Eugenics has proved a popular subject for authors and scholars in recent years. Adam Rutherford’s Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics is the latest addition to the canon and has attracted much praise by reviewers. The subtext of course is that we can congratulate ourselves on our superior twenty-first century ethical standpoint as we consider the spectacle of past generations of artists and intellectuals whole-heartedly endorsing the eugenic principle – that is, until the theory was exposed for what it was by the Nazis, who put it into practice by attempting to exterminate the physically or mentally subnormal, and thereby succeeded in discrediting it for all time. Whatever could the likes of Bernard Shaw, H G Wells, J M Keynes, or Bertrand Russell have been thinking?
Francis Galton, the founder of the discipline, now ranks as evil personified. UCL are busy ‘de-naming’ places and spaces that bear his name, except that because Galton made seminal contributions to a host of other disciplines (including statistics, psychometrics, meteorology, and forensic science), these stand in danger of being cancelled too. The same problem afflicts his protégé Karl Pearson, fellow eugenicist but also the founder of the discipline of mathematical statistics. Anyone who is has engaged in serious empirical research will know Pearson’s correlation coefficient – or ‘r’.
But is our modern-day obsession with building a meritocratic society where none are discriminated against (except the indigenous white majority), the disadvantaged are ‘levelled up’ (provided they belong to protected minority groups), and the indigenous population is progressively replaced through mass immigration, a million miles away from the eugenic principle, defined by Merriam-Webster as ‘controlled selective breeding of human populations to improve the population’s genetic composition’?
When we import ‘the brightest and best from around the world’ and condemn our good-for-nothing indigenous white working class to festering out-of-town sink estates, is this not the eugenic principle in action? When we clear away all ‘privilege’ or familial advantage and select solely on merit (that is, select the intellectually fittest), is this not the eugenic principle in action? When we clear away local attachments and loyalties to family, friends, community, and nation, and replace them by competitive global market forces, is this not the eugenic principle in action? When we concentrate wealth and property in the hands of a meritocratic elite, import cheap labour to drive down wages, and thereby condemn the poor and lower middle-income groups to a race to the bottom, is this not the eugenic principle in action? And when the history of the English people is rewritten, or simply cancelled, and our national culture systematically denigrated, all in the name of the prevailing ideology of multi-culture and diversity, is this self-inflicted national suicide not the very encapsulation of the eugenic principle?
Few would argue nowadays, least of all geneticists, that one race is genetically superior to another. But many advocates of eugenics or selective breeding – William Beveridge and H G Wells are notable examples – were more concerned to prevent the lower classes from multiplying and, as Wells put it, inflicting ‘ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens’ on us. Is the contemptuous attitude of today’s liberal elite toward the white working class much different to that of liberals of the past?
Meanwhile, the cult of diversity asserts that a multiracial, multicultural society is superior to a society which shares a common culture – especially when that culture is Western, European, and white. And when immigrants imported in the name of diversity outbreed the indigenous population to the extent that over one third of primary-age children in Britain now belong to ethnic minorities, it is obvious that a demographic transformation, a ‘great replacement’ of the population, is underway.
Yes, I would say that the eugenics principle is alive and kicking in Britain today.
The prevailing idea of the blank slate is at the core of the problem. No one wants to discuss this point. As long as one believes that biology is absolutely unimportant then one will keep propagating ideas of multiculturalism and the belief that vast swathes of foreign peoples and their cultures can be integrated or even assimilated. When will the common voter wake up to the fact, that multiculturalism and assimilation are absolutely at odds with one another? Maybe when it’s too late. Only non-whites are allowed the privilege of identifying with their biological identity. So yes, eugenics is very much alive in Britain and much of the West on the whole.
I would take it one step further. Not only is it alive and kicking, but it’s an organized plan of action. If you are capable of removing identifiable characterists, you are then able to state that nobody is different, that we are one in the same, and that our individual goals, ambitions, and desires are not important. Humanity can then be ruled by overlords, and be treated as borg like structures, always moving towards a collective will. Those who do not fit this paradigm will probably, as you say, find themselves on a reservation.
