Pearson's anthropological work was based in the eugenic belief that "favourable" genes can be identified and segregated from "unfavourable" ones. He advocated a belief in biological racialism, and claimed that human races can be ranked. Pearson argues that the future of the human species depends on political and scientific steps to replace the "genetic formulae" and populations that he considers to be inferior with ones he considers to be superior.[4][5][6][7]
Pearson was still alive as of May 2019[update].[8]
Early life
Roger Pearson was born in London on 21 August 1927.[9][10] Pearson's only sibling and four of his cousins died in World War II. Pearson later described World War II as a "fratricidal war" in which the mutual destruction of Germanic peoples contributed to the gradual downfall of the Nordic race.[11]
Pearson's anthropological views drew on the theories of British anthropologist Arthur Keith, who had argued that human races were distinct evolutionary units destined to compete for resources. Pearson's early writings directly cited Keith as a major influence even while recognizing that "many will see [Keith's observations] as a defence of Hitlerite philosophy."[14] Pearson summarizes Keith's racial and evolutionary philosophy in the following manner: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialised, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide, and destroys the work of thousands of years of biological isolation and natural selection."[15]
In his work, Pearson described racial types as subspecies, which he defined as "a distinctive group of individuals which are on their way to becoming separate species, but which have not been isolated long enough, or had time to become sufficiently diversified to lose the power to inter-breed". He argued that mixing between subspecies is detrimental as one subspecies will always be better suited for life than the other, and will therefore tend to avoid miscegenation.[16][17][18][19]
In 1995 and 1996, Pearson published a trilogy of articles in Mankind Quarterly regarding the "Concept of heredity in Western thought", a defense of hereditarianism and a denouncement of the "onslaught of egalitarianism". Pearson here repeated his defense for the view of racial groups as subspecies and he repeated his dedication to eugenicist ideas, although with the caveat that negative eugenics ought to take place as a voluntary act of altruistic sacrifice for one's species.[20] The same views were repeated in the 1996 book Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science.[21]
Business in South Asia
Pearson served as president of the Pakistan Tea Association, Chittagong, in 1963.[22] He also served on the managing committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.[23] Pearson sold his business interests in East Pakistan in 1965 and moved to the United States. It was during his time in South Asia that he became interested in Aryanism, and the linguistic, cultural, and genetic connections between Northern Europe and the Indo-Aryan populations of the Subcontinent.[24]
Academic career in the U.S.
Recently arrived in the United States, Pearson contributed to some of the publications of anti-Semite Willis Carto, such as Western Destiny, and to Noontide Press.[3] From 1966 to 1967 as "Stephan Langton", Pearson published The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question."[25] As Lanton he published articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power" and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."[26] His books of this era, all published in 1966 in London by Clair Press, including Eugenics and Race, Blood groups and Race, Race & Civilisation and Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples were later distributed in the United States by The Thunderbolt Inc.,[27] an organ of the National States' Rights Party. Pearson's co-founder of The New Patriot was Senator Jack Tenney, who for sixteen years was Chairman of the California Senate Committee on Un-American Activities and who wrote frequently for that journal.[citation needed] Pearson joined the Eugenics Society in 1963 and became a fellow in 1977.
