is eugenics dangerous?
high risk, low reward.
I’ve recently gotten into an argument over whether or not the Nazis were eugenicists, influenced by eugenics, and to what degree the Holocaust was a product of the eugenics movement:
In response, Dr. Jonathan Anomaly said that my take was “partly wrong,” citing Chapter 9 in his book. I have invited Dr. Anomaly on the podcast for a nuanced discussion, and schedule willing, that will come out eventually.
In the meantime, I want to state my position as clearly as possible.
antisemitism and eugenics.
Not all eugenicists were antisemites. It is not my position that all forms of eugenics lead necessarily to the Holocaust. Rather, my argument is that the Holocaust would have been impossible without eugenics.
Some of my critics have pointed out that Stalin was opposed to eugenics, and yet he killed millions of people. My argument is not that “eugenics is the only ideology which leads to death.” My argument is that the Holocaust, specifically, could not have occurred without eugenic justification. The Holocaust wasn’t orchestrated in a single year. It was planned, justified, imagined, germinated, brewed, and founded decades prior, all on eugenic grounds. In this sense, I reject the idea that Hitler “hypnotized Germany,” but see him as a relatively small figure in a large historical movement. This is not to say that the Holocaust was inevitable, but it is to say that it could not happen without the eugenics movement of the 19th and 20th century.
Similarly, I would argue, “the Thirty Year’s War could not have occurred without Protestantism.” Maybe a different war would have occurred; maybe it would have been better or worse without the influence of Protestantism; maybe Protestantism was a mere “justification” for already existing urges for sovereignty among the northern princes. But it seems ridiculous to argue that Protestantism was not an essential component of the death and destruction.
I can also admit that communism was an essential element of the Gulag system. The Tsars had already been sending criminals to Siberian penal colonies, called Katorga. However, the Katorga system numbered in the thousands, while the Gulag system numbered in the millions. Without the centralized, atheistic, totalitarian system of communism, the Gulag would not have taken on the same quality or scale, which resulted in millions of deaths.
Many early eugenicists were philosemitic. Arthur de Gobineau (1855) and Francis Galton (1883) praised Jews. This later became embarrassing for the Nazis, and they sought to hide or minimize these facts. But modern Jewish eugenicists also should be embarrassed to learn that Grant, Stoddard, and Davenport were all antisemitic.
For the bulk of my argument, I will quote extensively from the founder of antisemitic eugenics, Wilhelm Marr. In his 1862 work, he opposed Jews, prior to Galton, on the basis of their hereditary defects, on a purely atheistic and secular basis. In this respect, Marr disagreed with Gobineau (who was a Catholic aristocrat), but it is also obvious that Gobineau’s theory of racial mixing and degeneration serves as the basis for Marr’s attack on the Jews.
wilhelm marr.
For an overview of the life of Wilhelm Marr, I recommend Moshe Zimmerman, Wilhelm Marr – The Patriarch of Antisemitism (1986). Unfortunately, up until this point, no complete translation of Marr’s 1862 Judenspiegel has been published. In order to prove my claim that the Holocaust required eugenic ideas for its fulfillment, I must translate Judenspiegel myself.
I am making a positive case, not a negative one. I am not claiming, “there were no philosemitic eugenicists.” Rather, I am claiming that “eugenics was a foundational plank of Naziism, and led directly to the Holocaust.” I am saying that while eugenics itself was not sufficient for the Holocaust, it was a necessary component. I will demonstrate this by showing the relationship between eugenics and antisemitism at the birthplace of secular antisemitism: Wilhelm Marr.
