Revealed The international 'race science' network funded by US tech boss

Group promoting 'dangerous' scientific racism ideology teamed up with German rightwing extremist, secret recordings show

- David Pegg, Tom Burgis, Hannah Devlin and Jason Wilson

An international network of "race science" activists seeking to influence public debate with discredited ideas on race and eugenics has been operating with secret funding from a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur.

Undercover filming has revealed the existence of the organisation, formed two years ago as the Human Diversity Foundation. Its members have used podcasts, videos, an online magazine and research papers to seed ideology about the supposed genetic superiority of certain ethnic groups.

The anti-racism campaign Hope Not Hate began investigating after meeting the group's English organiser, a former teacher, at a far-right conference.

Undercover footage was shared with the Guardian, which conducted further research alongside Hope Not Hate and reporting partners in Germany.

HDF received more than $1m from Andrew Conru, a Seattle businessman who made his fortune from dating websites, the recordings reveal. After being approached by the Guardian, Conru pulled his support, saying the group appeared to have deviated from its original mission of "non-partisan academic research".

While it remains a fringe outfit, HDF is part of a movement to rehabilitate so-called race science as a topic of open debate. Labelled scientific racism by mainstream academics, it seeks to prove biological differences between races such as higher average IQ or a tendency to commit crime.

Dr Rebecca Sear, the director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University, described it as a "dangerous ideology" with real-world consequences. "Scientific racism has been used to argue against any policies that attempt to reduce inequalities between racial groups," she said. It was also deployed to "argue for more restrictive immigration policies".