In 1971, he was appointed chair of the department of Anthropology Comparative Religious Studies at the USM.[30] According to William Tucker's description, he fired most of the non-tenured faculty, hiring instead scholars such as Robert E. Kuttner and Donald A. Swan, both with similar political backgrounds to Pearson. The dean at USM later stated that Pearson had "used his post as an academic façade to bring in equal-minded fanatics."[31]
In 1974, Pearson was appointed Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech.[32] During his tenure as dean, the school received $60,000 from the Pioneer Fund to support Pearson's academic research and publishing activities.[32] When a journalist called the various universities at which Pearson had held positions, Montana Tech officials stated they were unaware that Pearson was the person who had edited Western Destiny, a periodical laden with many pro-South Africa, anti-Communist and anti-racial mixing articles, who had penned both articles and pamphlets for Willis Carto's Noontide Press.[32] These race-oriented titles included: "Eugenics and Race" and "Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples."[32]
Pearson's work in publishing the work of "scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, and a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense" was commended by President Ronald Reagan for his "substantial contribution to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad."[33][34]
Political activity
In 1958, Pearson founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, an organisation promoting Pan-Germanism, Antisemitism and Neo-Nazi racial ideology.[33][35] The Northern League published the journals "The Northlander" and "Northern World" which described its purpose as "to make Whites aware of their forgotten racial heritage, and cut through the Judaic fog of lies about our origin and the accomplishments of our race and our Western culture."[36] In 1959 in the Northlander, Pearson described the aim of the organization as preventing the "annihilation of our kind" and to lead Nordics in Europe and the Americas in the "fight for survival against forces which would mongrelize our race and civilization"[16] He also wrote of the need for "a totalitarian state, with conscious purpose and central control . . . to embark upon a thorough-going policy of genetic change for its population. . . . [T]here is surely little doubt that it could soon outstrip rival nations."[37] Under the pen name Edward Langford,[9] Pearson also wrote a series on "Authors of Human Science" with portraits of prominent racialists such as Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,[38]Arthur Keith,[39]Madison Grant[40] and Lothrop Stoddard.[41]
Pearson also corresponded with American segregationistEarnest Sevier Cox, a dedicated member of the League, who had lobbied for a federal funding to "repatriate" African-Americans to Africa since the 1920s. Pearson assured him that "I am entirely with you on your efforts to obtain Federal aid to American Negroes who wish to return to Africa."[37]
From the beginning, the League was criticized because of its open emphasis on the dysgenic and fratricidal nature of intra-European warfare, and its tendency to attract prominent ex-Nazis such as scholar Hans F. K. Günther, who received awards under the Nazi regime for his work on race, and Heinrich Himmler's former assistant Franz Altheim, both of whom were members of the league in its early years. Other members of the league were British Neo-Nazi Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall.[42] Pearson resigned from the League in 1961, after which it became more politically oriented.[33]
Cox suggested to Pearson that they should hold a meeting at Detmold in West Germany, near what was then believed to be the site where the Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The first meeting of the League was indeed held there in 1959, with Cox and Hans F. K. Günther as keynote speakers, although Günther's participation, given that he was a prominent former Nazi, had to be kept low profile.[37] The event was described by locals as akin to Nazism revived.[43]
Pearson also published two popular textbooks in anthropology, but his anthropological views on race have been widely rejected as unsupported by contemporary anthropology. In 1976 he found the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, which has been identified as one of two international journals which regularly publishes articles pertaining to race and intelligence with the goal of supporting the idea that white people are inherently superior (the other such journal being Mankind Quarterly).[44]
In 1978, he took over the editorship of Mankind Quarterly founded by Robert Gayre and Henry Garrett, widely considered a scientific racist journal. Most of Pearson's publishing ventures were managed through the Institute for the Study of Man, and the Pioneer Fund, with which Pearson was closely associated, having received $568,000 in the period from 1981 to 1991.[45][46][47]
Pearson's opposition to egalitarianism extended to Marxism and socialism. In the 1980s, he was a political organizer for the American far-right; he established the Council for American Affairs in the 1970s and was the American representative in the World Anti-Communist League during the second half of the 1970s. As world chairman of the WACL, he worked with the U.S. government during the Cold War, and collaborated with many anti-communist groups in the organisation, including the Unification Church and former German Nazis.[48][49]
World Anti-Communist League
In 1975, Pearson left academia and moved to Washington, D.C., to become president of the Council on American Affairs, President of the American chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, editor of the Journal on American Affairs, which was later renamed The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, and eventually president of University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), an organisation advocating academic integrity, social order and that the university should not be "an instrument of social change" and working to depoliticize campus environments. He was also a trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University.
