Lord Runciman Is Wrong About My Hair

And also about IQ, nationalism, globalism, etc.

Quinn Slobodian (above), a Canadian-born history professor at Boston University, is getting extraordinary coverage for his new book Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. I’m having trouble understanding his thesis, but it appears to to be an attempt to smear Austrian economics, and free-market economics in general, with various assorted nasties including race realism, Donald Trump and—me.

There’s obviously some sort of demand for this. Besides getting numerous Big Foot reviews, Slobodian has just been on a British book tour. It’s inconceivable that a commercial publisher would pony up for one. But I gather the the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hannah Gais spoke at a recent book event for Hayek’s Bastards in New York City. So maybe there’s race-communist money behind him.

I make 172 appearances in Hayek’s Bastards, right up there with Charles Murray’s 193 and his great book The Bell Curve’s 72.

Perhaps a result of Slobodian’s British tour, yet another review of Hayek’s Bastards has just appeared, in the London Review Of Books: “Hokey Cowboy”, by David Runciman, May 2025.

(I don’t understand the hed either, but I’m afraid it reflects my native Britain’s all-too-common continuing snobbery about Americans. Runciman is actually Lord Runciman, the 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford, but neither he nor the London Review of Books acknowledge this—which I’m also afraid reflects my native Britain’s continuing identitarian implosion).

At some point, I’ll grapple with Slobodian’s book. However, I must say Lord Runciman’s review doesn’t make its thesis any clearer to me (maybe it’s just incoherent).

But two points do stand out for me in Lord Runciman’s review:

• His fanatical race/IQ denialism

Lord Runciman writes

…the racial science on which it [i.e. Hayek bastardy—don’t ask] rested was utterly bogus. IQ was treated as a rigorous statistical tool rather than a rough and ready benchmark that can do pretty much whatever you want it to. The evidence that on almost every measure there are far greater differences within so-called racial groups than there are between them was ignored. Supposed hard data was often just an assembly of anecdotes

This is simply wrong and it’s been obviously wrong for a long time a.k.a more than 100 years. That Lord Runciman continues to maintain this absurdity suggests that (1) he’s completely stupid; or (2) there’s something seriously wrong about upper-class English intellectual discourse.

I vote for (2). They lost the Empire, and they lost Britain, didn’t they? That’s why I emigrated.

• MORE IMPORTANTLY: Lord Runciman is WRONG about my hair.

He writes that Slobodian’s account reveals

a colourful cast of characters – like the bouffant-haired Peter Brimelow, who started out as a fairly standard Thatcherite in the UK and ended up in the US as a white supremacist.

But Lydia assures me my hair is not bouffant i.e.

a voluminous, puffed-up hairstyle popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s characterized by hair teased or backcombed to create a high, rounded shape, often with a smooth outer layer. The style, associated with figures like Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, relies on hairspray and sometimes hairpieces for its dramatic lift. It’s less about length and more about height and fullness, giving a bold, glamorous look. Still seen in retro-inspired fashion or formal updos today.

(Thanks, GROK).

My hair is just LONG—because I can’t be bothered getting it cut.

Hence my most recent picture, with granddaughter;

Interestingly, Quinn Slobodian does not at all describe my hair this way: he just says I have “a confection of hair that could only be described as a mane from under which he would peek, smiling wryly.”

(Slobodian also knows I left Britain long before Thatcher).

So Lord Runciman came up with this taunt all on his own.

Why? Is he jealous?