Andrew Conru, founder of “Friendfinder” and funder of “scientific racists”

In various blogs shared on this page over the past year, I have attempted to connect the dots between J. D. Vance and Trump, and the nexus of tech billionaires who are backing them financially.

I have recently mentioned a thing called “Scientific Racism”, which is a term used by various academics to describe a contemporary resurgence of 1920s-style eugenics – this time using data from the field of population genetics.

I will write more on this subject after I get the next podcast episode out, but with just over two weeks until the most consequential election in my lifetime, it is crucial that all of us make clear to our friends, neighbors, relatives, and complete strangers what is actually going-on, and what is actually at stake here.

(Political disclaimer up front for the sake of tranparency:  I believe the USA should have a proportional representation voting system.  A two-party system must invariably lead to a polarised or tribalistic form of politics.  In a less fraught or normal time, with a more democratic voting system, I would support neither of these “big two” parties.  But these are not normal times.)

There is no longer any room for doubt that the Trump/Vance GOP, if they win, will attempt to move the USA away from democracy, and toward authoritarianism or outright fascism.

Every single indicator is already on full display:

1) Undermining of a free press through attacks on fact-based, investigative journalism

2) Undermining of an independent judiciary through stacking of courts with partisan loyalists

3) Undermining of a functioning, non-partisan justice department

4) Undermining of a functioning, non-partisan civil service

5) Undermining the neutrality of the armed forces by stating the intent to deploy them against political opponents

6) Undermining social cohesion with constant attacks on marginalised and minority groups

7) Undermining public political debate by characterising dissenting voices as “dangerous radicals”, “Marxists”, “evil”, etc.

In 1930s Germany under the Nazis, it was homosexuals, the disabled, Communists, Roma, and Jews who were publicly demonised as “poison” in the bloodstream of the German Nation.

In 2024, the GOP under Trump is singling-out many of the same groups, with a particular focus on immigrants.

It goes almost without saying that the mass deportations planned will be targeted in particular at immigrants of color.

It is a source of some alarm to this writer that no one seems to be mentioning that one of Trump’s largest financial backers, Elon Musk, is the grandson of one of the founders of the “technocracy” movement.

“Technocracy” is the idea that only people with a track record of technical expertise or SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE (as measured by “IQ”) should have a say in government.

And just by “chance” (yeah, right), the same men who wish to form a future technocracy are of European ancestry, and obsessed with “proving” an innate biological intellectual superiority to other “races”.

LEST I SOUND ALARMIST, please read articles like the one shared in the link left in the comments section.

We’ve all heard of “Friendfinder”, I presume?

The owner of that company (and many other wealthy tech barons) have been actively funding groups who supply the “science” behind the belief system of the “new eugenicists”.

These are the creeps lurking behind the curtains, whispering prompts to Trump and Vance.

Excerpt from linked article:

“…HDF [Human Diversity Foundation] is part of a movement to rehabilitate so-called race science as a topic of open debate. Labelled scientific racism by mainstream academics, it seeks to prove biological differences between races such as higher average IQ or a tendency to commit crime. Its supporters claim inequality between groups is largely explained by genetics rather than external factors like discrimination.

Dr Rebecca Sear, the director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University, described it as a “dangerous ideology” with political aims and real-world consequences.

“Scientific racism has been used to argue against any policies that attempt to reduce inequalities between racial groups,” she said. It was also deployed to “argue for more restrictive immigration policies, such as reducing immigration from supposedly ‘low IQ’ populations”.

In one conversation, HDF’s organiser was recorded discussing “remigration” – a euphemism for the mass removal of ethnic minorities – saying: “You’ve just got to pay people to go home.” The term has become a buzzword on the hard right, with Donald Trump using it in September to describe his own policies in a post on X that has been viewed 56m times.”

Image: Andrew Cornu of “Friendfinder”

1525 portrait of Christopher Columbus by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, thought to be the closest likeness available

Note: The word “lynching” in the text below does not necessarily refer to hanging, as is often thought.  A lynching is the execution of an accused criminal (often wrongfully accused) by members of the public without that person having received due process of the law.  The method of execution can vary.

This post includes historical ethnic slurs for the sake of information.
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If we do not pin down the facts – all the facts – about prominent people in history, mythology will seep into the vacuum where truth should reside.

As it of course did, as millions of Italian-Americans chose to commandeer Columbus as an Italian hero.

Why would Italian-Americans choose a mass-murderer like Columbus as their cultural icon, rather than someone, anyone, who brought something more positive to the table?

The Jacuzzi (Iacuzzi) Family anyone?

But seriously.  The appropriation of Columbus as the mascot of Italian-Americans almost certainly had much to do with anti-Italian racism and bigotry in the USA following the great wave of Italian immigration which took place between 1880 and 1920 to “L’America“.