Pearson was elected world chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978. According to William H. Tucker, he "used this opportunity to fill the WACL with European Nazis – ex-officials of the Third Reich and Nazi collaborators from other countries during the war as well as new adherents to the cause—in what one journalist called 'one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe'."[50]
Pearson presided over the League's 11th Annual Conference held in Washington that year. The initial session of the five-day session, which was addressed by two U.S. Senators and opened by the United States Marine Corps Band and Joint Armed Services Honor Guard, was attended by several hundred members from around the world. After the meeting had been condemned in Pravda, The Washington Post published an even more critical attack on both WACL and Pearson's extreme right wing politics.[13][51]
Pearson resigned from the WACL in the wake of accusations that he "encouraged the membership of European and Latin American groups with Nazi or neo-Nazi ties".[52] In a Wall Street Journal article subsequent chairman John Singlaub was quoted calling Pearson an "embarrassment" who is "not at all welcome in any activity"[52] The same article claimed that Pearson's presidential commendation had been achieved only through the mediation of an associate of Pearson's who worked in the Defense Department. The White House did not retract the letter, but made a public statement in which the Presidential secretary affirmed the Presidents' repudiation of any sort of racial discrimination. Pearson was requested to stop using the letter from Reagan in public promotion of his activities.[52] One member of the WACL, conservative politician Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, described the organization during its period under Pearson as "largely a collection of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers."[53]
In 1981, Pearson received the library of Donald A. Swan through a grant from the Pioneer Fund.[55] Between 1973 and 1999 the Fund spent $1.2 million on Pearson's activities, most of which was used for the Institute for the Study of Man[56] which Pearson directed and which under Pearson acquired the peer-reviewed journal Mankind Quarterly in 1979. Pearson took over as publisher and is said to have editorial influence, although his name has never appeared on the masthead. Pearson has used diverse pseudonyms to contribute to the journal, including "J. W. Jamieson" and "Alan McGregor", sometimes even using one pseudonym to review and praise the work of another.[57] This publication was later taken over by The Council for Social and Economic Studies.
Pearson was also director of the Council for Social and Economics Studies, which owns the Scott-Townsend Publishers imprint (which published most of his later books), and General Editor of the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies.
Publications
Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London (1953)
Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press (1986)
William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1992) OCLC26400159.
Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[27] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991 OCLC25308868 (2nd. Ed. 1994).
Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1991) [2nd ed. 1998].
References
^"Pearson has succeeded in combining such right-wing politics with a conventional academic career." – Kühl, Stefan (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press, p. 4.
^Winston, A. S. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5(2), 231-250.
^ abcMichael, George (2008). Willis Carto and the American Far Right. University Press of Florida.
^Kohn, M. (1995). The race gallery: The return of racial science. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 52-54
^Tucker, W. H. (2002). Closer Look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton, A. Alb. L. Rev., 66, 1145.
^Tucker, W. H. (2003). The Leading Academic Racists of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 90-95.
^ abPaul W. Valentine (28 May 1978). "The Fascist Specter Behind The World Anti-Red League". The Washington Post.
^Pearson, Roger. 1957. "Sir Arthur Keith and Evolution." Northern World 2, no. 1 (1957): 4– 7. cited in Jackson, J. P. (2005). Science for segregation: Race, law, and the case against Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New York University Press. p 46
^ abA. S. Winston. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5, 231—250. "Pearson was clear about the problem of contact between races: ". . . evolutionary progress can only take place properly amongst small non-cross-breeding groups. Always, a cross between two types meant the annihilation of the better type, for although the lower sub-species would be improved by such a cross, the more advanced would be retarded, and would then have a weaker chance in the harsh and entirely amoral competition for survival." (1959a, pp. 9-10)[1]
^Pearson, R. 1966 [1959]. Blood groups and race. London: Clair Press.
