WHO'S WHO IN THE DISSIDENT RIGHT: STEFAN MOLYNEUX

by Colin Liddell

Read other entries like this in Who's Who in the Dissident Right, an ever-expanding biographical guide to the colourful characters of the Right Wing.

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A rather milquetoast libertarian character in dissident right terms, but the mass media, taking its cue from organisations like the ADL, the SPLC, and Data&Society, have denounced him as a "White supremacist," "Nazi," and a leader of the "Alt-Right." Anybody who is -- or was -- in the Alt-Right knows this is bullshit. In fact, in the present-day, Jew-obsessed Alt-Right, Molyneux is believed by many to be a Jew himself, although there is little evidence for this, although what little there is comes from Molyneux himself!

The only evidence that he is a "member of the tribe" is some rhetorical point he made in a now deleted YouTube video that came out in 2013 in which he said that his mother was "Jewish":

"My mother was born in Berlin in 1937 to, y'know, a pretty Jewish clan, and this was pretty much the worst time to be born in the culture you choose to be born in. She went through the war as a young girl...she went to Dresden...my mother and some relatives fled the city when they heard the planes approaching, but my grandmother had to stay. She had to go to work the next day...and when my mother and her relatives went back to try and find her mother, they could only find the clasp from her purse."

Very pithy and poignant, but according to this narrative, Molyneux's so-called "Jewish" family was openly and freely living and working in Nazi Germany all the way up to 1945, without being fired, arrested, or put in camps. Not impossible, of course, but a point that clearly invites further explication.

According to the Molyneux narrative of Molyneux, it appears that his "Jewish clan" mother moved to the UK through marriage to an Ulsterman ("the other half [of my family] comes from England and Ireland, and not the part of Ireland that sat out the Second World War..."), sometime in the 1950s or 60s, and lived in the Republic of Ireland where Stefan was born in 1966.

Sometime in the 1970s, the Molyneux family moved to Canada, where his parents appear to have divorced, leaving Molyneux with a mother who was impoverished and abusive. This is highly important as it plays a large part in Molyneux's justifications of his views on women and his socially conservative position, which emphasises the importance of the traditional family and rejects the welfare state and debt-driven government.

After apparently being "successful in tech" and selling his company, Molyneux began a podcast called Freedomain Radio in 2005. Benefiting from the "founder effect" of getting in early, his podcasts built up an enormous following—nearly a million subscribers before he was kicked off YouTube. He focused a lot on personal problems, in which he stressed the need to distance oneself from dysfunctional family relationships ("deFOO" - disassociate from family of origin). This, as well as his frequent calls for donations, led some to view Molyneux as a kind of cult leader.

Around 2011-12, people in the Alt-Right started to notice Molyneux, mainly because he did not shy away from scientifically backed-up HBD positions. Over time, his emphasis on IQ and racial differences has become stronger, although Molyneux always presented these touchy subjects in an entirely rational, scientific, and moral manner. Nevertheless, in 2020, he fell foul of a wave of deplatforming (David Duke, Richard Spencer {temporarily}, American Renaissance, etc) that saw him kicked of Twitter and YouTube. 

This seems to have occurred at least partly because Jewish-funded hate organisations like the ADL and the SPLC have put Molyneux on their hate lists for the "crimethink" of politely discussing IQ differences in his shows and having on occasional guests like Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow.

Another possible explanation is that it was connected to the apparent Deep State "war" between the West and Russia, with 2020 being an election year, and the US establishment keen to stifle dissident voices that could be used to push the kind of memes/disinfo/narratives/polarisation that the Russians pushed in 2016 to help get Trump elected.

Molyneux was identified in 2018 as a key node on the so-called "Alternative Influence Network" by Becca Lewis who was working for the variously funded "think tank" Data&Society (see above). This work seems to have served as the blueprint for deplatforming much of the dissident right. Lewis presented Molyneux as a "gateway drug" between normie media like Dave Rubin and the "more dangerous" HBD ideas associated with the Alt-Right:

"In one illustrative example of [the Alternative Influence Network], Dave Rubin hosted the Canadian right-wing influencer Stefan Molyneux for an interview. Molyneux is a libertarian YouTuber and the host of Freedomain Radio, a call-in talk radio show. In his YouTube videos, Molyneux openly promotes scientific racism, advocates for the men’s rights movement, critiques initiatives devoted to gender equity, and promotes white supremacist conspiracy theories focused on “White Genocide” and “The Great Replacement.” When Molyneux appeared on Rubin’s show, Rubin did not directly endorse his views, but the host also did not challenge them in any substantive way. Rubin largely let Molyneux dominate the terms of the conversation."

Perhaps Molyneux's most "radical" position is the entirely sensible idea that women should get married and have kids when they still have plenty of eggs. Despite this, Molyneux only appears to have one daughter whom he appears to be raising to be a strong-minded person who values her own personal freedom more than the imperative to use her eggs.

Since his deplatforming from mainstream tech, Moilyneux has existed in a kind of "Alex Jones sphere" of alt-tech, with a much lower signal than he had before. He has also lost status and trustworthiness by shilling rather too hard for crypto at a time when it has been on a general decline.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).