Ouch, on the very next post even!
Posted on 05/01/2008 3:09:53 PM PDT by sitetest
It was from an obsessive Darwin-defender that I learned of the Anti-Defamation League's attack on the theatrical documentary Expelled, for "misappropriat[ing] the Holocaust." This guy is constantly emailing me. He warned that the ADL had just "issued a terse press release today condemning the equation of ‘Darwinism' with Nazism in Expelled. How can you call yourself a religious Jew and still believe in such Fundamentalist Protestant Christian nonsense like Intelligent Design?"
I thanked my email correspondent for a good laugh. The idea that, having defended Expelled's thesis concerning Hitler's intellectual debt to Charles Darwin, I would now feel chastised and repentant because of a statement from the ADL, an organization for which I have not a feather's weight of respect! This was rich stuff.
Just to be clear, however: Expelled doesn't equate Darwinism and Hitler. That basic point was also missed by Professor Sahotra Sarkar, who published a confused attack piece on me here on Jewcy. Sarkar attributed to me the view, "If you believe in the theory of evolution, you are an anti-Semite" -- something that, obviously, I would have to be a fool to write or believe.
Dealing primarily with the academic suppression of Darwin-doubting scientists on campuses around the country, Expelled only spends about 10 minutes on the Hitler-Darwin connection. But it draws upon a solid, mainstream body of scholarship by the chief Hitler biographers and others.
Undeterred, the ADL wailed that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."
Much the same view has been propounded elsewhere. Once again here at Jewcy, Jay Michaelson seemed to argue that all science is by definition value-neutral: "Last I checked, Hitler also made use of automobiles. Indeed, he based a lot of ideas on militarism and machines; does that mean technology is morally wrong? Should you turn off your computer right now?"
No, Jay, there are obvious differences between Darwinian theory and auto and computer technology. Most important, the latter make no claims to answering ultimate questions, like how life originated, from which ethical corollaries are naturally drawn.
Auto and computer technology are also proved reliable every day by our experience. But no one has ever reported seeing a species originate in the manner described in Darwin's Origin of Species - not now, not in the fossil record, not ever.
More interesting than these observations is the hypocrisy of the ADL's outburst: "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan."
It's funny how when the subject of conversation is Darwinism, then Hitler needed no one particular inspiration. But when the conversation shifts from Darwinism to - oh, I don't know - Christianity? Ah, then suddenly the genealogy of Nazism becomes eminently traceable.
One of the ADL's main fundraising technique has long been to scare Jews by demonizing Christianity. The group accordingly isn't shy about tracing the genealogy of the Holocaust back to the New Testament. In an essay on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, for example, Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs wrote:
"The anti-Judaism that begins in the New Testament was transformed through the admixture of political, economic and sociological prejudice into the anti-Semitism of modernity. This reached its ugly and inhuman nadir during World War II with Hitler's Final Solution for the Jewish people."
Blaming the earliest Christian writings for setting off a chain of influences resulting in the Holocaust evokes little outrage in the liberal Jewish community. Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, are greeted by a film, Anti-Semitism, purporting to uncover the "religious root of this phenomenon, the pervasive anti-Jewish teachings that evolved from overly literal readings and misreadings of New Testament texts."
Yet when Hitler successfully sold his ideology of hate to the German people in his bestselling tract Mein Kampf, he phrased his argument not in Christian terms but in biological, Darwinian ones.
Ignoring Hitler's evolutionary rhetoric, of course, some commentators brandish a famous quote from the same book -- "by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." They don't realize that Hitler was referring not to the God of the Bible but to Nature and her iron laws, as his preceding sentence clearly indicates.
In a curious irony, the modern paperback edition of Mein Kampf, available in any Barnes & Noble, includes an Introduction by - guess who? None other than the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman. Did he, I wonder, even read the book?
I don't know if you ever actually read in Mein Kampf, but Hitler didn't talk much about Christianity or "Catholocism" as he did evolution and preserving the superior race.
I realize that word counts are rarely more then just amusing, but I did do a word-count on Mein Kampf for a few words:
race: 274
Evolution: 182
races: 60
Superior: 79
God: 54
Christ: 46
Christian: 41
Christianity: 7
Jesus: 0
Look at what he did say. And these are his words which not only line up with his actions but describe in careful detail his reasons for his actions. This is not the bablings of a madman; these are careful well thought out arguments -- and they are exactly the arguments describing his actions! To a mind which believes in no such thing as absolute wrong -- except that the best races should survive - this is a perfectly logical idea.:
The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all. (Mein Kampf, Page 237, Paragraph 1)You can see here that he believes in the scientific fact of evolution. And he's bound and determined to help it along.
