Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism by Richard Weikart

Author:Richard Weikart [Weikart, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637120118
Publisher: Discovery Institute
Published: 2022-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Objection: The Nazis Just Used Darwinism as a Propaganda Tool

IT’S UNDENIABLE, then, that the Nazis employed Darwinism widely in their propaganda efforts. But one might object that the Nazi use of Darwinism was purely a rhetorical strategy: That is, Hitler and other Nazis shrewdly co-opted a dominant scientific paradigm in the service of their insidious political goals. And if there had been another dominant scientific view of origins, they would have claimed that for their cause. There are multiple problems with this objection.

First, it seems to rest on the false assumption that the Nazi regime was primarily opportunistic. Most historians today recognize that Hitler and most leading Nazis were not primarily opportunists but, rather, fanatical ideologues. Sure, Hitler and his comrades were willing to lie to the public if it brought political advantage. However, those lies were always to try to advance their heartfelt ideology, not just to attain power for power’s sake.

Second, we have considerable evidence that Hitler and leading Nazis did not just use Darwinism for public consumption, but promoted it in private conversations. It was not just a superficial add-on to gain support for unrelated ideas and policies.

Third, and probably most importantly, this objection fails to recognize that leading Darwinian biologists and anthropologists were promoting scientific racism in the pre-Nazi period. The Nazis were influenced by this scientific racism. Darwinism was an essential part of Nazi racial ideology from the start. It is not like Nazis had their racist ideology in place, and then added Darwinism to the mix to gain more public support. Racism and Darwinism were closely aligned long before the Nazis developed their ideology.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.