Aberdeen Alumnus with Neo-Nazi Links Leading the Charge for Racist Pseudoscience in Academia and Online
By Aiden Bridgeman
After studying Theology as an undergraduate at Durham University, Edward Croft Dutton went north to Aberdeen to research Religious Studies. He gained a PhD which, although focused on Christianity at universities, drew heavily upon anthropological study. Over the years, however, his research became increasingly corrupted and Dutton started mixing with some far-right groups, speaking at underground conferences, writing in pseudoscience academic journals, and discussing controversial topics through online videos.
After Aberdeen, Dutton became a university teacher at Oulu in Finland. He was dismissed a few years later having plagiarised a student’s dissertation in a co-written piece with Richard Lynn. Lynn, it should be noted, is a eugenicist who advocates for the “phasing out” of certain races (no points for guessing which ones). You’ll sense a recurring theme with the kind of people Dutton involves himself with very soon. Then, in a last-ditch attempt to remain accepted in academia, he was appointed “Professor” at Asbiro University in Łódź, Poland which, despite the name, is not a university. It’s more of a conference centre to discuss social media optimisation, bitcoin investing strategies, and race science. Dutton’s most popular “lecture” looks into innate IQ differences in race, including his belief that those with “blonde hair and blues eyes” have a higher intelligence. Of course, mostly based off of his unequivocally titled book, “How to Judge People by What They Look Like”.
A busy writer is Dutton, in fact. The Aberdeen alumnus has published many other titles, including “Why Islam Makes You Stupid”, “Making Sense of Race”, and “Meeting Jesus at University” (available in the library!). His books that aren’t self-published, however, are mostly published by Washington Summit Publishers, headed by American neo-Nazi and alt-right terrorist accomplice Richard B. Spencer. Dutton and Spencer are good friends – having appeared on his show many times – despite the fact that Spencer is banned from most European countries. See the recurring theme yet?
Perhaps the most dangerous endeavour of Dutton’s is his articles and editorial oversight in Mankind Quarterly, a pseudoscience white supremacist academic journal founded by anti-semite Robert Gayre and Roger Pearson, amongst others. Pearson, most notably, also founded the Northern League: a neo-Nazi organisation with founding members such as Nazi Party member and Third Reich race scientist Hans F. K. Günther, and SS spy and close associate of Heinrich Himmler, Franz Altheim. Although this journal calls itself ‘peer-reviewed’, much of that reviewing is done by a small group of fellow alt-right pseudoscientists simply rubber-stamping each other. Mankind Quarterly is funded by individual and institutional subscriptions and the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund dates back to 1937 when it was founded by American textile magnate Wickliffe Draper with the goal of advancing race science, eugenics, and racial segregation. The president of the fund until 1941 was Harry H. Laughlin, the architect of the Nazi forced sterilisation program in 1933. How much Dutton has received from this fund is unknown, but Lynn and Pearson themselves have received at the very least half-a-million and one million dollars, respectively.
After losing his job, Dutton, instead of speaking to a therapist, decided to start creating content for the alt-right on YouTube and BitChute (a video streaming site for conspiracy theories and hate speech). In each video he is featured in fancy dress (usually wearing a cravat for some reason) where he speaks in a garbled, eccentric manner. For someone who speaks as fast as he can, he repeats himself and his racist nonsense incessantly. Almost all his videos focus on intelligence and race. When he’s not livestreaming himself getting drunk on camera with other far-right chums, he makes videos discussing “research” that he’s been reading – often from other pseudoscientists – and coming up with crazy conclusions from his own mental gymnastics. This can range from his theory that Meghan Markle wants to steal Christmas, and Greta Thunberg is a threat to Christianity, to the European Union is to be racially segregated and Black Lives Matter is a death cult ran by mentally ill people. Other very real beliefs that he actually holds include: all feminists subconsciously want to be raped because it boosts their self-esteem, women in academia mean society is going backwards, transsexuals are merely fetishists, Muslims naturally want to commit genocide, and that left-handed people are pedophiles.
To say that Dutton’s research and convictions are free of bias is dangerously wrong. In 2019, Dutton joined the neo-Nazi-founded Patriotic Alternative headed by previous high-profile BNP member Mark Collett, with the primary purposes of pedaling the dangerous “great replacement” conspiracy theory and holocaust denial. They are also known for flying “white lives matter” and “it’s okay to be white” banners around the UK. Dutton has attended the Scandza Forum in Oslo, a meeting place for the international far right, where he attempted (and failed) to make links between facial features and personality traits; all alongside prolific anti-semite Kevin MacDonald and Hitler sympathiser Greg Johnson. A less underground, more influential gathering Dutton has connections with is the Traditional Britain Group. A group for high-Tories to spout all forms of bigotry from non-white anti-immigration sentiments to racial eugenics together with the likes of the previously mentioned Richard B. Spencer, infamous bigot Katie Hopkins, and Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Here, Dutton held a talk regarding immigration reducing the recipient country’s general intelligence amongst the population. In a similar vein, in 2015 he attended the London Conference on Intelligence where he outlined the theory that Sub-Saharan Africans have a lower level of intelligence because of their higher levels of promiscuity, and that their larger penises mean they’re more likely to commit crimes because of their innate live-fast-die-young, aggressive lifestyle (yes… really).
Worryingly, Dutton and his friends don’t just publish in fringe academic journals. They have crept into mainstream science despite their lack of qualifications in relevant fields in, for instance, Springer’s ‘Evolutionary Psychological Science’ and ‘Sexuality Research and Social Policy’, Elsevier’s ‘Personality and Individual Differences’, and Cambridge University’s ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’.
The title of this article is alarming but sadly true. These are things easily accessible with just some quick searches online. The University of Aberdeen may have some amazing and inspiring alumni to be proud of, but Edward Dutton is not one of them.
