Pioneer's big lie.(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.