A classic eugenics image


A fascinating bit of historical propaganda.

The message is about “The danger of increasing procreation of inferiors” and shows how the good German family on the left, with their two children, will be overwhelmed by the crude nose-picking progeny of those others. How awful! Clearly the people on the right must be culled. We know how that turned out.

We’ve outgrown all that, right? Only alt-right neo-Nazi scum are still peddling that kind of nonsense.

You know, like @WhiteHouse.

I just want to say that it is true that some people will have larger families than other people, but it doesn’t matter — all those children are still people, still have the same potential, and it is the responsibility of the nation to care for them all and give them all the opportunity to use that potential.

(via Kieran Healy)

Comments

  1. says

    The message is about “The danger of increasing procreation of inferiors” and shows how the good German family on the left, with their two children, will be overwhelmed by the crude nose-picking progeny of those others.

    Hmm… isn’t this the argument used in “Idiocracy?”

  2. rayceeya says

    First thought: Isn’t that the intro scene to “Idiocracy”?

    Second thought: This is another racist POS who is pissing his bed over the “Browning of America”.

    Zeroth thought: No one has ever given me sufficient reason to worry (much less piss the bed) over the “Browning of America”

    P.S. The idiots in “Idiocracy” were all white if I remember correctly.

  3. ck, the Irate Lump says

    They’re repeating “Great Replacement” (formerly branded White Genocide) ideas now? Remind me again why we’re not supposed to call Trump a white supremacist…

  4. cartomancer says

    Well, there was this German guy who migrated to America about a century ago. Two generations down the line and one of his descendants has made the place thoroughly unpleasant to live in.

  5. chigau (違う) says

    I saw Idiocracy once. I found it mildly amusing.
    Not being a biologist, I just ignored the bad biology.
    .
    To refresh my memory on The Marching Morons,
    I went to Project Gutenberg.
    This is an exerpt from the opening scene

    The buyer from Marshall Fields was turning over a black-glazed one liter carafe, nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. “This is real pretty,” he told Hawkins and his own secretary, Gomez-Laplace. “This has got lots of what ya call real est’etic principles. Yeah, it is real pretty.”
    “How much?” the secretary asked the potter.
    “Seven-fifty each in dozen lots,” said Hawkins. “I ran up fifteen dozen last month.”
    “They are real est’etic,” repeated the buyer from Fields. “I will take them all.”

    Not condoning the racism and bad science in the story, but that buyer from Fields is eerily familiar.

  6. vucodlak says

    But they’re not the same at all. The original makes the descendants of the inferior races look suspiciously human, if a little demonic, while the modern version is carefully sanitized. See- the immigrants on the new chart hardly look people at all! And if they aren’t people, then it’s not mass murder the White House is proposing, it’s more like… bleaching a counter to kill all the germs.

    Isn’t that so much better? What reasonable person could be against something so innocuous, so beneficial, so… completely necessary?

    It was a mistake, allowing the Nazis in the US to get away with their crimes after WWII. That would have been the ideal time to crack down on them and the other white supremacists, but we decided to embrace their sort instead. It’s like we discovered a cancer in our body and, instead of grabbing a scalpel and cutting it out, we just gave it a less upsetting name and started feeding the damn thing.

    Now it’s everywhere.

  7. Artor says

    Gosh, it’s just horrible that the US might gain more citizens with their skills and productivity to add to our economy! How ever will we cope?!? Oh noes!!!

  8. lotharloo says

    I also don’t like “Idiocracy” that much but I have to defend it a little bit: The movie was supposed to be a fun brainless comedy with pieces of bad science thrown in there to make excuse for the plot and setting. The problem was that people who watched it took it too seriously, way too seriously and bought the bad sciency parts. I think the problem was that the bad science somewhat resonated with their internal biases. Afterall, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that in 500 years humans can become complete idiots just by slight differences in procreation in different social/economical groups.

    It is the same basic problem I have with “The Matrix”. It is fine as a fun brainless action movie but I hate it when people pretend it is a “deeply philosophical movie”. Same with “Idiocracy”. Just enjoy it as a brainless comedy.