Well, of course, if you’re working class you might be already…the area around your local Greggs bakery, or temporarily on the “terraces” at your local football ground…food Bank…pub…”whitey cafe”…you get the picture
Another mystery is why emigration is invariably *to* those racist, evil, colonialists white countries, and *from* those wonderful “traditional societies where the colored… er, I mean, “people of color” live happily “in harmony with nature” ( I.e., subsistence farming). Must be global warming.
The immigration process plus the birth-strike of high-IQ women in the “developed” countries is DYSgenic. The process was predicted by creditable writers like Raymond Cattell, Elmer Pendell, William McDougall, etc. More truthful accounts of eugenics can be found in studies by Richard Lynn, John Glad, Cedric Carter and Carlos Blacker. Rutherford’s assertion that this humanitarian applied science led “directly” to the mass-murder of the Jews in WW2 is a total canard.
As for “racial” variations it is hardly likely that the genetic basis of brain formation and function are globally uniform. Thomas Huxley is being cancelled along with Francis Galton for thinking otherwise; Charles Darwin himself next. The list of past English and/or white icons being “cancelled” is still expanding, along with present-day scientists and others; see e.g. Academics for Acadamic Freedom, online.
On genetic variation, see modern studies by Charles Murray, Heiner Rindermann, Vincent Sarich, Tatu Vanhanen, John Baker, etc.
Are we facing the “clearance” preliminaries before the “replacement” described by James Monteith, (regarding which consult the books by Edward Paice, Renaud Camus, Stephen Smith, Douglas Murray, Patrick Buchanan, Winston Banks, Eric Zemmour, Thilo Sarrazin)?
To deplore such a possibility is regarded in some quarters as a race hate crime – even to discuss it could go the same way.
Someone should write a novel “2084” if it could find a publisher in print or online.
If you just watched the TV advertisements you might imagine that we already live in an African country.
@ Hugo Fuerst
Or the next “best” thing – read the metropolitan/BBC “news” source, The Guardian. Take just the 26 February 2022 issue, noting the blind date exception two white heterosexuals, and news largely on Ukraine (one picture with black refugees) and a major celebration of the “first black woman” on the US Supreme Court.
WHAT’S ON: Main feature on gang crime featuring two black males and women “getting their dues at last”, such as “Brit award-winning MC Little Simz, AKA Simbi Ajikawo”; also, illustrated – “We are Black and British”, Tina Turner, Ashley John-Baptiste, and more.
SPORTS: Full page about “[Black lesbian] Brazilian legend Formiga” commenting on “prejudice around football” and how to “change lives”.
ENVIRONMENT: (1) “Caribbean horticulture in Britain”, (2) Half-page picture of mostly black primary pupils cleaning up rubbish. MONEY: Half-page picture of black man to attack credit card scam.
SATURDAY magazine: (1) Five pages of Booker-winner “champion of black talent” Bernardine Evaristo’s sycophantic interview with “poetry’s new superstar” Warsan Shire, “Beyonce’s writer of choice” (too much drivel for quotation); (2) “West End actor Obioma Ugoala” author of “The Problem with My Normal Penis” (£14.78 from GuardianBookshop) unable as yet to say “our culture has moved beyond the stereotypes of Black make sexuality since my early experiences of dating”; (3) Peaky Blinders [brutal criminality glorification and falsified history] about a “working-class [!] family” with Irish Traveller and Romany Gypsy heritage” within the “presentation of British national identity”;(4) “Ali & Ava”, a mixed-race love story; (5) Kuba Shand-Baptiste’s review of Essays on “race and racism” by writer Esi Edugyan, illustrated by a black cultural appropriation of the iconic European masterpiece “Wanderer Above the Fog”; (6) Black actor Jeremy Pope to play the painter Basquiat “who died of a heroin overdose”; (7) Booker prize-winner Marlon James, who has finished a Channel 4 six-parter about a Jamaican detective in London, talks about “growing up gay in 80s Jamaica”; and then “back to his fantastical Africa” for his “Dark Star trilogy”; (8) “Musician, poet, visual artist and aspiring actor, Kojey Radical”, born Kwado Adu Genfi Amponsah in East London”, mixes “R&B, P-funk and rap” after calling for “racial revolution” [NB]; (9) Book reviews: Tanjil Rashid on Pankaj Mishra’s “Run and Hide”; Sanya Goyal on “Brown Girls” (Pakistan, Guyana, Haiti, Ivory Coast”; for children – “Kemosha of the Caribbean”; (10) Guardian angel: Queeny Singh who runs a WhatsApp charity for refugees and other single mums.
