From RationalWiki

Emil Kirkegaard

For the love of Goat, do not confuse him with philosopher Søren Kierkegaard

Emil Ole William Kirkegaard (online aliases: Deleet,[1] Deleetdk,[2] EmilOWK) is a Danish far-right eugenicist. He has a wide range of crank views and is a global-warming denier, anti-feminist, ableist, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe and has promoted white supremacy.[3][4][5][6][7][8] He is most notorious and obnoxious online for his ableism and calling transgender people, liberals, feminists and pretty much anyone with left-wing political views who merely disagrees with him as "mentally ill".

Aside from his controversial writings on eugenics and race, Kirkegaard has been involved in other activities such as publishing personal data of 70,000 OKCupid users without permission, including their sexual preferences,[9] considered by Vox to be "without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases".[10] His writings on race and intelligence[11] have caused controversy and because peer-reviewed journals refuse to publish his work, he set up the OpenPsych pseudojournals.[12] However, after this journal was discredited he now publishes pseudo-scientific race articles in the open-access Psych journal.[13][14]

Since 2014 Kirkegaard has attended the London Conference on Intelligence at University College London (UCL) with far-right individuals to deliver pseudoscientific lectures on controversial IQ-related subjects, including eugenics, hereditarianism and race.[15][16][17][18]

Kirkegaard denies and attacks anyone who points out he is alt-right and/or a white nationalist since he knows those things discredit his writings on race and intelligence; he self-describes himself alt-center, a term similarly adopted by Anatoly Karlin, Bo Winegard and several other crypto-fascist bloggers. The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors Emil Kirkegaard as part of their online hate watch.[19]

As well as running Openpsych, Kirkegaard is the current domain owner of Mankind Quarterly, a racist pseudojournal rejected by mainstream science.[20][21][22]

Background

Kirkegaard was born in Denmark in 1989,[23] but in 2018 moved to the US. A pseudointellectual, he has described himself as a "polymath", "scientist", "geneticist", "philosopher" and "psychologist",[24][25] when he isn't any of these things and his only qualification is a BA in Linguistics from Aarhus University. In 2019, Kirkegaard moved back to Denmark.[26]

He's been a member of three Danish political parties: Piratpartiet (Pirate Party) 2012–2014, Internetpartiet (Internet Party), 2015 and Technologipartiet (Technology Party) 2016–present; he co-founded the latter and describes it as a think-tank.[27] In 2014 he co-founded OpenPsych with Davide Piffer.

Kirkegaard v. Smith

Kirkegaard filed a defamation lawsuit against Oliver D. Smith. He lost the preliminary hearing Kirkegaard v Smith [2019] EWHC 3393 (QB)[28] and discontinued the lawsuit on 22 May 2020, shortly before the summary judgement hearing.[29] Kirkegaard won no damages and is liable to pay the defendant's legal fees. Despite filing and losing a libel suit, Kirkegaard claims on his website "sometimes I think we should just get rid of libel laws"[30] Do You Believe That? .

Views

Global-warming denial

Kirkegaard has posted he thinks global warming is a good thing for Denmark:

“ ” Global warming pretty good for Denmark, yes, unless that Gulf Stream thing is real. I saw someone claim it isn't. I didn't investigate in depth. —@KirkegaardEmil[31]

While he recognises anthropogenic climate-change is happening — he is a denialist in the sense he ignores the negative effects of global-warming massively outweigh positives in his country. Typical of a denialist, Kirkegaard also downplays the seriousness of global-warming; he argues it isn't either a crisis nor major problem, but a "minor issue".[32][33]

“ ” [What's our biggest threat?] The right answer is demographics. Climate change is a minor issue. —@KirkegaardEmil[34]

Kirkegaard says he doesn't take environmental activists very concerned about global-warming serious because they refuse to accept nuclear power as a solution.[35] However, there's no reliable evidence nuclear power is a solution to climate-change, at least the arguments for nuclear power are questionable.[36][37] Excluding the fact nuclear power is expensive, brings about pollution (from uranium mines to nuclear waste) and increases the chances of radiological terrorism or a nuclear war — there's the known problem carbon emissions caused when mining and refining uranium ore and making reactor fuel are greater on average than renewable energies.

Anti-feminism and sexism

Kirkegaard is a staunch anti-feminist and openly identifies as a sexist:

“ ” I support state funded one-way trips for Western feminists to Iran, Cambodia and any African country (not South Africa). When they get there, they can use their Female Empowerment to find enough money to get home (or beg their non-feminists friends/family). —@KirkegaardEmil[38]

“ ” is true. Stop thinking in isms. Think in numbers. Sexism is true. Stop thinking in isms. Think in numbers. —@KirkegaardEmil[39]

“ ” Hilariously whiny paper can't figure out why women like men who act like men. "Benevolent Sexism" such an awesome term! I'll use that in my dating profile. —@KirkegaardEmil[40]

“ ” Sexual access to women is the ultimate arbiter of Sexual access to women is the ultimate arbiter of male status —@KirkegaardEmil[41]

One of the reasons Kirkegaard opposes feminism is because he thinks women should be at home, having babies, rather than at work or in higher education:

“ ” Punchline something like: while male over-education is socially wasteful, female over-education is literally the killer of civilization due to the fertility trade-off. One cannot continue a civilization with sub-replacement fertility. —@KirkegaardEmil[42]

“ ” The most pernicious part of this, not mentioned, is the fertility cost from wasting women's time in school. —@KirkegaardEmil[43]

Obsession with European fertility rates

Kirkegaard thinks governments across Europe should increase birth and fertility rates, apparently without more white children, western civilisation is at risk!