When men have lost their natural instincts and ignore the obligations imposed on them by Nature, then there is no hope that Nature will correct the loss that has been caused, until recognition of the lost instincts has been restored. Then the task of bringing back what has been lost will have to be accomplished. But there is serious danger that those who have become blind once in this respect will continue more and more to break down racial barriers and finally lose the last remnants of what is best in them. What then remains is nothing but a uniform mish-mash, which seems to be the dream of our fine Utopians. But that mish-mash would soon banish all ideals from the world. Certainly a great herd could thus be formed. One can breed a herd of animals; but from a mixture of this kind men such as have created and founded civilizations would not be produced. The mission of humanity might then be considered at an end.Ahh, the end of humanity? But wait, he's not done:
Those who do not wish that the earth should fall into such a condition must realize that it is the task of the German State in particular to see to it that the process of bastardization is brought to a stop.Ahh, so it was his job to bring it to a stop. How is he going to do that? Here's his solution:
Our contemporary generation of weaklings will naturally decry such a policy and whine and complain about it as an encroachment on the most sacred of human rights. But there is only one right that is sacrosanct and this right is at the same time a most sacred duty. This right and obligation are: that the purity of the racial blood should be guarded, so that the best types of human beings may be preserved and that thus we should render possible a more noble development of humanity itself.There is one sacred duty - and that is to guard the purity of the favored race?!
And he says:
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.(238,1)And so here he explains that the superior individuals should not mingle with the weaker ones.
And he says:
Whoever ignores or despises the laws of race ... places an obstacle in the victorious path of the superior race and, by so doing, he interferes with a prerequisite condition of all human progress. Loaded with the burden of humanitarian sentiment, he falls back to the level of those who are unable to raise themselves in the scale of being. (240,8)The laws of race that he's referring to here are the natural law that says that superior (or Aryan) races should not mingle with non-Aryan race.
On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth. (317, 1,2)But not to worry, he wants to do something about it:
Those who do not wish that the earth should fall into such a condition must realize that it is the task of the German State in particular to see to it that the process of bastardization is brought to a stop.(332, 2)And intervene he did: He killed millions in the gas chambers of Auschwitz -- all because there was only one moral law - and that was that the fittest needed to survive.If the case were different the progressive process would cease, and even retrogression might set in. Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. (237,4)
Ideas do have consequences. And Hitler's actions were a direct calculated outworking of what he believed - and what he believed is that there was only one great law - and that was that the fittest should survive. The Aryans.
-Jesse
1a: Biological Evolution: (the word "evolution" appears 182 times in Mein Kampf.)
The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all. (Mein Kampf, Page 237, Paragraph 1. Emph. mine.)1b:
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.(238,1)2:Evolutionary Rhetoric to whip up Jew hatred:
If we divide mankind into three categories--founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture--the Aryan alone can be considered as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture. (241,2)
The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Aryan. (249, 3)Now in case that logic was hard to follow, grant me the liberty to paraphrase Hitler here: Is he not basically saying that "The Aryan is the most superior race and the Jews are the most inferior race?"
Does that satisfy your request? Or am I ruled out of order for providing two quotes when you asked for a single quote? [wide grin]
That pdf I provide a link for is pretty nice reading. Hitler goes on for pages and pages about how inferior the Jews are and and how the superior races will be lost if the inferior races are not controlled. For example:
Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. (237, 4)(Another free biological reference for you, above.)
And intervene he did.
-Jesse
Evolution, particularly Darwinian evolution theory, is concerned with the evolution of a new species from and old one. Hitler’s eugenics was concerned with creating a “master race” within homo sapiens.
Hitler has many inspirations. The most important would be Plato’s Republic where just his sort of program was described more than 2000 years before Darwin.
Hitler was apparently better read than most creationist/IDers in that he understood that Darwin didn’t further his argument. That would explain why he cited his religion as a source, but NEVER mentioned Darwin.
“Here, again, the necessary foundation was lacking, namely, a definite Weltanschhauung, and these leaders also lacked that clear insight into the laws of political evolution which is a necessary quality in political leadership.”
Ch 10 paragraph 157.
Instead of giving page #’s which will be different in every published volume can you give Chapter and paragraph so I can track down the translation of these quotes and why they are different?
Notice the difference in translation? Mine doesn't contain the word evolution.
