Roger Pearson (anthropologist)

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For the literary scholar, see Roger Pearson (literary scholar).

Roger Pearson (born 1927) is a British anthropologist, soldier, businessman, eugenics advocate, political organizer for the extreme right, and publisher of political and academic journals. He has been on the faculty of the Queens College, Charlotte and University of Southern Mississippi, and Montana Tech, and is now retired. It has been noted that Pearson has been surprisingly successful in combining a career in academics with political activities on the far-right.[1] He served in the British Army after World War 2, and was a businessman in South Asia. In the late 1950s he founded the Northern League, an organization promoting pan-germanism, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi ideologies. In the 1960s he established himself in the United States for a while working together with Willis Carto publishing white supremacist and anti-Semitic literature.

Pearson's anthropological work is based in an evolutionary and racialist approach, of the kind that was common in anthropology in the early 20th century, based on the idea that the progress of humankind depends on making sure that "favorable" genes are segregated out from amongst "unfavorable" genetic formulae".[2] Since his earliest work he has consistently advocated that the human species consists of biologically distinct races which he defines as "rival breeding populations",[2] some of which are intrinsically better fit than others, and which ought to compete against each other in a struggle for survival, but which all to frequently intermingle to the detriment of the superior races.[3] He argues that the future of the human species depends on political and scientific steps to replace the "genetic formulae" and populations that he consider to be inferior with better ones, through "humane and benevolent eugenics policies"[4]

Pearson also published two popular textbooks in anthropology, but his anthropological views on the race question have been widely rejected as unsupported by contemporary anthropology. Consequently Pearson faced difficulties in publishing his work. For this reason he founded several journals dedicated to publicizing research that was otherwise excluded from publication in mainstream journals, which Pearson considers to be dominated by egalitarian political correctness. Among the journals founded by Pearson are Mankind Quarterly (with Robert Gayre and others), Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies (with Council for American Affairs), both of which have been widely criticized for publishing scientifically questionable studies motivated by right wing political interests and a racialist ideology.[citation needed] He also founded the Journal of Indo-European Studies, the most influential journal of Indo-European linguistics. Most of Pearson's publishing ventures have been managed through the Institute for the Study of Man, founded by Pearson, but which now only publishes the JIES. The institute has received significant amounts of funding from the Pioneer Fund, with which Pearson is also closely associated. His strict stance against racial and political egalitarianism also manifested in a consistent opposition to Marxism and socialism. In the 1980s he was a political organizer for the American far-right, he established the Council for American Affairs, the American representative in the World Anti-Communist League. Pearson was World Chairman of the WACL, and in that capacity collaborated closely with the US government during the cold war, and he collaborated with international many anti-communist groups in the organization, including followers of Reverend Moon and former German Nazis.[citation needed]

Life and work

Background

Originally from Great Britain, Pearson joined the British Army Queen’s Royal Regiment in England, April 1945, was commissioned in 1946 from British Indian Army Officers Training School Kakul, North-West Frontier Province (today the Pakistan Military Academy). Served with the British Indian Army in Meerut, (1946) before the Partition of India: with the British Indian Division in the Occupation of Japan, and with the British Army in Singapore (1948), before returning to University in England. Pearson later directed various British-controlled companies in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

From the University of London, he gained a Master's degree in Economics and Sociology and a Ph.D. in Anthropology.[5] Pearson grew up in England during World War II and his only sibling, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot (238 Squadron), four cousins (three pilots/aircrew) and two school friends, died in that war. Later, Pearson would frequently describe World War 2 as a senseless "fratricidal war", in which the mutual destruction of Germanic peoples contributed to the gradual downfall of the Nordic race.[6]

Early political engagement

In 1958 he founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, an organization promoting Pan-Germanism, Anti-semitism and Neo Nazi racial ideology.[7][8][9] The Northern League published the journals "The Northlander" and "Northern World" which described is purpose as "to make Whites aware of their forgotten racial heritage, and cut through the Judaic fog of lies about our origin and the accomplishments of our race and our Western culture."[10]

From the beginning the League was criticized because of its open emphasis on the dysgenic and fratricidal nature of intra-European warfare, and its tendency to attract prominent ex-Nazis such as scholar Hans F. K. Günther, who received awards under the National Socialist regime for his work on race, and Heinrich Himmler's former assistant Franz Altheim, both of whom were members of the league in its early years. Other members of the league were British Neo-Nazi Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall.[11] Pearson resigned from the League in 1961, after which it became more politically oriented.[7] The first meeting of the League was held in Detmold, West Germany near the site where the Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The event was described by locals as "National Socialism revived"[12]

Business in South Asia

Pearson served as president of the Pakistan Tea Association, Chittagong, in 1963.[13] He also served on the managing committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.[14] Pearson sold his business interests in East Pakistan in 1965 and moved to the United States. It was during his time in South Asia that he became interested in Aryanism, and the linguistic, cultural, and genetic connections between Northern Europe and the Indo-Aryan populations of the Subcontinent.[15]