This writer was only born in 1964, but can clearly still remember when WASPish Americans – urban, suburban and rural – would openly speak with undisguised disdain of people they perceived as superstitious, rosary-clutching Catholic “W*ps”, “D*goes”, “Greaseballs”, and worse.

The stereotyping of southern Italians as being universally involved in crime – especially organised crime via the Mafia or Cosa Nostra – only added to negative perceptions.

But in a country divided by a binary racial caste system for centuries, nothing placed a mark upon Italian-Americans as damning as the perception that they were “not quite white”.

Which, on a certain level, is true. If “white” is intended to mean “pale complexioned, and of primarily central and northern European ancestry”, then many Italians, especially southern Italians, are not really “white”. With ancestors not only from Italy, southern Italians from places like Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia are a profoundly mixed population, descended from North Africans, Levantines, Greeks, Sephardic Jews, Romani, and people from sundry Arab lands.

In other words, a largely brown people.

*****

Make no mistake.  Anti-Italian (and anti-immigrant sentiment in general) was real, and at times vicious and violent.  It is believed that around 40 Italian-Americans were lynched in the USA between 1890 and the end of WWII.  Eleven of these victims were shot to death on a single day by a mob in New Orleans in 1891, so counting the 29 other victims of anti-Italian violence, we can see that an Italian became a lynch victim every couple of years.

This number is by no means comparable to the scale of intimidation and violence being meted-out to African-Americans during the same era.

At least 3,500 Black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968, which means at least 41 African-Americans were the victims of extra-judicial murder every single year – thus exceeding in one year the total number of Italians murdered over the course of over half a century.

Even so, the fact that such ethnicity-based killings happened at all is indicative of the widespread hostility shown to Italian-Americans.

400 years after the landing of Columbus in the Caribbean, a national day of celebration was declared by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892.  This was intended as a once-off event, mostly to repair US-Italy diplomatic relations which were under a great deal of strain following the above mentioned murder of 11 Italians in Louisiana.

This day had already been celebrated for decades in American cities with large Italian communities, much like recent Irish immigrants and long-time Americans of Irish ancestry had been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.

But while St. Patrick’s Day finds its roots in medieval Ireland (making it thus intrinsically “Irish”), the celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas in 1492 could not be said to be similarly intrinsically Italian.

The very concept of a unified Italian national identity didn’t even exist until the mid-1800s “Risorgimento” – so a Sicilian living under Spanish rule in 1492 would have seen the people of the Genoan Republic as foreigners, and vice versa.   This north/south cultural divide persists to this very day in modern Italy.

No, this embrace of Columbus as a cultural icon for Italian-Americans had far more to do with an increasingly vocal and conscious assertion of the right of Catholics to participate in the American project – on an equal footing with the dominant Protestant culture.

*****

After the American War for Independence, the new USA eagerly cast about for icons and symbols to represent a new and distinct identity following its break with Great Britain.

Britannia, the symbolic female embodiment of Great Britain, and John Bull, her male counterpart, had to be replaced.

As early as the 1600s, Anglo-Americans had been personifying the Americas as the female “Columbina“, and later, “Columbia“, usually in the aspect of an “Indian Princess”.

This usage of Columbia as a symbol for the USA increased dramatically in the decades following the Revolutionary War, especially as the young USA sought to model itself as a sort of “New Rome”.

“Uncle Sam“, the replacement for John Bull, would only come somewhat later.

Columbia had slowly drifted from “Indian Princess” toward a more Romanesque appearance.

The neo-classical architecture of Washington, D.C., eagle symbols, and the very name for the Upper House of Congress – the Senate – are similarly derived from this desire to elevate American identity through association with the classical world.

But despite her various incarnations, at the base of everything, the name “Columbia” ultimately relates to the idea that Columbus was somehow the ultimate, ancient father of the European New World.

And because Columbus was generally perceived by all and sundry to have been an Italian Catholic, American Catholics (especially Italian-Americans) seized upon him as a form of proof of their central part in American history.  Columbus became a powerful “birthright” symbol who Italian-Americans could point to, and say “We were the first Europeans in the Americas. The story of the USA is also our story”.

Italian-Americans and Catholic organisations lobbied intensely for Columbus Day to be recognised, and in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally conceded, declaring it a national holiday.

*****

But does the ethnicity of Columbus REALLY matter?

Well clearly, it does, because it is the religion and ethnicity of Columbus (and his part in the colonization of the Americas), which allowed Italian-Americans to elevate themselves from being seen as a “not quite white” underclass into full participants in American society – ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE COLOR BAR.