“ ” Western governments should be experimenting with ways to boost fertility, especially if it can be done without decreasing female productivity too much. —@KirkegaardEmil[44]

“ ” Aging pyramid of Germany shows that Germany needs... more children by increasing fertility of German women. —@KirkegaardEmil[45]

“ ” We have too few kids not too many. —@KirkegaardEmil[46]

“ ” Hungary doesn't have toxic feminism, or massive issues with immigrants, their biggest problem is national decline linked to low fertility. —@KirkegaardEmil[47]

“ ” How to bring about more [white] babies, according to How to bring about more [white] babies, according to Ron Unz . Would it work. —@KirkegaardEmil[48]

This view is a main goal of white nationalism to bring about more white babies and Kirkegaard promotes this message alongside Anatoly Karlin and Tara McCarthy. Although Kirkegaard doesn't identify as a white nationalist because of the stigma attached to that label he instead prefers euphemisms such as wanting to save "Western civilisation":

“ ” Which way Western civilization? Stagnation or progress? No child left behind, time to shine! —@KirkegaardEmil[49]

“ ” The decay of Western civilization: German edition. You cannot keep a civilization without reproduction (or anti-aging tech) —@KirkegaardEmil[50]

Despite being obsessed with saving "Western civilisation" by breeding more white babies, Kirkegaard has no children of his own. He has claimed this is partly because he is a "busy professional" and suggests artifical wombs and other bio-technologies in the near-future are the solution for men to have children who are too busy working full-time jobs:

“ ” Artificial wombs the final solution to boost fertility of busy professionals. A decade probably too early, but less than 2 decades for successful prototype. Lamb fetuses already up to 4 weeks (2017). —@KirkegaardEmil[51]

Kirkegaard thinks white families should be having at least four children and supports the pro-natalism policies of Viktor Orbán who promised that Hungarian women who have four or more children will never pay income tax again.[52][53]

Eugenics

Kirkegaard is a self-described eugenicist and claims without it — Western civilisation will be destroyed:

“ ” Dysgenics is real. Eugenics or Western civilization dies. Choose wisely. is real. Eugenics or Western civilization dies. Choose wisely. —@KirkegaardEmil[54]

He has defended the He Jiankui affair concerning CRISP gene-editing of embryos.[55][56][57]

Kirkegaard also supports IVF and thinks governments should fund assisted reproductive technology:

“ ” I meant the state should sponsor practical research into IVF and other modern biotech eugenics/reproductive genetics (egg generation for instance), and then subsidize this so it is available for the population at large. —@KirkegaardEmil[58]

He claims he only supports voluntary or incentive-based eugenics, not coercive.[59] However this is contradicted by his support of CRISP gene-editing; embryos cannot consent and there's the same risk with CRISP of gene therapy when applied to newborn babies,[60][61] i.e. "inadvertently damaging alterations could thus be seen as harming the genomes of the others without their consent."[62]

Kirkegaard has distastefully made a sympathetic tweet to sterilising the mentally ill:

“ ” Most eugenics was not Nazi extermination style. Most of it was sterilize dull and mentally ill people so they don't have (more) kids that others have to pay for and who will likely also cause more issues (and so on until regression towards the mean saves us). —@KirkegaardEmil[63]

Drugs

Kirkegaard describes himself as a "major proponent of drug legalization",[64] arguing even "cocain [sic] should be sold".[65]

Anti-immigration

Kirkegaard is a capitalist and views immigration mainly in terms of net-economics such as fiscal contribution he links to intelligence.[66][67][68]

He therefore opposes who he considers "low skilled" and "low-IQ" immigrants as well as refugees into Western countries, namely Denmark and Sweden:

“ ” I would go a lot further into massive negative externalities of low skill immigrants, all of which is to say that demography is almost destiny. —@KirkegaardEmil[69]

“ ” The Swedish non-miracle: refugees are net negatives (on average, NAXALT), and this is true even if adjusted for age/sex and time since immigration. —@KirkegaardEmil[70]

“ ” No Swedish refugee miracle: large negative net contributions of immigrants. —@KirkegaardEmil[71]

“ ” Have you ever written about how you think governments should deal with refugees from low IQ countries? —@Rogerindividuo[72]

“ ” ...not let them in? —@KirkegaardEmil[73]

“ ” You can't take down the welfare state, but you can limit immigration. Besides, if you let immigrants in and did away with welfare, they would vote left parties in, and implement the welfare state again. You always end up paying for low tier people if you don't guard the border. —@KirkegaardEmil[74]

“ ” If one imports a lot of low skilled workers, and then make their labor useless with automation, one will have a huge problem for welfare state -- larger than before importing them. —@KirkegaardEmil[75]

Kirkegaard has argued with people who share similar anti-immigration views but for different reasons:

“ ” It's not primarily about values, but ability. Ability selection is key to any successful immigration policy. —@KirkegaardEmil[76]

“ ” Liberal or illiberal, doesn't matter in itself. Thinking too much like a natural law Liberal or illiberal, doesn't matter in itself. Thinking too much like a natural law libertarian . Net benefit matters. I'll take a Burka ban if we can avoid another 100k welfare immigrants. Burka ban, though silly, has essentially zero impact on my way of life. —@KirkegaardEmil[77]

