“Hitler’s Holocaust” – made in Britain?
David Ashton reviews a TV agitflop
On 3 and 10 October, BBC4 showcased Science’s Greatest Scandal, a two-parter, which claimed that Englishmen initiated the “shocking” beliefs that “drove” the mass-murder of the Jews (Radio Times). This gruesome slander was illustrated by ipso facto irrelevant and therefore purposely prejudicial Soviet footage from Auschwitz.
The presenters were Adam Pearson and Angela Saini. Both have acutely personal perspectives. Pearson is an actor facially disfigured by neurofibromatosis and surgery. Ms Saini, from a high-caste Punjabi background, has written a book about Indian brains “taking over the world”, and another recommending that female scientists should transform society towards “equality” [1]. Her subsequent shallow polemic against “race science”, Superior: the Return of Race Science, was refuted by Mankind Quarterly’s editor, and also in Quillette, provoking a torrent of online vituperation.
The causal connection that she alleges between our fellow-countrymen and the “horrific practice [0f] …the Nazis” was “eugenics”, the applied science elaborated by the Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton. Eugenics is about human birth and conception, not death and extermination. Galton proposed incentives to encourage parenthood and fecundity among healthier and more creative people, and to discourage reproduction of offspring with hereditary illnesses and social handicaps. The objective was to prevent, not inflict, personal suffering, and to improve community capabilities. How is that “evil”?
During a century of theory and practice, like other medical and social policies, notably in psychiatry and criminology, eugenics made its share of mistakes. Some eugenicists also supported painless mercy killing – just as eugenics’ opponents support women’s “right” to destroy “innocent individual lives” by legalised abortions (9 million in Britain). In Germany, coercive sterilization and euthanasia occurred together for Nazi ideological purposes [2], but are not the same.
Saini’s pot-shots were wild. War-hero Carlos Blacker [3] was attacked for compassionate concern over Indian overpopulation. Tony Blair was condemned for ascribing delinquency to troubled families. The eminent scientist Ruggles Gates was accused of skin-colour obsession, and Mankind Quarterly was described as “notorious”. This reviewer has a complete run of the Scottish and American issues of this journal, endorsed internationally then and now by leading anthropologists, and he corresponded with Gates, whose intermarriage “field work” was extensive. His cautions focussed mainly on “disharmonic” crossing between Africans and Europeans because of their genetic distance [4].
Saini has a roster of “bad guys” aligned with the “monster” Galton, determined to “remove” from society those considered “inferior”, including Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot [5]. Yet numerous other prominent figures supported eugenics, including Balfour, Keynes, Beveridge, Bertrand Russell, Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells and C. O. Carter. They ranged from Communist scientists like J. B. S. Haldane, H. J. Muller and N. K. Koltsov, to Christian thinkers like Bishop Barnes, Dean Inge and Father Teilhard. Activists spread around the globe [6]. Jewish proponents long preceded and continued after Hitler [7]. Today, Tay-Sachs is screened in Israel.
Sterilization or segregation of sexually capable but parentally “unfit” adults was advocated – unethical perhaps, but not murder. Triage, quarantine, death-bed care, confinement of psychopaths, mass-inoculation and brain-cell experiments also raise moral questions.
During the three decades after WW2, English publications defended mainstream eugenics, from Gerald Leach’s Biocrats and Anthony Smith’s Human Pedigree to Raymond Cattell’s New Morality from Science and Cyril Darlington’s Little Universe of Man. However, as a result of the leftward march through academic and other institutions, this was soon quashed, the Eugenics Society itself politically corrected, accompanied by repetitive attacks on IQ tests, “scientific racism” and migration control.
The usual stratagem is to confuse the proactive elimination of disabilities from people (humanitarian) with the physical elimination of disabled people themselves (homicidal). Yet in this film, when NF1 sufferer Adam Pearson interviewed a couple whose son had the same affliction, he did not demur when the parents expressed reluctance to pass it to another child.
Pseudo-egalitarians misrepresent the biological reversal of civilizational decline as class-war “against the weak” or as “chilling” form of snobbery. Yet the Afro-American leader W. E. B. DuBois co-operated with eugenicist family-planners to raise Black achievements and relieve overburdened mothers.