Academic career in the US

Recently arrived in the United States, he contributed to some of publications of anti-semite Willis Carto such as Western Destiny and to Noontide Press.[16] From 1966 to 1967 as "Stephan Langton", Pearson published The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question."[17] As Lanton he published articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power" and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."[18] His books of this era, all published in 1966 in London by Clair Press, including Eugenics and Race, Blood groups and Race, Race & Civilisation and Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples were later distributed in the United States by The Thunderbolt Inc.,[19] an organ of the National States' Rights Party. Pearson's co-founder of The New Patriot was Senator Jack Tenney, who for sixteen years was Chairman of the California Senate Committee on Un-American Activities and who wrote frequently for that journal[citation needed]. Pearson joined the Eugenics Society in 1963 and became a fellow in 1977.

In 1966 he toured the southern US and Caribbean, and in 1967 he visited South Africa, Rhodesia and Mozambique, before joining the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in 1968 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology. In 1970, he was appointed Associate Professor and head of Sociology and Anthropology at Queens College, Charlotte (now Queens University of Charlotte) but resigned to return to USM the next year as Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology, offering both Bachelors and Masters degrees. As chair of Anthropology of the University of Southern Mississippi fired most of the non-tenured faculty, hiring instead scholars such as Robert E. Kuttner and Donald A. Swan both with similar political backgrounds to Pearson. The dean at USM later stated that Pearson had "used his post as an academic façade to bring in equal-minded fanatics."[20]

In 1974 Pearson was appointed Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech.[21] During his tenure as dean, the school received $60,000 from the Pioneer Fund to support Pearson’s academic research and publishing activities.[21] When a journalist called the various universities at which Pearson had held positions, Montana Tech officials stated they were unaware that Pearson was the person who had edited Western Destiny, a periodical laden with many pro-South Africa, anti-Communist and anti-racial mixing articles, who had penned both articles and pamphlets for Willis Carto's Noontide Press.[21] These race-oriented titles included: "Eugenics and Race" and "Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples."[21] Pearson also founded the academic Journal of Indo-European Studies.

Pearson's work in publishing the work of "scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, and a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense" was commended by President Ronald Reagan for his ""substantial contribution to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad."[22][7]

World Anti-Communist League

In 1975, Pearson left academia and moved to Washington, D.C., to become president of the Council on American Affairs, President of the American chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, Editor of the Journal on American Affairs (later renamed The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies), and eventually President of University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), an organization advocating academic integrity, social order and that the university should not be "an instrument of social change" and working to depoliticize campus environments. He was also a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University.

He also served on editorial board of the several institutions, including the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the American Security Council, and that a number of conservative politicians wrote articles for Pearson’s Journal on American Affairs and related Monographs, including Senators Jake Garn (R-UT), Carl T. Curtis (R-NE), Jesse Helms (R-NC), and Representatives Jack Kemp (R-NY), and Philip Crane (R-UT).[16]

Pearson was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978. According to William H. Tucker he "used this opportunity to fill the WACL with European Nazis - ex-officials of the Third Reich and Nazi collaborators from other countries during the war as well as new adherents to the cause—in what one journalist called "one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe."[23]

He presided over its 11th Annual Conference held in Washington that year. The initial session of the five day session, which was addressed by two U.S Senators and opened by the Marine Corp Band and Joint Armed Services Honor Guard, was attended by several hundred members from around the world. After the meeting had been condemned in Pravda, the Washington Post published an even more critical attack on both WACL and Pearson's extreme right wing politics.[24][25]

After the Washington Post article, Pearson was asked to resign from the editorial board of the neo-Conservative Heritage Foundation’s journal Policy Review, which he had helped to found, but his connection with other organizations continued, and in 1986 Covert Action uncovered his association with James Angleton, former chief of CIA Counter-Intelligence, General Daniel O. Graham, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Robert C. Richardson, and other American Security Council members.[26]

Association with the Pioneer Fund

In 1981, Pearson received the library of Donald A. Swan through a grant from the Pioneer Fund.[27] Between 1973 and 1999 the Fund spent $1.2 million on Pearson's activities, most of which was used for the Institute for the Study of Man[28] which Pearson directed and which under Pearson acquired the peer-reviewed journal Mankind Quarterly in 1979. Pearson took over as publisher and is said to have editorial influence although his name has never appeared on the masthead. Pearson has used diverse pseudonyms to contribute to the journal, including J.W. Jamieson, and Alan McGregor, sometimes even using one pseudonym to review and praise the work of another.[29] This publication was later taken over by The Council for Social and Economic Studies.

Pearson is also director of the Council for Social and Economics Studies, which owns the Scott-Townsend Publishers imprint (which has published most of his recent books), and General Editor of Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies.

