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From: waters@dover.uucp (Mike Waters)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,news.misc,news.groups
Subject: Re: A Historical Point about Anti-Semitism
Message-ID: <553@dover.uucp>
Date: 28 Nov 88 16:09:54 GMT
References: <17452@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: waters@dover.UUCP (Mike Waters)
Organization: Motorola CAD Mesa, AZ {dover}
Lines: 34

In article <17452@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> skyler@violet.berkeley.edu () writes:
>An interesting point, but not very well-founded.  Nazis believed
>they had to remove certain kinds of dangerous genes from the gene
>polls--genes which were supposedly associated with criminality.
>Based on Spencer, Lombroso, and other "Darwinists" (their reading
>of Darwin was, I would argue, questionable) they argued that crime
>resulted from atavism.  Negroes, Jews, Gypsies, and other carried
>these atavistic genes.  Hence, the way to wipe out crime was to wipe
>out those genes.

The scary thing is that their "pseudo logic" sounds so reasonable if you
don't carry it through to its logical conclusions. Dachau Concentrations
Camp Memorial has a superb display of the philosophical basis of Naziism,
(much of it with English translations). Combined with an object lesson
on the results it is downright scary. 

Unfortunately if you listen closely to many politicians and TV
evangelists you hear far too much of the same thing, but this isn't
alt.politics ....
>
>I think that the history of racism is fascinating--and that people
>should be well aware of it.  _The MIsmeasure of Man_ is good, but
>about the only recent work on Lombroso--otherwise you have to read
>the primaries.  

I agree, too many people think of Nazis as the stupid caricatures in
"Hogan's Heros" or something similar. They were (and still ARE!) neither
stupid nor extinct unfortunately.

-- 
Mike Waters                 (for your EDIFication)
Motorola SMART CAD Group - EDIF (ANSI/EIA std. 548) support
Mesa, AZ   ...!sun!sunburn!dover!waters
          OR   moto@cad.Berkley.EDU