Angela, why do you think there is an agenda behind Etruscans from Anatolia hypothesis?
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I believe everyone who maintained that had or has an agenda. Jean Manco believed it wholeheartedly. We had heated debates about it. I just thought she was too dogmatic about it, ignoring the archaeology completely in favor of believing Herodotus' version of events in preference to those of other ancient historians. She generally gave too much credence to these "historians", which they weren't really, who were just recounting myths of things which happened long before their time.
I myself stated more than once that it was possible that a small elite might have come from Asia Minor in the first millennium BC, but it was just that: a possibility. Certainly, there was no sign of a folk migration sufficient in size to have a real effect on the genome. There was just too much against it, with the archaeology first and foremost: there was and is absolutely no sign of a mass invasion, or destroyed settlements etc., just a gradual change in the culture as contact increased with the east. There was also the fact that the high levels of J2a are in the east, closer to the Balkans, not Toscana; that there is so much R1b in Toscana; that Greece, for example, has even more "West Asian" according to the old calculators based on modern populations which people loved to use; that there definitely seemed to be a south/north cline in terms of this ancestry etc. I specifically asked rhetorically many times if the Lydians went not just to Toscana but to Albania, Greece, Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, Campania and the Marche as well. I could go on, but you probably know all of this.
As for those with an agenda, I know they have one partly because I know who they are and what their motivations are. They were quite open about their ideas in the past, although they aren't now. One, Polako, is a Slavic/Nordic racist of long standing, member for years, and prolific poster at horrifically racist sites who, while such a member, posted numerous times highly anti-semitic content and highly racist comments about Southern Italians, calling them mongrels and non-Europeans because they had "too much" of the "Near Eastern" ancestry he so disdained. It's always amazed me that South Asians like Razib Khan could stomach him. I guess they didn't see the posts where he called "them" mongrels too.
As for Sikeliot, I have it in personal PMs from him that his father was Sicilian and rejected his son for his sexual orientation, as well as disdaining his Islander Portuguese mother for her African ancestry. Sikeliot has now convinced people that he is just a "fan" of Levantine and Anatolian ancestry. That couldn't be further from the truth. For years he masqueraded as "Portuguese Princess" (and under other sock accounts) at theapricity, and under other sock accounts here and elsewhere, even at citydata, and his only mission was to prove the Portuguese were "superior" to Sicilians and Southern Italians because they had less "Levantine" and/or Anatolian ancestry. How people don't know the latter is beyond me.
Principe is one of those Southern Italian Americans or Southern Italian Canadians, if he isn't just another one of Sikeliot's socks, rare but present, who like to believe they're Jewish. A Calabrian woman is sort of famous for this, actually converted and became a rabbi, and now lives in Italy. It takes all kinds, I guess. In his case it's all supposedly because he thinks his ydna is Jewish. Maybe it is. I have no doubt some Jews in southern Italy converted and tried to blend into the background to escape expulsion. It happened in Portugal and Spain, why not in Sicily and Southern Italy? That doesn't make you Jewish or Levantine. For crying out loud, I carry an mtDna from the European hunter-gatherers, no doubt via steppe people who came into Italy. Does that mean I should identify with them, tout all things hunter-gatherer and steppe just for that reason, try to get accepted by some far right group? It's completely ridiculous. We are what our autosomal inheritance, 98% of our genome, and culture make us. Anything else is as ridiculous as Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Amerindian because she carries 2% of that ancestry.
There are way too many people in this hobby who just aren't stable mentally, or are just out and out racists, and for whatever reason, partly, I'm sure, because we are living proof that "excellence", and achievement, and contribution to European civilization doesn't depend on high levels of WHG and steppe, and also probably because most of us don't give a **** about whether we have more "West Asian" or "Levantine" than northerners. I certainly don't, and I certainly don't disdain that ancestry. Would I have married someone more than half Calabrian if I did?
I could go on, but I won't. These are what could be called impeachable witnesses. Certain behaviors call people's veracity into question.
They're all very quiet about their motivations now, but I've been around for a long time, and I know who they are and what motivates them, and I see how they ignore any facts that don't fit into their "explanation" of things. Nothing that they say should be taken at face value. You have to check every statement of supposed "fact" because some of them, especially someone like Polako, and on every topic, think absolutely nothing of outright lying, misrepresenting the findings of academic papers, or manipulating the data.
I've spent my professional life pinning liars to the wall and exposing them, and I'm not going to do any different when the topic is genetics.