The Stark Truth: Interview with Anatoly Karlin – enjoyable if demanding interview with rising young intellectual

Robert Stark, “The Stark Truth: Interview with Anatoly Karlin” (Voice of Reason, 4 May 2012)

I’ve been visiting Russian-American political analyst Anatoly Karlin’s blogs Sublime Oblivion, AKarlin.com and Da Russophile since late last year so I was keen to hear The Man speak on Robert Stark’s program on the Voice of Reason network. The interview is available for listening at this link. In the interview, Karlin discusses some of the posts he put up recently on AKarlin..com: race realism versus race denial; disparities in IQ levels among different human populations or races and the implications for future economic development and national wealth; homophobia and why homosexuality exists in all human societies despite its apparent uselessness for the survival of the human species; and the geography of global human capital and potential as measured by average PISA scores for mathematics, science and reading achieved by 15 year old students and what these say about IQ levels in populations.

Karlin seems a bit nervous during the interview with a few “ums” and “ahs” throughout but once he starts explaining his posts, he becomes more assured. He starts off explaining why and how he started his blogs which examine trends in politics, economics and culture across the world that are likely to determine what the future will be like and which countries, cultures or economies will be dominant. The kinds of questions Stark asks Karlin perhaps reflect his audience’s political preferences: he asks Karlin what he thinks of US presidential candidate Ron Paul’s attitudes towards the question of race. A quick look at past interviewees on The Stark Truth: Voice of Reason website reveals a wide range of political, social and economic viewpoints among them but the common denominator is that they are people whom the mainstream media wouldn’t touch with a six-metre barge pole.

Stark and Karlin spend a lot of time discussing issues of race and race realism and in particular proponents of race realism like liberal-leaning Robert Lindsay and the more conservative Steve Sailer. The conservation then segues into physical and cultural differences across nations and gets quite funny when Karlin explains to Stark that a world map actually exists of average penis sizes among nations. After a break halfway through the interview, the discussion moves to the geography of human capital. Stark quizzes Karlin on the high PISA results achieved by Chinese students, especially those by Shanghai-based students, compared to the low results achieved by students in oil-rich countries such as Kuwait. Near last on the agenda is homophobia, what feeds it and homophobia’s likely cultural roots in Western societies. Other topics discussed include freedom, Karlin’s own freedom index and how the United States, the United Kingdom and other selected countries (like Israel!) rate on that index. Yep, there is a definite hidden political agenda behind Stark’s questioning though it is not necessarily sinister; Stark is interested in why Russia rates as a more democratic state than China despite China being more capitalist in its economic orientation and in how the Palestinian question influences Israel’s ranking.

The discussions can be quite dry and listeners do have to pay a lot of attention but there’s not much in the interview that isn’t also in the posts on Karlin’s blogs. The posts often feature colourful graphs and maps, many of which Karlin creates himself (and some of which I found I could create too when investigating and comparing infant mortality rates for Australia, Russia and several other countries while reading one post on Da Russophile), plus there are comments forums populated by a bunch of regular visitors including Yours Trolling Truly and occasional wanderers.

I enjoyed hearing the interview though it is demanding and listeners do need to concentrate on following the subject threads.

 

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