Intro

Defenders, obfuscators, and denialists of Jewish influence in Western countries sometimes try to explain away extreme Jewish overrepresentation in prominent industries and positions of power as solely a function of their high IQ. In this post I will briefly review the literature on Jewish IQ and then demonstrate that IQ alone is not a statistically sufficient explanation for the degree of Jewish overrepresentation in most areas.

First, I want to point out “high Jewish IQ explains overrepresentation” is a dangerous line of argumentation for most proponents depending on their convictions:

1. Simply acknowledging the degree of disproportionate Jewish influence that exists in Western society is problematic because it gives legitimacy to so-called “anti-semite” “conspiracy theorists” that are typically slandered as insane or evil in mainstream media and political discourse. This situation is beneficial for denialists and detractors since the concerns of skeptics can dismissed without any actual examination or discussion. As it turns out, empirical data strongly supports the idea that Jews are vastly overrepresented in positions of power and influence, and the average person is typically unaware to the extreme degree this is true. As a leftist, denialist, or philosemite, admitting this fact and opening the subject for review severely damages the credibility of the narrative and the mainstream media, while bolstering the credibility of the so-called “anti-semites” or “Nazis”

2. If any person starts talking about group differences in IQ, then significant concessions have already been made to the “racist” case, since they have acknowledged the fact that there are important cognitive differences between human populations. While not always known or presupposed by these types, the heritability of IQ in Western nations is 0.7-0.8 in adulthood - indicating genes are responsible for the majority of group differences in intelligence within developed countries. Acknowledging these facts are extremely problematic for left-wingers because they deal a serious blow to racial oppression narratives and call into question the efficacy and viability of wealth redistribution programs. They also open the door for other HBD-related topics, like race and crime. (Of course, race and IQ poses a serious real problem for left-wing polices and beliefs whether they acknowledge it, or not)

3. Some of these types will try to avoid #2 by denying the high heritability of IQ and insisting that Jewish IQ is due entirely to some environmental or cultural factors. This may satisfy the need for ideological consistency in the short term, but this position is largely indefensible on empirical grounds. At best, proponents could plausibly hold this position for the sake of discussion on Jews - but not be able to defend egalitarianism in its own right

4. The standard explanation of why Blacks, non-white Hispanics, and American Indians do poorly in IQ, education, earnings, and socioeconomic status is that they suffer from discrimination from whites. Yet, the Jews have suffered a great deal of discrimination over the last 2000 years, and it has apparently not had an adverse effect on their intelligence or their achievements. They are probably the most socio-politically and economically successful ethnic group ever, by any metrics one could devise. How can this be explained by left-wingers who insist black or Hispanic underachievement compared to whites is explained by “discrimination” or a nebulous “institutionalized racism” ?

5. Even if IQ did explain Jewish overrepresentation in Western public and private institutions, it does not follow that Whites should be OK with this. To argue otherwise would contradict any case for affirmative action

All told, a serious argument for “Jewish IQ explains overrepresentation” can only be made with ideological consistently by libertarians, Jewish or philosemitic conservatives, or perhaps interested centrists who are otherwise politically agnostic. Liberals can almost assuredly not craft a convincing narrative using this argument that does not insist Jews be “white”, with all problems that entails (e.g., what is “white privilege” compared to “Jewish privilege”?) However, the biggest problem with “high Jewish IQ explains overrepresentation” argument is not the ideological contradictions it poses but rather the fact that it cannot actually explain all of the overrepresentation we see.

