Elite Human Capital

Elite Human Capital (EHC) is a far-right technocratic elitist syncretic ideology, meme and political-philosophy fixating on IQ. It emerged in 2023 by Anatoly Karlin, an alt-right activist. The ideology was picked-up and developed by Richard Hanania in 2024.Elite Human Capital Is Always Liberal: Ideology and intelligence as an inherently causal relationship by Richard Hanania (Jul 29, 2024) Richard Hanania's Newsletter.Elite Human Capital Is Not Just IQ: Smarts are necessary but not sufficient for having a responsible elite by Richard Hanania (Sep 06, 2024) Richard Hanania's Newsletter. Karlin and HananiaRichard Hanania, Rising Right-Wing Star, Wrote For White Supremacist Sites Under Pseudonym by Christopher Mathias (August 7, 2023) Huffpost. have a long history of espousing white supremacism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny online but they now claim to be "liberals" who support EHC, which they claim is anti-racist, philo-Semitic, pro-LGBT and supports women's reproductive rights.See Karlin's articles titled "Intellectual Restructuring" (here, here and here) and Hanania's blog. EHC is a meme on social media such as X. It should not be confused with which is a concept used by economists.
One has to wonder why anyone would take these two characters seriously about this IQ-based ideology, when they have both been actively destroying their own brains, Karlin through glue sniffing and Hanania through gasoline huffing.Inhalants Cleveland Clinic. Although their behaviour is likely influenced by studies on the correlation between intelligence and addiction.
EHC ideology is undeniably far-right since it retains various of its core tenets such as "human-biodiversity" pseudoscience, eugenics and ableism (Karlin has stated EHC supports killing infants with disabilitiesSee comment #764 in the comments section of this open thread. In response to a question by a pro-infanticide eugenicist using the pseudonym Mr. XYZ: Anatoly Karlin posted: ). The ideology, however, is since it has adopted liberalism and some radical left-wing positions including "open borders" (Karlin has gone even further to argue to abolish nation-states to replace them with borderless "network-states"Humanity is violently forced to live in 200 territorially and legally segregated polities. Abolish the nation-state. Recreate civilization on 200,000 network states running on a decentralized blockchain that constitutionally mandates freedom of exit for processing transactions. by Anatoly Karlin (6:41 PM · Oct 7, 2023) Twitter (archived from 29 Sep 2024 21:58:57 UTC).It's time to abolish all borders. The US is illegitimate. Cancel all nation-states. by Anatoly Karlin (7:19 PM · Oct 27, 2023) Twitter (archived from 29 Sep 2024 22:05:26 UTC).) and defends LGBT rights but the ideology is capitalist. Karlin describes EHC as "super-globalism"The Soypill Manifesto: The Multipolarity Grift vs. EHC Superglobalism (December 31, 2023) Anatoly Karlin. and supports the World Economic Forum; the ideology is apparently influenced by billionaire tech figures from the Silicon Valley.
Critics of the EHC ideology consider it to be more of a rebranding of Karlin/Hanania's alt-right or white nationalist views rather than a new ideology and that the liberal positions it adopts are mostly cosmetic since eugenics, race and intelligence and unjustified prejudices are still inherent in EHC. In this sense, the far-right syncretic ideology is like national anarchism and Nazbol. EHC is arguably important for understanding how neo-fascists change their tactics/aesthetics to rebrand themselves despite having few adherents.
