Roger Pearson

[[File:Roger Pearson 1946.png|thumb|right|165px|Pearson.]]
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'''Roger Pearson''' {{lived|1927|2023}} was a [[British]] [[Racialism|racial pseudoscientist]], [[eugenics|eugenicist]], [[antisemitism|antisemite]], race isolationist, and [[far-right]] political organiser. He founded the [[neo-Nazi]] organisation the '''Northern League''' (no relation of the [[Northern League|Italian political party]]), whose membership included several actual [[German]] [[Nazis]], and racial pseudoscience front the '''Institute for the Study of Man'''.<ref name=wp>{{wpa|Roger Pearson (anthropologist)}}</ref><ref name=wpnl>{{wpa|Northern League (United Kingdom)}}</ref> He was a major recipient of money from the racist and [[segregation]]ist [[Pioneer Fund]].<ref name=splc>[https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/roger-pearson Roger Pearson], [[Southern Poverty Law Center]], accessed 5 Feb 2019</ref>

His work centred on a belief that the Nordic peoples, who stand "at the very peak of evolutionary progress — the highest form of life that Nature has ever produced", must be preserved as a pure race against [[miscegenation]] and [[white genocide]] by following eugenic policies.<ref name=splc/> As he wrote in 1966:<blockquote>If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of [[genes]] mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide.<ref name=bellant/></blockquote>

==Early life==
He was slightly too young to serve in [[World War Two]], so fortunately for him avoided having to kill any Nazis, but he joined the army in 1945 and after training in the UK and India, he served in British [[India]], occupied [[Japan]], and [[Singapore]].<ref name=wp/>

==''Northern World'' and the Northern League==
He founded the cosy-sounding Northern League for North European Friendship in 1958 with Peter Huxley-Blythe. From 1956 he published a journal, ''Northern World'', with related ideas, and he was also responsible for the Northern League's own journal ''Northlander''. The organisation had close links with the [[neo-Nazi]] publisher Britons Publishing Company, whose publications included an edition of ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]''. Its members included:<ref name=wpnl/><ref name=splc/><ref>[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xKsBBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT227&ots=lt2JMq3kk1&dq=roger%20pearson%20race&pg=PT227#v=onepage&q=roger%20pearson%20race&f=false The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea], Robert Wald Sussman, Harvard University Press, 6 Oct 2014</ref>
* Hans F. K. Günther, who holds the distinction of being the only race scientist to join the Nazi Party before they came to power, and who was a lifelong [[Holocaust denialism|Holocaust denier]]<ref>{{wpa|Hans F. K. Günther}}</ref>
* [[Robert Gayre]], eccentric racialist and founder of Mankind Quarterly
* Robert E. Kuttner, [[biologist]] and [[white supremacist]]<ref>{{wpa|Robert E. Kuttner}}</ref>
* Donald A. Swan, [[anthropologist]], Nazi memorabilia collector, and associate of [[George Lincoln Rockwell]]'s American Nazi Party<ref>{{wpa|Donald A. Swan}}</ref>
* Earnest Sevier Cox, an American [[Methodist]] preacher who campaigned against [[miscegenation]] and for segregation and repatriation of black Americans.
* Arthur Ehrhardt, a former officer in the [[Waffen-SS]], and after World War Two an associate of [[Oswald Mosley]].<ref>{{wpa|Arthur Ehrhardt}}</ref>
* Alastair Harper, who later stood as a [[UKIP]] candidate in [[Scotland]] and wrote for the [[British National Party]]'s magazine ''Identity''<ref>[http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=6203 Reconceptualizing Britishness on the Far Right: An Analysis of the British National Party’s Identity Magazine], Gilbert Bonifas, ''Cycnos'', Volume 25 n°2 - 2008</ref>
* Franz Altheim, who worked for Heinrich Himmler's Nazi [[archaeological]] institute Ahnenerbe<ref name=splc/>
* Colin Jordan, neo-Nazi leader of the World Union of National Socialists and the UK's National Socialist Movement<ref>{{wpa|Colin Jordan}}</ref>
* [[John Tyndall]], later head of the British [[National Front]], and a founder of the British National Party
* Ernest Cox of the [[Ku Klux Klan]]

It also embraced [[Asatru|Nordic pagan revivalism]] and pre-Christian tradition.<ref name=bellant>''Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party'', Russ Bellant, South End Press, 1991</ref>

