An interesting puzzle... So the other day I stumbled across an interesting site that discussed European phenotypes, with a particular focus on Southern Europeans vs. Northern Europeans. Lo and behold, there is another site devoted full time to refuting the original site... At first glance both of them seem to have some errors of omission and commission. If I have the time (after writing this FAQ - which is work), I'll step in and moderate. I have a hunch that the second guy - the refuter - may be a neo-Nazi. He has a bizarre chart up here and has a weird little passage on Jews here:

The co-efficient of inbreeding for an uncle-niece marriage is 1/4, compared to 1/2 for parent-child and 1/8 for first cousins. Among (non-Jewish) white Americans, even first cousin marriages came to be seen as backwards. It is amusing when certain Jews call white individuals "inbred" without realizing that they are likely to be much more inbred than the person they're applying that label to; and without realizing that their Jewish culture sanctions highly consanguineous marriages that many white Americans would find disturbing. By using "inbred" as an insult, they are ignoring their own culture and background and adopting mainstream American snobbery, which snobbery should deem real Jewish practices as even worse than those of caricatured "rednecks".

This just seems kind of gratuitous...on it's own, it's just a little weird that the guy thinks Jews make a habit of calling whites "inbred". But on the other hand, some of the refuter's critiques are definitely on the money. (e.g. South European non-Caucasoid admixture is certainly higher than North European admixture, although both levels are quite low.) So I may have to spend some time on this... Razib adds: I've known and checked out the first site. I just browsed the links on the second site, and it was pretty good at bursting the bubble of the first site. There is one question I have though-it seems a truism that "paleolithic Europeans" were dark people (darker hair in western Ireland than eastern Ireland). It is also obvious that most Europeans are not descended from "Aryans" [1]. In fact, it seems that Europeans are a commingling of Neolithic Near Eastern and Paleolithic ancient European lineages. Where are the blondes than? Where did they come from? I presume that southern Sweden, the epicenter of blondness was generally the stronghold of paleolithic blondes. Why did natural selection selected for blondes in this region? Was it sexual selection? Seems that Ireland is just as cloudy (more?) than Sweden, so I'm skeptical there would be a difference via natural selection. On the other hand, the Irish have pale skin like the Swedes, and that's what really matters. Is blondness just the peacock's tale? As for anti-Semitism, I didn't find anything overt on the site. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was racially conscious-but there's nothing wrong with race consciousness per se. In addition, even if the author was anti-Semitic, that doesn't invalidate what he's saying. I believe J. P. Rushton has attended American Renaissance conferences, so he is something of a white nationalist (or sympathizer). But we use Rushton's ideas freely, though to my knowledge no one that blogs on our site is a white nationalist. Though I sympathize somewhat with the general thrust of white nationalism in reaction to multiculturalism, for obvious reasons I oppose their political program. Now, there are white racialist sites out there that see a Jew behind every act of perfidy. They somewhat resemble Arab conspiracy theorists, and you know how I feel about that. There is no Jewish conspiracy. Have you ever been to a shabbas dinner? Have you seen the arguments? These people can't conspire worth a crap. But Jews, like any ethnic group do look to their interests. Recently many members of the Jewish community have been re-thinking immigration in light of the hard anti-Semitism of Muslim immigrants and soft anti-Semitism of Latinos. Note this exchange recorded by Vdare:

Mark Krikorian opened the discussion period by suggesting that Steinlight was guilty of 'triangulation' and asking if immigration could be analyzed from the point of view of the Jewish community, why could not WASPs do the same? This was so exactly what VDARE.COM had said a few days earlier in commenting on Steinlight that one might almost suspect Krikorian of risking contamination by reading the site. Steinlight did not appear to have an answer to Krikorian’s point. Initially he tried to escape by accusing Buchanan and Brimelow of dishonestly hiding their ethnic interests. When at length brought to face his published denunciation of their concerns, hidden or otherwise, he announced: "Not all identity politics are created equal".