==Defining EHC==
Karlin has never provided a straightforward definition of EHC but in a December 2023 blog post, he outlined the ideology as follows:
In a nutshell, Karlin argues an individual’s position on the social-liberal/social-conservative dimension is strongly correlated to an individual’s IQ or cognitive ability. Several studies, including by evolutionary psychologists, have claimed that liberals are on average more intelligent than social conservatives while other studies have found liberals are overrepresented in American academiaWhy Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent by Satoshi Kanazawa (2010) Social Psychology Quarterly 73(1):33-57. doi:10.1177/0190272510361602.Can intelligence explain the overrepresentation of liberals and leftists in American academia? by Noah Carl (2015) Intelligence 35:181-193. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2015.10.008.How intelligence mediates liberalism and prosociality by Idan S. Solon (2014) Intelligence 47:44-53. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2014.08.009.[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.2027https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300350 The Association of Cognitive Ability with Right–Wing Ideological Attitudes and Prejudice: A Meta–Analytic Review] by Emma Onraet et al. (2015) European Journal of Personality 29(6):599-621. doi:10.1002/per.2027. (although a minority of studies have produced different results including one study showing "extremists both on the left and right being higher in verbal ability than centrists."Is there a relationship between political orientation and cognitive ability? A test of three hypotheses in two studies by Markus Kemmelmeier (2008) Personality and Individual Differences 45(8). doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.08.003.) Furthermore, many studies have found individuals on average with higher intelligence tend to be more socially liberal on issues such as gay marriage, abortion and marijuana legalization. Based on these studies, Karlin argues that the most intelligent people are on average socially liberal, e.g., pro-abortion and support LGBT rights. Karlin is cautious not to equate liberalism with the "left" because some studies show fiscal conservatism is correlated with higher intelligence on average than socialism.Do Smarter People Have More Conservative Economic Attitudes? Assessing the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Economic Ideology by Alexander Jedinger & Axel M. Burger (2022) Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 48(11): 1548–1565. doi:10.1177/01461672211046808. For this reason, both Karlin and Hanania claim EHC is liberalism but not leftism and both defend capitalist economies such as in the US and Singapore. EHC therefore is social liberalism but right-wing in terms of economics. Based on the fact that people with these political views have higher IQs on average, Karlin argues for a form of technocracy and elitism involving them, and he believes that people with these views "are not just a cognitive triumph, but a spiritual and a moral one."Why Jail is Programmed for All Rightoids (December 31, 2023) Anatoly Akarlin. Since EHC is very strongly based on and reveres intelligence (almost as IQ-fetishism), EHC disparages people with "low IQs". It is this part of the ideology where the far-right aspect of EHC displays itself in terms of eugenics and ableism. For example, Karlin has stated that EHC supports infanticide for people with Down syndrome (the average IQ of a young adult with Down syndrome is 50, equivalent to the mental age of an 8-or 9-year-old childhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26294455/) and he has described Down syndrome individuals "retards". It is clear he does not like people with intellectual disabilities. EHC has other Nazi-eugenics vibes with its obsession with countering dysgenics and Karlin has described himself as an "outspoken eugenicist."Not idea what (a) is about but gender dysphoria is something relevant to an extremely small percentage of the population. They have to be treated with respect and understanding. Your idea that I am obsessed with racism is amusing. I am an outspoken EUGENICIST. by Anatoly Karlin (1:55 AM · Jul 19, 2024) Twitter (archived from 25 Sep 2024 22:39:29 UTC). Contrary to Karlin's writings on dysgenics, there is no evidence that any dysgenic trend exists in human populations.Do the Dumb Get Dumber and the Smart Get Smarter? by Karl-Friedrich Fischbach & Martin Niggeschmidt. In: Heritability of Intelligence (2022) Springer. pp. 37–39. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-35321-6_9.
==Views and ideology==
===Anti-Semitism to philo-Semitism===
Karlin and Hanania were formerly both anti-Semitic with the latter at one point sympathising with Holocaust denial. In 2018, Karlin admitted to being anti-Semitic:
Both now claim to have renounced their anti-Semitism and recently changed their view to become philo-Semitic in line with EHC because numerous IQ tests have shown Ashkenazi Jews have on average a high IQ (although estimates in the range of 112 to 115 are likely overestimations based on the dubious study "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"Paper. by Gregory Cochran). As of 2023, Karlin claims "my positions are now entirely philo-Semitic" and has described Jews as having "constituted the vanguard of Elite Human Capital (EHC) throughout history from Baruch Spinoza to Eliezer Yudkowsky."The Soypill Manifesto, Akarlin.com. December 23, 2023. Despite previously having made conspiratorial rants against Zionists, Hanania now claims to favour Israel in the https://www.richardhanania.com/p/israel-must-crush-palestinian-hopeshttps://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-ethical-case-for-a-siege-of-gaza and says he is friends with Jews and supports "Jewish power".https://archive.is/bZBZYhttps://archive.is/1L1dw In 2024, Karlin and Hanania were promoting reproductive technologies in Israel including IVF to increase the country's fertility rate.https://archive.is/SCbzXhttps://archive.is/a1sb5 Karlin has argued for Jews to govern Ukraine on the basis "Ashkenazi Jews have 15-20 IQ points on Slavs. They would provide much better governance."https://archive.is/slfYZ Karlin's sudden alleged Damascene conversion to philo-Semitism has been questioned by some of his own followers after he attended a pro-Palestine march in London in November 2023. He has since though stated: "I don't support Palestinians per se but I do support Palestinian property rights and oppose Israeli war crimes."https://archive.is/7evOV In 2024, Karlin came out in support of Israel against Hezbollah saying "The correct side in Israel vs. Hezbollah or Israel vs. Iran is crystal clear."https://archive.is/G1uJX He has criticised Iran as "human capital repellent".https://archive.is/oLoI2 Karlin has made tweets supportive of the Israel Defense Forceshttps://archive.is/QYKPkhttps://archive.is/RSV2o and in October 2024 attended a pro-Israel meet up in Berlin, saying he wants to "safeguard the State of Israel".https://archive.is/znZra
===Anti-LGBTQ+ to pro-LGBTQ+===
Karlin and Hanania were formerly both homophobic and transphobic.Why Homosexuality Shouldn't be Promoted. Akarlin.com. February 17, 2013. (archived copy).https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-gender-ideology-cant-survive In 2019, Karlin went as far as describing transgender (such as teaching about it in schools to children) as evil:
In 2023, Karlin did a 180-degrees turn to support LGBTQ+ rights and said LGBTQ+ people are "incredible magnet for elite human capital":
In other words, Karlin changed his view on the basis some IQ tests show that homosexuals have on average a higher IQ than heterosexuals.Karlin appears to be relying on Satoshi Kanazawa's research and a study by Rahman et al. (2012). However, other studies have doubted this and found little to no statistically significant differences in cognitive ability between homosexuals and heterosexuals.https://esirc.emporia.edu/handle/123456789/1806https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01541849 In April 2023 Karlin said he supported "gay parades"I support gay parades in Moscow. Women, gays, minorities are incredible magnets for human capital. by Anatoly Karlin (6:52 AM · May 9, 2023) Twitter (archived from 10 May 2023 14:05:12 UTC). and later began to self-identity as genderless when interviewed by Hanania on his podcast: "Anatoly tells me about his decision to identify as an it/it and his calls for Russia to embrace LGBT as a way to align with the West and signal its new path forward."Embracing It/It Identity by Richard Hanania & Anatoly Karlin (Jan 4, 2024) Richard Hanania (archived from March 6, 2024). Throughout 2023, Hanania continued to make anti-LGBTQ+ tweetshttps://archive.is/Hn1G0 but in 2024 did a 180-degrees turn (presumably influenced by Karlin) and said: "People with IQs over 125 are much more likely to report same-sex attraction... If you're not gay, it might be because you're too stupid."https://archive.is/84lMv and now claims to support gay rights saying: "There is nothing wrong with being a homosexual."https://archive.is/8ZbfM
In August 2024, Karlin tweeted: "I do identify as queer but sadly I am not gay, though I'd love to have been, since it's very prestigious."https://archive.is/twG5P and has gone as far as supporting and posting gay pornography on his X account.https://archive.is/p6YiRhttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/EJ3l2 Karlin now suddenly claims to support gay marriage despite previously opposing it, writing: "Gay marriage is foundational to the resilience of Our Democracy."https://archive.is/UlVZz He refers to transgender people as "Trans and says they "are courageous icebreakers towards the transhumanist Biosingularity", "are extremely prestigious and accelerate capitalism."Anatoly Karlin (September 30, 2024). "Trans folx are extremely prestigious and accelerate capitalism.". Twitter. (Archived version).Anatoly Karlin (July 25, 2024). "My views on transgenderism in 2019 vs. 2024: / (1) Evil Rightoid: Glorified mutilation that reduces capabilities and is inconsistent with transhumanism. / (2) Prestigious EHC: Trans folx are courageous icebreakers towards the transhumanist Biosingularity. / Which do you agree with?". Twitter. (Archived version). He cites Emil O. W. Kirkegaard to claim transgender people have higher intelligence.Anatoly Karlin (June 3, 2024). "In new paper based on OKCupid data, @KirkegaardEmil and @jollyheretic find that IQ advantage of trans folx over ciscels is greater than that of Jews over the goyim. / Amazing! 🧲💯". Twitter. (Archived version). This is an odd choice since more reputable sources than Kirkegaard had reported the same claim for decades, as was promoted by Transsexual.org; however, like the studies comparing gay and straight people, there are other considerations and it's conceivable there was a sampling bias.