Have the victims become the totems? Who is the “privileged” community here? Who is “guilty” of the new hate-crime of “colorism”?
I believe that those pushing these strange advertisements are trying to prepare us mentally for what is on the horizon. This could in some sense be called social engineering.
Civil war is the answer. Enough. Take off the gloves.
@ Orlando
Apart from the criminal elements, the immigrant communities are not the real enemy. The largely “white” ideologists – “Communist, Capitalist, Christian” (as it has been expressed) – are to blame and unfortunately not easily within reach of the English Resistance Army in the Derbyshire Dales or Marshwood Vale.
@ Jimmy Williams
The UK Stasi are already on to it. Hence, the expressed concern that “far right white nationalists” are a greater danger than Muslim terrorists. In fairly recent experience, meetings, marches or protests against immigration have been forbidden by various authorities, attacked with impunity by organised opponents, or closed down by the police. One man was once arrested for simply for reading in public a criticism of Islam written by some alcoholic politician known as W. S. Churchill, the Terror of Tonypandy, the Butcher of Bengal and the Destroyer of Dresden (a famous eugenicist, also, apparently).
Yes, Churchill originally supported coercive steriization. However, there was a wide spectrum of eugenic concepts, policies and supporters. The basic principle was to discourage the infliction of hereditary illness and to encourage the promotion of intelligence and creativity among the future population – by conception control. The opposite of causing pain or death. Hence support from people as diverse as Helen Keller, W.E.B. DuBois, Fr Bertrand Conway, and Dean Inge. In 1939 biologists INCLUDING Lancelot Hogben and other leftists signed a Genetics Manifesto supportive of eugenic principles; and it was advocated for two decades AFTER WW2 by qualified experts, including Sir Julian Huxley and Amram Scheinfeld. The Tay-Sachs disease in Israel and the USA has been reduced by eugenics among Jews – hardly a Nazi policy!
The wokist tyranny – DIE, as Jordan Peterson recently put it – supports late-term abortion in all its cruelty but attacks elitism, so that the history and ideas of eugenics, migration control, IQ tests, school exams and patriotism are smeared or deterred: disability, stupidity and criminality are in fact condoned, welcomed and in some cases celebrated.
The Galton Institute began as an Eugenics Education Society in 1907, but has now been turned into its opposite (using the same HQ) as a specifically anti-eugenics outfit and the founder’s name in effect cancelled – like many other English icons.
I’m afraid this article is broadly correct. Prof Eric Kaufmann’s book White Shift makes it quite clear that there will be no White British by the end of the next century. England as Multiracialland, a country for everyone and a country for no one. Isn’t this a kind of reverse racism by the trash liberals in charge and would this change be allowed in African and Asian countries? If London is only 50% White British would Delhi be 50% Brown Indian or Lagos 50% Black Nigerian? If we say these are poor undeveloped countries what will they do when they become rich and advanced, and they will. And what about advanced Japan? It has remained Japanese. Anyone calling it racist?
%Anyone calling it racist?
The Economist does almost every week.
Excellent article.
If we are a genuinely anti-racist country, why don’t we send “the brightest and best from around the world” back where they came from, so that they can enrich their own countries with their wondrous brightness and goodness, instead of taking racist advantage of them by keeping them in the UK (and indeed in Europe) to the detriment of the “Majority World”?