Sailer covers a wide array of subjects, but he’s most famous for arguing that racial disparities in outcomes can for the most part be attributed to cultural and genetic differences rather than discrimination. At the DC event, attendees skewed overwhelmingly male, mostly though not entirely white, and surprisingly young — an audience not quite befitting of a wonkish social science enthusiast in his 60s.

For his speaking portion of the evening, Sailer read an essay which appeared in Noticing titled, “What If I’m Right?”. A common theme of his work is the chasm between elite narratives and the lived experiences of ordinary Americans, a point he reiterated in comments to UnHerd. “The unfortunate facts that [commentators] prudently observe when making real estate choices for their families about ‘safe neighbourhoods’ and ‘good schools’ couldn’t possibly have any relevance to the great topics of the day they discuss in the media,” he said. “Only vulgar lowbrows would confuse these two vastly different domains of being.” That Sailer discusses his own observations so bluntly is the reason for his ouster from public life, but it’s also what’s made his work interesting to a new generation of readers.

There is no shortage of statements from Sailer which could explain his pariah status. He wrote a book about Barack Obama titled America’s Half-Blood Prince. He coined “Sailer’s law of mass shootings”, a maxim for predicting the race of a shooter based on the dead to injured ratio, and he has a habit of restating it in the immediate aftermath of such events. He writes a lot about the black crime rate. Perhaps most controversially, he has written extensively about the relationship between race and IQ, promoting research which concludes that white people have, on average, higher IQs than black and Hispanic people, and lower IQs than east Asian people.

Sailer’s writing is unmentionable in respectable public life, though some of his observations have trickled into the mainstream. He was one of the first people to publicly cast doubt on the UVA fraternity gang rape story in Rolling Stone, which was eventually revealed to be a hoax. His observation of a surge in car-related fatalities among African Americans in the summer of 2020 eventually made its way into the New York Times.

But recently, Right-leaning public intellectuals and commentators are now increasingly speaking up on Sailer’s behalf. Noticing has received critical acclaim from Tucker Carlson and Razib Khan. Charles Murray, whose discussion of race and IQ in The Bell Curve made him something of a pariah himself, defended Sailer in the Claremont Review of Books.

“Sailer does lack some filters that sterilise the prose of others who write about race (I include myself in the indictment),” Murray wrote, adding, “Sailer consistently tells you things you didn’t know and prompts you to rethink your positions… there’s no evidence of animus toward African Americans or Latinos as groups.”

Perhaps more important, Sailer’s work has become a favourite subject on the Red Scare podcast, an irreverent cultural commentary show that was cited by nearly every attendee I spoke with as their source of interest in Sailer.

His newfound popularity suggests a major shift in the Overton window is underway. He told UnHerd, however, that the “Great Awokening” was far from over, and any perceived recession is the result of Democrats’ efforts “to memoryhole the crazier events of the early 2020s.” Amy Wax, who faces possible job loss, said much the same Thursday evening.  “The fact that they’re letting Steve out in public,” she said, “is just a sign that they know they control the big institutions and can afford to ease up a little bit.”

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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