The following is from pages 31-36 of Judenspiegel, a free copy of which can be found on Google books. Unfortunately, it is written in Fraktur, the pre-WWII German script. To solve that problem, I have transcribed the Fraktur into Latin script, and provided both the German and English versions. If you find an error, let me know, and I will correct it. Let us proceed:
The myth of the twelve tribes further strengthens our assumption that the so-called Jews are a mixture of spawn from different nations. It seems that the only certainty is that at one time or another a mass of a nation left the country, whose stay in Egypt was ruinous for the Egyptians with respect to sanitary, political, national-economic and social conditions. In this, biblical tradition agrees with the secular historians.1
On the heels of another torrent of emigration, a curse had fastened itself onto the Jews. But why? Because of their addiction to conquest? Other people were conquerors, feared, but not viewed with disgust. Because of their religion? This religion is, according to tradition, too fanatic, too barbaric to be viewed with disgust. Because of their customs? The commandments of Jewish law include an immense number of monstrosities and absurdities; however, they do not merit a feeling of disgust. Disgust is fostered for primitive nations, as is still the case today (for instance, for the American Indians), on the foundation of external appearances. Cowardice before their enemies, uncleanliness of the body, and so on. But if one now reads the law of Moses in relation to the rules of cleanliness for the Jews, this is a most meticulous set of rules, unheard of among any other nation of the world; if one sees cleanliness as a divinely arranged law and then one thinks of the majority of Jews in their natural state as a comparison, then the riddle seems to solve itself in a very mundane and natural manner.2
The hypothesis that one initially had to deal with a mob of people, which was physically ill because of a “great, incurable hereditary disease,” or who had fallen into a bad state, becomes all the more certain as a hypothesis if one considers the heroic remedies which Moses had to employ in order to make a cure for the Jews in the exodus.3
We therefore accept the assumption, without further fence sitting, that the Jews had originally been a mob of various nationalities, initially nomadic and originating from various countries, who had taken root among the civilized Egyptians, who were given a special parcel (Goshen?) for dwelling, and who, through sexual miscegenation and social commingling of their own tribal distinctions with other tribes, transformed into that tribe that was degenerating at the time. And in truth, we find till today among the Jews the beautiful and nobly formed facial features of the Arab; the bold, eagle-like physiognomy of the Druze; the thick, bulging lips of the Negro; the Asiatic eyes of the Tartar. In short, they individually represent a multitude of racial and tribal characteristics. One would have to be blind to conclude that they are a clean, unmixed, original nation. Additionally, it may be assumed that, during their numerous voluntary and involuntary wanderings, the Jews did not contradict the tradition of the Bible in relation to sexual meanderings. During the exodus, Moses rejected this sort of thing so weakly that he pleasured himself with a Negress.4
But it is not easy to heal a millennia-old leprosy; it requires an operation — the abolition of Jewry. The evil ulcer of exclusivity no longer festers as strongly as it once did, but it expands itself, continually encrusting itself in the maintenance of its “power, dominion,” which no Jew with even the smallest level of education should take pride in. With upbringing, the specific kind of Jewish upbringing, the Jewish character maintains itself in a crucial way. With its way of life, customs, the specifically Jewish customs, the physiology of Jewry continues to spread. Our aesthetic and physical sensibilities react against both. It is a law of nature, which we cannot dispel through any abstraction. We have tried to befuddle ourselves with rhetoric, we have gone through the entire epoch of Jewish emancipation, and we fought honestly for that Jewish emancipation, but we artfully deceived ourselves into believing in a universal sympathy which we did not ourselves really feel, which, according to the laws of nature, can only be felt for individual Jews so long as there exists an ongoing and sharp contrast in sensibility and spirit between the Jew and non-Jew in terms of external and internal differences.5
Were I to quote the entire book at length, I could draw further parallels between Marr, the racial hygiene movement, Darwinism, and the eugenics movement. Were I to quote the speeches of Hitler, Mein Kampf, and other Nazis, I could easily draw parallels between Marr’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of the Holocaust. Only through ignorance or dishonesty can these parallels be denied. While the Nazis did not cite Marr himself (he was married to Jewish women), there is an intellectual thread running from Marr through the early antisemitic publishers, like Fritsch, who did directly influence the Nazis.
Marr’s intention was not to violently exterminate Jews (as later antisemites desired, through pogroms and the Holocaust), but for gentiles to intermarry with Jews to eliminate their hereditary diseases. He put this theory into practice by marrying a number of Jewish women. In this respect, his approach to the “abolition of Judaism” fits in with what Paul Rose calls “soft deconstruction”:
[Soft deconstructionists] believed in positive assimilation as the best destruction [of Judaism], and they supported legal emancipation as a means to this painless death of Judaism. To this school belonged such contrasting figures as the Young German “liberals” Gutzkow and [Heinrich] Laube, Jewish radicals such as Börne and for a time Heine, and socialist revolutionaries like Marx and [Moses] Hess. The first objective here was not just the moral death of Jewishness but the physical death of the Jews as a nation. This practicality may be seen even [...] by two of the least practically minded members of the soft school, Jacoby and Schopenhauer.6
Marr became a superstar in the antisemitic scene with his explosive 1879 pamphlet, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism.7 It is hard to overstate his influence during this early period, where antisemitism emerged for the first time as a secular phenomenon, on the basis of race, and not religion.