  9. dhabecker says

    You say that some people having larger families doesn’t matter. Really? It is “the responsibility of the nation to care for them all”. Really? No matter how many?
    There is a limit to how many people this country and this world can absorb, regardless of their color or ethnicity. Compassion and empathy we have in abundance, but it’s not feeding those starving and terrified faces that the multiplying masses of all colors bring forth.
    Recognize the problem. We can love everyone, but having billions around the world fighting for existence and millions more scratching at our border scares the shit out of people, and doesn’t give me confidence for our future. The world is fucking itself to death and can’t be ignored.
    Happy Holidays!

  10. vucodlak says

    @ dhabecker, #12

    Compassion and empathy we have in abundance

    Citation needed.

    Recognize the problem. We can love everyone, but having billions around the world fighting for existence and millions more scratching at our border scares the shit out of people, and doesn’t give me confidence for our future. The world is fucking itself to death and can’t be ignored.

    I’m not seeing anybody here saying “let’s do nothing.” Education and equality for women are the way to go, along with improving access to healthcare for everyone. Together, these things they level out the birthrate right quick.

    What we don’t do is… pretty much anything the Nazis think is great idea.

  11. says

    dhabecker

    You say that some people having larger families doesn’t matter. Really?

    That word “some” is right in there.
    Because most people don’t. Many people, when given options, don’t have any offspring at all.
    So if you’re totes worried about expanding populations, stop using terms like “the planet is fucking itself to death” which, in case you didn’t know, is a racist dogwhistle that blames the problems of impoverished nations on their inhabitants “animal sexuality” and do something that gives women and with uteri education, sex ed and contraception.
    Because we can really deal with those few who enjoy bearing and raising 8 kids or so.

  12. rietpluim says

    The solution is easy for the people on the left. Marry one person from the right and all their offspring will be yours.

  13. rietpluim says

    OT: Did you see Liz Plank’s Twitter video with Trump apologizing to women? It’s brilliant!

  14. KG says

    I’m not sure whether it’s amazing, or completely unsurprising, that global population scaremongers like dhabecker@12 clearly know fuck-all (pun intended) about demographic trends in the real world. The global population growth rate peaked around 1960 at about 2.3% per year. It has been almost monotonically decreasing ever since, and is now about 1.2%. Even the annual absolute increase (births minus deaths in a year) has fallen from its 1990s peak. Almost every country has seen, and most continue to see, a fall in the fertility rate (number of children per woman). We know what to do to ensure that this continues in those countries (mostly poor, mostly in Africa) where this rate is still well above replacement level: improve the education and status of women, improve the availability of health care including contraception and abortion, reduce poverty. Fortunately, these are all good things to do in themselves. Rapid urbanisation (which we couldn’t stop even if we wanted to) will also contribute. I recommend Danny Dorling’s Population Ten Billion? for an expert view on how the world can both ensure the population doesn’t grow much beyond that, and give ten billion people a decent life. Of course there are huge obstacles to meeting those goals, but they are political, and centred on the greed and selfishness of capitalist elites, not the feckless fucking of the masses.

  15. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    cartomancer @6,

    Not to mention the Scottish woman who bore him. As a descendant (mostly) of Scottish and German immigrants, I may have to self-deport.

  16. says

    Not to mention WH one doesn’t even make sense.
    So we start with one immigrant, let’s be stereotypical and call him José. He migrates to the USA. After some time, his wife María and their two children follow, which makes the first two lines of the image.
    And now what? Which three persons follow María to the US? Or baby Juanita?
    The only way this makes sense is if you go straight back to the Nazi image: one day baby Juanita may have kids, as well as her brother. And those kids will not be white.
    “White ladies need to make more babies” is, btw, another slogan of the current regime and friends.

