Thread by @eigenrobot

how it started / how its going

everyone was just like this in the early 20C incidentally

ppl pretend that hitler was weird but naw

fact is, pretty much all of the Leading Thinkers of the age were outright tumescent at the idea of mass murder

check out what DH Lawrence said downthread

my pet theory is that we have to hyperfocus on hitler not just because he was the worst about this shit, although he absolutely was and by a wide margin, but mostly because it takes the heat off of the entire progressive movent which we all hold so dear

the progressives of course owned and ran the universities, most of which put their names and reputations on the popular eugenics programs of the united states

today most historians are employed by those same universities

so anyway you can imagine how this usually plays out

to this day i have no idea how the entire progressive establishment managed to avoid perpetual shame because im pretty sure everyone at the time remembered all those court opinions and laws and essays about sterilizing and murdering undersirables

even wikipedia, today!!

you guys it was the Bad Racist Movement

but wait

i wonder who these Racists were
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_…

"actually it was the jews" uh huh

lets see

i wonder what organizations were behind this!!

in fact these were the most prominent heirs of Lyman Beecher, of the Social Gospel, of the great Yankee Benevolent Societies

for another view of the cultural valence of eugenics, check out this map from 1926

the states in white?

didnt pass sterilization laws

makes u think

"oops"

". . ."

". . ."

" . . . oops"

any comment @RockefellerFdn

fortunately historians after 1945 corrected the record

you see, american eugenics was DIFFERENT

@JonEntine sets the record straight here, and i think none of us can argue with his lucid framing

contemplate this on the tree of woe

appendix

"ok fine we did forced sterilization but the murder was all nazi brain worms"

this is a depressing thread so i offer one consolation in closing

eugenic euthenasia occurred in the United States, but was only carried out (unsurprisingly) by doctors, and only covertly

they thought normal americans would be outraged, and i think they were correct.

because,

we have another study of a contemporary culture, one that had extensive exchanges with the united states, as described above

hitler DID carry out a widespread euthenasia program of physically and mentally ill people

as with most nazi programs it was a fucking cockup and normal germans were quick to figure out what was going on when hair and ash started raining down from the sky in their own cities

i imagine this may have influenced the distant placement of later death camps for (eg) jews

the people of germany did not like this one bit when they found out

families frequently did all they could to save their relatives and _crowds_ protested

i find this incredibly brave. let me reiterate that they were openly opposing

- adolf hitler
- in nazi germany
- in wartime

notably, the vatican condemned the killings when they became something like public knowledge

the church did not wholly cover itself in glory--many german clergy were supportive--but some bishops were incredibly outspoken, and apparently commanded popular support

I'm not a scholar and won't claim certain causality, but I suspect that the lesson was taken from Akton T4 that "actually normal people don't generally support industrial murder, it fucking horrifies them in fact," and as evidence i shall provide a map in the following tweet

this is the best map i could find; in polish or smth

what you need to know is

1. concentration camps (where jews et al were *held*) were different than death camps (where they were murdered en masse)

2. circles are concentration camps

3. squares are death camps

i direct you to notice that though germany is full of concentration camps, the death camps--auschwitz, treblinka, sobibor--were built far from germany, in areas of poland and belarus controlled by the wehrmact

i suggest this was not entirely for reasons of homicidal efficiency

wow

i had actually read this (year ago?) but forgot it almost immediately

*kristallnacht* also scared the normies

not even randos either: a majority of NAZI PARTY MEMBERS condemned it (survey data, small sample, fine; just, gosh)

tonight i say a prayer for the normies

when it comes down to it, as a group they often just dont care for mass violence and systematic murder of their neighbors

this makes them better than us. fact of the matter is, the bigbrains are not as a class the heroes of history

food for thought, girl