|
| An Interview with Prof. Hans Eysenck |
| Prof.
Hans Eysenck, a lecturer in Psychology at the Institute of
Psychiatry in Denmark Hill, South London, was recently back
in the news when he leaped to the defense of the late Sir
Cyril Burt, a pioneer in the study of intelligence. Prof.
Eysenck has himself come under attack from the Establishment
Press, and physical assault from Communist students, since
the publication of his book Race, Intelligence and Education.
Some time ago we interviewed Prof. Eysenck about reaction
to his work. Beacon: When you actually wrote the book, did you anticipate stirring up so much controversy? H.E.: No, I didn't; I must say I was rather.... was largely inherited. I put this point in my 1950 book Uses and Abuses. But then results began to come in, I stopped lecturing on the subject because I couldn't be certain that this was true, but then on the other hand I couldn't be certain that the opposite was true either, so I just stopped talking about it altogether. Then came first of all that book by Shuey (Ed.: The Testing of Negro Intelligence) and that I really found convincing. And then came Jensen's book and between them I found this was absolutely convincing, so I re-read all the literature and found I couldn't maintain the view I had held before. Beacon: Will the controversy and the results on you make any difference to the views you put forward in the future? H.E.: No, it doesn't make any difference to what I say or write, I left Germany and went into exile because I cherish free speech and I think it's absolutely vital for me, and..... Beacon: Well it seems to have turned a full circle now... H.E.: Yes, the other way. Beacon: Have you found any social ostracism from academic colleagues? H.E.: No, none at all. It's entirely this small group of militant students and one or two left-wingers on the press who obviously know nothing about the topic and couldn't care less about the facts. Beacon: So would you say that most of these people are politically motivated rather than academically or scientifically... H.E.: Well, I think they must be because they obviously know nothing about the topic. They haven't even read the literature. Beacon: Turning to your work itself, how is it that you can correlate the heritability of intelligence within a race, with the heritability of intelligence between races? H.E.: Well, as I say in the book, you can't. There is no definitive, explicit way in which this has been done. That's why I say that the argument is not conclusive. It is merely suggestive. Beacon: So it just provices evidence... H.E.: There is a lot of evidence which is derived largely by taking the arguments pro |
Editor's note: the original reproduces only a portion of the interview, and each column of the original ends where indicated - A. W.
'NATION EUROPA'
Once again parallels can be found between Eysenck and Jensen. If Beacon reports an exclusive interview with Eysenck, then it is possible to find a fascist political magazine to announce its scoop of an exclusive interview with Jensen.
In September 1975 the German monthly magazine Nation Europa featured an exclusive interview with Jensen (pp.19-28), under the heading of Rasse und Begabung ('Race and Achievement'). There is, however, one difference between this interview and Eysenck's with Beacon. Whereas Beacon was a publication of an insignificant fascist group (the National Party never attracted the support of the National Front and is now defunct), Nation Europa has been one of the most substantial fascist publications for a number of years.
Two Italian journalists, Del Boca and Giovana, surveying fascism throughout the world wrote in their book Fascism Today: "Nation Europa has for many years been considered to be the most authoritative organ of European neo-Fascism" (p.457).
Nation Europa was established shortly after the Second World War by a former Waffen-SS officer, Arthur Ehrhard. Associated with Nation Europa were many old Nazis attempting to reorganise Nazi activities throughout Europe. In 1951 a Fascist International conference was held in Malmo Sweden, attended by more than 30 fascist leaders. The purpose of the conference was to lay the basis for future fascist activities. The conference was organised by the Swiss fascist Per Engdahl. An observer of the fascist scene wrote at the time: "Dr Engdahl, the organiser of this movement, is conspicuously associated with a German journal which may be described as the brains trust of the Fascist International. Nation Europa, a well-produced monthly (published at Coburg) claims to be labouring in the service of European nationalism" (Wiener Library Bulletin, 1952 May/August, p.21).
Early contributors included many of the remains of the old Nazi 'elite': i.e. Hans Grimm, Karl Heinz Priester, Oswald Mosley, Julius Evola (the Italian racist, whose works are highly recommended in Nouvelle Ecole: see p.76, Autumn 1973) and Maurice Bardèche, the French fascist who started a book with the statement je suis un écrivain fasciste.(73) Adolf von Thadden, the ex-leader of the NPD, is a regular contributor and Richard Verrall of the National Front's directorate,(74) and editor of the National Front's paper Spearhead, is also a contributor (see his article Was will Englands 'National Front'? in September 1977).
Not too surprisingly some of the cultural fascists and racists, involved with The Mankind Quarterly and Neue Anthropologie, also write for Nation Europa: for example, Kosiek, Rieger, Swan and Irsigler.(75)
Moreover, advertisements for Nation Europa have appeared in Neue Anthropologie; similarly Nation Europa has carried advertisements for both Neue Anthropologie and Nouvelle Ecole. As is to be expected, Nation Europa also advertises overtly political publications like Deutsche Wochen Zeitung and Northern League magazines, as well as advertising fascist political meetings.
A few examples of the contents of Nation Europa for 1975 will be sufficient to show its fascist complexion. The May issue published a poem entitled 'For the soldiers of the Waffen-SS'. This tribute to the SS starts with the lines "They have stolen our selves and our honours" but concludes encouragingly "They have not broken our pride". The June issue advertised an NPD meeting with Gerhard Frey and Austin App. The August issue had an article by Fritz Brunner (Nordlandsehnsucht und nordischer Gedanke) praising the work of Günther.