===Economics===
EHC according to Karlin and Hanania is right-wing and fiscally conservative. Karlin has scored himself ultra-right wing economically even more than Reform UK.https://archive.is/5LGa0 Karlin and Hanania are both committed to capitalismhttps://archive.is/7PeJi and intensely dislike communism, socialism and degrowth with Hanania going as far as saying Greta Thunberg should be "cancelled" for her anti-capitalist views and support for degrowth.https://archive.is/moJpU Hanania has written he believes socialism will "wreck your country".https://archive.is/9Bt8t In October 2024, Karlin wrote "the left is so economically destructive."https://archive.is/URUUc As mentioned above, Karlin and Hanania consider EHC to be right-wing in terms of economics because some studies have suggested higher cognitive ability is associated with fiscal conservatism. Karlin and Hanania were formerly both against non-White immigration having supported white nationalism but now claim to support open borders and want no immigration controls between countries. It appears they changed their viewpoint to argue immigration restrictionism weakens economic growth. Despite opposing immigration for many years, Karlin now claims "Open Borders are a sacrosanct goal of Elite Human Capital"https://archive.is/uzqGS and describes himself as a .https://archive.is/JXfuw
===White supremacism and racism===
Karlin and Hanania have a long history of supporting white supremacism and racism but both in 2023 claimed to have renounced their racist and extremist views. In August 2023, Hanania published an article at Quillette titled "My Journey out of Extremism".https://quillette.com/2023/08/07/my-journey-out-of-extremism/ Similarly, Karlin in December 2023 wrote an article saying he had given up his racist, "rightoid" and nationalist beliefs and is now committed to anti-racism.https://archive.is/hkK1G The problem with taking either seriously is they have continued to make unambiguously racist comments. Hanania was quoted in 2023 as saying: "We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people."https://archive.is/ZatAfhttps://www.readtpa.com/p/huffposts-story-on-rising-right-wing In October 2023, Hanania tweeted support for neo-fascist Bronze Age Pervert.Breland, Ali. "Is the Bronze Age Pervert going mainstream?". Mother Jones. In 2024, Hanania continued appearing on white nationalist podcasts including a discussion about race with Edward Dutton.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0dYE9KAzAc In August 2024, Karlin described Black people as having "systematically far higher" violence rates as well as a "higher prevalence of psychopathic personality", relying on Richard Lynn's racist pseudoscientific literature.https://archive.is/teoLQ Karlin continues to support HBD/hereditarianism and retweets HBD accounts including Steve Sailer and Jordan Lasker. In October 2024, Karlin was defending the far-right Human Diversity Foundation which was founded by Emil Kirkegaard.https://archive.is/UCEkh According to Karlin, EHC is based on the idea there is a racial hierarchy in IQ with Blacks (on average) at the bottom; Karlin believes population-differences in intelligence are primarily because of genetic factors. He describes IQ writer Scott Alexander as being a "paladin of Elite Human Capital".https://archive.is/zVusA
===Alcohol and drugs===
Karlin formerly said he was addicted to alcohol but as of 2024 claims to drink alcohol "moderately".https://ghostarchive.org/archive/lWxFC Karlin has criticised teetotalismhttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/ulRV9https://ghostarchive.org/archive/fal7a and has described abstaining from alcohol as a "fad".https://ghostarchive.org/archive/3yqKN This is a dubious claim seeming as surveys reveal 62% of American adults say they drink alcohol with only 38% abstaining and the latter has not significantly increased or decreased over the past 25 years.https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/03/10-facts-about-americans-and-alcohol-as-dry-january-begins/ He is strongly in favour of alcohol consumption, having described his "perfect meal" as including beer.https://archive.is/Dldo8 This position in line with EHC seems to be based on studies concerning IQ and alcohol consumption, for example, multiple studies have reported alcohol consumption and IQ are positively related, excluding binge-drinking and alcoholism.Fan X, O’Donnell A, Singh SP, et al. Light to moderate alcohol drinking is associated with higher cognitive function in males with type 2 diabetes. Exp Aging Res 2008;34:126–137 Stampfer MJ, Kang JH, Chen J, et al. Effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive function in women. N Engl J Med 2005;352:245–253Arntzen K, Schirmer H, Wilsgaard T, et al. Moderate wine consumption is associated with better cognitive test results: A 7 year follow up of 5033 subjects in the Tromsø Study. Acta Neurol Scand 2010;122:23–29https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613001128 A recent study by Druffner et al. (2024) reported "higher adolescent IQ may predict a higher likelihood of moderate or heavy drinking in midlife".https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-abstract/59/4/agae035/7683100 On the other hand, studies have shown that individuals with alcohol‐related disorders have lower intelligence test scores.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6851852/ For this reason, Karlin advocates moderate drinking but he appears to ignore studies with mixed, or contradicting results. Four studies from Sweden reported negative relationships between high intelligence and various alcohol measures.
