5 Feet of Fury

Steve Sailer: Alan Turing is ‘a nerd for our times’

Steve Sailer writes:

Turing worship is related to two groups riding high in the 21st century: gays and nerds. The Imitation Game exploits Turing’s status as one of the relatively rare gay-nerd intersections to create a victim for our times. (…)

In 1983, a feverish biography by mathematician and gay activist Andrew Hodges established the current image of Turing as a gay martyr.

The Imitation Game screenplay—by Graham Moore, the son of Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff Susan Sher—is officially an adaption of Hodges’ bio, but is less fervid and more geeky. (…)

It’s hard for 21st-century audiences, who have been instructed that the past was one long featureless nightmare of homophobia, to make sense of the last two years of Turing’s life. The old stereotype of the English elite as prone to homosexuality has been forgotten, but it’s useful in understanding what happened to Turing.