I am reading a great review of a book on my reading list in the Journal of Creation, Volume 27, Issue 1 (Published April 2013) entitled, “Metaphors for mankind? A review of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin” ~ Book Review by Marc Ambler. I loved the review, and it is right up my “religio-political alley. Here is an excerpt (pp. 27-29) that I found fascinating and will undoubtedly add to the general knowledge of the reader:
From Darwin to Dachau
Eugenics and belief in racial supremacy eventually led to the horrors of Nazism on the European continent. In a later chapter, Zubrin argues that the evil deeds of the Nazis in occupied Europe, far from being done under cover, and without the awareness of the majority of the German population, was carried out with the complicity and knowledge of the majority. Thoroughly indoctrinated by ‘scientific’ racism, the German people would see Hitler’s actions as at minimum a necessary evil, or even for the ultimate ‘good’ of the Nordic Aryan people. Hitler is quoted as saying in 1941, “The law of existence prescribes uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live” (1. 984). As proof of his argument, Zubrin relates that
“At the height of the Third Reich, there were over 20,000 death camps, and most were discovered by Allied forces within hours of their entering newly liberated territory-as the stench of the camps’ crematoria made them readily detectable. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were employed operating these facilities, and several million more were members of armed forces or police units engaged in or supporting genocidal operations”
The idea that the general populations of Germany and other European countries where this was being carried out were unaware of the Holocaust stretches credulity.
As a further proof of the acquiescence of these peoples due to social Darwinian indoctrination, the writer gives the account of the White Rose resistance group. These Munich based, college students, mainly Lutheran and Catholic, began a campaign of leaflet distribution throughout Germany in 1942.5 Some quotes from their leaflets illustrate their awareness of what was going on:
“Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes-crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure-reach the light of day?”
“Since the conquest of Poland, three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings … . All male offspring of the houses of the (Polish) nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS! Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them? … . Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? … . Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”
These brave students were captured and tortured in 1943 and some beheaded, some imprisoned. By highlighting this awareness, Zubrin is preparing us for what is possible when men lose their perception of who we are through Darwinian (he would not use the term evolutionary) indoctrination. As another White Rose leaflet declares,
“… when of his (man’s) own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil … . We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” The thesis of Zubrin’s book is that, under the same belief system as the Nazis, genocide has taken place throughout the world over the decades since the war, though by different, less obvious means.
Eugenics in America
Eugenic societies and ideas also began to increasingly manifest themselves with a `back-to-nature’, `Darwinian antihumanism’. Notable disciples in America were such influential individuals and families as the Roosevelts; Henry Fairfield Osborn; and Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League who argued for legal abortion as a means of “eliminating undesirable racial stock”. In the build-up to WWII, blind eyes were turned in America to what Hitler was doing. Eugenic and population concerns lead to the obstruction of European Jews trying to flee, and even to refugees being turned back from American shores, as it turned out to the ovens of German. The Darwinian, Malthusian, eugenic influence continued after the war, though subdued due to the devastating fruits seen during the war, in such organisations as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club and the Club of Rome, as well as many influential global organisations such as the World Bank and UN.
One of the recurring themes of this book, is of how pseudo-scientific, eugenic books and publications such as that of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler referred to as his ‘bible,’ became populist propaganda tools under which devastating policies were justified and implemented. Grant was the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League and a trustee of the Museum of Natural History. This use of eugenic-inspired media was also key in ‘numbing’ the public to other policies later described in the book Man and Earth, a neo-pagan tract written in 1913, was influential in the birth of another child of Malthus’s theory of limited resources—”This twin was environmentalism” (1. 1056), closely linked philosophically to eugenics in both Germany and the USA. It was reprinted in 1980 as one of the founding documents of the West German Green Party, whose founder and first chairman was August Haussleiter, a former SS officer.
Our Plundered Planet, written in 1948 by Fairfield Osborn, the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn. was a 3-million copy bestseller “which became the founding manifesto of the postwar environmentalist movement” (I. 1185). These movements and foundations such as the Conservation Foundation, Sierra Club and the Environmental Defence Fund, had population control as their primary focus. This was especially for developing nations, but was also promoted in post-war Japan where key American eugenic advocates were placed in influential positions, and forced ‘population control’ measures on the Japanese people.
Commissioned by The Sierra Club, The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich in 1967 amidst much publicity (figure 2), became the “new Malthusian bible for modern times”. Typical of this type of propaganda, prophecies of impending doom were used to induce a popular panic which became a smokescreen for increased government interference in people’s lives.
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death … . We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail” (1. 1584). –A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people … . We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense” (1. 1605).
Under the hysteria of this type of propaganda (proven false by history), measures were taken throughout the world to coerce people into population control measures. As an example, Zubrin documents the World Bank’s making loans to third world countries, often ruled by corrupt leaders. The loans were subject to the implementation of broad, coerced programs including abortion, sterilisation and involuntary insertion of IUD’s. These programs often meant that while normal healthcare facilities were neglected and underfunded, `population control’ staff, facilities and resources were state of the art.
Anti DDT, Nuclear, GM and CO2; pro-nature or anti-human?
The writer begins in Chapter 6, entitled “In Defence of Malaria”, to document another post war implementation of eugenic ideology. Most telling is a quote from Alexander King, a co-founder of the Club of Rome, who said “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem” (1. 1350). DDT began to be used by the Allies in WWII in areas where malaria threatened to derail the campaign against the Nazis and Japanese, with dramatic effect. After the war, DDT programs in the Southern USA, Ceylon, South Africa, and other countries reduced malarial deaths and incidence to almost zero. Alarmed by the implications to population growth, particularly in third world countries, alarm bells again began to be rung by influential eugenicists. If eradicating DDT programs had been overtly sold as a means of reducing population, Western sensibilities would not have accepted it. In what has become a predictable routine, an environmental reason was given to halt DDT use. The marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson was contracted to write Silent Spring (figure 2). In it she warned of the dangers of DDT to wildlife, particularly birdlife. The evocative title says it all, if DDT programs were continued, one day mankind would awake to a ‘silent spring’ bereft of the sound of birdlife. Zubrin goes on to show that the various claims were totally unscientific and cites a number of scientific studies to document this. The environmentalist campaign was successful and DDT was banned in western countries and aid to third world countries again made subject to their suspending the use of DDT. Today, “Malaria kills more than a million people worldwide each year-90 percent of them in Africa; 70 percent children under the age of five.”‘ This is more deaths than due to AIDS, but receives far less media attention; while the cheapest and most effective remedy available to African countries, DDT, is denied them.
The next leftist, environmental cause that Zubrin examines is ‘The Anti-Nuclear Crusade’ …