"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
CS Lewis
Eugenics became an international movement founded on genetics, social theory and policy prescription. And right here in the United Kingdom we were at the forefront, however it soon spread to Germany, France, in fact most European countries, as well as the good old United States. From programs aimed at encouraging those considered "fit" to reproduce, through to marriage prohibition and even the sterilisation of those undesirable types with mental or physical disabilities, and naturally minority groups classed unfit to reproduce. That this seems strikingly similar to the Nazi eugenics program shouldn't surprise you. Indeed, those that attempted to defend themselves at the Nuremberg trials, tried to do so under the justification that Nazi eugenics policy was basically identical to the US programs.[2]
Following the war, the subsequent institution of human rights policies meant a was a gradual decline in the oh so blatent eugenics policies, although some states within the US continued a policy of sterilisation well in to the 1960s. Yet the modern world currently seems tainted by Eugenics, which has recently been amplified by the "send the buggers" back attitude as our nation, (or 52% of them) seemingly attempts to protect the race of "our" island. All this whilst completely ignoring our colonial past. Cries of make Britain great again completely ignores our previous convictions for empire building. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that the Great in Great Britain refers to our occupation of territories such as British India.
As we step out of the European Union (or at least shuffle towards the door having been abandoned by the two rats that conned a nation), it is becoming increasingly clear that the leave vote, was frequently more of a vote to seal up the borders. To protect 'our' national identity, in effect, keep 'them' out, and maintain our (allegedly) superior race. We're losing the empire that we once acquired, colonised or whatever other tag you wish to apply to our imperial reputation. Having plundered our way around the globe, now is the time to batten down the hatches before we suffer the same consequences. At it's height our British Empire consisted of a fifth of the global population and a quarter of all land, we were quite a force to be reckoned with. Yet despite millions of deaths due to famine, brutal detention camps, the massacres of civilians, 44 per cent of a YouGov Poll were proud of our colonial past, even David Cameron thinks it should be celebrated.[3] This blinkered view if our history, coupled with the fear purported by Murdock et al, that another race may do as we did, seems to be driving a huge surge of nationalism around the country. I know, it is good to be proud of your country, just maybe not when you want to block anyone that hasn't popped out of a Vagina in the right part of the globe, or to anyone rich enough. It may seem far fetched, but the Nazi campaign was founded upon Nationalism and Economic downturn...and where are we right now? A hate fuelled rhetoric led by Boris and Nige fuelling far right groups and facing more austerity and cuts for the lower classes.
So, what is the selection criteria for entry to our imperial island? How do we select whom the superior immigrants are? Do we perform a medical examination? Will it be genetic based? Education? Career prospects? Wealth? Or any other number of methods for selecting who is desirable, whilst avoiding those who may not fit our criteria. Sounding much like the Third Reich yet?
‘We may perhaps assume that, if people grow less superstitious, government will acquire the right to sterilise those who are not considered desirable as parents.’
Not the Bertrand Russell quotes that your used to I'd imagine, but it just goes to highlight how accepted eugenics had become.
Whilst our government is currently unable to implement such measures, due to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, they are able to do it much more slyly. Take for instance the government’s decision to limit a family’s child tax credits to two children, aimed at dissuading reproduction from those less attractive socio-economic groups. Their is however a clause that allows further payment if the child is the result of a rape (nice bonus touch government). And most of us happily accept this, maybe even nod our head in agreement, "why should we support those who can't afford it", and to some degree you may have a point. Yet it doesn't change the fact that it is a soft way of ensuring those with money can reproduce more easily than those from poor backgrounds
From the other side we are seeing IVF technology advancing to a stage in which we are able to screen for inherited diseases. Sounds great, but calls are afoot for the ability to choose your child right down to the sex or hair colour. Will it be the dystopian social groups that get to avoid the game of chance? The ruling class, those with money, power and elite status will no doubt be able to afford the ability to tinker with procreation. So whilst the elite will be able to ensure that they select preferable genetics, the lower classes will no doubt suffer testing for birth defects [5] and be meekly ushered towards the abortion pamphlets.
As Boris shuffled rather uncomfortably away from Number 10, we must remember that the man he seemed intent on modelling himself on, Sir Winston Churchill (the then Home Secretary), urged the Prime Minister of his day to stop the “multiplication of the unfit”, and we can start to see how close modern policy comes to our haunted past.
As we snear at those immigrants for "coming over here and taking our benefits" we must turn to Dr Adam Perkins, a lecturer in the neurobiology of personality at King’s College London. Perkins is a social scientist that studies and no doubt holds the image of benefit Britain close to his heart. His academic research (if its possible to call it that) has looked at welfare traits and found that these traits are often inherited through generations, which in his mind helps explain why poverty has a tendency to be passed down from one generation to the next.