Estimates for Average Jewish IQ

The answer to the question “What is the average Jewish IQ?” is not a settled debate. Richard Lynn believes Ashkenazi IQ to be 110 on average based on his own work, a few studies in Canada, Israel, and the UK, and a larger sample in the US - in particular these seven studies mostly done by Boris Levinson. Levinson’s studies have been criticized for drawing unrepresentative and small samples from New York Jews from Orthodox schools exclusively. I don’t know enough to say much about this - but at the very least, the wild variation in Levinson’s own studies lend credibility to this idea (99-125). Aside from Lynn’s own 2004 study (n=105, IQ = 107.5) and older ones he compiled, other notable tests are Herrnstein and Murray (1994) study of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth adolescents their IQ of 112.6 for Jewish adolescents a review of Project Talent data of 1236 adolescent American Jews (15-18 yos) in 1992 that put full scale IQ of Jews at 102, with a mathematical IQ of 113, and verbal at 109. Pumpkin Person discusses that data in more detail here.

Whether the full-scale average Ashkenazi IQ is 102 or 115 it is acknowledged by everyone that Jews have peculiar disparities in different types of intelligence:

Different studies have found different results, but most have found well above-average verbal and mathematical intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews, along with somewhat below-average spatial intelligence

The nuances of Jewish intelligence as revealed by IQ tests could probably help explain why they are overrepresented in areas like journalism and underrepresented in areas like engineering. As an aside, this article was the one commented on by Pumpkin Person (linked above) and I still see the number 125 thrown around sometimes

I’ve been informed in the comments by William that Wikipedia is claiming Ashkenazi Jews have a mean verbal IQ of 125.6! Although I’d like to believe this because it would nicely explains the incredible economic and cultural achievements of U.S. Jews, it’s hard to believe a people so genetically related to whites and Arabs could have a verbal IQ dozens of points higher than both

That Wikipedia article has since been edited, but probably referenced Levinson (1958).

It is also important to recognize different groups of Jews have very different levels of intelligence. It is rather well-known that Ashkenazi Jews are the ones who are particularly intelligent (and powerful) thus, usually when someone talks about “the Jews” this is really the group they mean (and I’m not going to bother to always make this distinction going forward). In Race Differences in Intelligence (also by Lynn and an great source I reference all the time) you can read more about Israeli IQ (95) in section 9:

Intelligence in Israel is higher than in the other countries of South Asia and North Africa. Eight studies of intelligence in Israel are summarized in Table 6.7. The IQs lie in the range of 89-97 with a median of 95. This is substantially higher than the median of 84 for the remainder of South Asia, showing that Jews have higher IQs than other South Asians. In Israel approximately 20 percent of the population are Arabs, whose IQ of 86 (see Table 6.1, row 20) is virtually the same as that of other South Asians in the Near East. Forty percent of the population are European Jews (mainly Ashkenazim from Russia and Eastern Europe) and 40 percent are Oriental Jews (Mizrahim) from Asia and North Africa. Three studies carried out in Israel have found that the Ashkenazim have a mean IQ approximately 12 IQ points higher than the Oriental Jews (Zeidner, 1987a; Burg and Belmont, 1990; Lieblich, Ninio, and Kugelmass, 1972). The IQ of 95 for Israel is the weighted mean of the IQs of 103 of the Ashkenazim Jews, 91 of the Oriental Jews (12 IQ points lower), and 86 of the Arabs. The lower IQ of Arabs in Israel compared with Jews is confirmed by Zeidner (1987a), who has reported that Arab applicants for admission to university obtain an IQ 15 IQ points lower than that of Jewish applicants.

Lynn goes into even more detail on some of these tests and evolutionary theories, but at the main takeaway is

the IQs of Jews in the United States and Britain average between around 107 to 115 and are therefore higher than the 103 estimated for Ashkenazim Jews in Israel.