^Pearson (1966), p. 27: "There is no way of eliminating undesirable genetic qualities except by annihilating the 'line,' that is by preventing the individual who carries the unfortunate genes from reproducing at all. If one does not wish to go so far as that then one must at least prevent cross-breeding between 'healthy and unhealthy stock, for once the entire stock is contaminated there is no solution other than the annihilation of the entire species."
^Pearson (1966), pp. 40–41: "To think and practice eugenic and racial morals ourself is our duty, but this is not enough in the troubled state of the world today. It is necessary for each and every one of us to work to bring these ideas home to our fellow beings. We must talk and write about eugenics and race; we must help to make the ideas "fashionable" as quickly as we can. Let there be no confusion, also, between the two concepts for basically they are one and the same. A race is a group of individuals who possess a similar genetic heritage, and who when crossed are capable of breeding true. A race is consequently pure or impure according to its ability to breed true, and to produce its own kind. Biological accidents do occur, and these may result in the defects which eugenics seeks to remove from the mainstream (not necessarily by inhumane means), but differences in emotive, intellectual and physical constitution, where not acquired, are largely racial, the product of the importation of a different pattern of genes. ... We can only prevent the destruction of this edifice if we take it upon ourselves to overcome our· inherent shyness of such topics, to forget that we might possibly say something that might offend our neighbours, and start talking about race, racial hygiene and human eugenics. Only thus can we ensure that our children and-their children-will be able to find fitting partners for marriage. Only thus can we ensure the survival of our own kind and our own species and also lay the foundations for a noble future. Human stock-breeding is surely not a bad thing when exercised voluntarily and intelligently, and when its aim is to preserve an aristocracy of mankind."
^Pearson, R. (1995). The concept of heredity in Western thought. III: The revival of interest in genetics. Mankind quarterly, 36(1), 73-103. "Once science can determine which individuals and populations have disproportionately high gene frequencies for advantageous traits, and which are handicapped by deleterious genetic qualities, societies which are prompted by a higher altruism dedicated to the wellbeing of future generations, rather to the sole gratification of the selfish needs of those who are currently living, will be able to effectively select eugenic over dysgenic reproduction. If true altruism prevails, the result will be eugenic decisions, made voluntarily and without coercion." "Any species that adopts patterns of behavior that run counter to the forces that govern the universe is doomed to suffer a painful, harshly enforced and totally involuntary eugenic process of evolutionary reselection and readaptation - or an even more severe penalty, extinction."
^Schaffer, Gavin "'Scientific' Racism Again?":1 Reginald Gates, the Mankind Quarterly and the Question of "Race" in Science after the Second World War Journal of American Studies (2007), 41: 253-278 Cambridge University Press
^Jackson, John P. (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. NYU Press. ISBN978-0-8147-4271-6.
^Steven J. Rosenthal (September 1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Financier of Fascist Research". American Behavioral Scientist. 39 (1): 44–61. doi:10.1177/0002764295039001006. S2CID144496335.
^Lincoln, Bruce (1999). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press, p. 122.
^ abcJackson, John P. (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. NYU Press. ISBN978-0-8147-4271-6. pp.43–144
^Anderson, Scott, & Anderson, Jon Lee (1986). Inside the League: the Shocking Exposé of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have infiltrated the world Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd, Mead, p. 94.
^Rosenthal, S. J. (1995). The Pioneer Fund Financier of Fascist Research. American Behavioral Scientist, 39(1), 44-61.
^Winston, A. S. (1998). Science in the service of the far right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby. Journal of Social Issues, 54(1), 179-210.
^Kuhl, S. (1994). The Nazi connection: eugenics, American racism, and German national socialism. Oxford University Press.
^Jackson, J. P. (2006). Argumentum ad hominem in the science of race. Argumentation and Advocacy, 43(1), 14.
^"The Checkered Careers of James Angleton and Roger Pearson", Covert Action, No. 25 (Winter 1986)
^Miller, Adam (Winter 1994–1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Bankrolling the Professors of Hate". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (6): 58–61, 60–61. doi:10.2307/2962466. JSTOR2962466. OCLC486658694.