The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. Ch11 paragraph 5.
The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. Ch11 paragraph 5.
Heh, "higher development of organic living beings" would be described as evolution nowadays.
-Jesse
He seems to be talking about racism more than biological evolution; and his talk about how this can be viewed as cruel by the weak is hardly drumming up hatred of the Jew or the weak, just advising against mixing the “strong” Aryan with the “weak” specimens; according to RACIST rather than Evolutionary thought.
He drummed up hatred of the Jew by talking about ‘avenging the savior's blood upon the cross’ and ‘driving them out like Jesus drove the vipers out of the Temple’ or by Socialist talk about ‘conspiracies of international bankers’; not by saying that they were inferior specimens not worthy of mixing with the highest image of God, the Aryan.
Also evolution would say that the differences in human populations has nothing to do with “strong” and “weak” but instead “adapted for a equatorial climate” or “adapted for a northern climate”.
I was using Murphy's translation. I found the word "evolution" 182 times. See my post which lists a couple of quotes in Murphy. I can email you a list of all paragraphs containing 'evolution' if you like - just pm me.
Instead of giving page #’s which will be different in every published volume can you give Chapter and paragraph so I can track down the translation of these quotes and why they are different?
I gave page number and paragraph number because I always linked to the pdf from which I was reading and from which I was deriving page numbers. This was significantly easier then counting hundreds of paragraphs after a chapter heading. And besides, I gave exact quotes so someone can just search for exact phrases if they want and it doesn't matter what chapter or page it is on. (It may be that your search program is broken or something, or maybe one of us is reading from a doctored version of Murphy's translation. I provided a link to the PDF I was reading from - what document were you searching for "evolution" in? I have no idea why you found only one occurance of the word "evolution" when there are so many in what I'm reading from.)
-Jesse
The only example in the Manhein translation with the actual word “evolution” was in reference to Political rather than Biological evolution (the quote I provided).
I'm using the Murphy translation.
thanks for the tip -- I stand corrected. Doing a whole word search, 'evolution[ary]' only appears 14 times!
The rest are revolution or whatnot. Please accept my most sincere apologies!
-Jesse
Here are the following examples of the word “evolution” used in Mein Kampf according to the Murphy translation. As you can see they are mostly in regard to political evolution not biological evolution.
Also it goes without saying that any notion Hitler held of evolution was indistinguishable from racism. Nothing in Natural Selection argues that the “weak” should not mate with the “strong”,but instead that a diversity of traits is beneficial for a species, and that nature will decide what is too “weak” to survive.
POLITICAL
“And the political leaders of the REICH at that time had no far-seeing policy. Here, again, the necessary foundation was lacking, namely, a definite WELTANSCHAUUNG, and these leaders also lacked that clear insight into the laws of political evolution which is a necessary quality in political leadership.” (this is I believe the only use of the word in the Manhiem translation, although I am going to check their translation of these quotes and compare)
RACISM
“Such mating contradicts the will of Nature towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favourable preliminary to this improvement is not to mate individuals of higher and lower orders of being but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.”
RACISM
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”
POLITICAL
“Only after subjugated races were employed as slaves was a similar fate allotted to animals, and not vice versa, as some people would have us believe. At first it was the conquered enemy who had to draw the plough and only afterwards did the ox and horse take his place. Nobody else but puling pacifists can consider this fact as a sign of human degradation. Such people fail to recognize that this evolution had to take place in order that man might reach that degree of civilization which these apostles now exploit in an attempt to make the world pay attention to their rigmarole.”
SOCIALISM?????
Unconsciously his instinct will submit to the knowledge that the preservation of the species, even at the cost of the individual life, is a primal necessity and he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development. For it is a necessity of human evolution that the individual should be imbued with the spirit of sacrifice in favour of the common weal, and that he should not be influenced by the morbid notions of those knaves who pretend to know better than Nature and who have the impudencc to criticize her decrees.
RACISM
The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands of years. To-day the Jew is looked upon as specially ‘cunning’; and in a certain sense he has been so throughout the ages. His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner evolution but rather have been shaped by the object-lessons which the Jew has received from others. The human spirit cannot climb upwards without taking successive steps. For every step upwards it needs the foundation of what has been constructed before—the past—which in, the comprehensive sense here employed, can have been laid only in a general civilization.
BIOLOGICAL
Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed in use among the animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere; and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena ‘instinctive.’
In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the
practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as ‘instinct.’