Together, the evidence doesn’t very strongly support any conclusions that are significantly different from the Mainstream statement in 1994:

8 "The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered"

But generally speaking, the range for Ashkenazis given as 105-115, with most serious evidence falling around 107-112. A favorite study I have seen cited by 115 advocates is The Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence written in 2005 by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending. This is not an intelligence study or a metanalysis of IQ studies on Jews – but rather a paper that presents and tests several evolutionary theories for high Jewish intelligence. The evolutionary theories for high Ashkenazi IQ are very interesting, but beyond the scope of this post. This paper is also one detractors should hesitate to cite, since the authors propose mostly genetic explanations for high Jewish IQ. Cochran and Harpending also co-authored the 10,000 Year Explosion -How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, and both could be considered “race realist” anthropologists. Here’s Harpending talking about the subject of race (he passed in 2016). In A Natural History, the authors cite one of Levinson’s papers as well as one I found (but not beyond the paywall) and one other that I have never seen referenced anywhere else.

Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data. They score 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations above the general European average, corresponding to an IQ 112-115. This has been seen in many studies (Backman, 1972; Levinson, 1959; Romanoff, 1976), although a recent review concludes that the advantage is slightly less, only half a standard deviation Lynn (2004).

Proponents of this source also often ignore the section where the authors implicitly accept an average of 110 in the very next paragraph

For example if the mean Ashkenazi IQ is 110 and the standard deviation is 15, then the number of northern Europeans with IQs greater than 140 should be 4 per thousand while 23 per thousand Ashkenazim should exceed the same threshold, a six fold difference.

(Some foreshadowing there) I should point out that Greg Cochran’s own opinion as of April 2019 is 112. 110 has also been recently corroborated by a genetic study in 2019 using data from Lutherans and Ashkenazi Jews in the US, in which the Jewish IQ was estimated to be 109.72 based on polygenic scores (and this is what Cochran was referencing). These findings were later replicated in the UK, but have also recently come under criticism. I don’t know enough to say if the criticism is serious or not.

All told, the most reasonable number for average Ashkenazi IQ given all data is 110. This is the average of most studies, what Richard Lynn believes, and is the number corroborated by what PGS data we have. So that will be the number we use for our analysis today.

Jewish IQ, SES, and Achievement

Probably the greatest empirical review of Jewish intelligence and achievement is Richard Lynn’s 2011 book The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement. This was the key reference for almost all of the claims compiled by Sean Last (F) in his article The Jewish Question: an Empirical Examination and I am going to copy and paste his work as needed for our fun maths below. To summarize Last’s review briefly:

This post will be about the Jewish Question. Specifically, I am going to empirically document the following claims:

• Jews are vastly overrepresented in positions of power and cultural influence

• Jewish elites are far to the left of gentile elites and have moved shifted the distribution of political opinion among American elites from centrism to leftism

• Jewish leftism and success can partly be explained by their mean IQs, living in large cities, personality traits, and possibly certain cultural values, but ethnocentrism also plays an important role that should not be ignored.

Anti-Semites are fond of pointing out that Jewish people control various industries or are vastly overrepresented in various positions of power. As it turns out, empirical data strongly supports these claims.

The question we are looking to answer here today is whether such overrepresentations can be adequately explained by Jewish IQ, which again we estimate to be 110. Critical to the claim of detractors is how this higher average IQ has a profound impact on the “genius” end of the bell curve usually defined as 140 (or top 1%), and this accounts for why Jews are overrepresented in “elite” samples. If we assume that IQ is normally distributed with a standard deviation of 15 and that the only difference between white and Jewish distribution is the mean of 100 or 110, then we can use a bell curve calculator to figure out exactly how much of a difference this makes. Using the white distribution, the percent of gentiles with an IQ > 140 is 0.38%., Using the average Jewish IQ of 110, the chance of being >140 is increased to 2.28%. Put another way, any Jew is about 6 times more likely to be a genius than white gentile is.

If we pretended IQ was a perfect predictor of income/status/importance in society, it would then follow we should expect a representation of "elite" Jews to be six times more likely within the Jewish population compared to elite representation within the gentile populations. For simplicities sake, we will also pretend that all elites are either White or Jewish and all Jews are Ashkenazis, both of which greatly help detractors. This maximizes the intelligence of the Jewish population and excludes East Asians at ~5% US population) (but this kind of makes sense for other groups – even at 92, Hispanics have basically 0 chance of being >140). Since Jews in the US make up about 2% of the US population and white Americans make about around 60% this would mean that, once we correct for proportions, Jews are (6 * (0.02/0.60)) = 0.2x times more likely to be represented in American "elite" samples than gentiles based in their population and IQ. Put another way, for every 5 elites, 4 would be gentiles and 1 would be a Jew, or Jews should make up about 20% of the American elite.