In other words, Kirkegaard doesn't much care about the values and beliefs of immigrants but their net-fiscal contribution and IQ. He is particularly hostile to Muslim immigrants who aside from denigrating by calling them "low-intelligence" and "terrible", equates Muslim immigrants in Sweden with "self-destruction" and claims they're much more crime-prone:

“ ” That's right. In addition to low intelligence, Muslims seem to have other traits that make them poor citizens in Western countries. —@KirkegaardEmil[78]

“ ” Lol, I don't see anything Lol, I don't see anything fascist by calling out bizarre Swedish self-destruction of their country. —@KirkegaardEmil[79]

“ ” I didn't do any work on refugees specifically, but sure, people from those countries have below average performance in every social indicator including crime (i.e. more criminal). There is also a link between terrorism and Muslims (work by I didn't do any work on refugees specifically, but sure, people from those countries have below average performance in every social indicator including crime (i.e. more criminal). There is also a link between terrorism and Muslims (work by Noah Carl ). —@KirkegaardEmil[80]

“ ” The more Muslims in a country, the more extreme they become. —KirkegaardEmil[81]

“ ” EmilK takes #UncomfortableData to new level by quantifying cuck. Westerners underestimate the extent Muslims leech them for welfare. —@i_aver[82]

“ ” At least, Danes do. Would be interesting to replicate in Sweden, UK, Czech. Presumably Czechs less cucked. —@KirkegaardEmil[83]

Kirkegaard purports to produce scientific data showing Muslim immigrants are low net-fiscal contributors and more crime-prone. However these studies have been criticised for serious methodological flaws and confirmation bias; Noah Carl, Kirkegaard's colleague was sacked from his job at Cambridge University for publishing anti-Muslim papers in the academically dodgy OpenPsych journals that Kirkegaard publishes. Kirkegaard has had his manuscripts rejected for peer-review when submitted to mainstream journals.[84]

Ableism

Kirkegaard intensely dislikes people with mental-health issues and disabilities; on his social media he has posted ableist language such as calling people "retards":

“ ” Executive committee is a bunch of retards too. —@KirkegaardEmil[85]

“ ” Hawks decided to go full retard recently, presumably to protect himself. decided to go full retard recently, presumably to protect himself. —@KirkegaardEmil[86]

“ ” Github is going full retard: "Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub". —@KirkegaardEmil[87]

It is often the case that individuals Kirkegaard attacks as being mentally ill for merely holding different views to him — don't have any mental-health issues:

“ ” ...apparently we all have mental illnesses to the point where we must be blocked lol. —@sillyolyou[88]

He has also falsely accused an individual of having mental-illnesses they don't have on his website.[89]

Furthermore, Kirkegaard labels academic fields he disagrees with (such as Whiteness Studies ) as being for mentally ill people:

“ ” There's entire academic fields for mentally ill people writing about the terrors of Whiteness. —KirkegaardEmil[90]

Kirkegaard argues transgender individuals are mentally ill,[91] however this claim is dubious.[92][93]

He argues against individuals who have mental illness from having children:

“ ” Think twice before having kids with mentally ill people. ~15 times increased mortality from opioid abusers ~ times for amphetamines/cocaine ~6 times for anorexics. Only ~3 for being retarded. Seriously. —@KirkegaardEmil[94]

In February 2020 Kirkegaard published a pre-print of a paper arguing mental illness is significantly more common among individuals with left-wing political views than conservatives. However, the paper isn't (yet) peer-reviewed and likely has many errors.[95] The paper has already been referenced and promoted on various far-right and conservative blogs.[96][97]

Despite the pre-print not being peer-reviewed, Kirkegaard references his own paper having "proved" white liberals are crazy:

“ ” White libs crazy, science confirms. You wouldn't wanna be a science denier, now would you? —@KirkegaardEmil[98]

Aside from liberals, Kirkegaard has described SJWs, Antifa, Marxists, feminists and pretty much anyone left-of-center in politics as insane.[citation NOT needed]

Kirkegaard claims to block insane people on social media:

“ ” I block dishonest or insane people. Both of these qualify for one or the other. —@KirkegaardEmil[99]

Hilariously someone then asked why he associates himself with unhinged people such as Davide Piffer who claims to have psychic powers:

“ ” You say that you block insane people, but don't you still work with Davide Piffer after he claimed to have psychic powers. —@KirkegaardEmil[100]

Kirkegaard is therefore rather selective who he blocks as insane. He has further defended Piffer's batshit crazy Uri Geller-type beliefs.[101]

In May 2020 Kirkegaard began describing vegans and vegetarians as mentally ill:

“ ” Mental illness and the left: vegan edition. —@KirkegaardEmil[102]

While a meta-analysis of studies[103] has shown vegans have a much higher risk of depression and anxiety than meat-eaters, Kirkegaard ignores the vegetarian-depression link is possibly the result of vegans simply "being aware of the cruelties of the world and this is more depressing than living in a state of ignorant bliss."[104] Instead, Kirkegaard argues:

“ ” The prior is always that it's mostly or entirely genetic confounding via common cause. —@KirkegaardEmil[105]

Transphobia

Kirkegaard is a transphobe and has described transgender individuals as "bad", "mentally ill" and "insane":

“ ” ...okay to point out obvious truths denied by PC elite such as ...okay to point out obvious truths denied by PC elite such as Muslims are terrible immigrants to get, there's only 2 sexes, trannies are mentally ill etc. —@KirkegaardEmil[106]

