A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #362 - History - Eugenics: Genealogy of a Far-Right Obsession (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Talking about eugenics today refers either to scientific thought dating 
back to the late 19th century, or to a futuristic vision of 
biotechnology related to procreation (selection of embryos, selection of 
the genotype of the unborn child, etc.) that seems more science 
fiction-like. Yet eugenics, which fascinated the fascist regimes of the 
first half of the 20th century, remains a very relevant compass for the 
far right. Eugenics is a concept developed by Sir Francis Galton 
(1822-1911), an explorer, geographer, meteorologist, and biometrician 
known for his work in statistics and psychometrics, in the late 19th 
century. The term first appeared in 1883 in his work Inquiries into 
Human Faculty and its Development. Eugenics, as defined by Galton, is 
defined as "the science which deals with all the influences which 
improve the innate qualities of a race, and with the methods of 
developing them to the greatest advantage" and is part of a hereditary 
approach then in vogue in scientific circles. It is this same approach 
that inspires the theory of "social Darwinism," popularized by the work 
of the English sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who sought to 
apply to the social world the Theory of Evolution developed by the 
famous naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The latter, Galton's 
cousin and the inspiration behind his work, wrote of him, "we now know, 
thanks to the admirable work of Mr. Galton, that genius[...]tends to be 
inherited."

Galton, inspired by Darwin's work on evolution and natural selection, 
suggested that similar principles could be applied to humans to "improve 
the human race." Thus, according to Galton, eugenics should aim to 
improve the human genetic makeup by encouraging the reproduction of 
individuals with "desirable traits" and discouraging the reproduction of 
those with "undesirable traits." His work also led him to focus on the 
hereditary characteristics of certain characteristics: "genius," 
"talent," or physical characteristics. But for Galton, eugenics was not 
only a descriptive science; it was also a science that prescribed 
methods for its social implementation. Questions relating to the control 
of marriages played an important role in his reflections. Galton 
advocated incentives to encourage marriages between "fit people" and 
restrictions to discourage marriages between "unfit people." The issue 
of migration control was also addressed; some, viewed as "beneficial" 
from a eugenicist perspective, would be encouraged while others would be 
limited or even prohibited.

Francis Galton (1822-1911), an explorer, geographer, meteorologist, and 
biometrician known for his work in statistics and psychometrics, coined 
the term eugenics and its modern definition in the late 19th century.
"Improving the human race"
While the appeal of eugenics-related issues to the far right is 
immediately apparent, liberal democracies were not immune to the 
implementation of these policies-quite the opposite, in fact. And from 
the early 20th century, several states, influenced by Galton's work, 
implemented eugenic policies. It was in the United States, a 
segregationist country where Jim Crow laws legally organized this 
discrimination, that these ideas first found fertile ground for their 
development. Several eugenics foundations were created: the Race 
Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1906, and the 
Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, in 1911. 
Supported by intellectuals and private funds, they contributed to the 
spread of eugenic ideas. In 1896, Connecticut passed a law prohibiting 
marriage to anyone "epileptic, imbecile, or unsound of mind," and 
several states followed suit. In 1907, the state of Indiana was the 
first to enact a sterilization law (overturned by the Indiana Supreme 
Court in 1921), and several states would follow suit.

Eugenics Exhibition at the Palace of Education and Social Economy in 
1915 in San Francisco, California.
The panels read: "Evidence of the Deterioration of the Race." 
Possibilities and Methods of Racial Improvement. Importance of Racial 
Hygiene or Eugenics," "Race Betterment: A Popular and Non-Sectarian 
Movement Aiming to Advance Knowledge Beneficial to Life," "Reminder: 
Improvement Means Biological Eating, Drinking, Working, Playing, and 
Sleeping."
UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library
Eugenics also appealed to many "scientists" and politicians in Europe: 
in England, Sweden-particularly at the initiative of the Social 
Democrats-and in Weimar Germany. But it was of course in the far-right 
regimes, Italian fascism and German Nazism, that eugenic ideas would 
find their way to development from the 1920s in two, a priori opposing, 
directions. On the Italian side, many European eugenic scientists 
publicly expressed their admiration for the Duce who, engaged in a 
nationalist pronatalist policy, leaned more towards a neo-Lamarckian 
pronatalist eugenics which postulated that "quantity is necessary to 
have quality", with the aim of building the "New Man", fascist of 
course. The main architect of this thought was the statistician and 
demographer Corrado Gini, signatory in April 1925 of the Manifesto degli 
intellettuali fascisti (Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals) and member 
of the committee of eighteen "wise men" responsible for drafting the 
Fascist Constitution. He justified his commitment to fascism in an 
article published in 1927 in a US journal: The Scientific Basis of 
Fascism. The "Latin eugenics" established by the fascist regime was 
built on a Latinity that would oppose it to "Nordic eugenics", a 
"positive eugenics" based on a strong demographic and health measures, 
rather than a "negative eugenics" promoting in particular female 
sterilizations (and in lesser cases vasectomies). Although it claimed to 
be non-racist, the racialist logic of eugenics gradually imposed itself, 
resulting in two series of laws and decrees: in 1937 with the ban on 
marriage and cohabitation between Italian men and women and "subjects of 
African colonies", then in 1938 with the promulgation of a first series 
of decrees, notably that on the "defense of race in fascist schools". 
Finally, following Benito Mussolini's proclamation from the balcony of 
Trieste City Hall on September 18, 1938, a law was passed, based on a 
Racial Manifesto, stating that "the Jews present in Italy since ancient 
times do not fall under the 'Italian race' and no longer officially 
belong to the Italian people."