To call these numbers out specifically again:

Jews: 110 mean IQ, SD 15.

Jews are 2% of US the population

Gentile whites are 60%

Jews are thus (0.02/0.60) = 3.3% of the potential “elite” population

Expected (US) Jewish Elite representation @ 140 is = 3.3% * 6 = 0.198 (~20%)

Do such ratios play out in actuality?

Wealth:

A 2009 analysis of Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans found that 35% were Jewish while 40% of the top 50 were Jewish. Using 40%, this would be an overrepresentation of about 2,000% (a factor of 20) compared to the Jewish overall population of 2%, or 200% (a factor of 2) after correcting for Jewish IQ.

The Media

Page 309 of Lynn (2011) reports on 5 analyses of Jewish representation among media elites in contemporary America. The mean factor of overrepresentation across the table is 19 (or 1.9 (190%) if we correct for IQ, assuming population was always the same)

In the 1988 book The Media Elite: America’s New Powerbrokers, Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter report on a representative survey of 238 journalists from America’s top new organizations which found that 59% of respondents were Jewish (an overrepresentation factor of 3 (300%) after correcting for IQ)

A 1990 list of the top 10 US entertainment companies published in American Film found that Jews accounted of 8 of their ten CEOs (Lynn, 2011). The companies were Time Warner, Paramount, CBS, Fox, Columbia Pictures, Viacom, ABC, and MCA Inc. This translates to an overrepresentation factor of 4 (or 400%) after correcting for IQ.

Perhaps one would argue these metrics are dated or cherry-picked. OK – let’s look at the state of the media today. Of the big media firms now, (Sumner Redstone (Viacom) is Jewish, so is Brian Roberts of Comcast and John Stankney of TimeWarner and Bob Iger of Disney. Note also that in 2005 Michael Eisner was CEO of Disney and Jeff Zucker still oversees CNN. While the gentile Rupert Murdoch (NewsCorp/FOX) is often cited as an exception to Jewish media dominance, he is also an extremely strong supporter of Israel. However, even he slips-up sometimes, and needs to apologize publicly for simply naming Jews in an extremely Jewish industry.

Political Donors:

In 2012, Jews accounted for 20% of the top 5 GOP donors and 40% of the top democrat donors. In 2016, Jews accounted for all 5 of the top Democrat donors. One analysis finds that, of the top 50 donors in 2016, Jews accounted for 40% of mega-donors in total, 25% of Republican donors, and 79% of Democrat donors. I’m not going to bother to calculate the overrepresentation for all of these but at any rate they are all greater than the 20% we gave as “fair” representation.

So Jews are vastly overrepresented in the American elite, and the most generous assumptions on IQ cannot adequately explain this. What about historically in the US or Europe, where Jews were even fewer in number compared to the 90-100% white population?

History:

In the late 19th and early 20th century in northern continental Europe, the Jewish elites most often talked about were those in finance. Lynn (2011) compiled data from this time and place showing Jews being heavily over-represented in finance-related occupations. The mean factor of overrepresentation in this table is 25.

An analysis of the 29 richest families in Germany in the years 1908 – 1911 found 9 of them, or 31%, to be Jewish. An analysis of the US upper class in 1945 found that Jews accounted for 22% of members, corresponding to an RR of 7.3. A 1982 survey of the 40 richest individuals in the United States which revealed 40% to be Jewish (All from Lynn, again.)

An analysis of 5 data sets on those working in journalism from early 20th century Northern Continental Europe reveals a mean factor of overrepresentation of 10.

