Downing Street Advisor Beyond Barking

[Update at end of post]

You can always tell when someone has said or done something totally and irredeemably indefensible when those who might be expected to rally to their defence fall silent. So it has been with Andrew Sabisky, taken on as an advisor at 10 Downing Street, apparently by chief polecat Dominic Cummings, whose past utterances have led to calls for him to be dismissed. They include the E-Word, as in Eugenics.

Andrew Sabisky

Even the Daily Mail’s website has covered the controversy, observing “Mr Sabisky - who calls himself a 'super forecaster’ … told an interview with School's Week: 'From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year’ … In the same interview, he said: 'Eugenics are about selecting "for" good things’”. And what good things might those be, O wise one?

“Intelligence is largely inherited and it correlates with better outcomes: physical health, income, lower mental illness … There is no downside to having IQ except short-sightedness”. Is he talking about wanking? But do go on. “Mr Sabisky Tweeted: 'I am always straight up in saying that women's sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s’”. So what have those who actually know the subject said about him?

Adam Rutherford, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, and who has written How to Argue With a Racist, an authoritative book on the subject (HERE), is not impressed: “like Cummings, he appears to be bewitched by science, without having made the effort to understand the areas he is invoking, nor its history”. There is more.

“The argument that humans are susceptible to selective breeding as in agriculture (as expressed by Dawkins) is not incorrect, though it is simplistic to the point of being almost meaningless … His presence at the Intelligence conference held on UCL grounds is problematic, as it is mostly attended by scientifically semi-literate cranks, actual white supremacists, and utter fools, whose self style heretical pose masks not just weirdness, but ignorance and bigotry”. That sounds like the conference that did for Toby Young.

He warns “though cognitive abilities are most certainly heritable, this confused statement (and others) indicates a failure to understand this concept. Attainment gaps are far better explained by environmental differences than genetic … I could go on about the scientific illiteracy much further, but the moral repugnance is overwhelming”. Point taken.

Sunder Katwala has added “Sabisky (in 2014, 6 years ago) does seem to clearly advocate that ‘UK immigration control’ should be based on there being ‘very real racial differences in intelligence’ (which he thinks to be mostly genetic) … Another (Aug 2014) comment is ‘Ethnocentrism & racism are just facts of life and there’s good reason (IMO) to suspect they are part of our evolved biology’ … Sabisky (2014) tells Cummings it'd be desirable to genetically select for ‘ethnocentrism’ alongside empathy + altruism”. Yes, well.

One hates to use words like “fruitcake” and “wacko”, but if that is what Sabisky has said this recently, he appears to be both, and should not be anywhere near the centre of Government. Mind you, nor should Dominic Cummings, but hey ho.

Welcome to the darkest side of 1930s race theory. And we the people are paying for it.

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[UPDATE 2025 hours: Sabisky has now resigned. Pity he was hired in the first place]