  17. dhabecker says

    Scaremonger here again. Not knowing fuck-all is a common problem with our species. I’m glad to know all of our problems have been solved because someone wrote a book about how it can be solved. And population growth is taking care of itself; hooray!
    As a pre-boomer, I’ve witnessed the earth’s population near triple, and the number of poor grow even larger, so it’s a little hard to grasp the fact that everything is under control and taking care of itself; if only we can educate; oh, never mind, #18 now says we have huge obstacles. But don’t be concerned because they are political, and I suppose, therefore, easy to fix.
    Now all we have to worry about is where to put 160 million Bangladeshi’s when the sea covers their country. Maybe some brilliant person who knows fuck-all has written a book, thus solving the problem.

  18. Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?! says

    I guess I should be deported. After all, my great-grandfather Hieronymous Czernyestski emigrated from Poland. Twice (once after the first Russian revolution (1905), then, after returning to an independent Poland, he came back in 1922). So I am one of those third generation subhumans.

    Of course, I also have ancestors who came to the colonies in the 1600s. And 1700s. And 1800s.

    ======

    dhabecker:

    We know the answer. Education. Not just here (where we are trying to eliminate it (for the non-rich at least)), but everywhere. Education means better use of resources, lower birth rates, lower crime, environmental consciousness, and a whole passel of things that will make the world better in all countries. We cannot build a wall and pretend that the rest of the world does not exist. That will guarantee everyone loses, not just the poor.

  19. dhabecker says

    “We” is you and me, kemo sabe, and anyone else who gives a shit.
    Education; I’m all in. Good stuff, that education. Everybody has one you know; or are we just talking about the book-lernin’ stuff. Some people spend their entire lives learning where the best stuff can be found in the dump. Most of us in the same situation would be dead in a week because of our ignorance.
    I don’t like walls, but I do lock my door at night.

  20. KG says

    dhabecker@22,

    It’s obvious that entire comment is an attempt to distract from the facts that (a) you were indeed ignorant about global demographic trends, and (b) you were laying the blame for the world’s problems on “the multiplying masses of all colours”* rather than the greedy elites who are primarily to blame.

    As a pre-boomer, I’ve witnessed the earth’s population near triple, and the number of poor grow even larger, so it’s a little hard to grasp the fact that everything is under control and taking care of itself

    Which of course I didn’t say, as you go on to admit.

    someone wrote a book about how it can be solved

    Yup – one of those so-called “experts” who have actually spent decades studying the issues that you know all about just because of how old you are, and ended up a “perfesser” at one of those snooty colleges. Fuck it, he even seems to be a librul, or worse.

    *I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here, and assume that your ignorance of demography extends to the fact that most of the “multiplying” (or “population increase” as those egghead demographers call it) is currently occurring in predominantly black or brown populations, while in many predominantly white populations, fertility has fallen below replacement level. Because if you did actually know that, the phrase “of all colours” would be a pretty obvious attempt to camoflage that your real concern is about people of the wrong colours becoming more numerous.

  21. Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?! says

    dhabecker @25:

    “We” is you and me, kemo sabe, and anyone else who gives a shit.

    Ah, we have yet another layer of racism. This time aimed at the people who were here before my ancestors came over from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and Russia and took the land away from them.

    I do “give[s] a shit.” I give a shit about not just the country in which I happen to have been born, but about the world.

  22. chris61 says

    Chain migration isn’t about the size of families it’s about sponsoring extended family members (siblings and parents). To use
    Giliell’s example: Jose gets a green card. He sponsors Maria and their two children who also get green cards. Jose and Maria then sponsor her brother and his sister who get green cards, they sponsor their spouses and children and so on. But chain migration isn’t really a thing in the USA because of the wait times (measured in years) involved in sponsoring anyone other than an immediate family member (spouse and/or minor children). Even sponsoring immediate family members can take years (and $$).

  23. dhabecker says

    Calling me a racist doesn’t solve anything. I use the term ‘kemo sabe’ as meaning friend, not as a derogatory term; and you know it.
    Seeing someone as racist for trying to explore a problem that you assume must be about people of color, is in itself racist. Tell me overpopulation is not a problem because most of the world is non-white. Doesn’t make sense.
    Oh; and why should anyone care where ancestors came from? We’re all from the same source.
    Understood the image is of chain migration, but my original comment concerned PZ’s last sentence.

