Mark Carrigan<p><strong>Are digital elites literally trying to establish a new species?</strong></p><p>I found this morbidly fascinating from Harry Shukman’s (excellent) Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right. He went undercover with the pro-natalists Simone and Malcolm Collins who attracted a great deal of media attention (and funding) in recent years for what has been described as ‘hipster eugenics’. From pg 228:</p><blockquote><p>the Collinses are building is a network of ideologically aligned friends who they can make their own community with. ‘We want our kids to know other kids [their] age. As we’re worried about the same things you’re worried about, I hate to say it, but the only path forward is likely to be speciation, even though we’re never going to get everyone on board. That means I need to know lots of people who my kids can marry.’</p><p>This knocks me back for a second. Speciation is when a new species with different characteristics splits from an existing species, like horses and donkeys evolving from a single common ancestor.</p><p>A species is defined as a group that is ‘reproductively isolated’ from other populations. This means that one species can’t breed with another to produce fertile offspring (donkeys and horses can make mules, but mules are usually infertile and can’t produce foals of their own).</p><p>When Malcolm says speciation is the only path forward, it seems like he is not just talking about creating a community of elites who are culturally different but one that is biologically distinct from other humans.</p><p>“What I’m really trying to do is make sure my kids have an isolated and differential breeding network. And that’s what we’re really trying to build to an extent, and that has the highest source of value going into the future.”</p></blockquote><p>And from pg 229: </p><blockquote><p>The Collinses believe they can create an original intergenerationally durable culture that prizes high fertility. Their culture teaches children to look towards the future, they say. Malcolm and Simone tell reporters that they do not celebrate Christmas with their kids but Future Day, in which their children receive presents from the Future Police, based on contracts they draw up pledging to complete certain objectives over the course of the year.</p><p>Malcolm also wants to offer arranged marriages so young people can remain in his isolated and differential breeding network.</p><p>On their website and in their self-help books, Malcolm and Simone call their new culture ‘techno puritanism’ or ‘secular Calvinism’. In practice, it means viewing central heating and fun as unnecessary indulgences, while advocating for smacking children as a form of discipline. The most important aspect of techno puritanism seems to be a belief in predestination.</p></blockquote><p>I wonder how widespread this is? I’d previously assumed there was a loose coupling here between what we might call consumerised eugenics (i.e. seeking to genetically tweak your own kids) and social eugenics (i.e. a concern for the genetic ‘welfare’ of the entire species). I find it easy to see sociologically how a concern for one could rapidly lead to a concern for the other, particularly if you enter into a community of likeminded eugenicists. In other words I don’t think we should assume that the ideologues of this movement speak for everyone loosely connected to it, but that everyone loosely connected to it is potentially on a trajectory towards being gene-pilled. </p><p>BUT how widespread is this concept and goal of ‘speciation’? That would break the loop I’d imagined by making consumerised eugenics a matter of <em>seceding </em>from the entire species rather than seeking to intervene in relation to it. One of the most striking things about Shukman’s book is how it identifies a careful strategic orientation on the part of the far-right elite to insulate public performance from private beliefs. In other words how much talk of <em>speciation</em> takes place within these circles in private? Is this a stated goal for many pro-natalists? In fact could this be <em>the </em>stated goal? </p> <p>Here’s a recent video which gives a sense of the direction they’ve gone in since their flurry of media attention in the later stages of the pandemic:</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub95EcWgSto" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub95EcWgSto</a></p><p>(It was also startling to discover that Malcolm is an alcoholic, telling Harry he drank 45 beers a day (which is obviously physically impossible!?) until discovering naltrexone which has enabled him to achieve ‘moderation’. In fact if most of this account is true it’s hard not to see them as deeply traumatised people and worry about what will happen to the many children who might get locked into their “isolated and differential breeding network”.)</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/eugenics/" target="_blank">#eugenics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/far-right/" target="_blank">#farRight</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/harry-shukman/" target="_blank">#HarryShukman</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/malcolm-collins/" target="_blank">#MalcolmCollins</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/simone-collins/" target="_blank">#SimoneCollins</a></p>