Re: American eugenics and Nazism

[Mike Ballard <swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Weren't there a lot of people on the left in to
eugenics back in the early parts of the 20th Century?

Didn't the Socialist Party have segregated locals?

Wasn't eugenics part and parcel of certain strands of
reasoning in the birth control debate?

Please do correct me, if I'm wrong, but I seem to
recall that Sanger was saying things like birth
control could contribute to eliminating unsavoury
elements from contaminating the gene pool.

Best,
Mike B)


--- Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> NY Times Book Review, October 5, 2003
>
> 'War Against the Weak': Here Comes the Master Race
> By DANIEL J. KEVLES
>
> WAR AGAINST THE WEAK
> Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master
> Race.
> By Edwin Black.
> Illustrated. 550 pp. New York: Four Walls Eight
> Windows. $27.
>
> Eugenics -- the idea of manipulating human genes to
> the end of improving
> individuals, groups or entire populations -- is
> strongly associated with
> the Nazi programs of sterilization, euthanasia and
> genocide. But during the
> first third of the 20th century, eugenics movements
> flourished in many
> nations, including the United States. In the last
> few years, newspaper
> articles have called attention to -- and prompted
> official apologies for --
> state-mandated sterilizations done legally to rid
> society of its alleged
> human trash, the ''weak'' in the title of Edwin
> Black's new book, notably
> in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon
> and California.
>
> Black is the author previously of ''IBM and the
> Holocaust,'' a work
> strongly suggesting that the company, with its
> punch-card machines,
> knowingly assisted Hitler's brutalities. His ''War
> Against the Weak,''
> apparently written with similar intent, is a
> muckraking book about a
> subject incontestably awash in muck. In the vein of
> the genre, it is a stew
> rich in facts and spiced with half-truths,
> exaggerations and distortions.
> The most pungent ingredient is its central thesis:
> eugenic doctrines and
> policies favoring ''Nordic superiority'' were in
> fact invented in the
> United States, were developed in alliance with
> American wealth and power,
> and were then exported, inspiring Hitler and
> achieving their ultimate
> realization in the Holocaust.
>
> (clip)
>
> In support of his main thesis, Black stresses that
> European eugenicists
> were linked with their American counterparts through
> international
> organizations, meetings, correspondence and visits
> several made to the
> United States, some to work at the Eugenics Record
> Office. German
> eugenicists praised American policies, research and
> writings and
> incorporated accounts of them into their works. In
> ''Mein Kampf,'' Hitler
> himself praised America's sterilization laws and
> immigration restriction
> act. Black also emphasizes that beginning in the
> 20's and continuing well
> into the Nazi period, the Rockefeller Foundation
> provided sizable funds for
> research at three eugenically oriented research
> institutes in Germany. All,
> he writes, would ''make their mark in the history of
> medical murder.''
>
> full:
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/books/review/05KEVLEST.html
>
>
> Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list:
http://www.marxmail.org


=====
*****************************************************************
"--why do you slack your fighting-fury now?  It's hard for me, strong as I am, single-handed to breach the wall and cut a path to the ships--come, shoulder-to-shoulder!  The more we've got, the better the work will go!"

One of Sarpedon's speeches in THE ILIAD--The Trojans storm the rampart
http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com