Pioneer's big lie.

• Author: Lombardo, Paul A.
• Position: Pioneer Fund, Nazi eugenics - Response to article by J. Philippe Rushton, Albany Law Review, vol. 66, p. 207, 2002

In this they proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of ties that were too big.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1)

In the spring of 2002, I published an article entitled "The American Breed": Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund as part of a symposium edition of the Albany Law Review. (2) My objective was to present "a detailed analysis of the ... origins of the Pioneer Fund" (3) and to show the connections between Nazi eugenics and one branch of the American eugenics movement that I described as purveying "a malevolent brand of biological determinism." (4) I collected published evidence on the Pioneer Fund's history and supplemented it with material from several archival collections--focusing particularly on letters and other documents that explained the relationship between Pioneer's first President, Harry Laughlin, and Pioneer's founder, Wickliffe Draper. The evidence thus assembled convinced me that both Laughlin and Draper were sympathetic to the eugenic agenda being crafted in the mid-1930s by the Nazis. As they launched their private eugenic foundation, they hoped to emulate the German model. (5) To support my conclusions I pointed to factors such as Laughlin's arrangement for Draper's attendance at a Nazi population conference in Berlin, (6) as well as Laughlin's excitement on receiving his own Nazi-conferred honorary degree. (7) I noted parallels between projects funded by Draper before Pioneer was incorporated and similar projects in its early years as well as more recently. (8)

The unyielding position of present day Pioneer Fund spokesmen--that the foundation's past contains no links to Nazi eugenics (9)--demonstrates to me the unwillingness of the Pioneer Fund to confront its troubling history. Rather than admitting to the obvious implications of its founders' actions and motives as revealed in their unguarded personal commentary, the Pioneer Fund today continues to declare that Laughlin was a "life-long scientist" (10) and Draper, merely a "gentleman scholar". (11) Pioneer supporters claim that rather than being part of the darkest chapter of the multifaceted story of American eugenics, Laughlin and Draper--and the Fund itself--are victims of a recent rash of political correctness and "Pioneer bashing". (12)

Why does Pioneer refuse to face its history? Perhaps it is simply continuing a practice honed by Pioneer leaders like the late Harry Weyher. (13) As I explained in my first Albany Law Review article, past Pioneer spokesmen made few public statements, but more recently the Fund has been "particularly aggressive in leveling the accusation of 'McCarthyism' at anyone who connects its founding to the American eugenicists who celebrated Hitler's ascendancy." (14) This strategy--denying the obvious, feigning shock at any challenge to the sanitized, official history of Pioneer as compiled by Fund beneficiaries and apologists--resembles a well known tactic. It is called the "Big Lie" and it was made famous by Adolf Hitler, whose articulation of the scheme of deceit is quoted above from Mein Kampf. (15) The technique was used to justify his agenda against the Jews. (16) Pioneer leader Weyher resorted to the same technique as a counter to the invariably bad publicity generated by news commentary on the activities of Pioneer grantees (17) in addition to the growing historical documentation of the Fund's own dark beginnings. (18)

Apparently, University of Western Ontario psychologist J. Philippe Rushton agrees with Weyher's strategy and has embraced his methods. For the last eighteen years, Rushton has been a regular recipient of Pioneer favors; his own books, such as Race, Evolution, and Behavior, were supported by Pioneer funding. (19) Having graduated to a new level in the Pioneer hierarchy, Rushton now defends the honor of Weyher's legacy, serving as current Pioneer President; (20) in that role he wrote a lengthy response to my article. (21) Fairly frothing with real (or contrived?) indignation, Rushton managed to fill fifty-five journal pages in an attempt "to refute a series of false charges" (22) that he claimed to find in my article. Unfortunately, the majority of Rushton's diatribe is just another puff piece on what he calls the "frontier-style, path-breaking, scientific research" (23) supported by Pioneer over the six decades of its existence. (24) He failed to challenge substantively the documentary evidence that I presented, settling instead to rail against me in terms that rarely rose above the level of personal attack. Rushton attempted to distort the analysis that I provided of the history of eugenics and the people about whom I wrote, describing with patent inaccuracy both the content and tone of my article.

