On why linking Darwin to Hitler matters to Darwinists.

Why My Critics Care So Much About the Darwin-Hitler Connection

Richard Weikart

published my earlier historical works, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004) and Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. Hardly anyone, however, bothered to engage the arguments, except for Robert Richards at the University of Chicago, whose critique of my position is riddled with errors, not only of interpretation, but also of basic facts.

As I demonstrate in my newly released book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, there is a fundamental tension between many Darwinists' claim that morality is an evolved trait -- thus having no objective reality -- and their moral indignation toward Hitler (and toward me for explaining how Darwinism informed Hitler's ideology).

To be sure, I have encountered some true believers in Darwinism who have told me that their Darwinian-inspired moral relativism leads them to the conclusion that Hitler was neither right nor wrong. I once held a conversation with a philosophy graduate student who defended moral relativism on Darwinian grounds. After I pressed him to see if he was willing to be relativistic about Hitler's atrocities, he uttered the stunning words, "Hitler was OK."

Maybe you think this student was just off his rocker. However, the leading evolutionary biologist and world famous atheist Richard Dawkins took a similar position in an interview, where he was being questioned about his moral relativism. Dawkins asked, "What's to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn't right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question." If this is a tough moral question for Dawkins, he should stop pontificating about how religions are "the root of all evil," especially since he doesn't believe that evil actually exists!

Most Darwinists, however, including those who believe in the evolution of morality, do not have consciences as dead as Dawkins, so they are genuinely outraged by the historical connections between Darwin and Hitler. They consider Hitler truly evil, and they don't want their positive image of Darwin tarnished by any association with this evil man.

However, why do they care about this at all? If they believe, as many do, that morality is simply "an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes," as evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson and philosopher Michael Ruse famously put it, then what makes the illusions of some people superior to Hitler's illusions? Why do everything possible -- even denying obvious historical facts -- to obscure the historical linkages between Darwin and Hitler? I have a hunch that at some level they recognize that their evolutionary account of morality is inconsistent with reality.

In The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, I expose many of the inconsistencies within secular philosophies, such as Darwinism, materialism, positivism, and many others.

Dr. Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

On the alt-right and the monkey on Darwinism's back

Evolution and the Alt-Right

David Klinghoffer 

you know that a mostly online splinter called the "alternative right" or "alt-right" is currently a subject of bitter and voluminous indignation. At The Federalist today, Cathy Young has an interesting analysis ("You Can't Whitewash the Alt-Right's Bigotry"), taking issue with two other journalists at Breitbart who tried to explain the phenomenon in a sympathetic, even admiring manner.

There is great worry about the conservative brand image, and the alt-right figures prominently in that. Cathy Young's piece, you'll notice, has some intriguing references to evolution, "human biodiversity," "race-related genetic cognitive and behavioral differences," and related subjects. On that, she and other mainstream conservatives could have said much more. Though this has escaped focused attention, the alternative right draws heavily on themes of evolution-based racism. And that is significant.

Miss Young notes "retired California State University-Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, who has some peculiar theories about Jews: namely, that Judaism is an 'evolutionary strategy' by which Jews seek dominance...It's 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' dressed up as evolutionary psychology."

Another writer cited by Young raises eugenic, or rather dysgenic, concerns:

"The Pro-Life Temptation" by Aylmer Fisher -- presumably a pseudonym stolen from the innocent British geneticist -- which cautions the alt-right against adopting an anti-abortion stance in knee-jerk opposition to liberals. The pro-life position is 'dysgenic,' since it encourages breeding by 'the least intelligent and responsible' women.

If you think you know where this is going, you're right. Fisher argues that, firstly, the pro-life position is "dysgenic," since it encourages breeding by "the least intelligent and responsible" women who are most likely to have abortions and who are "disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and poor."

Taken from the Radix Journal (more on it in a moment), that's ugly stuff and Miss Young does a service in pointing it out. In her article, our old nemesis John Derbyshire, scrubbed from National Review, makes an appearance, along with the alt-right "movement's online hubs such as Richard Spencer's AlternativeRight.com and Steve Sailer's VDARE." (Actually VDARE is edited by Peter Brimelow, not Steve Sailer, who has his own blog at another alt-right hotspot, The Unz Review. Once upon a time, I enjoyed editing them both as writers for National Review.)

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We've reported here in the past on the evolutionary preoccupations of Derbyshire and another "race-realist" outlet, Jared Taylor's American Renaissance. But not till reading Cathy Young's post did I recognize that the mother lode of pseudo-conservative, pseudo-scientific racism is Richard Spencer's AlternativeRight.com, which as she points out has been rebranded as Radix Journal, "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States, and around the world."

Here, the vein of evolutionary thinking is particularly rich. We read, "Darwinian Evolution Revolutionized the Natural Sciences. The Social Sciences Have Been Immune for Too Long." In "What Is Identitarian Religion?," writer "Alfred W. Clark" tells of a "long-standing 'Trad Catholic' I know [who] told me recently that he had left the Church. [H]is 'conservative' priest had become obsessed with [among other things]...denouncing evolution because it's 'racist'." More:

And what of identitarian atheists and agnostics? Can they co-exist with identitarian religion? Since identitarian religion is not at odds with nature, and thus not at odds with evolutionary science, it does not threaten secular knowledge but offers itself as an additional societal glue.

Another writer wonders why few women seem enthusiastic about "race-realism":

The evolutionary basis for this doesn't seem too hard to figure out. As a prehistoric man, you have to decide the best way to find food and kill the members of the other tribe....

There is sympathy for eugenics, and much fretting about the "dysgenic menace." A writer notes an "antisocial Darwinism" where "Society favors the broken at the expense of the fixed. The result isn't so much that the fixed are crushed, but that the broken proliferate and become permanent dependents of the state." 

Richard Spencer shares his "Foreword to a new annotated edition of [racial eugenicist] Madison Grant's Conquest of a Continent [1933]," explaining that "Darwinism offers a compelling and rational justification for Whites to act on behalf of their ancestors and progeny and feel a shared since of destiny with their extended kin group."

Again, Alfred W. Clark asks, "What Is the #Altright?" He explains: 

Michael Brendan Dougherty recently called the alt-right "race obsessed". A better phrase might be: race realists. Most alt-righters actually take Darwinism seriously. (If you are at a loss of what "taking Darwinism seriously" means, you might want to read this book.) Young alt-righters are comfortable with modern science which shows that human biodiversity is a facet of life. The fact that so many today in Conservatism Inc. want either to ignore or deny human biodiversity, shows how untethered from reality modern conservatism has become. 

And much more along these lines. 

The Right has periodically sought to purge itself of tendencies like this, and it's engaged in such a purge right now. I prefer understanding to demonizing. Darwinian "conservatives" operate with a particular picture in mind of what a human being is -- a very different picture from the one posited by the Judeo-Christian tradition on which conservatism has drawn in the past. It's either man the animal or man in the image of an intelligent designer. Those are the choices.

From such a stark dichotomy, everything else is downstream. Recognizing as much would be a first step to restoring the health of a fractured and troubled movement.