==Antisemitism==
Pearson later became more interested in antisemitism and the [[USA]] (and [[pseudonym]]s). Taking the name Edward Langford, he collaborated with prolific antisemite [[Willis Carto]] on the newsletter ''Western Destiny'' in 1964-65, and moved to the USA around this time. In 1966 and 1967, under the pseudonym Stephan Langton, he published ''The New Patriot'', dedicated to "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the [[Jewish Question]]", with responsible and penetrating articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power", and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."<ref>[https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/pioneer-fund Pioneer Fund], [[Southern Poverty Law Center]], accessed 5 Feb 2019</ref><ref name=splc/>

==Academia==
In the late 1960s he pursued respectability by moving into academia, gaining a PhD in anthropology from the University of London and taking up work at the University of Southern Mississippi where he became a full professor in 1971 and replaced the properly-qualified faculty with neo-Nazi and racist associates like Donald Swan and Robert Kuttner.<ref name=splc/>

In 1973 he founded the ''Journal of [[Indo-European]] Studies'' with [[Marija Gimbutas]], and several other prominent Indo-Europeanists.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Arvidsson |first=Stefan |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62172703 |title=Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science |date=2006 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-02860-6 |location=Chicago |pages=303–304 |oclc=62172703 |quote=[By the 1980s] the racial-anthropological perspective had more or less disappeared from view in the Indo-European discipline [...]  But behind the scenes, the situation was different. Most notable is perhaps that no one reacted to the fact that the editor of the world-leading journal for research on the Indo-Europeans, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Roger Pearson, had since the 1950s been 'one of Americas foremost Nazi apologists and quite clearly a racist with one of the worlds best web of contacts.' Before Pearson, along with Marija Gimbutas, Edgar C. Polomé, and Raimo Anttila, founded the Journal of Indo-European Studies, he had worked with Hans E. K. Günther, who had continued to spread his racial doctrines after the fall of the Third Reich. }}</ref>
In this period his academic work included an attempt to argue that the ancient [[Greece|Greek]] aristocracy were of Nordic stock and ethnically distinct to the majority of the population of Greece. This work, popularised in a 1974 article "The Greek Face", has been attacked as "non objective, non empirical, pseudo scientific, dishonest".<ref>[http://archhades.blogspot.com/2013/03/roger-pearsons-greek-face-completely_30.html Roger Pearson's "The Greek Face" completely debunked.], Arch Hades, March 30, 2013</ref>

He moved briefly to Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology in Butte, [[Montana]], but soon quit that to found the Institute for the Study of Man with funding from the [[Pioneer Fund]].<ref name=splc/> He also became head of ''Mankind Quarterly'' in 1978. He took over the leadership of various far-right bodies including the [[Heritage Foundation]], the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the American Security Council, the Council on American Affairs, and chairman of the 1978 conference of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). He edited the American Security Council's ''Journal of International Relations'' alongside co-editor James Jesus Angleton, and he was on the editorial board of the [[Heritage Foundation]]'s ''Policy Review''. However his attempts to turn the WACL into a neo-Nazi and openly antisemitic organisation were rejected by its members following an exposé of his views in the ''[[Washington Post]]'', and he lost various jobs and influence as a result, leading him to pull his neck in a bit regarding his promotion of [[Hitler]]'s ideas.<ref name=splc/><ref name=bellant/>

He nonetheless continued to publish frequently on racial topics, such as ''Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe'' (1991) which attempted to show that history's greatest racial scientists were right.<ref name=splc/> Many of these books were published via his position as head of the Council for Social and Economics Studies and its publisher Scott-Townsend. He also edited the ''Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies''.<ref name=wp/> He reputedly published frequently in ''Mankind Quarterly'' using several pseudonyms, even sometimes pseudonymously reviewing his own work.<ref name=wp/>

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20210615165740/https://www.professor-roger-pearson.com/ An archived copy of Pearson's website from 2021]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pearson, Roger}}
[[Category:Anthropologists]]
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:British people]]
[[Category:Eugenics supporters]]
[[Category:Fascists]]
[[Category:Neo-Nazis]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience promoters]]
[[Category:Racialism pseudoscientists]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:Segregationists]]

Categories: Anthropologists, Antisemites, British people, Eugenics supporters, Fascists, Neo-Nazis, Pseudoscience promoters, Racialism pseudoscientists, Racists, Segregationists