Source.
Karlin and Hanania have both recently come out in favour of legalising psychoactive drugs and claim to be inhaling glues, gases, solvents and/or aerosols. As of 2023, Karlin suddenly claims to engage in inhalant abuse, writing: "I suffer from glue addiction. I huff it every day."https://archive.is/2cWEo He also mentioned as having "dosed heavily on LSD". Tweet by by Anatoly Karlin (11:32 PM · Jun 17, 2023) Twitter (archived from 21 Jun 2023 11:36:23 UTC). The reason Karlin and Hanania probably have resorted to drugs is because of studies reporting that IQ and substance abuse have a positive relationship i.e., more intelligent individuals are more likely to be addicted to drugs than less intelligent individuals.https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/intelligent-people-drugs/https://vertavahealth.com/blog/correlation-intelligence-addiction/https://www.yellowstonerecovery.com/2016/07/22/the-correlation-between-intelligence-and-addiction/
===Pro-natalism and reprotech===
Karlin and Hanania are both committed to pro-natalism but favour promoting "reprotech" (reproductive technology) through IVF, polygenic embyro selection and artificial wombs than using traditional natalist methods. For this reason they prefer to use the term "techno-natalism" to describe their ideology.https://archive.is/GAhsd Karlin supports a policy of free IVF in the UShttps://archive.is/zQHn2 and has suggested use of artificial wombs to increase birth rates.https://archive.is/TvEZqhttps://archive.is/oYsoy The reason EHC is pro-natalist is self-explanatory — the ideology requires humans and Karlin supports reproductive methods to continue the existence of the human species. Karlin, for example, has described human extinction as a "suboptimal" scenario and he is critical of anti-natalism particularly those who are childfree for climate-change concerns.https://archive.is/cgtlRhttps://archive.is/9WHuv Karlin's pro-natalist outlook via technology seems to have been influenced by the eugenicist Jonathan Anomaly's book Creating Future People and so-called "techno traditionalism".https://sophia.bio/p/welcome-to-sophia-dao Hanania has described embryo selection as "cool".https://archive.is/K9Re7
===Anti-veganism===
Karlin and Hanania are both anti-vegans who eat meat and have a long history of criticising veganism and vegetarianism. Karlin has promoted the paleo diet and Atkins diet.Are You A Social Contrarian? (June 1, 2012) Anatoly Karlin (archived from March 6, 2024). Karlin has repeatedly claimed vegetarianism reduces IQ but this is not supported by reliable evidence.But vegetarianism makes one weak & depresses IQ (a balanced veg. diet is theoretically possible, but v. difficult to achieve). by @akarlin88 (3:53 AM - 20 Dec 2012) Twitter (archived from 29 Apr 2020 16:26:52 UTC). On the contrary, a study has shown "children with greater intelligence are more likely to report being vegetarian as adults."High IQ Link to Being Vegetarian.You may turn vegetarian if you have higher IQ.
Karlin's anti-veganism appears to be linked to his extension of the EHC concept to non-human animals. According to Karlin, only animals with higher cognitive ability as measured by neurons can experience suffering and pain therefore he argues animals of the lowest intelligence such as insects, crustaceans and small mammals can be killed for food. In fact, he has argued almost every animal can be slaughtered with notable exception of pigs and dogs. In September 2023, Karlin disturbingly stated he has no ethical objection to killing certain animals for entertainment ("laughing watching them die in comical ways") if they have a low amount of neurons.Tweet. September 8, 2023. Karlin's belief animals can only feel pain if they have an arbitrarily high amount of neurons is dubious (criticisms can be found on his article under "animal cognitive ethics"). Karlin believes the pleasure from him eating fish, chicken and beef "outweigh" the suffering involved of these slaughtered animals.https://archive.is/F7eI7
==Publications==
As of December 2024 there have been no peer-reviewed publications or scholarly books published on elite human capital. Richard Hanania claims to be working on the first EHC publication, a book to be published in 2025. On his Substack, Hanania has released draft versions of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of his book.https://www.richardhanania.com/p/announcing-book-on-elite-human-capitalhttps://www.richardhanania.com/p/donald-trump-and-the-decivilizinghttps://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-origins-of-elite-human-capital Most of what he has written is incomprehensible word salad.
==See also==
*Neoreactionary movement — Some similarities, some differences.
*Elon Musk's natalism — Another IQ-obsessed tendency presenting as more positive towards at least one minority group (Asians)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Ableism
Category:Alt-right
Category:Eugenics supporters
Category:Racialism