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Human Phenotypes is a racialist website which outlined a pseudo-scientific race typology by a world map and search function, based on 19th-century "scientific" racism. The name may confuse off guard high school Biology students who might be doing a research paper. The name could be considered Technobabble.
The Human Phenotypes website was created by Karsten Reuß,[1] from Germany, who posts as "Ratatoskr" on the Anthroscape forum, where he advertised his site in December, 2012.[2] From the get-go, the site itself went up and down — though notably receiving an update in July of 2015.
Reuß also claims to have been influenced by the racial views of an online poster by the name of "Agrippa" — a Neo-Nazi from the "TheApricity" forum.[3] In 2012, a post on Forumbiodiversity claims that "Agrippa" eventually faced imprisonment in Germany, allegedly for hate crimes.[4]
According to Reuß, his original creation did not quote enough actual anthropologists, opting instead to quote various crank internet sites (e.g. "racialcompact.com", a website advocating racial segregation.[5] The updated site would instead focus on misrepresenting actual scientists, and Reuß allegedly claimed to have distanced himself from the previous reliance on Neo-Nazi and far-right literature.[citation needed]
This quote reflects Reuβ's racialist views:
“”To conclude, phenotypic as well as genetic differences account for human diversity. Human diversity may be relevant for health, nutrition, society, sports, and skills.
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Additionally, the site calls certain features "ancient", implying that some features are more "primitive".
Unsurprisingly, the promised "scientific" sources turned out to be at least half a century old (dating generally from pre-1960). On top of this, the select authors cited happened to rely on various defunct race typologies (since discredited and abandoned),[6] if nothing else, due to biology having progressed quite a bit in the odd six-or-so decades since.
Despite amounting to little more than a Gish gallop of racialist gibberish, modern racialists (Reuß and Hbdchick spring to mind) tend to strategically present themselves as being 'merely interested in human biodiversity'. This, in order to pass as slightly less kooky to the untrained eye — a media tactic commonly employed by the more internet-savvy white nationalists (in order to first sell the whitewashed version of their beliefs).
In posts at Anthroscape, Reuß (as "Ratatoskr") has described his opposition to interracial marriage, categorizing it as "reproductive" "destructive".[7]
Like most racialists of today, Reuß and his band of merry men adherents often frequent sites like Stormfront.[8] Go figure.