Marr did in fact later repudiate antisemitism very late in life on the basis that had become stupid, violent, and hateful. He “only” wanted to intermarry with Jews and destroy their harmful hereditary disease — not to burn them at the stake or drive them into the sea. However, the damage was already done.
scientific eugenics.
Marr was not a mystic. The Nazis did have mystics: Himmler and Rosenberg, for example. But it also had secular atheists, like Bormann and Goebbels. Still, I could mention a number of antisemitic eugenicists, who were extremely influential, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1899).
My critics have attacked me for not sufficiently differentiating between “scientific eugenics” and “mystical eugenics.” They claim that whereas “good eugenicists” were philosemitic, the Nazis rejected science in favor of mysticism. To bolster this claim, they use the example of Hitler banning IQ tests. Hitler, however, never banned cognitive testing in general, which were used to determine mental retardation in his sterilization campaigns.
Hitler believed that “genius” was revealed in the fire of war, and as such, it could never be captured by a set of paperwork, but he didn’t deny the existence of cognitive ability. His desire was to avoid breeding a race of “paper pushers,” which he believed would be the result of eugenics on the basis of IQ testing. Instead, he preferred the sort of eugenics as advocated by Plato, which necessitated first and foremost a foundation in the practices of war, such as gymnastics, and a demonstration of the ability to self-sacrifice. Without those elements, Hitler believed that intelligence was either useless or destructive. Following Nietzsche, Hitler believed that intelligence without manly strength and aristocratic virtues would only breed priestly resentment against higher types.
The distinction between science and mysticism, which is now clear in retrospect, was not so clear at the time. The scientific theories of the 19th and 20th century often intermixed with ideas we would now call “pseudoscience.”
However, in my attacks on eugenics, I will endeavor to focus on the most “scientific” eugenicists, and ignore the “low hanging fruit” of “mystical eugenics.” In other words, I will steelman the eugenicists, and ignore the most antisemitic cranks and kooks of the eugenics movement.8
However, in order to make the strongest case possible, I will exclude men like Chamberlain from my analysis, and instead focus on supposedly “scientific” eugenicists like Charles Davenport, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard.
“mainstream” eugenics.
Davenport stated that, notwithstanding their intelligence and religiousness, Jews were “quarrelsome, greedy, and lewd,” because they tended toward Semitic traits, rather than Nordic ones:
“Summarizing this review of recent conditions of immigration it appears certain that, unless conditions change of themselves or are radically changed, the population of the United States will, in account of the great influx of blood from South-eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality and less given to burglary, drunkenness and vagrancy than were the original English settlers.”
Here’s what Grant had to say about the Jews:
“The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews.”
His successor, Stoddard, called Jews an "Asiatic" threat to the "Nordic race."9 Stoddard promoted the most scientific theory of heredity at the time, which claimed that heredity was carried from generation to generation by something called a “germplasm,” which was Galton’s precursor to modern DNA. At the same time, he complained that America was “invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and Jews.”10
Stoddard saw no distance between eugenics and antisemitism. In 1923, when the KKK was beginning to lose its grip on American politics, Stoddard was unmasked by Hearst's International magazine (now Cosmopolitan) as being a secret advisor to the KKK. In response, he attacked the magazine as "the radical-Jew outfit."11
Besides these academic celebrities of the eugenics movement, Charles Lindbergh also promoted the idea of a Nordic race as opposed to the Jewish race. Lindbergh’s public statements on Jews were rhetorically careful, and he even stated that he “admired” the Jewish race in his last public speech against war with Germany. But that distant admiration was intermixed with condemnation and rejection from the racial bloodline of the Nordic race. In this sense, Lindbergh masked his antisemitism with philosemitism. This seems to confuse the issue, and it is easy for my opponents to use this confusion to obscure the fundamental link between the Holocaust and eugenics.
