Just over a month ago, Boris Johnson’s team publicly urged “misfits and weirdos” across Britain to come and work for them in an effort to find people who wouldn’t usually be given top jobs at the heart of government. In Andrew Sabisky, they appear to have found exactly that—but not in the way they might have hoped.
Sabisky, 27, was selected to work as an adviser in Downing Street after he replied to the weird advert written by chief aide Dominic Cummings. He’s only been in the job for days, but Johnson and Cummings are already under huge pressure to fire him after an old blog post was found in which he straight up said black Americans are dumber than white Americans, according to reports.
In the 2014 blog post, Sabisky is reported to have written: “If the mean black American IQ is (best estimate based on a century’s worth of data) around 85, as compared to a mean white American IQ of 100, then if IQ is normally distributed, you will see a far greater percentage of blacks than whites in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation.”
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The figures have no basis in truth.
It’s the kind of statement which you would hope might be flagged in a screening before someone is ushered into government—and it’s not the only shocking statement attributed to him. Sabisky also backed the compulsory use of contraception to prevent the creation of a “permanent underclass;” said that giving children mental performance-enhancing drugs is “worth a dead kid once a year;” and he openly advocates for the use of eugenics to eliminate what he sees as undesirable characteristics.
On contraception, he’s reported to have written: “One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies, creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception and the onset of puberty... Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”
Sabisky also previously said women’s sport was “more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s,” and said: “Eugenics are about selecting ‘for’ good things... Intelligence is largely inherited and correlates with better outcomes: physical health, income, lower mental illness.”
After the comments were widely circulated on social media and in newspapers, Johnson’s spokesperson was asked about them at a Monday morning media briefing. Astonishingly, the spokesperson refused to condemn the concept of eugenics, didn’t say whether Johnson personally believed black people have lower IQs on average, and had no comment on whether Sabisky could lose his job for his deeply troubling views.
But it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to carry on.
BuzzFeed News reported that Johnson’s cabinet ministers will refuse to work with him. One cabinet minister is reported to have said: “Did nobody consider google? Jesus fucking Christ.” Another angry minister reportedly added: “Hiring this imbecile is an insult to those who came before, which is a minor point I know, but, Jesus wept, it makes me ashamed.”
The opposition Labour party has also called on Johnson’s office to fire Sabisky immediately, with party chairman Ian Lavery saying Monday: “Boris Johnson should have the backbone to make a statement in his own words on why he has made this appointment, whether he stands by it, and his own views on the subject of eugenics.”