POLITICAL
For in the German lands of two hundred years before who would seriously have believed that Hohenzollern Prussia, and not Habsburg, would become the germ cell, the founder and the tutor of the new REICH? And, on the other hand, who would deny to-day that Destiny thus acted wiser than human wisdom. Who could now imagine a German REICH based on the foundations of an effete and degenerate dynasty?
No. The general evolution of things, even though it took a century of struggle, placed the best in the position that it had merited.
POLITICAL
On the contrary, he wished to leave over for the future what it would be difficult to carry through at the moment and might not have been readily agreed to by the individual states. He trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship.
POLITICAL/ORGANIC ANALOGY
have never been in favour of hasty and pedantic methods of organization, because in most cases the result is merely a piece of dead mechanism and only rarely a living organization. Organization is a thing that derives its existence from organic life, organic evolution. When the same set of ideas have found a lodgement in the minds of a certain number of people they tend of themselves to form a certain degree of order among those people and out of this inner formation something that is very valuable arises.
POLITICAL
“It is a great mistake to believe that by acquiring possession of supreme political power we can bring about a definite reorganization, suddenly starting from nothing, without the help of a certain reserve stock of men who have been trained beforehand, especially in the spirit of the movement. Here also the principle holds good that the spirit is always more important than the external form which it animates; since this form can be created mechanically and quickly. For instance, the leadership principle may be imposed on an organized political community in a dictatorial way. But this principle can become a living reality only by passing through the stages that are necessary for its own evolution. These stages lead from the smallest cell of the State organism upwards.”
POLITICAL
This evolution has not yet taken the shape of a conscious intention and movement to restore the political power and independence of our nation; but the blame for this must be attributed to those utterly incompetent people who have no natural endowments to qualify them for statesmanship and yet have been governing our nation since 1918 and leading it to ruin.
POLITICAL
The German frontiers are the outcome of chance, and are only temporary frontiers that have been established as the result of political struggles which took place at various times. The same is also true of the frontiers which demarcate the territories on which other nations live. And just as only an imbecile could look on the physical geography of the globe as fixed and unchangeable—for in reality it represents a definite stage in a given evolutionary epoch which is due to the formidable forces of Nature and may be altered to-morrow by more powerful forces of destruction and change—so, too, in the lives of the nations the confines which are necessary for their sustenance are subject to change.
(lots of spelling errors in this translation as well)
Search term count:
race: 274
Evolution: ?14? (I found 13) according to the Murphy translation; only 2 -4 of which could be taken to have anything to do with Biology, and only one having directly to do with hating the Jew.
races: 60
Superior: 79
God: 54
Christ: 46
Christian: 41
Christianity: 7
And from this some try to say that Darwin/Science/Biology was responsible for the Holocaust?
race: 274
Evolution: ?14? (I found 13) according to the Murphy translation; only 2 -4 of which could be taken to have anything to do with Biology, and only one having directly to do with hating the Jew.
races: 60
Superior: 79
God: 54
Christ: 46
Christian: 41
Christianity: 7
Here is a corrected search term count list. These are now exact whole word matches.
Evolution: 12
evolutionary: 2
Christ: 1
God: 28
Christian: 31
Christianity: 7
races: 43
race: 169
Superior: 68
favoured: 7
revolution: 113
Note that when I claimed 14 I said"'evolution[ary]' only appears 14 times!" -- that is because 12 of them are "evolution" and 2 are "evolutionary." Also note that your search may be skewed if you're searching for "evolution" and the word appears with a dot after it like "evolution.". Sometimes it has a dot, others a comma, yet others a space.
And from this some try to say that Darwin/Science/Biology was responsible for the Holocaust?
That's absurd and that's not what I or anyone that I know of said. When I first posted the statistics I prefaced them with"I realize that word counts are rarely more then just amusing,..". What I'm using as arguments to argue that Hitler was influenced by evolutionary ideology are is own words which describe how he believes that evolution is what brought man to his current level and that he can and should bring it to even higher levels by guarding the superior race.
-Jesse
You've read? I've read lots of absurd stuff on forums too :-)
But whether Hitler used the word 'evolution' to describe what hew as talking about, he was definitely talking about it. That's the important point.
While everything Hitler did may have been for political purposes, it is clear that he was indeed talking about biological evolution and about helping it along. the fact is that if one believes that all life came from nothing and came to its current state by natural selection, then it's perfectly logical that some will get the bright idea of helping it along. Farmers have been doing it with their livestock forever.
-Jesse
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.