I will now quote from Dr. Anomaly himself to explain why all of these early eugenicists were pro-Aryan and antisemitic. It is because they all derived their ideas from de Gobineau, who, while philosemitic himself, established the concept of a pure Aryan-Nordic race as the cornerstone of eugenic theory for generations to come:
“Gobineau described Aryans as the most exalted race, with Alpine and Mediterranean ethnicities as degenerative versions of the pure Aryans. This view was popularized by the American author, Madison Grant, and adopted by Adolf Hitler. Unlike Grant and Hitler, Gobineau had complimentary things to say about Jews, describing them as a “free, strong, and intelligent” people (p. 59). Despite his attitude to Jews, Gobineau’s idea that Aryans were a “master race” influenced antisemites like Richard Wagner, Grant, and eventually Hitler.”
Hitler’s Aryan ideal was adopted more from American authors than from German scientists (Proctor 1988). For example, it is well known that Hitler greatly admired the work of the American naturalist, Madison Grant, who followed Gobineau in exalting the Nordic (or “Aryan”) race as the most physically beautiful and psychologically capable of all Europeans. Grant complained that America had been admitting fewer Nordic immigrants and more Celts, Jews, and Italians. Upon reading Grant’s Passing of the Great Race in the late 1920s, Hitler declared “This book is my Bible” (Spiro 2009, xi).12
Davenport, Madison, Stoddard, and the Nazis all agreed that Jews were clever, or intelligent, but they still presented a threat to the Nordic race because of their hereditary criminality. This was eugenics.
the final solution.
Dr. Anomaly claims that “the Final Solution was not an extension of Nazi eugenic policies”:13
“It is important to distinguish the mass killing of Jews from the broader German eugenics programs, in part because the rationale seems to have been different and the informal orders authorizing the mass killing of Jews were separate from the official decrees that authorized the Racial Hygiene program meant to improve the genetic stock of the Aryan race (Friedlander 1995).”14
Instead of blaming eugenics for the Final Solution, Dr. Anomaly blames a number of other factors:
The Jewish Question;
Jewish capitalism;
Jewish communism;
The Second World War.
Dr. Anomaly undermines these supposed explanations by allowing for the possibility that they were a mere pretext:
“Whether Hitler believed that the Jews actually started either of the two World Wars is hard to know. It’s possible he had deluded himself into believing this, perhaps to help him come to terms with the fact that he would be sending millions of German troops to their death in a war that could have been easily avoided. Either way, Hitler invoked the idea of a Jewish threat to Europe as a pretext to launch the Final Solution, which would end with the killing of nearly six million Jews.”15
The intention of the Nuremberg Laws, in 1935, was to eliminate breeding between Jews and Aryans, with the eventual goal of deporting all Jews (at first voluntarily, and later forcibly) from Germany, and finally, Europe itself. All of this was planned prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. When the war broke out, Hitler used it as an excuse to further radicalize the German people by scapegoating Jews for the war. But Hitler was already dead-set on eliminating the Jews from Germany for purely eugenic and racial reasons, not because of the outbreak of war. The Second World War only sped up his agenda.
If Hitler was not a eugenicist, like Marx, he could have still believed that Jews were responsible for international finance because of their culture or religion. Marx’s 1844 tract, Zur Judenfrage, demonstrates that it is possible to oppose Jews as part of opposition to capitalism without any need for eugenic ideas. Similarly, Winston Churchill opposed Bolshevism as a Jewish creation in 1920.
Both Marx and Churchill believed that Jews were responsible for the evils of capitalism or communism, and therefore, they both believed in the existence of a “Jewish Question.” However, neither Marx nor Churchill believed that Jews should be sexually segregated from gentiles, prevented from interbreeding to avoid “blood poisoning,” or deported or expelled from any country. It was only because Hitler was a eugenicist that he took things to that level. Without eugenics, the Holocaust could not have happened.
That is not to say that a non-eugenicist could not have engaged in mass killings of Jews. Pogroms were carried out by medieval Christians, by pagan Romans, and by Zoroastrians. Genocides have occurred all throughout the world for non-eugenic reasons. I am not suggesting that eugenics is the only ideology capable of genocide. Rather, I am saying that without eugenics, the Holocaust could not have happened. That doesn’t mean that a German communist couldn’t have persecuted Jews, or that FDR didn’t lead to the deaths of Jews by denying their immigration, but that those sorts of persecution or exclusion are not equivalent to the Holocaust.
Despite Hitler’s accusation that the Jews dominated the Soviet Union, the communists did persecute Jews, especially under Stalin. Stalin committed genocide against many ethnicities, including the Volgadeutsch. I am not making the claim that all genocides require eugenics, or that all eugenicists necessarily endorse the Holocaust. I am only arguing that the Holocaust was motivated by a form of eugenics.
old vs new eugenics.
