior: The Return of Race Science—A Review. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  15. I am definitely a member of the alt-center by Bo Winegard (9:59 AM - 26 Aug 2017) Twitter (archived from May 24, 2019).
  16. The terms "scientific sexism" and "scientific racism" are profoundly misleading. Empirical facts cannot be sexist or racist. It's important to separate real racism and real sexism from perfectly legitimate scientific hypotheses. by Bo Winegard (6:48 AM - 4 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from August 19, 2019).
  17. The Egalitarian Fallacy: Are Group Differences Compatible with Political Liberalism?
  18. "Arthur Jensen, my intellectual hero, had a demanding intellectual moral: be transparent about one’s sincerely held intellectual beliefs. I think that a laudable goal. And I try, to my limited abilities, to adhere to it". Bo Winegard.
  19. 10. I generally don't share the political beliefs of conservatives, because I am too liberal on a number of issues, but I don't like progressivism either. So I float around somewhere in the center. by Bo Winegard (1:27 PM - 8 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  20. Agreed as a moderate conservative 😃 by Bo Winegard (2:05 AM - 19 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  21. Somebody needs to create the right-wing alternative to Rage Against the Machine, a band that rages about order and disciplined markets and Edmund Burke. That would be truly alternative and unique. And the band wouldn’t be making millions while calling for the Marxist revolution. by Bo Winegard (5:12 AM · Aug 14, 2019) Twitter (archived from August 19, 2019).
  22. 2. I am an immigration restrictionist in the Rich Lowry sense of the word. But, I am not dogmatic about this, and I would happily discuss. I might change my mind. 3. I am pro choice and pro gay marriage and pro socially tolerant policies in general by Bo Winegard (1:21 PM - 8 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from November 16, 2019).
  23. Cartoon: You made me become a Nazi! by Matt Bors (August 08, 2018 · 5:00 AM PDT) Daily Kos.
  24. 1. Thread. Leaving the Democratic party. My long path from the left to the center (and even, gasp, to the right on many issues). For most of my life, I was a member of the left. I voted for Democrats in every election. But, around 2015, I started to change. by Bo Winegard (5:36 AM - 29 Feb 2020) Twitter (archived from February 29, 2020).
  25. 19. So, the left has become more and more alien to average Americans. It promotes ludicrous beliefs that even very liberal people who are not among the initiated find distressingly bizarre. Many of my older friends are completely astonished at how strange Democrats sound today. by Bo Winegard (5:36 AM - 29 Feb 2020) Twitter (archived from February 29, 2020).
  26. I really don’t like political correctness. It stifles debates. And it ruins jokes and a sense of charity. But I don’t think the answer is a reactive “f*ck PC” attitude either. Model the discourse you’d like to see. Irritating the prudes is too easy to consider an accomplishment. Bo Winegard.
  27. Reality Vs Propaganda by Luke Ford (July 10, 2019).
  28. I have absolutely no evidence that he is. I consider him a friendly colleague. And I like him. But you welcome to ask him his views and to assess for yourself. by Bo Winegard (10:11 AM - 8 May 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  29. i think this one actually counts as anti-racist by his standards by Daniel Weissman (4:51 PM - 11 May 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2109).
  30. I would not have posted them. I think Emil is uninhibited, shall we say. I can understand if some people were offended. But, I personally generally like him as a human, although I do not agree with everything (or nearly everything) he says. by Bo Winegard (2:08 PM - 8 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  31. CathyYoung63 on Twitter: There is some naiveté on this among well-meaning people. I recall the time Bo said he saw no evidence Emil Kirkegaard harbored any racist views. Then @dbweissman posted these https://twitter.com/dbweissman/status/1127360415699218440 … https://twitter.com/dbweissman/status/1127366315990237185 …] by Cathy Young (2:52 PM - 6 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from August 20, 2019).
  32. Ha! Well, at least replacement level fertility would probably be good, but I've read some reasonable criticisms of this idea, so I'm working through the literature in my free time. by Bo Winegard (8:29 AM - 7 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from May 29, 2019).
  33. No, I think that is correct. But it's driven mostly by specific spots on the planet (mostly around the tropics). In Europe and much of Eastern Asia, fertility is below replacement (which is, I think, 2.1 births). by Bo Winegard (06:54 - 6 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from May 29, 2019).
  34. https://twitter.com/EPoe187/status/1309539261251760130
  35. https://twitter.com/________Jackson/status/1309544104456384513
  36. https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1311337372592865280
  37. There are people who are what Eric Kaufmann calls ethno-traditionalists who fear rapid demographic change. I don't think it's useful or morally laudable to call them racists or white nationalists. by Bo Winegard (12:10 PM - 14 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from May 29, 2019).
  38. I made cultural nationalism because it sounds better than ethno-traditionalism 😃 by Bo Winegard (8:10 AM - 21 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from November 16, 2019).
  39. 1/ Thread. In defense of cultural nationalism. Nationalism is a divisive topic. Many progressives view it as a moral failure, a lapse into atavism that we should strive to overcome. I disagree. Here's why. by Bo Winegard (7:01 AM - 21 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from November 16, 209).
  40. Bo Winegard, Benjamin Mark Winegard and Brian B Boutwell, Human Biological and Psychological Diversity, Evolutionary Psychological Science (2017) 3:159–180, January 2017.
  41. Geographic and Microgeographic Races by Marshall T. Newman. Current Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Apr., 1963), pp. 189-207. (see Jean Hiernaux comments on pages 197-198).
  42. Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows Natalie (August 22, 2000) New York Times.
  43. Implications of biogeography of human populations for 'race' and medicine by Sarah A. Tishkoff & Kenneth K. Kidd, Nature Genetics 36, S21-S27 (2004). doi:10.1038/ng1438.
  44. PODCAST 80: Bo Winegard on Losing his Job as an Assistant Professor.
  45. Here is the letter sent to Bo Winegard's department. Afrosapiens.
  46. Bo Winegard firing — time for action. Emil Kirkegaard.
  47. Bo Winegard Fired For Liking Sailer Tweet. VDARE.
  48. Hounding The Heretic Bo Winegard. Rod Dreher.
  49. I wrote a response to my RationalWiki page because too many people were taking it seriously. medium.com/@winegabo/resp… by Bo Winegard (4:46 AM - 13 Nov 2019) Twitter (archived from 14 Nov 2019 11:25:58 UTC).
  50. Response to RationalWiki by Bo Winegard (Nov 13, 2019) Medium.
  51. https://archive.is/Ba67B
  52. https://archive.is/WHFYe
  53. https://archive.is/1aHxv
  54. https://archive.is/wujlp
  55. https://archive.is/XzKal
  56. https://archive.is/akSqP
  57. https://archive.is/PjKt5
  58. http://archive.is/bzYWF
  59. https://archive.is/9phiw
  60. https://archive.vn/2Ezqb
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