“ ” Replace with your favorite surpressed truth (race iq, trannies bad, women irrational, dysgenics real, etc) —@KirkegaardEmil[107]

“ ” Do transgender people seem insane to you? Well. —@KirkegaardEmil[108]

Homophobia

Kirkegaard wants to end homosexuality in the future through eugenics by selecting for heterosexual children:

“ ” Parents will still select against gayness. They'd be silly not to. It's related to mental illness, less happiness, problems in dating, many places social disapproval, shorter lifespan and so on. —@KirkegaardEmil[109]

Studies have indeed shown there is a higher risk of mental disorders (such as depression) among homosexuals than heterosexuals,[110] but Kirkegaard ignores data that suggests this is because of institutionalised prejudice and social exclusion (even within families). Instead he doubtfully claims the higher risk of mental illnesses is because of genetics:

“ ” The relationship between gayness and various poor outcomes has to do mostly with biology, not social factors. Society used to be very hostile to gays, now it's the opposite, but associations stay the same, suggests different causes. (No surprise there.) —@KirkegaardEmil[111]

Islamophobia

Kirkegaard is a staunch Islamophobe; he has described "Muslims as terrible immigrants to get", [112] and his tweets do not draw a distinction between ordinary law-abiding Muslim citizens and Muslim extremists, for example he has described Allah as a "fire god" because of an arson incident:

“ ” Third day of random arson in Aarhus, Denmark, ghetto area. Third day of random arson in Aarhus, Denmark, ghetto area. Allah apparently is a fire God. —@KirkegaardEmil[113]

He has described the entire Islam religion and Muhammad as paedophiles:

“ ” Some sad stats on pedophilia and Muslims. Mohammad set the precedent, so I guess the followers of Mohammad act as him. —@KirkegaardEmil[114]

He uses the Islamophobic #swedistan hashtag on Twitter.[115]

Racism and xenophobia

Kirkegaard identifies as a "moderate racist:"

“ ” Well, they have literally redefined the word so that Well, they have literally redefined the word so that racism is an empirical claim that's true in moderate form. —@KirkegaardEmil[116]

However he has posted crude racism about black people; for example, in his opinion their neighbourhoods are bad to live in:

“ ” So, e.g. areas with lots of blacks are (generally) poor/crime prone/low trust because there's more blacks and blacks are poor/criminal/low trust. It's not the mixture of people per se, but their relative proportions. Different causal mechanism. —@KirkegaardEmil[117]

He has criticised the academic John Hawks for denouncing racism.[118]

Kirkegaard sometimes equates racism with being non-politically correct:

“ ” It's reverse skin in the game, actually. If they don't publish more PC findings, or publish unPC findings, they risk their career. The incentive is towards PC findings. If truth is racist, and you can't publish racist stuff, then you can't publish true stuff about these matters. —@KirkegaardEmil[116]

And thinks the word "racism" is more or less redundant because of political correctness:

“ ” When whites talk about race, they are racist. When they don't, they are also racist. Usually. Groundbreaking research here.. —@KirkegaardEmil[119]

He thinks white women are discriminated against:

“ ” UK priorities: detain and ban 2 UK priorities: detain and ban 2 internet journalist girls , while ignoring massive rape ring of their own daughters by immigrants. I guess their priorities are quite consistent: Fuck White Women. —@KirkegaardEmil[120]

Kirkegaard has praised Einstein not for his scientific accomplishments, but his alleged xenophobic[121] views:

“ ” Do you ever worry that overtly racist posts will undermine your credibility as a supposedly disinterested scientist? —@vince_adultman[122]

“ ” There are basically no disinterested scientists. Everybody except extreme autists have an agenda. It is an unavoidable part of being human. The point of science is to reduce the agendas influence on scientific results by making the process resistant to them (and other errors). —@KirkegaardEmil[122]

“ ” I wasn't talking about terminology, for the record. I was referring to the fact that you were half-ironically praising Einstein for racist remarks. —@vince_adultman[122]

Kirkegaard has been accused of anti-Semitism:

“ ” Only @KirkegaardEmil would proudly advertise support for the author of "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power" and "Swindlers of the Crematoria" as a list of "who's cool in behavioral genetics and IQ." He that lieth down with dogs shall wake up with fleas. —@ent3c[123]

Although he denies this.[124] Nevertheless, he has made a bunch of controversial tweets critical of "Hollywood Jews":

“ ” When one protected group hates another. Time to battle over who's the bigger victim! —@KirkegaardEmil[125]

“ ” Well, in the metoo vs. Hollywood Jews, looks like metoo won. —@KirkegaardEmil[125]

“ ” When ratwiki [sic] can't figure out whether something counts as anti-Semitic [sic] or not. Everybody knows that Jews are highly over-represented in creative wordy stuff. Hollywood Jews is an obvious term for those in that particular area. —@KirkegaardEmil[126]

“ ” While the phrase Hollywood Jew maybe [sic] accurate, it does seem to be generally used in a nefarious manner. —@rasalghulvc[126]

“ ” Nice try. But people use that term not just to highlight Jewish creativity in cinema, but mainly to denounce Jewish influence in popular culture as being agenda-driven, self-interested, and anti-Christian. —@aschops[126]

Kirkegaard has claimed anyone who doubts his racist views concerning race and intelligence must have "destructive immigration policies":

“ ” Whether intentional or not, the effect of this denialism & doubt about race and IQ is to further the destructive immigration policies. —@KirkegaardEmil[127]

