"Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race: War Against the Weak" Author: Edwin Black
This documentary or filmed talk is a review/overview of the Eugenics Movement which originated in Britain with Sir Francis Galton the cousin of someone (mis)referenced here often, Charles Darwin.
There is an abbreviated slideshow of powerful and influential persons/institutions who empowered, financed, and promoted the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Here is a photo collage with a blurb about each of them.
Edwin Black is the author of the 2003 book being discussed. He is the featured speaker to a small crowd to discuss the book. IMO it is not as hard-hitting as it might have been but the somewhat subtly conveyed message will sink in. Years previous to the 3rd Reich, American Eugenicists began promoting racial purity internationally. Hitler praised American Eugenicists for their work.
There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." Adolf Hitler MEIN KAMPF 1923
The author's central thesis is that Nazi racial hygiene and its ultimate manifestations in the Holocaust were imported lock, stock and barrel from the USA, and that, indeed, it was US ruling elites who hatched the idea of creating a master Aryan race by selective breeding and then passed it along to the Nazis. More specifically, Black argues that the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) funded much of the American-based movement, both at home and abroad, and so sat in the driver's seat guiding Nazi racial hygienists along their fateful path. Library of Medicine
The video I found interesting and not a tedious ear beating (about 47 minutes). The right-wing Aryan nation and neo-nazis today are eugenicist fundamentalists.
Edwin Today https://theedwinblackshow.com/
It's a subject visited in a slightly different context in sci-fi. There may be a some ethical reasoning to fix our genome, but any elitism or bigotry erupting by these efforts must be mitigated and explained transparently to the public.
An interesting film on the subject:
Don’t know for sure who the first nazis were, but I sure as hell know who the current ones are.
The US was just a little gentler hand while trying to encourage white rule. We had native American “health” centers that would sterilize young women without their knowledge or consent. We did the same thing with African Americans - and worse.
This is why the fucking republicans are up in their asses over CRT. The US has not been the beacon of light we were always told it was. We’ve always had a racist and corrupt ruling class that has set policy and pushed these kinds of inhumane and terrible things.
What needs to happen is for people to learn about all the bad shit we’ve done. That’s the only way to stop it. Learn from history or repeat it. Republicans don’t want to learn and do want to repeat history because that’s how they see the world. They are a cancer.
Thank you for finding this information.
Thank you Dip for this post. It is truly well written and extremely insightful. I had read briefly about the eugenics movement here in America but had no idea how deep it ran. And I didn't know or even realize who embraced it and the reasons behind it. Helen Keller's reasons made sense, but Du Bois especially, well that surprised me, and his reasoning behind it, which was so blunt and to the point, it went far beyond just breeding out the impurities. Oliver Wendell Holmes, his thoughts on the movement were jaw-dropping. I have briefly touched on the subject here and there in my studies and was aware of the subject in Nazi Germany. Again Dip great post and to be honest, it's making me read more on the subject.