A position that many were more than happy to occupy alongside Anglo-Americans.

The history of the USA shows us time and time again how a privileged group (“white” Protestant Americans) was willing to co-opt or accept certain “marginal” groups (i.e. Irish Catholics, Slavs, Jews, Italians) into its caste/community, in order to stop that group from making common cause with peoples from non-privileged castes/communities.

If Columbus turns out to have indeed been of Sephardic Jewish ancestry as recently reported (or if he is Spanish as opposed to Italian?), this will open up a can of worms as various groups argue over what constitutes “identity”.

Family.  DNA.  Place of Birth.  Place of residence.  Culture at home.  Cultural community.  Religion – was he really Catholic, or just pretending?  Can a person be considered Jewish outside of the Jewish religion?

Whatever the answers to these questions, it is clear that some answers would strike at the very heart of the body of mythology underpinning the self-identity of many people.

It would also offer a textbook example for future generations to study how “constructed identities” and “fake history” can be used to leverage social privilege.

And if millions of Italian-Americans were able to construct a self-identity and social position for decades based on a non-reality, how many others of us are doing the very same?

The “white race” in the USA has no more basis in reality than the “Aryans” proposed by Hitler and his minions.

This blog and podcast has spent 20 years gathering and collating a cache of evidence to able to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of American “whiteness”.

Many of my readers have commented this week, saying something along the lines of “Why are you even bothering with this?  Your interest makes YOU look race-obsessed”.

If US citizens were really living in a post-racism society, or in a country where economic and political dominance had no relation to gender or ethnicity, we wouldn’t have a clearly racist and misogynistic old man on the brink of being elected president.  We wouldn’t have his running mate, the hard-core Christian nationalist J. D. Vance, just one step away from the White House.

And this slickly-produced-made-for-TV-character, J. D. Vance, is so close to real power because he is being backed and funded by people who believe profoundly in the new iteration of eugenics called “human diversity” (aka “Scientific Racism”), in which some ethnic groups are seen as inherently “smarter” than others, and thus deserving of a right to rule over “inferiors” without the need for cumbersome democracy.

The ethnicity of Columbus really matters, because it gives a glimpse into the way mythology, half-truths, and outright lies about who we are, and where we come from, can be weaponized by people with money and a terrifying agenda.

Columbus, scoundrel

This should be interesting.

Later today, a team of geneticists is due to announce the results of a comprehensive analysis of DNA samples – taken from the purported remains of Christopher Columbus, and a number of his descendants.

Columbus’ true identity and ethnic background have remained a bone of contention among scholars for centuries.

Although purportedly buried in Spain (due to his explorations having been funded by the Crowns of Spain), he has traditionally been claimed to have been a native of Genoa, in Italy.

This hasn’t stopped countries like the Dominican Republic from claiming to be the final resting place of Columbus’ remains, and it hasn’t stopped wider speculation that his origins might be found as far afield as Hungary or Poland.

Many (including this writer), have wondered if Columbus may in fact have been of Jewish background, and chose to keep this quiet due to the Jewish, Romani, and Moorish Muslim expulsions taking place in Catholic Iberia during the 1490s.

It is already certain that Columbus included Jewish translators and Ciganos (Iberian Gypsies) among his expedition members.  Remember that he was aiming to find a route to China and the East Indies, where he expected to encounter Jewish merchants.

Whatever comes of today’s announcement, it will remain a matter of historical fact that Columbus was a wealth and power-seeking scoundrel obsessed with status and titles. A man who brought nothing but pain, torture, disease, slavery, death, and genocide to the indigenous Taino people of the island he would rename “Hispaniola” – the modern Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Don’t trust my opinion.  Read his letters.  Read his friends’ letters.  Read royal court correspondence.  Read Bartolomé de las Casas.

Singer Sandy Posey, circa 1966

People are distillers of information, with anything meaty getting cooked-down to its bare bones.

Nowhere is this more true than in our understanding of history – even recent history.

Entire decades of events, trends, and changes are reduced to a shortlist of manageable icons and symbols.

Take the 1960s USA.

Ask anyone who wasn’t alive at the time to offer up a summary, and it’s a pretty good bet that they would mention hippies and flower power, the moon landing, Civil Rights marches and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

And yet, most of the events seen as being quintessentially “60s” actually took place at the tail end of the 1960s and during the first half of the 1970s.

The USA remained in many ways a deeply conservative and profoundly patriarchal society throughout much of the 1960s, with the majority of married women (especially those from the working- and middle classes) expected to bear and care for children, have a meal ready for “the man of the house” when he arrived home from work, and to put constant effort into making themselves attractive.

