Meet the Weirdos Making Pronatalism Look Like Racist Insanity
Any people who want to be the poster couple for natalism probably shouldn't be.
1. Babies
I have written a lot about demographics and natalism. Here is an uncomfortable fact: Do you know who else is really into natalism? Racists and weirdos.
Back in April, Gaby Del Valle reported from the second annual Natalism Conference, which is the kind of thing that, in theory, I’d be into it. Here’s Del Valle:
At first glance, this conference might look like something new: A case for having kids that is rooted in a critique of the market-driven forces that shape our lives and the shifts that have made our culture less family-oriented. As Dolan later tells me in an email, declining birth rates are primarily the fault of “default middle-class ‘life path’ offered by our educational system and corporate employers,” which Dolan says is “in obvious competition with starting a family.”
Sounds pretty good, right? Not far from the JVL-Elizabeth Warren semi-commie critique of late-stage capitalism! But then things take a turn:
But over the course of the conference, the seemingly novel arguments for having children fade and give way to a different set of concerns. Throughout the day, speakers and participants hint at the other aspects of modern life that worried them about future generations in the U.S. and other parts of the West: divorce, gender integration, “wokeness,” declining genetic “quality.” . . .
Wait, do they mean—
The goal, as put by Indian Bronson, the pseudonymous co-founder of the elite matchmaking service Keeper, is “more, better people.”
I mean, it can’t be as bad as it sounds, right?
Haywood’s final words to the audience elicit raucous applause: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its progeny are probably the single most destructive set of laws in American history, and all should be wiped forever,” he says before getting off stage.
Oh, shirt. They just . . . said it.
So this is a problem.
What do you do when you have a real challenge—demographic decline—but a bunch of the people paying attention to it are motivated by something that’s uncomfortably close to eugenics?