Why is the American right so obsessed with high IQs?

With Trump and his followers repeatedly using 'low IQ' as an attack line in this election, Roisin Lanigan explores the ploy of invoking an intelligence scale born of eugenics and racism

- Roisin Lanigan

On Sunday, I was unfortunate enough to schedule a journey on the New York subway that coincided with Donald Trump’s homecoming rally. The train passed through Madison Square Garden, where Trump was flanked by Elon Musk, Dr Phil, Hulk Hogan and co with tales of how together they were going to take

America “back” from an unnamed other. There, inevitably, the true believers who didn’t manage to get tickets to the Trump 2024 sideshow piled into the carriage and, inevitably, an argument ensued.

A man in a camo Maga hat took up against a tourist for putting his suitcase in the supposedly wrong place, supposedly blocking the entrance. “In your country you can do whatever the fuck you want,” the man in the camo hat bellowed at the poor bewildered guy, who had no space to move his suitcases even if he wanted to. And then, the culmination of the whole rant, when the man said he “didn’t speak English”.

“I have an incredibly high IQ”, said the man in the camo hat, while everyone else stared stubbornly down at their phones, pretending not to hear. “I am a highly intelligent person.”

What this particular Trump supporter’s intelligence had to do with the situation was unclear. Except that high intelligence, particularly intelligence measured by IQ, is an enduring fascination for the right. Just this week, Mel Gibson, an actor and director perhaps more well known of late for his racist and antisemitic rants rather than his acting or directing, went in on Kamala Harris’s perceived low intelligence.

Gibson, who’s unsurprisingly voting Republican, told TMZ he thought the vice-president’s political track record was “appalling”. He went on to say she had “no policies to speak of”.

“And she’s got the IQ of a fence post.”