At this point, the debate should be finished. From a historical perspective, there is no further doubt. Eugenics led to the Holocaust. It is historically ignorant and offensive to suggest otherwise.
There have been many books on this subject — hundreds of them. The idea that the “Nazis were not true eugenicists” is wishful thinking, mostly on the part of philosemitic eugenicists. Calling the Nazis dumb, mystical, or crazy is not an intellectually honest way to approach this question.
With all of that said, I will put the question of Nazi eugenics to rest, and address a different question: is eugenics necessarily antisemitic? No. In fact, there are many different kinds of eugenics, and not all of them have the same outcomes.
Dr. Anomaly argues that “liberal eugenics in contemporary bioethics differs from older forms of eugenics.”16 Is there such a thing as liberal eugenics?
the semantics of eugenics.
What is eugenics? Can eugenics be voluntary? Liberal? Compulsory? Positive, or negative? It is possible to distinguish between different kinds of eugenics. While one form of eugenics did, in fact, lead to the Holocaust, another form does not necessarily need to do so in the future. What are these different kinds?
negative eugenics.
Negative eugenics is when a population is identified as “dysgenic,” and has its fertility reduced through coercion. In classical or historical eugenics, this meant forced killing, abortion, and sterilization of undesirables. The disabled, mentally ill, or “racially inferior” were victims of this. Modern eugenicists seek to implement negative eugenics by forcing citizens to complete IQ tests, and sterilizing those with an IQ below 80. Alternatively, they may seek to sterilize non-whites, or in the case of Israel, non-Jews, or criminals, or those with genetic diseases.
positive eugenics.
Positive eugenics is when a population is identified as “eugenic,” and has its fertility boosted through incentives. If negative eugenics is the stick, positive eugenics is the carrot. The largest positive eugenics program in history was the Lebensborn program, and it largely failed to achieve its aims. Natalist policies throughout the world are fairly ineffective, even when they put aside any eugenic aims. The only thing which seems to raise fertility is religiousness, not cash incentives.
voluntary eugenics.
Voluntary eugenics is a variation on negative eugenics which seeks to avoid violating human rights, and instead provides incentives for individuals to sterilize themselves. As an explicit program, voluntary eugenics has never been attempted at scale. However, implicitly, McGenics could be described as a form of covert voluntary eugenics.
privatized eugenics.
Unlike the Lebensborn program, which was sponsored by the state, some eugenicists believe that eugenic goals can best be achieved through private companies. For example, gene editing, IVR, or embryo selection have all been offered as potential solutions to dysgenic trends. If intelligent and wealthy people have greater access to these private healthcare services, they can artificially boost their fertility, even as society as a whole continues to decline in fertility.
the substance of eugenics.
Besides these four forms of eugenics (positive, negative, voluntary, privatized), the substance of eugenics is also variable. Modern eugenicists tend to focus on intelligence. Classical or historical eugenicists focused much more on physical health and moral fiber. Hitler, for example, stated in Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch that the most valuable trait in the world was idealism, or the tendency of man to identify some higher good beyond himself (family, country, civilization) and to sacrifice his life for that ideal. He believed this was a trait which originated with Nordic Aryans, but was entirely absent in Jews.
Dr. Anomaly states that privatized eugenics might look completely different from Hitler’s eugenics. For example, wealthy families might select for children who can sit still for long periods of time.17 Why is this? In the first place, we might speculate that students who can sit still get better grades. This is because schools are designed to emulate a corporate office. In other words, the ability to sit still and concentrate on paperwork is not a skill originating from the education system, but something implanted into the education system by corporate design.
If we take this idea further, we can recognize that parents, in seeking to optimize their children for educational success, are merely reproducing the desires of corporations. This then unveils a horrifying reality: privatized eugenics results in the breeding of the best corporate slaves.
Eugenicists could object to this characterization on two grounds. Firstly, they could object that, since parents are not forced to breed Kafkaesque monstrosities, there is no moral hazard. Second, they could object that “breeding for the economy” is something which has been going on in slave-based or serf-based economies for thousands of years, and he is not actually proposing anything new.
My critics have also levied these charges against me. Since I refuse to regulate or restrict reproductive technologies, they accuse me of going against God and trying to create new species. On this point, I find myself converging with so-called “privatized eugenicists” in practice, while still rejecting positive, negative, and voluntary eugenics. I reject 75% of the four categories.