Today, independent research into genetics and epigenetics is enriching our knowledge not only of disease and intelligence transmission, but also of “race”. It has enabled gene-therapy and carefully targeted ethnic medication.
The notion of a gradually “perfectible” species, as imagined by Leon Trotsky [8] and by Nick Bostrom [9], may well be utopian [10]. But is it really “shameful” to want more “beautiful, intelligent, productive” children? Voluntary eugenics, especially direct DNA intervention, should first be openly discussed and then carefully monitored, legally regulated if not government organised, whether on a piecemeal family basis, or as grander attempts at controlled evolution [11].
Who would prefer, instead, a world of reduced genius and perpetuated disabilities? Yet after reports of improved CRISPR prospects for genome editing, one “bioethicist” promptly opposed any enhancements which “entrench the dominant view of the privileged”, and suggested that some humans should be born deaf [12].
ENDNOTES:
[1] Geek Nation (2012), p.262; Inferior (2017)
[2] E.g. Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic (2009)
[3] C. P. Blacker, Eugenics: Galton & After (1952) [4] Heredity & Eugenics (1923); Human Genetics (1946); “Race Crossing,” De Genetica Medica (1962)
[5] Donald J. Childs, Modernism & Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats & the Culture of Degeneration (2007)
[6] Alison Bashford & Philippa Levine (eds), Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2012)
[7] John Glad, Jewish Eugenics (2011); Tony Greenstein’s Blog, 17 May 2009 online
[8] Literature & Revolution (1924); Bernice Glazer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World (2004)
[9] Julian Savulescu & Nick Bostrom (eds), Human Enhancement (2011); Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Nietzsche, the Overhuman & Transhumanism,”Journal of Evolution & Technology, March 2009 online
[10] Cf. John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (2000); Gregory Claeys, Dystopia (2018); Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden (2007)
[11] Cf. Nathaniel Comfort, Scientific American, 23 August 2013; also varied comments online from Joshua Lederberg, Jonathan Glover, Jon Entine, Matt Ridley, Richard Lynn, Jonny Anomaly, Allen Buchanan, Natasha Vita-More, &c.
[12] Natalie Kofler, Guardian, 22 October 2019
David Ashton is a retired teacher. He writes from Norfolk
A PS to angelic Angela’s “wish father to her thought” about Indian brains taking over world: according to “The Times”, 7 November, the West Bengal President of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said that when sunlight falls on the humps of the sacred Desi Cows, it produces gold which is why their milk is yellowish. The Education Minister in 2017 said that just standing next to a cow could cure a weak nervous system. A Mr Shankar Lal coats his mobile phone with its dung which, since it treats cancer, should also protect against microwaves. Sales of dung-and-urine have soared. So not only scientific advance, but a wonderful mutual “trade deal” beckons for £million-debt Britain after the next “election”.
Hitler murdered six million Jews.
Therefore, people should have as many severely disabled people as possible.
Unanswerable logic.
It’s more offensive when you consider Galton’s own conversations with Jews. The Nazi policies are in complete opposition to Galton’s sense of eugenics.
There are a number of ways in which to explain Galton’s eugenics.
Lets say you have a breed of mice and want them to be immune to a disease so they can better survive in the wild, how do you do it? A callous scientist would simply give them all the disease and the ones that survive represent the better breed. That’s also what nature does. Crude but effective. The ends are what justify the means.
Galton observed that human accomplishment was often achieved through much suffering. Nature is very much like the callous scientist. It doesn’t care if it’s cruel or not, it only cares for the result.
Galton’s thinking was to consider if science could offer some some humane ways of achieving the same good results instead without the horrific cost mankind had suffered up until that point to maintain genetic health. This would no doubt in indirectly have to be artificial rather than natural. Galton also preferred a system with as minimal impact on personal liberty as possible.