His argument rests upon the rise in welfare spending creating a burden upon the rest of us, and by allowing the birth of individuals with inherited laziness, propensity to commit crime, become alcoholics, abuse drugs etc society is further damaged. His remedy is for welfare restrictions to inhibit reproduction, ensuring decent hardworking human stock is allowed to prosper whilst the poor are phased out. Heil.
Perkins work is a complete fantasy, in all honesty he is simply a eugenist, [5] he considers that benefit payments should be restricted until "workless" households lower their birth rates is a Daily Mail dream. Yet his data is sloppy at best, more likely deceptive. His claims that ‘the higher the proportion of unemployed adults in a household, the greater the number of children – on average – it contains', only works if you exclude childless households. I mean I would of won more competitions this year, if you ignore the data from those that I didn't win. If you want to be so bold, you really need to include the full data. The whole thing stinks.
Howwever, that is forgetting one other thing. Genetics research is generally a total crock of %*$@. A $2.7 million crock of %*$@.[6] On that note, we refer to the bastion of knowledge that is Dr. Raymond Peat;
"The Central Dogma of the molecular geneticists, in their own words, was that information flows only from DNA to RNA, and from RNA to protein, never in the other direction. The Central Dogma was formulated to suppress forever the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characters, that Weismann's amputation of the tails of a multitude of mice had attempted to deal with earlier in the history of genetics.
The Central Dogma continues to be influential, even after a series of revisions. Until the 1990s, the only "practical" fruit of genetics had been genocide, but now it has become possible to insert genes into bacteria, and to use the bacteria to produce industrial quantities of specific proteins. In principle, that could be useful, although bovine growth hormone poses a threat to the health of both people and cows, human growth hormone poses a threat to athletes and old people, and human insulin could increase the number of treated diabetics. A deranged culture will put anything cheap to bad use. The ability to make organisms produce foreign proteins confirms that information can flow from DNA to protein, but as that technology was being developed, the discovery of retroviruses showed that the Central Dogma of molecular genetics was wrong, RNA is a very significant template for the production of DNA. And the scrapie prion shows that proteins can be infectious, passing along information without nucleic acids as the agent of transmission. The directed mutations demonstrated by John Cairns and others have thoroughly destroyed the Central Dogma of molecular genetics, even as it applied to the simplest organisms, but molecular genetics survives as an industrial and forensic technology." [7]
So, what does this have to do with our recent EU referendum? Well, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states;
"(b) the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at the selection of persons;
(c)
the prohibition on making the human body and its parts as such a source of financial gain;
(d)
the prohibition of the reproductive cloning of human beings." [8]
And post-referendum we must ensure these protections stay in place.
While sperm banks boast about screening for everything from autism to red hair [9], and you can pay to select your embryo or its sex. We futher attempt to hold the poor back by means of high education costs (£9000+ for University fees), criminalise those self medicating with drugs, classify them as addicts, restrict welfare despite promoting tax cuts for high earners and corporate welfare, attempt to ban those with different pigmentation or race. The implementation of various nutritional programs (the promotion of polyunsaturated fats, low calorie RDA etc).
For the public, at lot of this has been about race, yet we must remember that the biological differences between us all or practically unmeasurable. Colour cannot be seen by the human eye, it takes the brain to decide what you see.[10] And if that is the case, that means that that ideology about maintaining our imperial whiteness is a learned behaviour. And, much like your genes can adapt both ways, so can you. You can learn that no matter where on the globe someone is born, we are all fundamentally the same. For the race to prosper we need unity and togetherness. Post Brexit I think for the safety of all involved it would be wiser to keep these fundamental rights to life.
References;
1. Sir Francis Galton - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
2. Nazi eugenics history - http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
3. British people are proud of colonialism. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-are-proud-of-colonialism-and-the-british-empire-poll-finds-a6821206.html
4. Birth defects can be diagnosed during pregnancy or after the baby is born, depending on the specific type of birth defect. http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/diagnosis.htmlx.
5. Mr Perkins’ Welfare Traits http://londoninvestigates.uk/?p=669
6. The failure of the genome https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/17/human-genome-genetics-twin-studies
7. Peat, R. Genes, Carbon Dioxide and Adaptation http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/genes-carbon-dioxide-adaptation.shtml
8. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union - http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A12012P%2FTXT
9. Sperm bank turns down redheads http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/8768598/Sperm-bank-turns-down-redheads.html
10. Our brains, not eyes, see colour http://thefutureofthings.com/4180-our-brains-not-eyes-see-color/