Uh, no, there is absolutely no rational question to be raised about it, eugenics is a thing that was invented in the 1860s-80s, invented by Francis Galton and published in a series of articles and books and he was absolutely explicit that eugenics was motivated by his reading of On the Origin of Species, something he said any number of times, most finally in his autobiography written not long before his death. He not only noted its inspiration in his cousin, Charles Darwin's thinking but that his cousin endorsed his earliest eugenic writings, articles and the book Hereditary Genius, in a letter to him endorsing the idea. Darwin confirmed that later by citing those articles and that book numerous times to support his own eugenic contentions in The Descent of Man. He cited them as science to support his own scientific contentions, presenting Galton's eugenics as having the reliability of science. He also gave tacit and behind the scenes support for eugenics articles written by George Darwin, his own son, when they were criticized by St. George Mivart. In his letter endorsing Hereditary Genius, he mentioned that George Darwin had read it before he did and that he had recommended it to his father, Charles Darwin.
Furthermore, Darwin's son Leonard Darwin, the successor to Francis Galton in heading the major eugenics effort in Britain, said several times over a number of decades that he was continuing his father's work in his eugenics efforts and, as mentioned, as late as April, 1939, in the Eugenics Review, he noted that Wilhelm Schallmeyer, sometimes considered the founder of eugenics in Germany, had said it was his independent reading of On the Origin of Species which inspired his own eugenics even before he had read Francis Galton on the topic. Alfred Ploetz, the other contender for that dubious honor and, eventually, a Nazi, as well, was explicit in attributing his eugenics to his reading of Charles Darwin and Darwin's foremost German colleague at the University of Jena, Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel's extension of Darwinism through such entities as his Monist League has been called proto-Nazism by both Stephen Jay Gould and Daniel Gasman and, if you read his books, including those endorsed by Darwin and cited positively as authoritative science in The Descent of Man, any honest and informed person would have to conclude that it is, in fact, proto-Nazism.
Whenever anyone is talking about eugenics they are talking about an aspect of Darwinism which Darwin, himself, endorsed during his lifetime and which was never denied by anyone before the end of World War II who I have ever found. I challenged people more than five years ago to produce anyone who knew Charles Darwin who distanced him from eugenics and no one has ever produced such a witness to exonerate him from that association. If they did manage to find someone they would be hard pressed to make the case considering at least three of his sons, his cousin and others who knew him all attested to his approval of eugenics as a logical extension of his theory of natural selection. Just as he made the association between natural selection and Spencerian Social Darwinism, himself, in the fifth and sixth editions of On the Origin of Species.
I've written on all of those things before, look in my archive, I gave exhaustive documentation of what I said. And I'll keep on saying it as long as the lie it refutes is told.
Shorter Sparky: I will continue to deny that six million Jews were murdered because of European Christian anti-Semitism.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that, I wonder.
You usually say something about "two thousand years of European Christian anti-Semitism".
DeleteIf that was the reason for the Nazi genocide of the Jews, why hadn't it happened until the 1930s-40s? Why did it have to wait until arguments out of a. the post-romantic conception of German nationalism and b. the Darwinian theory of natural selection combined into Nazism to happen if it was due to the history of European Christian anti-Semitism?
The fact is that the central figures in Christian moral authority, Jesus, Paul, the Apostles, etc. WERE ALL JEWS. As Susannah Heschel has pointed out Paul called himself a Pharisee, Jesus taught in Synagogues and at the Temple, his parents presented him at the Temple, the Romans who crucified him put a sign over him mocking him as King of the Jews. That was such a problem for Nazis that, as Ms. Heschel has pointed out, they had to create a new heresy that denied all of those things.
The fact is that the word "anti-Semite" has meanings that are entirely different, it is used for Pius IX kidnapping Eduardo Montara, bringing him up as his adopted son, educating him, overseeing his formation as a Catholic Priest due to the rumor of a family servant that she had baptized him as a child. There is all the difference between that and the Nazis murdering Jewish children who fell under their control. To pretend that those things are the same thing is extremely stupid and extremely dishonest, so it surprises me not at all that you would hold the same thing.
The history of Jewish persecutions in Europe, by Christians is not all the same thing and, in fact, frequently, Popes and other religious authorities condemned civil authorities for expulsions of Jews, persecutions and murders of Jews, the blood libel (which, as I've pointed out to the brick wall that your mind is, was a pagan-Greek creation) and many other things done to Jews was forbidden. The New Testament, the ultimate defining authority of Christianity, is absolutely explicit that Jesus was a Jew.
If the same thing that caused the Nazis to try to murder all of the Jews of Europe had been there before, that attempt would have been done before and it would have been a Europe-wide phenomenon. That there were millions of Jews in Europe at the time of the rise of the Nazis proves that what they did was not the same as what went before because, if your contention were true, there is no doubt that they would have been wiped out during the preceding centuries.
DeleteWhat was different was, as Rudolph Hess said, Nazism believed it was practicing applied biology, in Germany that was Darwinist biology based on a belief in natural selection as invented by Darwin and as adopted by the proto-Nazis such as Darwin's own, endorsed follower, Ernst Haeckel.
Darwinists, from Charles Darwin, himself, Thomas Huxley, Ernst Haeckel all endorsed the idea that genocide of named groups was not only inevitable because of natural selection, that it would bring benefits to the survivors in a "struggle for existence" who would murder the losers in that struggle. Darwinism didn't allow for conversion of people, it doomed them to death on the basis of their biological identity. The Nazis merely added Jews to the list of those they intended to murder, they intended, explicitly, to murder all of the Poles, other Slavic people (their plans called for holding a fixed number of Slavic people in slavery to serve Germans, in the way of Spartan helots, as discussed in both Haeckel and Darwin) and other named groups. In their later day followers, people such as William L. Pierce, who made no secret of the Darwinist origin of his racist genocidalism, virtually everyone but white Northern Europeans are to be wiped out.
I know you don't care about any of the other groups targeted for murder by the Nazis, you're a particularly vulgar chauvinist, like Podhoretz and Decter, but I don't limit my opposition to Darwinist genocide to any one group, and that is what pisses you off because I won't follow your self-centered bigotry. As I've pointed out, you think the same way the Nazis did, I will not think like a Nazi. I'd rather think inclusively like Abraham Heschel and his daughter.
ReplyDelete"The Nazis merely added Jews to the list."
That's a pretty big merely.
Considering the groups you merely leave out of consideration, including those who Darwin named for extinction, it would seem to be an easy thing to do.
DeleteYou think more like a Nazi than you'd ever want to consider.
Nazis = killed six million Jews. Me = makes fun of your obvious anti-Semitism.
ReplyDeleteSame diff.
You = habitual and pathological liar. Not to mention total ignoramus who once skimmed Berlin Diary and still couldn't find the passage that disproved the lie you told about me the other day.
DeleteYou are a typical, ill-educated college degree-holding idiot of my generation. You know not much more than you got from watching TV and movies and skimming a few books in your school years. You are incapable of learning. Though that's due to your being a lazy, spoiled douchebag, not something inherited.