This is a world apart from the Nazis. The kind of thing that the Nazis did was EXACTLY what Galton was attempting to avoid with his eugenics. Galton specifically pointed out that eugenics had been achieved before via persecution and it was exactly that element of persecution that he sought to eliminate from the process. If someone looks at Galton and sees a Nazi then that speaks very poorly of that person. I would suggest that such a person is insane and really shouldn’t reproduce. Perhaps that might also suggest the real problem they have with Galton.
Eugenics advocates originally opposed abortion, whereas today abortion advocates oppose eugenics.
Eugenics advocates aren’t universally for or against abortion. Some are some aren’t. Eugenics can be implemented in a number of ways. I think you’ve approached this from the wrong direction.
I think a far more obvious contradiction is that those who most viciously advocate against eugenics are almost always the same who most viciously advocate for abortion which is unavoidably within the realm of the eugenic.
There is this mentality people have in which they seem to believe there is a way to step into the arena and participate that isn’t participating in the sport. It’s mental nonsense.
This is an anti-intellectual movement, that is, an anti-genius movement, reframed as an anti-nazi movement to legitimise it and hide its intent. Though there’s more to it than that. Galton had common sense. His approach to Eugenics was at the top to preserve genius but at the bottom things are more muddled. The desire to eliminate wickedness, that is, criminality shines through.
These people are no doubt either either wicked or stupid. It is naturally that they would respectfully oppose or misunderstand Galton. I tend to find this: Those who opposed Galton would surely survive under Hitlerian eugenics but might not be so favoured under a furtherance in good faith of Galton’s eugenics. Neither at that being the latter would Hitler himself.
There are quite a few points that can be made about people faulting Galton but I will focus on some key points.
First, those blaming Galton for Nazi (National Socialist) atrocities ARE Nazi apologists. They are sympathisers. The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the Nazis. They are attempting to shift the blame and there is no defence. To put it on Galton instead is to indubitably defend the Nazis. Those who do so must without any reservation be recognised and treated as Nazi sympathisers as that’s exactly what they are. There is no debate. There is no trial. They are guilty as charged the moment they engage in this conduct. There is no acceptable excuse for it and I recommend a policy of zero tolerance.
Another stranger point. Galton never finished his work on eugenics. It was never a one man job. Few are qualified. If you’re not a polymath and a genius of the right personality type then you probably aren’t qualified to be working on eugenics. Galton’s eugenics trended toward a certain direction. Some people did their own thing in his name while dead which he can’t be held accountable for.
The strange thing about this is that Galton’s eugenics would be expected to benefit the Black race the most. His study of eugenics was not perfect but tended toward self improvement through a rigorous method of continual investigation. I’m not necessarily saying it should be implemented for the benefit of black people.
I’m not making a proposal either way. I’m saying that were it to be, it would not in its intent be antagonistic toward the race. The standard approach to eugenics isn’t strictly focused on any particular racial group over the other. Instead it’s a general set of considerations for improving the innate inherited health of any breed.
This should raise an eyebrow in respect to those who attempt to equate the eugenics of Galton to those of the Nazis and then remap that onto racial conflict in the USA which might as well be a world apart.
There is also another point in a similar vein. Those who slander Galton in this manner also claim to strictly adhere to science and again to be its defenders. They claim to uphold evolution over creationism. Yet all Galton really did was to study the most recent human evolution. It is little difference in practice to studying the origin of man other than a difference in timeframe. How can they truly believe in evolution when they reject Galton’s field of study on a fundamental level?
The case for negative eugenics is primarily humanitarian, not to eradicate existing people but to remove defects from people yet unborn. The case for positive eugenics is to encourage the conception of more healthy and creative people. Any “racial” improvement is a by-product, but theoretically welcome.
The genetics and their social management are complex matters, but we can all do without groundless smears and verbal confusion.
The refusal of bright young women to have babies, for “selfless” reasons (saving the planet for others) or “selfish” reasons (career and pleasure), is a serious problem. “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard childbirth as a question of pros and cons, the great turning point has come,” wrote Oswald Spengler a century ago. “Life itself has become questionable. The father of many children is for the great city a subject for caricature… Civilizations enter upon a stage of appalling depopulation.”
Except that younger more fecund but less intelligent masses will move into the continental vacuum.