“Science has no country”, said Louis Pasteur. She has no political color either, but on the far right, some seem to have forgotten that. On April 28, Thaïs d’Escufon, the star influencer of the identity right, published A thread [fil] on Twitter supposed to demonstrate the (scientific) reasons why “the fall of feminism must […] and will happen”. An anthology of fallacious analogies: certainly, “women who earn more than their spouse become more and more numerous in the United States”. But at the same time, “it has been demonstrated by evopsy (evolutionary psychology) that women tolerate loneliness less than men”. However, “an American study reveals that white women more 45 years old are the category of the population most likely to consume and depend on antidepressants”. The proof, according to the young influencer, that “obviously, their financial independence does not satisfy them enough to support loneliness”. that feminism, which would like “to make a woman a man like any other, free to multiply partners without ties and without consequences”, has manipulated these “vulnerable women”.
Let’s go back to the logic: if women tolerate loneliness less than men even when they gain financial independence, it is therefore because their loneliness is correlated with the fact of gaining independence – since, according to Thaïs d’Escufon, “the independent and careerist woman who assumes financial responsibility” would necessarily be alone and without ties. And feminism, a sham ignoring the real biological needs of women. CQFD
Sophism – false reasoning despite an appearance of truth, which could for example suggest that if the sky is blue and blue is a color, then the sky is a color – is not the prerogative of extreme influencers LAW. The instrumentalization for political purposes of evolutionary psychology – a branch of cognitive psychology that aims to explain the mechanisms of human thought and behavior from the theory of evolution – and even from the whole of biology behavioral is more so.
Battle between nature and nurture
“Research in behavioral biology is more taken over by the right because it is interested in what is genetic, ‘natural’, and in the differences between living groups, explains Stéphane Debove, researcher in biology and evolutionary psychology. However, it is common to think (wrongly) that what is genetic cannot be changed and that what is natural should not be changed. Faced with this, the left will rather tend to deny the differences or highlight their origins social and cultural – as between women and men.” To the point that on the far right, some seem to identify in research in behavioral biology the validation of the conservative model of society that they advocate (most often involving anti-feminism, reaffirmation of a family pattern based on gender roles, even rejection of immigration). Even if it means twisting scientific facts or dressing them up with a moral charge that they do not contain.
Thus we find, in the reasoning of Thaïs d’Escufon, the idea that the discoveries of evolutionary psychology would invalidate the foundations of feminism. “Science says what is, not what we should do. Believing that nature provides the right model for society to follow is an error of reasoning called naturalist paralogism”, recalls the director of research at the CNRS and specialist in cognitive sciences Franck Ramus (also a columnist for the Express). “While explaining the origin of certain differences between men and women, evolutionary psychology does not say that these differences are good or that they are irremediable. It does not in any way prevent us from fighting gender stereotypes and inequalities”, he illustrates.
Evidenced by the many feminists inscribing their activism (whatever the ideological line) in the wake of this discipline. Thus the anthropologist Barbara Smuts, author of The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy, which identifies the species of primates where male dominance is present. Or the evolutionary biologist Patricia Adair Gowaty, for whom his research could “to help women and men who fight against gender oppression”. Ditto for the philosopher Griet Vandermassen, author of Who’s afraid of Charles Darwin (2005). Asked by L’Express, she said that feminism and evolutionary psychology “must” collaborate to defend the interests of women.
Legacy of the New Right
But in recent years, many influencers on the right of the right have invested in this scientific current. Thus Valek (400,000 subscribers on Youtube), author of videos on “the differences between men and women” or “friendship between men and women” based in particular on evolution (“men as predators often choose their friends ) s according to their physical attractiveness”). In an interview to the far-right media Livre Noir, Laurent Obertone for his part scolded the consequences of the sexual liberation of women by citing the work of Charles Darwin. “Even in fruit flies, there was a certain ardor from the male and a certain restraint from the female. […] The woman must have a much greater sexual caution than the man, he argues. And if by ideology she condemns herself to behave differently, obviously the repercussions on her life will be considerable since she will have a very bad image with men.
In reality, this trend towards the instrumentalization of science by the right goes back to the end of the 1960s. Yves Christen already adorns some of their speeches with a scientific varnish mixing biology and genetics. Within this current, some defended the idea that the Whites would descend from the Indo-Europeans, and that as such, they would constitute a “race” superior to the others. Worse, the interbreeding of “races” would weaken them – intelligence quotient tests revealing, according to the proponents of this theory, that intelligence is linked to skin color.