Supporting abortion, even if it leads to eugenic outcomes, is not a form of eugenics. Intent matters. I am not trying to fix humanity using eugenic ideology. I have bigger priorities. I can be honest in saying that privatized eugenics shares my desire for technology freedom. But since I have a different set of priorities, labeling myself a “privatized eugenicist” does not accurately reflect my intentions, even if I find myself fighting for legislation that would protect those people.
To give another example, I am not a Satanist who believes that an abortion is a ritual to gain magical powers. However, let’s say there are 15 Satanists in America who believe that, and they put an LLC together and become an incorporated religious body. Tucker Carlson does a show on these “evil child sacrificing Satanists,” and how these Satanists justify banning abortion.
I am not a Satanist, and if I was a woman, I would not choose to get an abortion for the sake of gaining magical powers. However, I would find myself defending a Satanist’s right to have an abortion if this group was attacked by Tucker. That does not mean I am a Satanist, or that I share in their intentions or desired outcomes. But I am willing to defend groups, no matter their intentions or errors, if I believe they are operating within their rights to bodily autonomy.
Similarly, I am not convinced that privatized eugenics is necessarily good. I am not excited by the prospect of people choosing to make their children into feminized test-takers, even if that is what produces the highest expected income. However, despite the fact that I don’t share those motivations, I will defend the right of people to use IVR, embryo selection, abortion, elective sterilization, transgender surgery, hormonal therapy, tubal ligation, vasectomy, and any other reproductive technology on themselves and their children.
Even if I find some of these practices to be slightly horrifying, I think the moral and scientific consequences of banning these technologies are even more harmful in the long run. If we want to learn, we have to be open. In this sense, while I am not a eugenicist, I am functionally an anti-anti-“privatized eugenicist.” That’s a mouthful.
the danger of eugenics.
To summarize thus far:
One form of eugenics led to the Holocaust.
There are, however, different forms of eugenics, and some of these may not lead to a future Holocaust.
I don’t support eugenics, but I do oppose “anti-eugenicist” attacks on reproductive rights, as comes from Alex Jones and the religious right on abortion, gender affirming care, IVR, embryo selection, and gene editing.
This is my honest approach to the question of eugenics. Eugenics was a part of the Holocaust, but non-Nazi forms of eugenics do not necessarily need to lead to the Holocaust. An Israeli Jew who advocates for the forced sterilization of Arabs is not a Nazi. I don’t believe in some kind of cosmic law of karma or “blowback” where the sterilization of Ethiopians necessarily leads to Jews receiving the same treatment down the line.
However, it does make such a thing more likely.
I have already argued that race realism is dangerous. It was a two part series of 12,000 words, so I won’t reproduce all the arguments here. But most of them apply to this area very simply.
Right-wingers object that, if I do not embrace eugenics and race realism, America will be flooded with billions of Africans, and civilization as we know it will collapse. I reject this hysterical fear mongering.
I do believe that we face serious problems: pollution, the rise of China, Europe’s economic stagnation, decreasing trust in institutions, grade inflation, the rise of the Gribble voter, and the decline of America. Eugenics cannot solve any of these short term problems, which all threaten to come to head in the next 20 years. If eugenicists are correct, and global IQ lowers by 5 points in the next 100 years, I think there will still be enough smart people around to fix things. If, on the other hand, America collapses suddenly, that seems to be a greater risk.
That is not to strawman or accuse eugenicists of being unsympathetic to my concerns. Perhaps they believe we can do everything at once: we can simultaneously revolutionize our Civil Religion, while also beating China, fixing education, and stopping pollution. In fact, some eugenicists believe that it is only through a religious revolution that American culture can break out of stagnation and achieve the sweeping changes that are necessary.
revolutionary and marginal eugenics.
Eugenicists seem to be split into two camps: revolutionary and marginal. Revolutionary eugenicists tend to call themselves transhumanists, anarchists, National Socialists, or use some other bold and extreme label. On the other hand, marginal eugenicists tend to downplay or excuse the implications of their ideology. They believe that eugenics can be introduced slowly, subtly, secretly, or implicitly, without much societal disruption.