A Pillar of Nazi Thought
The Nazi regime, for its part, implemented various eugenic measures from 
the very beginning of its seizure of power; eugenics can be considered 
one of the pillars of Nazi "thought." Even before the Nuremberg Laws 
(1935), the Nazi regime promulgated in July 1933 a law known as the 
"Prevention of Hereditary Diseases of Offspring," which was in fact a 
law of compulsory eugenic sterilization for people with one of the nine 
diseases legally considered hereditary or congenital. These mutilation 
measures, then called "negative eugenics," were supplemented by even 
more direct measures of euthanasia and murder (by gassing, malnutrition, 
etc.) of children and then disabled adults, now grouped under the name 
of Action T4, which began in 1938 and continued until the end of the 
Nazi regime in 1945. And always under the "scientific" guise of 
promoting "racial hygiene." Finally, the policies of imprisonment and 
murder of undesirables: communists, anarchists, homosexuals, Gypsies, 
Jews, and Jewesses, and the policy of exterminating European Jews, 
Gypsies, and Slavic populations within the territory of the Reich and, 
more generally, throughout Europe, were part of a eugenicist ethos, 
since the aim was once again to eliminate undesirables, to "cleanse 
society," and to "purify the territory."

Nurse in a Lebensborn facility, an association run by the Nazi 
government and the SS, with the aim of "accelerating the creation and 
development of a perfectly pure Aryan race."
Bundesarchiv, Bild
Forced Sterilizations
While following the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, biological racism 
was no longer defended, at least publicly, except by the most crass 
fringes of the far right, the same was not true of eugenics, which 
continued to be legally practiced throughout the 20th century in several 
Western democracies, particularly in Scandinavian countries. In France, 
the forced sterilization of people with disabilities-and especially 
adolescent girls and young women-long remained a practice as widespread 
as it was taboo. But what about the far right today? While the platforms 
of the RN and Reconquête! do not directly address eugenics, some of 
their flagship measures are part of eugenicist, nationalist, and 
racialist thinking.

The RN today, like the FN in the past, makes "national preference" a key 
measure of its platform, particularly in terms of family policy. The 
link is very clearly established in the presentation of the RN's "family 
project" published during the last presidential election: "Family policy 
also aims to enable French people to start families and, thus, to reward 
the service provided by French families, as a tool for consolidating 
France." During the 2022 presidential campaign, candidate Marine Le Pen 
proposed "doubling the family support allowance (ASF) for French single 
parents" and "reserving family benefits for households where at least 
one parent is French." During the 2024 legislative elections, this 
measure was repeated with a promise to "reserve social assistance for 
French people." These measures were also accompanied by promises of 
savings, a "gain" of "15.6 billion during the five-year term." A barely 
distorted way of repeating a racist mantra that claims that foreigners 
cost the nation and "true French people."

As for Reconquête!, as is often the case, the bias seems to be moving 
even further to the right. In his Villepinte speech, Éric Zemmour 
promised, if elected, to "abolish the right to family reunification and 
drastically reduce family immigration." While, like the RN, several of 
the far-right candidate's measures are in line with national preference, 
he is more explicit in his remarks, since it is about "supporting 
families and encouraging the birth rate," understood as "French" or 
"native," thus this measure aims to "favor families in rural areas with 
a birth grant of 10,000 euros, awarded to French families." For the 
Reconquête! candidate, rurality is necessarily white, French, and 
"native." Finally, a measure unanimously supported by the far right and 
a large part of the right: the elimination of State Medical Aid (AME), 
notably put forward by Zemmour during the 2022 presidential election. 
Passed by the Senate as part of the Immigration Law, this measure is 
part of an undeniable racist and eugenicist logic... and an aberration 
from a medical point of view.

The Ideological Origin of the "Great Replacement"
Finally, the demographic issue is today at the heart of the racist 
concerns of the far right. To counter their delusion of the "Great 
Replacement," the birth rate has become a key issue on their political 
agenda. In September 2021, the not-yet-candidate Éric Zemmour met with 
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and participated, along with 
Marion Maréchal, in a conference on demography. He then described 
demography to the far-right media Breizh info as "one of the fundamental 
elements of the civilizational struggle between East and West." This 
obsession with the perpetuation of a pure "white race" is the quest of 
far-right activists who organize themselves in Identity Zones to Defend 
(ZID), often small rural villages where ecofascist activists seek to 
"grab and protect" the rare territories where "native populations" might 
still live, and fight against "the hordes of migrants" fleeing other 
continents that have become inhospitable. Others, like the white 
supremacist YouTuber Daniel Conversano, have preferred exile in Romania 
in order to create white communities in Eastern Europe. This same 
obsession with natalism and eugenics is also found within the tradwife 
community (an archetype of the housewife constructed from a 
representation of the American housewife of the 1950s), particularly in 
the United States, where they promote the White Baby Challenge (a 
challenge to bring as many white babies into the world as possible) to 
"regenerate" the threatened white race, if not disappear.

Eugenics, popularized nearly 150 years ago by Francis Galton, is still a 
very strong idea today. The COVID crisis has demonstrated the porosity 
of eugenicist reflexes, including among social movement activists. It is 
infusing political discourse and practices, particularly on the far 
right. While from the outset its proponents have promoted a "positive 
eugenics" approach, one of incentives (which has also appealed to some 
in socialist and even sometimes libertarian circles), it ultimately 
remains embedded in a racialist vision of society. National preference 
in matters of family allowances or demographics is the first step in an 
ethnoracialist policy. Faced with the imminent announcement in France of 
a future inversion of demographic trends (when the number of deaths will 
exceed the number of births), there is a fear that this "fear of 
decline" fueled by the far right will encourage the expression of 
nationalist eugenic measures. In the face of this, we must propose 
alternatives that are united, emancipatory, and inclusive.

David (friend of AL)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Eugenisme-Genealogie-d-une-obsession-de-l-extreme-droite
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