Lynn (2011) also reviewed a mountain of data from around the world on the socio-economic status of Jews and showed them to be overrepresented among wealthy, well educated, individuals, and underrepresented among blue collar workers. This was shown to be true all over continental Europe, the British Isles, South Africa, Australia, North and South America, as well as Israel. These differences were often large with Jews often being overrepresented among high SES individuals by factors of 5-20.

Jews and Gentiles in a realistic “Elite Congress”

One thing we didn’t establish was that a higher IQ necessarily indicates socioeconomic and political success. We made the presupposition that all elite positions require a “genius” level intelligence (of IQ = 140). In actuality, the predictiveness of IQ for SES and career achievement breaks down at higher levels (among other things). Research suggests that the mean IQ of billionaires is probably in the low-mid 130s and millionaires is in the high 110s. This aligns with the idea that IQ is probably a better predictor of poverty than of wealth. Since media executives probably make on average around $60-100M a year, that puts them squarely in millionaire territory and we would expect them to have IQs somewhere around 115-125 (see also here and here on IQ and income correlations).

Jewish IQ advantage drops precipitously as you come down to these levels of IQ. Using the same calculations we did before (Approximated at 3 decimal points), we can visualize the Jewish advantage within a “congress” of 1000 elites, divided between gentiles and Jews at a “fair” ratio according to our assumptions on what elite IQ threshold is and a Jewish IQ of 110). Using NORMSDIST() in excel, the formula is (Jewish prob. / Gentile Prob * (1/30))

160: ((0.00135/0.000032) * (1/30)) = 1.406 (or Jewish Advantage 584-416 of 1000 elites)

Note that 160 is absurdly high, but is probably close to what is needed for a Nobel prize. Lynn talks about this more

145: ((0.023/0.00135) * (1/30)) = 0.562 (already Gentile Advantage, 640-360)

130: ((0.159/0.023) * (1/30)) = 0.232 (812-188)

120: ((0.369/0.091) * (1/30)) = 0.135 (881 - 119)

110: ((0.631/0.252) * (1/30)) = 0.083 (923 - 76)

Notice at “Elite IQ” = 110-120, Jews should still only make up ~10% of elites at best. This is much lower than the 20% we assumed above, and would effectively double any of those overrepresentation ratios. Here, I have created a table using our basic assumptions that demonstrates what a realistic “Elite Congress” looks like at different levels of average Ashkenazi IQ and “elite” IQ:

Ashkenazi IQ (FIXED)

Elite IQ:	105	107	110	112	115
150	9.5%	13.9%	22.9%	30.5%	43.3%
145	8.6%	12.2%	19.5%	25.6%	36.0%
140	7.9%	10.8%	16.5%	21.2%	29.4%
135	7.2%	9.5%	14.0%	17.5%	23.7%
130	6.5%	8.4%	11.8%	14.4%	18.9%
125	6.0%	7.4%	10.0%	11.9%	15.0%
120	5.5%	6.6%	8.4%	9.8%	11.9%
115	5.0%	5.9%	7.2%	8.1%	9.5%
110	4.7%	5.3%	6.2%	6.8%	7.7%

Across the top is average Ashkenazi IQ, and the vertical axis represents “elite IQ”, at whatever level that is defined. I bolded sections I consider to be “serious” estimates, given what data exists. Within these, you can see that the reasonable range of Jews in the congress is only 5-21%. Recall that this only holds for the assumptions we have laid out in the US: Ashkenazis as 3.3% of the potentially elite “”White”” population, other races otherwise uncounted. So the final verdict is that, even under the most absurdly generous assumptions, IQ cannot explain Jewish overrepresentation. As Last puts it:

Since you obviously cannot be a Nobel prize winner, an important intellectual, or an academic, without a good deal of intelligence, IQ is also clearly an important part of the explanation for Jewish success and influence. It’s probably best thought of as a necessary but not sufficient condition.

