Legitimizing slavery, colonization or inequalities of rights between men and women… For centuries, science has been used to justify discriminatory ideologies. At the beginning of the 20th century, the eugenics movement particularly distinguished itself by invoking genetics to advocate “racial hygiene” aimed at promoting the reproduction of people deemed superior. This would later become one of the pillars of Nazi policy. If these ideas receded at the end of the Second World War, they did not disappear for all that. From the end of the 1960s, there was a particularly striking return to old racist discourses, reformulated and dressed up with progress in biology and genetics. A movement embodied, in France, by the New Right, a deeply racist and scientist current of thought. “From the beginning, the New Right included many scientists, such as the biologist Yves Christen, but also people working in the pharmaceutical industry, doctors and more generally personalities with a strong interest in genetics, including the essayist Alain de Benoist”, explains Stéphane François, professor of political science at the University of Mons (Belgium) and connoisseur of the far right.
Review Element, one of the standard-bearers of the movement, devotes files to polygenism, a thesis according to which humanity has had several cradles and that there are therefore different races. She also defends the idea that white people, in particular blue-eyed blonds, are descendants of Indo-Europeans and have their own characteristics, including Neanderthal man DNA, which would make them a race with apart and superior to others. The New Right still believes that the “races” that mix are weakened, and relies on the results of intelligence quotient (IQ) tests to affirm that intelligence is linked to skin color. “Its members did not hesitate to cite the work of biologist Richard Dawkins on the selfish gene, American sociobiologist Edward Wilson or even zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who was at the heart of a controversy over his proximity to National Socialist ideology. With the aim of appearing to be aware of science, while twisting its results”, explains Stéphane François. This did not prevent the scientific community from demonstrating their errors and lies.
From the review Element at the Iliade Institute, close to Eric Zemmour
The ideology of the New Right then evolved, claiming less frankly its anchoring in science and tinting itself in particular with culturalist theses. Alain de Benoist founded the journal krisis in 1988, after being supported and then thanked by Le Figaro magazine, whose scientific section was for a time entrusted to his colleague Yves Christen. But the movement ran out of steam, before disappearing in 2013. “Its ideological matrices have survived, its ideas have spread all over the far right, but the problem is knowing by whom, because some members of the New Right have always remained anonymous, out of fear for their professional career, or precisely because it is a good way to do entryism”, indicates Stéphane François. Today, we find them partly in the Iliade Institute, a think tank close to Eric Zemmour, but also among neo-fascists and neo-Nazi groups, and even among the essayist Alain Soral, who argued that inequality man-woman is justified by the biological differences of the two sexes. They even travel in the form of pseudo-humorous images shared on the 9gag and Imgur sites, and spread on Reddit forums, 4chan and social networks, where anti-feminist movements are particularly active.
To support the idea that women are less intelligent than men, the heirs of the New Right cite, for example, the work of British psychologist Richard Lynn, stripped of his chair of professor emeritus at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland ) after his racist and misogynistic positions. “He gathered a lot of data showing that women score a few points lower than men when they take IQ tests, but this work is not well replicated by other researchers. I have never read clear data in favor of one sex or the other. If there are differences, they are necessarily minute, since they are not obvious in the many scientific studies devoted to the subject”, points out Franck Ramus, research director at the CNRS and specialist in cognitive sciences. “In general, the results of cognitive tests between men and women show almost no difference”, continues the researcher, who recognizes a few rare exceptions.
Most scientific studies on the ability to visualize 3D objects thus give a slight advantage to men, even in babies. “It is today the most convincing case of cognitive difference between men and women due to biological factors”, estimates the researcher. However, these results do not allow us to conclude that all men have better 3D visualization than women since the differences observed remain minimal. “In addition, there are also small differences to the advantage of women, especially in the verbal field”, adds Franck Ramus.
New Right heirs also frequently cite Richard Lynn’s “World IQ Map”, supposed to reveal the superiority of China and the Western world over the rest of the world, and in particular Africa. “These results have obvious biases, such as the fact that these Western tests are not all adapted to different cultures and that the population samples between countries are not equivalent, says Franck Ramus. Despite everything, it is certain that it There are differences in IQ between different countries and we know very well why: they are explained by environmental factors: nutrition, health, education.On the other hand, there is no proof that purely biological differences are the cause of these differences. differences.”
Distribution of average IQ scores by country.
© / David Becker
According to Stéphane Debove, researcher in biology and evolutionary psychology, author of the popular science YouTube channel Homo Fabulus, the far right uses two strategies to manipulate science. “The first is to exaggerate the differences between men and women or between populations and there, as a scientist, we can correct; the second is to remain faithful to the studies, but to interpret them as ‘appeals to nature'” , he notes. Classic example: since it is the females who take care of the young in most mammals, it would be logical to reproduce this pattern in human societies. A “biological analogy error” swept away for centuries by philosophers like David Hume or John Stuart Mill. Human behaviors are indeed influenced by factors other than biology, such as culture, society and technology. “And it is not because a thing is in nature that it is desirable, continues the videographer researcher. The life expectancy of men is lower than that of women, should we conclude that it shouldn’t they be treated? It’s absurd.”
Ideological tensions of part of the left
Nevertheless, when it is necessary to rationally attack the scientific arguments put forward by the extreme right, both Stéphane Debove and Franck Ramus and Stéphane François regret the ideological tensions… of part of the left. “Some of its members are convinced that scientific disciplines such as behavioral genetics, population genetics, even neuroscience, are dangerous because they are taken over by the far right. Except that you have to weigh the pros and cons of this research and remember that the intolerant have always found in the science of their time arguments to justify themselves. These recoveries have not prevented the social progress of the last fifty years either”, notes Stéphane Debove, whose recent video “Can you be on the left and love the biology of human behavior?”has also been criticized.
A part of this left has even decided to fight against these recoveries by refuting the existence of differences between populations or sexes. Yet genomic sequencing does show that some populations have parts of genes that are slightly different from others. However, the concept of race still remains without scientific basis, because these differences are neither numerous nor important, and their existence does not imply anything in terms of social policies. “To fight against racism, we do not deny the existence of differences in skin color, continues the videographer-researcher. We recognize that they exist and we fight so that they do not serve as a basis for discrimination We should do the same with all other genetic and biological differences.” In the meantime, the far right is taking advantage of this research to discredit progressive movements that refute these differences or argue that they are explained solely by socio-environmental factors.
Franck Ramus paid the price for these criticisms when he devoted on his blog a long post questioning the scientific arguments of the “world map of IQ”, while acknowledging that certain biological hypotheses are not yet settled. “The most objective presentation possible of the data did not suit either camp, he recalls. The racialists flooded my blog with their comments accusing me of knowing the ‘truth’ but of not not have the courage to reveal it to ‘save my skin.’ And the anti-racists criticized me for giving visibility to the racialists by responding to their arguments and accepting some of them – the validity of IQ tests, the average differences between countries – whereas, according to them, everything should be rejected as a whole, regardless of the data.” Stéphane François confides, for his part, having experienced similar difficulties with colleagues or activists. “In the meantime, the far right is beginning a return to the 1970s, with this desire to cite studies ‘to make solid’ and present itself as a rationalist”, he notes. And offers a new playground too deserted by its historical opponents.