Relation to alt-right

The vast majority of Kirkegaard's political views overlap with the alt-right and white nationalism, but he rejects these labels for alt-center.[128]

“ ” Haha. I'm not much of a White Nationalist. They WNs call me cuck and IQ nationalist! —@KirkegaardEmil[129]

In reality, posters on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront see Kirkegaard as a white nationalist[130] and promote his writings on race.[131]

Kirkegaard uses white nationalism slogans on his social media:

He also denies being far-right which he blatantly is:

“ ” I'd like to point out that I am a heterodox/alt centrist, not far right in politics. —@KirkegaardEmil[133]

Despite claiming to be heterodox, most of Kirkegaard's views are standard alt-right and he uses their terminology and memes — so he's actually boring and unoriginal:

“ ” As for using 'alt-right terminology', whatever man. These people have invented a lot of good terms for describing things going on. I'm not the type to avoid using words just because they were invented by the 'wrong people'. —@KirkegaardEmil[122]

Kirkegaard has defended the alt-right Unite the Right rally and claims they somehow weren't far-right extremists:

“ ” Yet somehow the media and academics are obsessed with them [Unite the Right]. To a left wing extremist, everybody looks like a far right extremist. —@KirkegaardEmil[134]

“ ” But they really are far-right extremists. So bad example to illustrate your point. —@greenrd[135]

On his blog he lists his political views.[136] Many of them are conservative such as strong border controls, opposing foreign aid and anti-affirmative action:

Immigration

Immigration to welfare states should be tightly controlled, including by cognitive ability tests, language tests and ability to find work. It should also be limited in scope, so as to avoid the formation of parallel societies. Given these policies, I don’t see the reason to have race discrimination in immigration policies. Recent immigrants that strongly under-perform (very crime-prone, living off benefits for decades and the like) should be sent home. If it is ethically questionable to send them home (e.g. >1 generation), then they should be offered money to go somewhere else/home. It is cheaper to pay them a small sum up front than paying in the long term for them and their descendants.

Affirmative action

There should be no affirmative action for any groups, including racial and sex groups. Lobby organizations for these groups should not receive public funding.

Foreign aid

Economic foreign aid does not work and should be stopped. To improve the conditions of poor countries, one should focus on making technological advances cheaply available to the less bright countries; free of intellectual monopolies. Probably some of the lowest hanging fruit are disease extermination programs.

That said, he does hold some progressive views, although his right-wing positions largely outweigh the former.

Kirkegaard is a member of the right-wing Technologipartiet whose website claims it opposes multiculturalism, opposes gender equality laws and wants to decommission the Ministry of Gender Equality in Denmark.[137] The Technologipartiet promotes nuclear power, "including experiments with thorium-based versions and fusion when the time comes" and wants to avoid "wasting money on expensive renewable energy". One of its strangest policies is providing state aid for embryo selection or "eugenics biotechnology".

Kirkegaard supports a number of right-wing populist to far-right parties, including the Sweden Democrats. [138]

He has been described as a "figure on the radical right fringe".[139]

Kirkegaard claims with flimsy evidence that right-wing people are more moral:

“ ” Generally speaking, Generally speaking, right-wingers are more moral people. True both for trivial stuff like swearing, but also cheating rates in relationships etc. —@KirkegaardEmil[140]

Alt-right

Further evidence he is alt-right, include:

Kirkegaard uploaded this alt-right graphic of Pepe the Frog to Twitter; notice it contains the word "niggers" on the left side.

Kirkegaard is listed as a member of the "All Right Social Network", that also includes white supremacists such as Richard Spencer, Brittany Pettibone, Patrick Little and Angelo John Gage.[168]

Controversies

Nazi sympathies

In 2013 there was a campaign by Danish Projekt Antifa to expel Kirkegaard from the Piratpartiet (Pirate Party) after they discovered he had ranted about "low IQ immigrants" on the Piratpartiet internet forum. Furthermore, on his Facebook profile, Kirkegaard posted a photo of himself next to someone performing a Nazi-salute, while smiling, and writing an insensitive comment about being the Führer. Antifa also found evidence that Kirkegaard had tried to defend cooperation of the Piratpartiet with the neo-Nazi Party of the Danes , founded by Daniel Carlsen; an article appeared on the Project Antifa website describing Kirkegaard as a "Nazi Sympathiser" and attempted to expel him from the Piratpartiet:

Emil Kirkegaard's approach to issues about racism and nazism, you may find only in neo-Nazi groups. At the Pirate Party's forum he writes "If one's immigration consists primarily of low intelligent people, then it will be very, very expensive for the country. And that's exactly what we see in the western countries now." Both Emil Kirkegaard and several other party activists defend cooperation with the Party of the Danes. At the same time, Emil Kirkegaard's Facebook can see a photo where an unknown person is in the background, while Emil Kirkegaard is smiling at the camera. Emil Kirkegaard's comment reads: "The Führer is being hailed/saluted". (English translation of Danish) [169]

Führer. Emil Kirkegaard with Nazi saluting friend; Kirkegaard wrote on Facebook he is the

then complains if someone points out his political views are far-right. Emil Kirkegaard supports the fascist All-Polish Youth then complains if someone points out his political views are far-right.

In response to the Projekt Antifa article, Kirkegaard has claimed the photo of the Nazi salute was a joke. Do You Believe That?