I have already criticized the first group quite thoroughly in my attacks on race realism. Describing some people as inferior, and others as superior, favors stagnation and caste systems like that of India, not a dynamic and expansive frontier like America. On the other hand, the latter group is entirely self defeating. There is no such thing as “eugenics-lite.” Once you embrace the label of eugenics, you have already lost the rhetorical battle. In this sense, the revolutionary eugenicists are more intellectually honest and self-aware.
Eugenics is, for better or worse, associated with the right-wing, but it is stuck in a sinkhole. That is, eugenics is taboo on the left, but on the right, it is forced into a coalition with the religious, the conspiratorial, and the anti-technological.
Anecdotally, in the past few months, I have conducted 46 interviews. 11 of these were with left-wingers, 15 of these were with moderates/centrists, and 15 of these were with right-wingers. Even among those 15 right-wingers, many of these were Christians or non-white conservatives who are opposed to eugenics. Even if I am wrong, and eugenics is good, it seems as if the mythological structure of our political system needs to change before any progress can be made. Eugenicists would be better served in achieving their ultimate goals by first crushing the religious right (and some elements of the superstitious Christian left).
I believe that, to the extent that national or global IQs are decreasing, most of this is due to the environmental effects of industrial pollution, and not due to differential birthrates across socio-economic classes. I don’t support mass immigration from Africa. I am supportive of BioTech and reproductive rights, wherever that may lead. None of this is eugenics, in a classical or historical sense.
Alex Jones may accuse me of being a eugenicist for wanting to decrease the global population, but my advocated methods are reproductive freedom and feminism. In that case, his use of the word eugenics is merely a slur against environmentalists, and not an accurate description of my views.
I understand that the argument I am making is nuanced. I understand that “they will call you a eugenicist anyway.” I can’t control what slurs people use against me. All I can control is how I describe myself.
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Was uns in unserer Vermuthung noch bestärkt, daß die sogenannten Juden ein Gemisch von Abkömmlingen verschiedener Völker waren, ist die [end of page 31, beginning of page 32] Sage von den 12 Stämmen. Fest zu stehen scheint nur, daß zu irgend einer Zeit ein Haufen Volkes, dessen Bleiben in Aegypten den Aegyptern in sanitätlicher, politischer, national-ökonomischer und socialer Beziehung verderblich war, das Land verließ. Hierin stimmt die biblische Tradition mit den profanen Geschichtsschreibern überein.
An die Fersen des andern Stromes der Auswanderung, hatte sich dagegen ein Fluch geheftet. Aber weshalb? Ihrer Eroberungssucht wegen? Andere Völker waren auch Eroberer, gefürchtet, aber nicht verachtet. Ihrer Religion wegen? Diese Religion ist nach der Tradition zu fanatisch, zu barbarisch, um verrachtet zu werden. Ihrer Gebräuche wegen? Die Vorschriften des jüdischen Gesetzes enthalten eine Unzahl Monstruositäten und Lächerlichkeiten, verdienen aber auch das Gefühl der Verachtung nicht. Die Verachtung pflegte bei primitiven Völkern, wie dies auch noch heute der Fall ist, (z. B. bei den Indianern Amerika's) ihren Grund in Aeußerlichkeiten zu haben. Feigheit vor dem {*) "Und zog auch mit ihnen viel Pöbelvolks." (Exodus 11. 12. 38.)} [I don’t know where this footnote is connected by an asterisk] [end of page 32, beginning of page 33] Feinde, Unreinlichkeit des Körpers u. dgl. [desgleich?] Wenn man nun aber die Verordnung Moses im Bezug auf die Vorschriften der Reinlichkeit bei den Juden liest, dieses minutieuseste Reglement, wie es kein Volk der Welt kennt, wenn man die Reinlichkeit als ein göttliches Gesetz hingestellt sieht und dann die Mehrzahl der Juden <in natura> daneben denkt, dann scheint sich das Räthsel auf eine freilich sehr prosaische und natürliche Weise zu lösen.
Die Annahme, daß man es im Anfange mit einem Volkshaufen zu thun hatte, welcher physisch krank an der "unheilbar großen Brüderkrankheit" oder verwahrlost war, liegt um so näher, wenn man die heroischen Mittel bedenkt, welche Moses anwenden mußte, um mit den Juden eine Kur in der Wüste zu machen, wenn man bedenkt, was für ein Volk das sein mußte, dem sein Gesetzgeber solche wahrhaft drakonische Reinlichkeitsordonnanzen ertheilte!