The Intelligence Quotient Argument
In 2023, the heirs of this political fringe have certainly calmed down their discourse, but some continue to advocate a model of reactionary society based on the study of IQs. “For Professor H. Rindermann, in his monumental study ‘Cognitive capitalism’ published by the Cambridge Press, the average IQ in the West will drop dramatically, largely due to immigration (unless there is some new effect Flynn [NDLR : qui décrit comment les scores de tests de QI progressent mondialement au fil des générations] quite unlikely). Thank you”, tweeted Julien Rochedy, former president of the National Youth Front (FNJ) converted into a dandy youtuber, February 18.
The latter is far from being the only one to suggest the idea that immigration would have deleterious consequences based on “science”. In 2019, a “world map of IQs” showing differences in average IQ levels depending on the country had already circulated within far-right networks, causing an outcry – to the point of leading to a petition to have its distribution banned. . This did not prevent some hard-right influencers, such as essayist and youtuber Grégory Roose, from concluding that “this card offers [ait] a new reading of the consequences of massive African immigration for Europe”.
“Studies on IQ differences that include less developed countries are not at all reliable, slice Hugo Mercier, researcher in cognitive sciences at the Jean-Nicod Institute (CNRS-ENS-PSL). There is no reason to think that the differences in IQ observable between different countries (when measurements are more reliable, for example between different Western countries) have genetic origins. On the contrary, these differences are most likely due to education, which has a significant effect on IQ.
In another register, Thaïs d’Escufon explained in a video published at the end of April that if “on average, men and women have an identical IQ”, “there is a huge difference between the two: women gravitate around the average, while men are more distributed towards the extremities” (i.e. there are more men with low IQ but also with very high IQ than women). This would explain, according to Thaïs d’Escufon, why the overwhelming majority of Nobel prizes have been awarded to men.
While it is true that the distribution of IQ scores is more spread out among men than among women, “this does not contradict the fact that there may also be discrimination and barriers that hinder women”, recalls however Frank Ramus.
Business
Despite the “instrumentalizations” of “real results of evopsy that they interpret in their own way”, of “false results”, and of results “distorted or excessively simplified to go in their direction” noted by several specialists solicited by L’ Express, the success of this content is such that some have even made a business out of it. In his video entitled “The differences between men and women”, the influencer Valek slips, for example, a reference to his commercial partnerships. “As with our cousins the primates [la taille] is an asset in the confrontation between males, so inevitably, […] women will select the strongest. Taking the example of gorillas, there is already a difference in size between males and females and sometimes even more than 100 kilos of difference. One could naturally ask the question: is it because male gorillas take more protein shakes than females? By the way, we don’t forget the code VALEK10 on Prozis [NDLR : un site commercialisant notamment des compléments protéinés] to weigh more than 120 kilos and gain in size.”
In a more classy style, Julien Rochedy launched in 2019 a training in “sexual psychology” to “understand the behaviors and the differences between men and women”. Four years later, it is no longer available. Contacted, Julien Rochedy did not respond to our requests. His work remains, love and war (Hetairie), which is based, according to its description, on “a lot of work on evolutionary psychology and biology”.
Bad reputation
But by dint of outrageous shortcuts and fallacious moralization of biology, certain critics of the extreme right have come to consider evolutionary psychology as a “right-wing science” or even a “pseudoscience”. The doctor of political science Leonardo Orlando paid the price: after the censorship by Sciences Po of his course entitled “Biology, evolution and gender”, anchored in the theory of evolution, the latter had been accused by some of make “scientific disinformation” and “flatter the extreme right”.
“But in the United States, some supporters of the left also use behavioral biology to defend the natural character of homosexuality”, recalls Stéphane Debove. In France, however, the fact that the instrumentalization of this science is the prerogative of the extreme right can be interpreted, according to the journalist at Point and author of Orphan Hatred (Anne Carrière) Peggy Sastre, as “a reaction to the rejection by the left of the most obvious differences between human beings, but also as a natural movement of the right which, by being repeatedly told that it would be ‘a ‘right-wing science’, ends up taking an interest in it”. Behavioral biology has not finished carrying its bad reputation.