The Media: A Jewish “conspiracy?”

A common claim of obfuscators is that judeo-skeptics are “conspiracy theorists”, who only advance their views out of blind hatred for Jews. However, when the data is considered, statements such as “Jews Control the media” are more plausibly true than untrue when evaluated using almost any metric one can devise. Since this part is no longer theoretical, the question then becomes: Do empirically-validated measures of overrepresentation in these various industries truly amount to a “conspiracy”? How could we tell?

Its hard to imagine that, in areas like Hollywood or media, that these people do not realize they are all overwhelmingly Jewish. How could they all not notice that? Does it make more sense to assume all of this over-representation is purely coincidental, or instead that there is some kind of tribalism/nepotism involved? What more proof is required that we could reasonably be expected to produce? At the very least, Jewish overrpresresentation in the media probably explains why (largely Jewish) propaganda institutions, such as the SPLC or ADL, are taken as serious moral authorities and partner with companies like Facebook and Google.. Its also probably explains how the media can be so consistent on its anti-white bias and harassment of white advocates - who can be reliably slandered, character-assassinated, or ignored without ever seriously evaluating their legitimate concerns. There are so many examples I could point to here, but this is a post – or novels – all on its own, but you get the idea. I’m sure examples will come up in the comments.

Jewish media dominance raises many questions: When should we expect the Jewish media to start taking race and IQ seriously, and what this implies for globalism and mass third-world immigration into Western countries? When should we expect them to start criticizing the Jewish supremacist ethnostate of Israel? When will they start universally applying their “racist” narratives to groups beyond just whites – and even to themselves?

Given just how aggressively anti-white, leftish, and how Jewish the media is, the real question that should probably be asked is: What is the practical difference between labelling it “a conspiracy”, or not? The overrepresentation of Jews in media positions is absurdly high. They consistently hold 50%-80% (or more) of these positions, no matter what criteria you use. We can try to explain some of this away with statistical factors and come up with potential explanations that arent nepotism or a "conspiracy" - but at this point, what is the practical difference between deliberate nepotism or a purely cohencidental overrepresentation? All these people network with eachother and are obviously aware of the fact that they are all mostly Jewish. Jews celebrate their media dominance and even act as a "police" force against "anti-semitism" etc. Is that overreaching? Let’s ask.. Jews themselves:

In 2012, Gilad Atzmon published an article in The Times of Israel (now removed) titled “Jews DO Control the media”

We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor.. Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.

But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”

Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!

Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene.

Columnist Joel Stein is even less conciliatory when it comes to American ignorance on Jewish influence in the media. In the LA Times, he expresses his dismay on a 2008 poll in the article “Who runs Hollywood? C’mon”

I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,” down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood

These examples are humorous and not strictly empirical - but they demonstrate just how ridiculously ignorant the average American is when it comes to the inordinate degree of Jewish influence in the media - according to Jews themselves. At the very least, the American public should be more educated and concerned about Jewish influence in the media (just as they are purportedly concerned about left/righ-wing bias). Predictably however, Jewish tribalism prevents this from happening. Obviously the media – sometimes elevated as the “Fourth estate” US – should at least vaguely resemble the population it serves. It can’t be a good idea to have a small ethnic minority dominate any of your country’s vital public and private institutions. This aligns with #2 above: Even if IQ DID explain Jewish success, it doesn’t follow that Whites should be OK with their dominance of Western institutions - and IQ is neither a statistically nor morally sufficient explanation for this phenomenon.

TL;DR – The average Ashkenazi IQ is about 110, almost certainly 107-112. At current population levels, this is only sufficient to explain Jews as 5-21% of most elite samples in the United States. This is especially not sufficient for Jewish dominance in the Media (50-80%). Also, since I couldn’t fit it in anywhere else – the best intro vid to the JQ IMO is AltHype’s “A Celebration of the Jewish People” ~ 20 minutes long.