In April 2019, Kirkegaard published a blog article on his website "On Nazism and Jews" claiming he is an anti-authoritarian and "not very supportive of Nazism, and fairly pro-Jewish as far as HBDers go."[170] However his claim to be an anti-authoritarian is contradicted by his opposition to civil liberties of immigrants, especially if they're Muslim, while his claim of not supporting Nazism or fascism, is contradicted by his support for far-right political groups, including the fascist All-Polish Youth . While the All Polish Youth attempt to cosmetically distance themselves from Nazism by anti-swastika banners, the group is anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist.

Kirkegaard also claims, he has "often been critical on Hitler and Nazis publicly". However these anti-Nazi comments that have all suddenly appeared were only made in response to this RationalWiki article that was made in 2016 and don't predate this page.[171] Like almost everything Kirkegaard says, his claims are bullshit.

Child porn

In 2012, Kirkegaard wrote a controversial blog post titled "the ban on child porn possession".[172][173]

Falkvinge recently ran an article about the legalization of child porn possession. Either very foolish or very brave, perhaps both. Surely some reporters will pick up on this sooner or later and run headlines like “Pirates want to legalize child porn”, which even if true will damage the media image of the Pirate Parties. However, there is no way around this if one wants to discuss censorship and freedom of information. There is a reason why online censorship started with child porn, and ofc, the copyright people are happy about it. I suggest that people read the comments as well, i also made some comments there as well. Consider also reading this article which is making the basic point: if sexual orientation is something one is born with (it is), then the preference for children is as well. So, no law can make people become not pedofiles. Sad situation. Now comes the saddest part: Suppose one is born a pedofile. What to do? If one is a moral being, then one will avoid actually raping children. One can have sex with some rather young ones (say, any consenting child in puberty) without any moral problems, especially when one is young oneself. For the rest, one is left to masturbate to porn, perhaps child porn (animated or not), and regular porn. That sucks, and there is nothing to do about it. Perhaps a compromise is having sex with a sleeping child without them knowing it (so, using sleeping medicine). If they dont notice it is difficult to see how they cud be harmed, even if it is rape. One must distinguish between rape becus the other was disconsenting (wanting to not have sex), and rape becus the other is not consenting, but not disconseting either (so, unaware of the action becus of sleep or coma or something like that). There is also the possibility of bodily harm that will be there after the person wakes up. This is especially the case with small children since their bodily openings are not large enuf for a regular sized male penis. To avoid this one shud not penetrate. Oh, and perhaps the best solution to one who is exclusively aroused by very young children: castration, either medical or fysical. This will help reduce libido.[172]

In another blog post, Kirkegaard defended the legalization of animated-child pornography.[174] In 2018, Kirkegaard was widley criticized in British newspapers and by many other notable people for making these blog posts.[175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188]

OkCupid doxxing

In 2016, Kirkegaard published the data of nearly 70,000 OkCupid users, as a study in one of his own pseudojournals.[189][190]

Kirkegaard claims he was publishing already public information, but this is disputed by others who argue the information was "semi-private":

Moreover, it remains unclear whether the OkCupid profiles scraped by Kirkegaard’s team really were publicly accessible. Their paper reveals that initially they designed a bot to scrape profile data, but that this first method was dropped because it was “a decidedly non-random approach to find users to scrape because it selected users that were suggested to the profile the bot was using.” This implies that the researchers created an OkCupid profile from which to access the data and run the scraping bot. Since OkCupid users have the option to restrict the visibility of their profiles to logged-in users only, it is likely the researchers collected—and subsequently released—profiles that were intended to not be publicly viewable. The final methodology used to access the data is not fully explained in the article, and the question of whether the researchers respected the privacy intentions of 70,000 people who used OkCupid remains unanswered.[191]

$200 bounty

In response to the firing of Bo Winegard from his job, Kirkegaard posted he would pay a $200 "bounty" to anyone who can identify a pseudonymous Twitter user called AfroSapiens (an anti-racist activist) who allegedly sent emails to Winegard's university informing them about his racist tweets.[192] Kirkegaard claims legal action should be taken against this person. Do You Believe That?

Pseudoscience

“ ” If you are referring to Emil Kirkegaard - He is not a scientist! —Aarhus University[193]

Race and intelligence

See the main article on this topic: race and intelligence

“ ” Users who fall into this category include Mankind Quarterly editor Gerhard Meisenberg. Emil Kirkegaard, who edits frequently under the username Deleet, is a research fellow at Users who fall into this category include racialist academics and members of the human biodiversity, or HBD , blogging community. Often these are single-purpose accounts that exclusively edit on topics like race and intelligence, racial classification and bios of related researchers, like Linda Gottfredson or Helmuth Nyborg. Some have direct ties with racist journals or organizations, likeeditor Gerhard Meisenberg. Emil Kirkegaard, who edits frequently under the username Deleet, is a research fellow at Richard Lynn ’s Ulster Institute for Social research and the co-founder of the online pseudojournal OpenPsych —Southern Poverty Law Center[194]

“ ” ...his approach is the opposite of a scientific approach: he twists the numbers in all directions until he reaches a result that confirms his bias, namely that Muslim migrants are genetically less intelligent and commit more crimes —Le temps, discussing Kirkegaard's pseudoscience

Kirkegaard identifies as a proponent of HBD,[195] i.e. racialism and has described himself as a "race realist",[196] a term coined by J. Philippe Rushton that is adopted by white nationalists like David Duke. His website contains posts on race and eugenics.[197][198][199] Against the scientific consensus that race is not an accurate way to describe or analyse human biological variation, Kirkegaard erroneously argues human races are valid biological constructs (as "genetic clusters") and makes PRATTs such as quoting Lewontin's Fallacy:

I think one can just read the various existing defenses of race realism if one is curious. The page you link to is well-sourced but an exercise in semantics and irrelevance. E.g. section Genetic evidence: Race does not predict human variation well presents results irrelevant to the title, it is well accepted that most variation is within the major racial groups. It does not follow from this that the between group variation is unimportant. Indeed, even very small differences can make a large difference, as people with mutations in e.g. SRY can report. It does not matter so much to me whether these groups are called races, genetic clusters, biogeographical ancestry or whatever (the most common euphemism in medical genetics).[200]

Kirkegaard doesn't just argue for human races, but maintains there is a racial hierarchy with different "tiers" of races based on average intelligence, for example he considers Indians to be a "lower tier".[201] He argues mean group differences in intelligence is mostly the result of genetic factors, for example writing "The hereditarian hypothesis is almost certainly true.[202] In fact, he has gone as far as arguing "100% genetic for the USA black white gap".[203] Nonsurprisingly, no peer-reviewed science journals would publish this pseudoscience and so Kirkegaard was left submitting a paper to the Mankind Quarterly.[204] On his website, Kirkegaard recommends outdated racialist literature such as John Baker's Race (1974) and in 2015 positively reviewed the far-right Metapedia article on race and intelligence.[205][206] He alleges a left-wing bias in academia that downplays heritability of race and IQ.[207]

Kirkegaard is permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia,[208] having misused the wiki to spread his racist nonsense. He has since whined about Wikipedia deleting his pseudoscientific writings on race.[209]

London Conference on Intelligence

See the main article on this topic: London Conference on Intelligence

Another major organiser of the LCI is Emil Kirkegaard, who has attended all four conferences and even designed the website. Although he refers to himself as a “polymath” and Thompson describes him as a "very bright young guy", Kirkegaard is not an academic. His highest qualification is a Bachelor’s in linguistics. Having dropped out of his Masters degree, instead preferring to be "self-taught in various subjects", Kirkegaard now runs OpenPsych, a platform for non-peer reviewed psychology papers, along with Davide Piffer of Mankind Quarterly. Piffer is a fellow LCI-speaker, and was praised by Richard Lynn as having done "brilliant work identifying the genes responsible for race differences in intelligence." Authors on OpenPsych include Kevin MacDonald, described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as “the neo-Nazi movement’s favourite academic”, who praised Anders Breivik as a “serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy.” John Fuerst, a fellow of the UISR, spoke at LCI 2015 and 2016, and frequently collaborates with Kirkegaard on OpenPsych. As well as writing various blogs, which he describes as “race realist”, , he also frequently posts anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook. When questioned about his popularity on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, he stated that he had “no beef against… neo-Nazis." Kirkegaard’s own personal blog is home to topics such as "Is miscegenation bad for your kids?" and how one could empirically verify a Jewish conspiracy. His Facebook features alt-right promotional videos and once featured a friend’s Nazi salute with the caption "There will be an heir to the Führer." By far the most disturbing of part of Kirkegaard’s internet presence, however, is a blog-post in which he justifies child rape. He states that a ‘compromise’ with paedophiles could be: “having sex with a sleeping child without them knowing it (so, using sleeping medicine. If they dont notice it is difficult to see how they cud be harmed, even if it is rape. One must distinguish between rape becus the other was disconsenting (wanting to not have sex), and rape becus the other is not consenting, but not disconsenting either.” He qualifies this with a note that “bodily harm” would undermine this justification, and especially “with small children since their bodily openings are not large enuf [sic] for a regular sized male penis. To avoid this one shud [sic] not penetrate.” Kirkegaard’s reputation as a scientific advocate for neo-Nazism was increased last April [2017] when he appeared on Tara McCarthy’s ‘Reality Calls’ to discuss “the future of eugenics.” McCarthy was banned from YouTube for alleging a Jewish conspiracy to commit “white genocide”, supports deporting naturalized citizens and “killing them if they resist”, and said that she hopes “zero” migrants crossing the Mediterranean “make it alive”.[210]

Ulster Institute for Social Research

On Facebook,[211] Kirkegaard says he is a research fellow at the Ulster Institute for Social Research. This institute founded by Richard Lynn has received grants from the far-right Pioneer Fund and publishes the racist pseudoscience journal Mankind Quarterly, described as white supremacist by SPLC.[note 2]

Arthur Robert Jensen memorial site

Kirkegaard is the owner of the Arthur Robert Jensen memorial site dedicated to the white nationalist Arthur Jensen.[212] Kirkegaard tries to portray Jensen as an "objective scientist" who fought against political bias and censorship, when in reality Jensen was politically biased and far-right for example sitting on the Editorial Board of a neo-Nazi journal and was interviewed by Jared Taylor in 1992. Jensen remains most infamous for his controversial writings on race and intelligence and Kirkegaard has described him as his main influence.

