| Founded | 2022 |
|---|---|
| Type | Limited liability company |
| Focus | Scientific racism,eugenics, white nationalism |
| Location |
|
| Origins | Pioneer Fund |
Area served | Europe, United States |
Key people | Emil Kirkegaard, Matthew Frost, Erik Ahrens |
TheHuman Diversity Foundation (HDF) is afar-right company founded in 2022 to publish "race science" through theAporia Magazine andMankind Quarterly. It also publishes Edward Dutton'sThe Jolly Heretic podcast. Key persons of the HDF including its founder supportremigration andwhite nationalism.
The Human Diversity Foundation was founded byEmil Kirkegaard, a Danish far-right activist, under his legal name William Engman in 2022.[1] It was registered as alimited liability company inWyoming, US.[1] The other HDF leaders are Matthew Frost, a British former teacher and founder of theAporia Magazine, and Erik Ahrens, a Germanwhite nationalist and social media advisor for the far-right partyAlternative für Deutschland (AfD).[1] The Human Diversity Foundation is a rebrand of thePioneer Fund.[1] According to Matthew Frost, assets from the Pioneer Fund were inherited by Emil Kirkegaard and used for the HDF.[1][2]
Emil Kirkegaard leads an "underground research wing" of the HDF consisting of about 10 researchers.[3] Members of the HDF research team include Bryan Pesta, Bo Winegard and Davide Piffer.[1] Pesta, who had received money from the Pioneer Fund, was dismissed from his position atCleveland State University in 2022 for misusing genetic data in his research.[1] Piffer's writing aboutrace and intelligence was cited by Payton Gendron, perpetrator of the2022 Buffalo shooting.[1] Another employee of HDF is Edward Dutton, a former editor-in-chief ofMankind Quarterly and racist YouTuber who promoteseugenics.[1] Dutton has suggested that Black people "don’t do very well academically and don't behave very well either".[1] Dutton was fired from his position at theUniversity of Oulu for plagiarising a student's dissertation.[1] HDF has funded a research paper authored by Russell T. Warne.[1]
In October 2024,The Guardian newspaper revealed thatAndrew Conru, an American businessman, had donated more than a million US dollars to HDF.[3] According to their reporting, "After being approached by theGuardian, Conru pulled his support, saying the group appeared to have deviated from its original mission of 'non-partisan academic research'."[3]
As of April 2025, their website consists solely of this statement: "We are a non-profit organization which specializes in researching human diversity. We are not looking for more funding at this time."[4]
HDF plans to create a private far-right club called Neo Byzantium to obtain income.[1] Membership starts at £650 and rises to £5,000.[1] It was to be led by Erik Ahrens and Matthew Frost.[5]
In October 2024, journalists fromThe Guardian reported that Emil Kirkegaard and HDF had accessedUK Biobank data.[6] Hidden camera footage revealed Matthew Frost in 2023 claiming that "they've managed to get access to the UK Biobank," and to know more "talk to Emil".[6] In response, a UK Biobank representative commented that they have "continued to monitor and prevent attempts to access the resource by Kirkegaard and other researchers believed to be connected with him". The representative also commented that HDF are "not bona fide researchers".[6]
HDF operates the online magazineAporia as a scientific racism outlet.[1] Matthew Frost foundedAporia in 2021 and sold it to Emil Kirkegaard.[1] Frost has stated that the magazine should be read "by the elite, people aspiring to the elite".[1]
Diana Fleischman is its podcast host.[7] She attended the 2023 Natal Conference with members of theNew Right.[8] Bo Winegard,Aporia's executive editor, stated that he believed racial stereotypes were "reasonably accurate" and requested that his readers embrace "white identity politics".[1] Winegard was dismissed from his position atMarietta College.[1] In 2020, Winegard published a retracted paper which drew onRichard Lynn's flawed IQ data.[1] Winegard's race and intelligence research was criticized for resemblingpseudoscience.[9][10]
Noah Carl, editor ofAporia, was sacked from theUniversity of Cambridge over allegations that he had collaborated with far-right extremists.[1][9][11]
White nationalistJared Taylor appeared on theAporia podcast in 2024 to complain about multiracial societies.[1] He commented that "there is no possibility of blacks and whites living peacefully together".[1]
HDF have stated that they ownMankind Quarterly.[1] It has been described as a "pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality".[12]
HDF publishes Edward Dutton'sThe Jolly Heretic podcast and newsletter.[1] Dutton is reported to be on the HDF payroll at approximately $40,000 per year. In November 2023,The Jolly Heretic earnedUS$62,400 in annual revenue which was put into the HDF.[1] The podcast includes documentaries and interviews from Dutton.[1] In May 2024, Dutton released1492, a documentary about Muslim rule in medieval Europe. The full documentary can be viewed by paid subscribers. In the documentary Dutton compares theMuslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 700s to contemporary Muslim immigration to Europe.[13]
HDF plans to create a white-onlyethnostate by forcibly expelling non-ethnically European minorities, a tactic they describe as "remigration".[1][3] This term has become a populareuphemism in recent years among far-right political groups in Germany and Austria to refer to the mass deportation of minorities.[14] HDF has connections to the German far-right political partyAlternative for Germany (AfD).[1] HDF Leader Matthew Frost has stated that AfD's key policy should be remigration if the party were to take power.[3] Kirkegaard suggested that families that had settled for two or three generations should be paid to leave.[3]
Erik Ahrens, a HDF leader, has defended theWaffen-SS and has stated that he wants to create a home for "white, Christian people", as he believes they are under threat fromimmigration.[1] Ahrens has commented that "[his] vision is to one day run in Germany, in a Trump-like fashion",[1] adding "It hasn't been done for 100 years, to run a populist movement centred around a person. I was looking for who can be this, and I probably have to go into that role."[1]
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