Wir acceptiren daher ohne Zaudern die Annahme, daß die Juden ursprünglich ein Volkshaufen gewesen sind, der unter den civilisirten Aegyptern, anfangs nomadisch von verschiedenen Ländern herstammend sich eingebürgert hat, dem ein besonderes Departement (Gosen?) zum Wohnsitz angewiesen wurde und welches Volk durch sexuelle Vermischungen und sociale Berührungen seiner eigenen Stammsverschiedenheiten mit andern Völkerstämmen sich in jenen, damals degenerirenden Menschenstamm verwandelte. Und in Wahrheit, wir finden noch heute unter den Juden die schön und edel geformten Gesichtszüge des Arabers, die kühnen Adlerhpysionomien [Adlerphysionomien] der Drusen, den wulstigen Typus des Negers, das geschlitzte Gepräge des Tartaren, kurz eine Menge Racen- und Stammeigenthümlichkeiten individuell vertreten, daß man blind sein müßte, wollte man auf ein reines, unvermischtes Urvolk schließen. Außerdem darf man annehmen, daß auf ihren zahlreichen freiwilligen und gezwungenen Wanderungen die Juden die Tradition der Bibel nicht Lügen gestraft haben in Bezug auf sexuelle Abschweifungen, so wenig Moses es in der Wüste verschmähte, sich mit einer Mohrin zu vergnügen.
Aber es ist nicht leicht, einen Jahrtausende alten Aussatz zu heilen, es bedarf dazu einer Operation — die Aufhebung des Judenthums. Das böse Geschwür der Exclusivität eitert heut zu Tage nicht mehr so stark, als früher, aber es ergänzt sich inkrustirend fortwährend in der Aufrechthaltung eines "Thums," auf welches kein nur einigermaßen gebildeter Jude Ursache hat, sich Etwas einzubilden. Mit der Erziehung, der specifisch jüdischen Erziehung, erhält sich der jüdische Charakter nothwendiger Weise. Mit der Lebensweise, den Gebräuchen, den specifisch jüdischen Gebräuchen, pflanzt sich die Physiologie des Judenthums weiter fort. Gegen beides reagirt unser ästhetisches und physisches Gefühl. Es ist dies ein Naturgesetz, welches wir durch alle Abstractionen nicht wegdisputiren können. Wir haben uns versucht, durch die Phrase zu berauschen, wir haben die ganze Epoche [end of page 35, beginning of page 36] der Emancipation mit durchgemacht und redlich für dieselbe mit gekämpft, aber wir haben uns selbst künstlich in eine generelle Sympathie hineingelogen, die wir nicht empfanden, nach den Naturgesetzen nur für die Einzelnen empfinden konnten, so lange im Aeußerlichen und Innern ein auf Sinn und Geist prägnant wirkender Gegensatz zwischen Jude und Nichtjude existirt.
Paul Lawrence Rose, German Question/Jewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner (2014), 279.
Nietzsche, for example, was a eugenicist, but I avoid speaking about him, since my critics will accuse me of “ignoring the science” and focusing on “mystics.” I do not think this is a fair characterization of Nietzsche, but I will side-step this argument by ignoring him entirely. While his relationship to Jews has been described as philosemitic, that characterization is overly simplistic and has been manufactured to spare the feelings of Nietzsche-loving Jews and liberals. Anything which Nietzsche wrote as “antisemitic” has been dismissed as a forgery by his sister, even where there is no material evidence to prove that claim. Like Wilhelm Marr, Nietzsche had affection for certain Jews, and like Lindbergh, he had admiration for Jews as a whole, but that does not preclude him from holding certain antisemitic views.
Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (1995), 94.
Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (2006), 84.
Yudell, Michael, Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in The Twentieth Century (2014), 41–42.
Jonathan Anomaly, Chapter 9: Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust, 154-156.
Jonathan Anomaly, Chapter 9: Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust, 158.
Jonathan Anomaly, Chapter 9: Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust, 157.
Jonathan Anomaly, Chapter 9: Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust, 157-158.
Jonathan Anomaly, Chapter 9: Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust, 153.
YouTube interview with Chris Williamson, Is It Ethical To Hand-Pick Your Child’s Genes? - Dr Jonathan Anomaly (August 10, 2024), 55:00.
Currently reading. Caught this error: “It is not my position that all forms of eugenics lead necessarily to eugenics.”
I appreciate the clarification of your views in the end. Your pronouns are not "eugenicist" indeed