Publications

  • Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London, 1953.
  • Eugenics and Race. Clair Press, London, 1958; 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 9737954
  • Blood groups and race. (1st edition unknown) 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London, and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 6099970
  • Race & civilisation. (1st edition unknown) 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London, and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 4387181
  • Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples. Northern World, London, 1958. Noontide Press, Los Angeles, 1965 OCLC 9972221
  • Introduction to Anthropology: an ecological/evolutionary approach. Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1974.
  • Sino-Soviet Intervention in Africa. Council on American Affairs, 1977.
  • Korea in the World Today. Council on American Affairs, Washington, D.C., 1978.
  • Ecology and Evolution. Mankind Quarterly Monograph, Washington, D.C., 1981.
  • Essays in Medical Anthropology, Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1981.
  • Anthropological Glossary. Krieger Publishing Co., Malabar, Fl. 1985.
  • Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press, 1986
  • William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1992. OCLC 26400159
  • Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[19] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991 OCLC 25308868 (2nd. Ed. 1994).
  • Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science, 1996. Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991 (2nd edition 1998).

References

  1. ↑ "Pearson has succeeded in combining such right-wing politics with a conventional academic career." — Kühl, Stefan (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press, p. 4.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Evolution cannot occur unless 'favorable' genes are segregated out from amongst 'unfavorable" genetic formulae' [...] any population that adopts a perverted or dysgenic form of altruism - one which encourages a breeding community to breed disproportionately those of its members who are genetically handicapped rather than from those who are genetically favored, or which aids rival breeding populations to expand while restricting its own birthrate - is unlikely to survive into the definite future." — Pearson, Roger (1995b). "The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Three, the Revival of Interest in Genetics," The Mankind Quarterly, 36, pp. 96, 98."
  3. ↑ Pearson, Roger (1966). Eugenics and Race. London: Clair Press, p. 33.
  4. ↑ Timson, John. "Try to Publish and be Damned", Galton Institute Newsletter, March 1997, p 8.
  5. ↑ Paul W. Valentine (1978-05-28). ""The Fascist Specter Behind The World Anti-Red League"". The Washington Post. 
  6. ↑ Tucker 2002:160
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Russ Bellant (1991). Old Nazis, the new right, and the Republican Party (3rd ed.). Boston: South End Press. OCLC 716423118. 
  8. ↑ Steven J. Rosenthal (September 1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Financier of Fascist Research". American Behavioral Scientist 39 (1): 44–61. doi:10.1177/0002764295039001006. 
  9. ↑ http://www.psychology.uoguelph.ca/faculty/winston/papers/rushton.html
  10. ↑ Lincoln, Bruce (1999). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press, p. 122.
  11. ↑ Tucker 2002:161-3
  12. ↑ Anderson, Scott, & Anderson, Jon Lee (1986). Inside the League: the Shocking Exposé of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have infiltrated the world Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd, Mead, p. 94.
  13. ↑ "Pakistan Tea Association Chairman's Speech." Eastern Examiner, Dacca, 30 April 1963.
  14. ↑ Pakistan Tea Association Annual Report
  15. ↑ Zeskind, Leonard (2009). Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Macmillan, p. 12.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Michael, George (2008). Willis Carto and the American Far Right. University Press of Florida.
  17. ↑ Heidi Beirich (2008), "Of Race and Rockets", Intelligence Report (Southern Poverty Law Center) (130) 
  18. ↑ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/pioneer-fund
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Bruce Lincoln (2000). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-0-226-48202-6. 
  20. ↑ Tucker 2002:166-67
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Lichtenstein, Grace (December 11, 1977). "Fund Backs Controversial Study of 'Racial Betterment'". New York Times. 
  22. ↑ Zeskind (2009), p. 12-13.
  23. ↑ Tucker, William H. (Reissue 1996). The Science and Politics of Racial Research. University of Illinois Press. p. 257. ISBN 978-0252065606. 
  24. ↑ Paul W. Valentine, "The Fascist Specter Behind The World Anti-Red League". The Washington Post. 1978-05-28
  25. ↑ Tim Kelsey; Trevor Rowe (1990-03-04). "Academics were funded by racist American trust". The Independent. 
  26. ↑ ”The Checkered Careers of James Angleton and Roger Pearson”, Covert Action, No. 25 (Winter 1986)
  27. ↑ Miller, Adam (Winter 1994-95). "The Pioneer Fund: Bankrolling the Professors of Hate". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (6): 58–61, 60–61. JSTOR 2962466. OCLC 486658694. 
  28. ↑ Tucker, William H. (2002). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0252027628. 
  29. ↑ Tucker, William H. (2007). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07463-9. Lay summary (4 September 2010). 
  • Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection (South End Press, 1989), p. 2; John Saloma, Ominous Politics (NY: Hill & Wang, 1984), p. 8.
  • Bellant, Russ (1991). Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. Boston: South End Press.
  • Harris, Geoffrey (1994). The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today. Edinburgh University Press.

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