The great majority of single women were actively seeking a suitable husband, and most job opportunities open to single women were often found in non-fulfilling or low-paying employment as telephone operators, factory workers, secretaries, nurses, and other jobs in which they played a supporting role to supervisors, businessmen, doctors, and other professional men.

Married women spent hours scrubbing, changing diapers, doing the laundry, peeling potatoes, vacuuming or mopping floors, washing windows, and ironing.

Women (both single and married) also spent hours back-combing or “ratting” their hair, wearing curlers, applying copious amounts of hair spray, painting nails, and sitting under hair dryers in beauty salons.

Life outside the home for many married women involved little more than shopping, going for a weekend drive, or “dressing-up” and going out dancing in cocktail lounges and nightclubs with their husbands on Friday nights.

“Women’s Lib” and the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) campaigns wouldn’t hit hard until the 1970s.

In hindsight, it seems almost certain that the single biggest thing to hit American society during the late 1960s and early 1970s had nothing to do with Nixon and Watergate, Vietnam, or hippies.

That massive thing was The Pill.

The Pill only became available to married couples in 1965.

The Pill only became available to single women in 1972.

To the great shock and horror of many males, it became apparent that women enjoyed sex just as much as men.

Women being able to have a sex life both inside and outside of marriage, free from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, removed one of the greatest obstacles to female agency and independence.

Suddenly, many more married women wanted a job outside the home, sick of asking their husbands for pocket money.

There were fights and arguments in houses all over the USA, as certain types of men saw their traditional roles (and means of asserting control) eroding from under their feet.

“My wife could leave me, if she isn’t depending on my money. My wife could easily have an affair now, and GET AWAY WITH IT.”

There are undoubtedly still many men who would like to regain the control over women’s bodies that was lost in the 1960s and 1970s.

So the next time you hear the 1960s described as all hippies and flower power, remember that Woodstock was in 1969, and only a tiny percentage of kids were well-off enough to travel around in a VW microbus, following bands like The Grateful Dead.

Counter-culture bands were a niche interest until their wider breakout in 1967.

You will not find songs by Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Santana, Arthur Lee‘s “Love“, or even The Beatles among the Top 30 selling singles of 1966.

You WILL find songs by ? and the Mysterians, The Monkees, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, Nancy Sinatra, and Barry Sadler singing “The Ballad of the Green Berets“.

And the most important pharmaceutical of the era wasn’t LSD, it was a little pill containing progestin and estrogen.

*****

Post script

A girl from Alabama named Sandy Posey passed away this summer just gone.

Millions upon millions of people have heard her singing backing vocals on fellow Alabamian Percy Sledge‘s smash 1966 soul hit “When a Man Loves a Woman“.

Probably fewer people remember Posey’s own mega-hits from 1966 – “Single Girl” and “Born a Woman“, both written by Martha Sharp.

These two songs perfectly encapsulate the world of many American women during the mid-1960s, as they tried to reconcile and balance traditional gender roles with glimpses of greater possibilities just over the horizon.

The lyrics to “Born a Woman” illustrate this conflict between two worlds, hovering somewhere between proto-feminist critique and acquiescence.

Sandy Posey would later become “born again” – largely withdrawing from music recording and going on to marry an Elvis impersonator.  We make our choices.

It’s a good pop song, whatever the case.

It makes no difference
If you’re rich or poor
Or if you’re smart or dumb
A woman’s place in this old world
Is under some man’s thumb

And if you’re born a woman
You’re born to be hurt
You’re born to be stepped on
Lied to, cheated on
And treated like dirt

Ah, if you’re born a woman
You’re born to be hurt

A woman’s lot
is to give and give
And go on giving
A woman’s got to love and lose
And go on living

Well, I was born a woman
I didn’t have no say

And when my man finally comes home
He makes me glad it happened that way
Because to be his woman
No price is too great to pay

Yes, I was born a woman
I’m glad it happened that way
Oh, I was born a woman
I’m glad it happened that way

A Black Union soldier posted at a slave auction house during Gen. Sherman’s occupation of Atlanta, GA [1864]

In the heat of post-emancipation excitement, men like the one pictured could never have imagined that it would be another 100 years until the Civil Rights Act would finally enshrine the rights of all US Americans in law.

And this soldier would have probably been shocked (or not?) to learn that 160 years later, the USA would be on a pre-election knife-edge, with half of its electorate supporting a man who called for the execution of innocent Black men, a man who flouted the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, refusing to rent his New York properties to people of color.

All those years ago in Atlanta, would this man have believed that it would be the elections board of that very state (Georgia) which would try to undermine democracy itself in order to force a racist into the Oval Office, against the will of the electorate?

In 2024?

I reckon he would have smiled, shook his head, and said “Naw. We ain’t going back”.

#history #civilrights #racism