This is the kind of thing that sparks a lot of anger from those that are ethnically/racially conscious on the WASP right. In this way, Jews are like many minorities in applying a double-standard, as they seem to believe their history of oppression (and a long history it is) inoculates them from charges of ethnic chauvinism [2]. Perhaps it once did, but in early 21st century America things are a lot more on an even playing field than they once were. There is a balance one can strike between between raving about ZOG and ignoring the fact that Jews act as a self-interested ethnic group in the context of a pluralistic American republic (just like blacks and now Latinos). Similarly, one can admit that Israel is not an oppressive and racist state, without denying that it has a strong ethno-religious orientation that make it different than the United States not some liberal democratic clone made in our image. [1] Strictly speaking, only the Iranians and the clean twice-reborn castes of India are Aryan. It is a social term more than an ethnic one in any case. But it is an open question as to what percentage of Europeans are descended from Indo-Europeans that somehow swept all the old languages except for Basque from the continent. [2] The Left-wing activist Michael Lerner once put out a personals add looking for an Ashkenazi Jewess. Now, one could agree that Lerner is looking toward cultural similarities, but one could also accuse him of racism (someone wondered if he didn't like dark-skinned Oriental Jews). In addition, even though he has extreme Leftist connections, Lerner obviously still believes that a relationship with someone of his own ethnic group would be the best situation. This is probably true, as it is true for many Jews, blacks, Asians, Latinos and WASPs. Yes, you heard me right. WASPs, or white Christian Europeans in general, should be just as free to say that they think inter-ethnic marriage don't work as any other group. I hope this idea doesn't spread too much in all honesty though-it might cramp my dating pool. Godless adds: Someone asked me whether my hunch that the guy (refuting_racial_myths) was a neo-Nazi was just flinging mud. After looking at his site some more and digging through his links, I think he is. Reasons: 1) On this page he links to this page, which is a subsection of this site, which is the website of a self described neo-Nazi called "Jerry's Aryan Battle". Note the irrelevant attacks on Jews at the bottom of the linked page. Note also that the original page on this neo-Nazi's page has a similar title as this geocities page - it's also called "Reply to Racial Myths". It seems likely to me that Jerry is the same guy as "refuting_racial_myths". 2) On this page he links to this page (under "Basques"), which is a subsection of this site, which is the website of a neo-Nazi group called "Genocide" with songs like "Swastikrist". Of course, that doesn't automatically invalidate everything "refuting_racial_myths" says, but it means that I'm much more suspicious of both sides. Concerning anti-Semitism: See here for my views on the (Ashkenazi) Jews. Let me reprint the relevant passages:

Many people expect arguments concerning the biological reality of race to be followed with a dollop of anti-Semitism. This is because of people/organizations like Strom Thurmond, David Duke, and others of their ideological ilk. However, it's my opinion that this association only holds for one of the two classes of people that aren't afraid to talk about race. I've previously said that the only ones who regularly stand up to the inevitable slur of racist are real racists and rationalists . I've gone into the many differences between these two camps before (Summary: rationalists are interested in facts, and racists are not), but I want to state that in my opinion, rationalists are not anti-Semitic. There are people on the message boards who regularly inveigh against the Jewish control of academia. Indeed, I think the one substantive claim that can be levied against the Jews as a population is that they have a lot of crazy left-wing intellectuals who like to stir things up. (Most readers already know my position on Israel - suffice to say that I support Israel in the main, if not on every detail.) But the assuredly negative effect of these intellectuals has to be balanced against the unmatched contributions of Jews to science and engineering. I mean, subtract the Jews from history and out the window goes much of mathematics and physics as we know it...along with the attendant applications that make our technological world go 'round. From their contributions to science and engineering alone, I doubt any other single population (pound for pound) has contributed as much to the welfare of humanity as the Ashkenazi Jews. (European whites have contributed the most in absolute numbers, but the ratio of contributors/total population is much smaller than for the Ashkenazi Jews.) Now, I think that there are Indian and European and Asian subpopulations who can probably hang with the Jews intellectually, but the promise of future performance notwithstanding, I don't know whether these subpopulations have achieved anything comparable to the Jews. Pound for pound, perhaps the only population on earth that can match the Jews' "accomplishments per capita" are the Kalenjin of Kenya (albeit in an entirely different arena). Finally, I think much of the animosity to the Jews is really "player hating"...much as many blacks dislike whites largely because the latter have supposedly undeserved material wealth/affluence/power, many whites dislike Jews because the latter have supposedly undeserved material wealth/affluence/power. Of course, these are the inevitable features of any comparison of populations that are a standard deviation apart in IQ. Disclaimer: I am not Jewish or related by blood or marriage to Jews. Even if I was, I think the facts presented above stand for themselves independent of the qualities of the speaker.

Godless retracts: I was wrong about refuting_rm being a neo-Nazi. Refuting_rm was gracious enough to clarify his position in the comments box below - I suggest you check it out. I apologize for my misapprehension, though I think I can be excused for some of it (the "Jerry's Aryan Battle" page was a bit suspicion inducing). I didn't mean to tar the whole refuting_rm site with guilt-by-association, though I suppose that was the effect. My intent was just to say, "be suspicious of both sides in this". Note though that I did say: "some of the refuter's critiques are on the money", so I wasn't dismissing it outright. I need to read through both sites and dig out my copy of Cavalli-Sforza's book, and I plan to write a followup post in which I give my judgment on which sides are correct in each myth of this little webpage war. For the most part I think refuting_rm will come out ahead, but there's one area in which I think he may be wrong and in which racial_myths may be incomplete. The sickle-cell mutation that confers malarial resistance is a functional single base pair alteration. It's not inconceivable that it could have arisen independently in geographically isolated subpopulations. On its own, it's not an ideal marker for sub-Saharan black ancestry.