As well as the Jensen interview, the September issue also contains a very favourable review of the pamphlet Did six million really die? by Richard Harwood; this pamphlet, originally published in English, but translated into several European languages, is on most Nazi booklists and denies that the Nazi murder of Jews ever took place. The Nation Europa review ends: "We emphatically recommend this book, and that our youth should get hold of it...Harwood destroys the web of lies".(76)
The Jensen interview focused on the American psychologists's views that blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites. Jensen expounds at length his thesis that heredity is much more important than environment in determining intelligence. In the course of this, he gives opinions that could not fail to please the fascist readership of Nation Europa. For instance, he comments that when all-white schools in America become integrated standards of performance decline in proportion to the drop in number of white children attending. Jensen also mentions an increase in problems of discipline with integration. He also discusses the hypothesis of a great 'genetic distance' between whites and blacks.
However, not all of Jensen's thoughts in this interview match the line of Nation Europa. In fact in a short introduction to the interview, Nation Europa mentions Jensen's "politically rather liberal views".
On a number of occasions, Jensen firmly rejects the interviewer's suggestions in favour of separating races. He declares racial segregation to be immoral and states that it runs counter to the "essential values of freedom and liberty". Moreover Jensen declared that "people should be treated as individuals, not according to their racial, ethnic or social origin".
One might wonder why Nation Europa should publish such 'rather liberal views' (and indeed why Jensen should have granted them an interview in the first place). One reason could be the belief that in the context Jensen's liberal views do not follow from his statements on the genetic inequalities between races.
At one point in the interview Jensen utters the injunction: "Disregard groups and concentrate on the individual" (p.22). However, this classic liberal position is somewhat undermined by Jensen's own insistence on discussing data from groups (namely blacks and whites). In fact Jensen's basic conduct as a psychologist disregards this injunction: his work as a psychologist has been devoted to establishing differences between groups, rather than between individuals.
This basic point is not lost on fascists, even if hereditarian psychologists might like to think that their work does not accord with fascist racism. For instance Eysenck in a letter to The Times, March 16 1978, attempted to argue that his scientific conclusions in fact disproved racism. According to Eysenck:
"To the racist all members of a given group are inferior to all members of another. The empirical work that Jensen and I have surveyed makes it quite impossible to maintain any such position; there is a great deal of overlap between any racial or national groups that have ever been studied....Looked at from the rational point of view, therefore, the empirical studies of different races and national groups conclusively disprove the allegations of racists and destroy their fundamental belief."
This attempt to distance the results of empirical psychology from racism is founded on a specious premise, of which Eysenck should have been aware. Racialists do not necessarily claim that there is no overlap between racial groups and in fact they frequently use the overlap findings to bolster their racialism.
For instance, the National Front is overtly racialist. Its paper declares "we are proud racialists and we say so" (Spearhead, September 1976) and its banners proclaim unequivocably "The National Front is a Racialist Front". And when discussing the psychological research on race and IQ differences, the National Front does not deny any overlap between black and white intelligence. For instance Spearhead April 1976 clearly states:
"The findings of Prof. Audrey Shuey, in her monumental compendium of 50 years of I.Q. tests entitled The Testing of Negro Intelligence, are that the Negro, on average, scores 15 to 20 points lower than the European in such tests. The average overlap, i.e. where exceptional Negroes score the same as Whites, is 11 per cent. According to Prof. Garrett, for every one gifted Negro there are 7-8 gifted whites."
When he wrote The Times letter, Eysenck should have been aware of Spearhead's position. The present author sent Eysenck a copy of the Spearhead April 1976 article ('The reality of race' by Richard Verrall). Eysenck's response is worth recording. His reply was that "the devil can quote scripture, and malevolent people can always misquote factual evidence . . . These things are sent to try us and there is very little that can be done about it".
The inconsistencies in Eysenck's position were not lost on the National Front. Richard Verrall and Anthony Reed-Herbert (both leading members of the National Front) replied to Eysenck in a letter to The Times, March 20 1978.
They dismissed Eysenck's argument about overlap between races and racialism:
"Of course there is a statistical overlap whereby a minority of individuals of one race fall outside the norm, but in no way does overlap, as Professor Eysenck must know full well, invalidate the proven fact of inherited genetic differences between the races."
In similar spirit Verrall and Reed-Herbert pointed to the contradiction in the position of a scientist "who has himself studied the question of race and intelligence in terms of group comparisons" arguing that "races cannot be considered in terms of their group aspects, but only in terms of their 'characteristics as distinct individuals'."
The conclusion of Verrall and Reed-Herbert illustrates the harmony which the National Front believes to exist between its racialism and the science of Eysenck and Jensen: "It is regrettable that, in choosing to enter the political arena, Professor Eysenck found himself unable to correlate his political conclusions with the logic of his scientific findings".
In fact, Eysenck in his interview with Beacon went even further. Instead of using the overlap argument to separate his work from racism, Eysenck maintained "there is no connection at all between the facts, whatever they are, and a racist type of attitude" (our emphasis). Here Eysenck seems to be implying that even if science maintained there were no overlap between races, this would still not support racism. More than this, Eysenck is implying that no scientific 'facts', whatever they are, can ever be connected with racism.
Not only is this historically untrue, but it is quite absurd: the context of the statement refutes its content, appearing as it does in a racist magazine published by a racist political party.