OpenPsych

See the main article on this topic: OpenPsych pseudojournals

OpenPsych is a pseudoscience factory-farm, and Noah Carl is its prize hen. He is its second most prolific contributor, a member of the review team and its only Russell Group academic. Half of Carl’s OpenPsych reviews have come from just two people, one of whom, Emil Kirkegaard, has no educational qualifications beyond a Bachelor’s degree in linguistics, according to his own LinkedIn page. Kirkegaard also happens to be the founder of OpenPsych. Kirkegaard is a maverick when it comes to scientific ethics. In 2016, he and Julius Bjerrekær (OpenPsych’s third most prolific author, behind Kirkegaard and Carl) were responsible for what one social scientist described as “without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases I have ever seen.” The two had leaked the private data of 70,000 OKCupid users, including their personal sexual preferences.[213]

Many of Carl’s articles have been published on the OpenPsych website set up by Kirkegaard to circumvent the peer review system. Its editors and referees are almost all associated with the far-right and often do not even have qualifications in the fields they are responsible for overseeing. Over half of the articles on the site are authored or co-authored by Kirkegaard. The co-founder of OpenPsych is Davide Piffer—another pseudo-scientific researcher who once claimed to have psychic powers—who is based at the Ulster Institute for Social Research (UISR), established by Richard Lynn. UISR is backed by Lynn’s Pioneer Fund and publishes the equally irreputable Mankind Quarterly, which regularly prints Kirkegaard’s writings. What we have here is a network of right-wing ideologues, who set up what have rightly been called “pseudo journals” through which they publish and “review” one another’s tracts.[214]

Despite Kirkegaard's insistence otherwise,[215][216][217] OpenPsych and its journals are pseudojournals: they do not use traditional peer review and are filled with Kirkegaard's publications. For example OpenPsych show typical signs of a pseudojournal: high percentage of content written by one of the journal's creator, Kirkegaard himself.

As of 13 January 2018:

Kirkegaard wrote for 18 out of the 32 papers in Open Differential Psychology [218]

Kirkegaard wrote for 1 out of the 7 papers in Open Behavioral Genetics [219]

Kirkegaard wrote for 8 out of the 11 papers in Open Quantitative Sociology & Political Science[220]

Kirkegaard was an author for 27 of 50 total papers, or 54%.

According to Kirkegaard, his journals do have peer review:[216]

OpenPsych journals do have peer review. In fact, they have open peer review meaning that literally anyone can see the review of any paper. For instance, look in the post-publication forum for the reviews of all published papers. I think this is a much better and certainly more transparent review than journals ordinarily practice. My status as editor has little impact on this system, since editors do not have rejection powers in these journals. Nor can they select reviewers at whim. Rather all in-house reviewers can review any paper they desire. The role of the editor is mainly to smooth things by asking reviewers whether they have time to review this or that submission.

However, this is an argument by assertion. The aforementioned process falls under the umbrella of open peer review.

Mankind Quarterly

Kirkegaard is the domain owner and webmaster of the controversial racist journal Mankind Quarterly. In recent years, the journal has tried to repackage itself as doing "normal science" on race.[221] But this is bullshit and nobody is fooled because the journal continues to publish racist woo from Edward Dutton (its editor), John Fuerst, Richard Lynn and Gerhard Meisenberg.

Self-citation

Kirkegaard has been criticized for inflating his h-index and other citation metrics by heavily citing his own papers. For example, as of February 2019, all 38 citations to his most cited paper were self-citations (i.e. papers authored or co-authored by Kirkegaard himself).[222] Of the 404 Google Scholar citations (as of February 12, 2019) to his papers, 316 of them (78%!) were self-citations. Many of the exceptions are citations to the OkCupid paper he co-authored in 2016, and the citations are typically talking about controversial issues in data science (using the privacy-violating paper as an example).[223]

Stopped-clock

While Kirkegaard supports racialist pseudoscience, he nevertheless is against most other pseudosciences, including creationism and climate change denial, writing: "I spent several years debating creationists online (and religious people in general), and now a days occasionally debate climate science deniers."[224] (in actual fact Kirkegaard is a global-warming denialist, see above). He has done some decent research on how atheism correlates with intelligence and education.[225]

Kirkegaard is also to be thanked for uploading Martin Gardner's book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science online in its entirety[226] (though ironically among the things Gardner criticized were racist claims of his time).

See also

Notes

↑ is real. Eugenics or Western civilization dies. Choose wisely" (see While he claims his support for eugenics "has nothing to do with any racial matters" this is contradicted by comments he has made elsewhere e.g. " Dysgenics is real. Eugenics or Western civilization dies. Choose wisely" (see here ↑ : "Between 2002 and 2006, the UISR was bankrolled by the ‘extremist’ Pioneer Fund to the tune of $286,372. And in response to a query by The Canary, The Canary he could not provide precise figures. But we can. Indeed, the fund’s support of the UISR began as far back as 1971, with grants totalling $609,000 up to 1996. According to the According to an article published by The Canary : "Between 2002 and 2006, the UISR was bankrolled by the ‘extremist’ Pioneer Fund to the tune of $286,372. And in response to a query by Lynn confirmed that the UISR was financed in this way. Lynn, who has been the president of the Pioneer Fund since 2012, toldhe could not provide precise figures. But we can. Indeed, the fund’s support of the UISR began as far back as 1971, with grants totalling $609,000 up to 1996. According to the SPLC : "the Pioneer Fund’s original mandate was to pursue ‘race betterment’ by promoting the genetic stock of those ‘deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons’. It’s also claimed that the Pioneer Fund supported several well known white supremacists. These include David Duke (former Grand Wizard, Ku Klux Klan); Richard Spencer (agitator at the Charlottesville action that saw the tragic death of a civil rights protester); and Nick Griffin (former head of the British National Party )."

References