It would not be fruitful--nor is it necessary--to restate everything I said in my original Albany Law Review article on Pioneer to address Rushton's fulmination. Thoughtful readers can compare his version of Pioneer's history with my own and reach their own conclusions on whose case is convincing. A few pages in the Rushton screed do, however, call for a response.

First, in the Rushton view of history, what qualifies as proper evidence to set the historical context of Pioneer's founding? Second, what was the real reputation of Laughlin and Draper among their contemporaries? Third, is "playing the Nazi Race Card" ever justified?

1. HISTORY, PIONEER STYLE

   My article was based on a review of primary sources, such as documents in the Harry Laughlin Papers at Truman State University, the John Harlan papers at Princeton University, the Edwin Alderman and John Newcomb presidential papers at the University of Virginia, the Earnest Sevier Cox papers at Duke University, the archives of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the various historical collections on eugenics at the American Philosophical Society. (25) I also referred to most major books on the history of the American eugenics movement written in the past forty years. (26) In contrast, what Rushton describes as a "detailed refutation" (27) cites few primary documents, and reveals nothing from the Pioneer archive over which he now presides. Instead, he relies principally on comments in the primary and secondary literature made by past or current Pioneer directors, and people who have received Pioneer grant support. (28)

   Rushton's favorite sources for his supposedly historical perspective are the Pioneer web site and the in-house hagiography of the Pioneer Fund written by Pioneer stalwart Richard Lynn, The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer Fund. (29) Rushton calls Lynn's book an "invaluable insider's guide to the Pioneer Fund's history." (30) Lynn, who has been supported by Pioneer funding for years, (31) is preferred over the dozen historians who published recent books on eugenics, all of whom were catalogued in my article. (32) One need read no further than Lynn's glowing (curiously written in the third person) account of his own activities as a Pioneer beneficiary to see evidence of his supposed objectivity in reporting the Pioneer saga. (33)

   It is difficult to take anyone seriously who proposes to provide the "historical context" (34) for an episode in the past and who then refuses to confront the substance of the documents that provide contemporaneous, unfiltered evidence of that episode. Rushton is a Pioneer-funded advocate (35) and hardly qualifies as an unbiased reviewer of his organization's past. Rather than investigate the actual documentary record, he takes one glowing account of his organization--the Richard Lynn book--as the best historical source of Pioneer history. The book was not only bought and paid for by the Pioneer Fund itself but was written by an individual who has regularly benefited from the organization's subsidies. (36) Placed in this light, Rushton's credibility is strained beyond the vanishing point. But, as Rushton knows, the Big Lie does not depend upon credibility, but gullibility.

2. LAUGHLIN'S REPUTATION--IN CONTEXT

   Was Harry Laughlin the famed scientist that Rushton wishes to portray, or merely a propagandist, as I assert? Rushton claims that Laughlin's 1924 testimony before a Congressional committee in favor of immigration restriction (37) was much more "nuanced" (38) than my analysis indicated, and that it proves he was not an anti-Semite. (39) True to form, Rushton was not convinced by the unadulterated evidence I set forth in my first Albany Law Review article. He is unfazed by my assertion that in private Laughlin played an enthusiastic second chair to Madison Grant, the maestro of scientific racism and author of the book Hitler hailed as "'his Bible.'" (40) Forget that Laughlin complained to Grant that "'[t]he Jew is doubtless here to stay and the Nordics' job is to prevent more of them from coming.'" (41) By Rushton's logic, we should disregard Laughlin's candid private remarks in favor of those he prepared for a public political presentation.

   I argued that Laughlin was a bigot, not that he was a complete fool. There were two Jews on the committee to which Laughlin read his testimony. (42) His public presentations were vetted by friends like Draper, Grant and the other immigration restrictionists who knew well how to avoid inflaming opposition to their legislative agenda. (43)

   Those who wish to read Laughlin's testimony can decide for themselves whether I did it justice; meanwhile, it is instructive to read what contemporaries of Laughlin said about it. In a critique of testimony before Congress in support of immigration...