From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views:
While the Confederate cause in the Civil War has been the subject of much chatter, the modern racial right owes far more to Charles Darwin than to Robert E. Lee.
That’s a takeaway from a pre-print study, “A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right,” by two social psychologists, Patrick S. Forscher and Nour S. Kteily of the University of Arkansas and Northwestern University respectively. Their news peg, predictably, is the 2016 presidential election.
…
Much of what they found is no surprise, but the frankness of their questioning about evolution is refreshing …
You won’t be startled to hear that alt-right believers were more inclined to dehumanize, in evolutionary terms, their disfavored racial and ethnic groups, rating “White people” as more “evolved” than, say, “Mexicans, Nigerians, and Blacks.” Or rather you won’t be startled if you’ve been paying attention to our reporting here on the role of evolutionary thinking among racist right-wingers. (The left has its own racialists, but that’s a different discussion.) More.
Possibly, the researchers asked frank questions because they wanted to find out what is really going on. That happens to the best of them, despite all efforts to stop it.
Some of us think that the alt right scare is way overblown. The average alt-rightist is probably an unemployable gamer Occupying his mom’s basement while seeking legal aid for charges for minor offences. He does not even have the status of a serious threat.
But he’s big in traditional media. Just imagine, a way of interesting people in their currently deficient coverage at last! But we shall see.
See also: The alt right, Donald Trump, and – oddly enough – Darwin. Anyone not committed to Darwinian survival of the fittest cannot be ‘alt right’.
and
Christian racism? Election years bring dangerous creatures from the shadows