  24. says

    “Kemosabe” is a term that is loaded with a lot of condescending, patronizing Heroic White Man and faithful brown servant bullshit.

    Some of you don’t seem to get that whether it’s by “outbreeding us” or “chain migration”, it’s all the same thing. There is an “us” who are the true and rightful inhabitants of this land, and we’re supposed to be afraid that others will outnumber us. I’m more worried about redneck assholes outnumbering open-minded progressive people than their terrors of furriners.

  25. chigau (違う) says

    I use the term ‘kemo sabe’ as meaning friend, not as a derogatory term; and you know it.
    How would I know it? I don’t speak demented fuckwit.

  26. lumipuna says

    Yeah, I guess most Racist-Americans wouldn’t really care what chain migration is about, as long as it’s seen as resulting in an exponentially growing “immigrant” population.

  27. vucodlak says

    @ dhabecker, #31

    Even if we ignore the racist aspect (which we shouldn’t) of “OMG those people are having too many babies,” there’s still the fact that you’re demanding a solution when several people in this thread have already shared pretty much the only decent one. So the only conclusion I can come to is that you find that solution unacceptable.

    What, then, do you suggest? Do we forcibly sterilize people? Do we destroy food supplies in nations which we judge to be too populous? Do we set a hard limit on population and just start killing people until the numbers are acceptable?

  28. dhabecker says

    Sorry PZ, I won’t bite. Think what you want. I saw Tonto (as in the TV show, for all you youngsters) as an equal and still do. At the time we called each other kemo sabe as meaning good friend. I guess I’ll have to get with the times and see it as hateful; too bad.
    It’s not about being outnumbered in terms of us and them, it’s about being able to care for those in need, which is huge. I hurt seeing the pictures of poor, hungry, mistreated children around the world, but most of all, in this country. And the numbers grow, albeit at a slower rate. Blame it on the rich, or Trump or whoever, the problem is there and is not getting better. That anyone would express that frustration should not be surprising or condemned.
    I am far from being what has been assumed, so maybe a little self reflection on some of the biases I see in these comments is in order. Know your enemy; it’s not me.

  29. vucodlak says

    @ dhabecker, #37

    Those “poor, hungry, mistreated children” are not poor, hungry, and mistreated because the resources don’t exist to prevent them from being any of those things. They are poor, hungry, and mistreated because the greedbags with all the power would rather see a billion children suffer and starve than part with the tiniest fraction of their wealth.

    You really want to help those children? Start thinking about how to separate the obscenely rich from the resources they hoard instead of how to further punish the poor for their rotten luck.

  30. chigau (違う) says

    maybe a little self reflection on some of the biases I see in these comments is in order
    spoing

  31. KG says

    dhabecker@37

    Seeing someone as racist for trying to explore a problem that you assume must be about people of color, is in itself racist.

    Nope. It might be wrong, or unfair (although in this case I’m increasingly sure it’s not), but it’s most certainly not racist, because seeing someone as racist, even mistakenly, doesn’t reinforce racial inequalities, unless it’s being knowingly aimed at someone on the wrong end of such inequalities in a bullshit accusation of “reverse racism”. And “The world is fucking itself to death and can’t be ignored.” is not “trying to explore a problem”, it’s spewing offensive and ignorant garbage.

    Blame it on the rich, or Trump or whoever

    The point is, you blamed it on “the multiplying masses” – note the dehumanising terminology.

  32. dhabecker says

    Fighting ‘the good fight’ against the powerful, wealthy, greedy, pious, and ignorant is something I have done all my knowing life and still do. Would anyone like to compare scars? Kinda like Jaws. Oh shit, Jaws is probably a derogatory term for people with braces or ?.

  33. KG says

    dhabecker@43,

    Yeah… no. Claims of virtue which no-one can check are not of much use, and faux-concern about offensive terminology when you’ve demonstrated (at best) your insensitivity to such issues is even less impressive.

  34. vucodlak says

    @ dhabecker, #43

    You go on and on about this problem that absolutely must be resolved right now, strongly implying that no measure is off the table. You keep demanding to know what other people are doing about it, despite having received an answer several times. And now you’re bragging that you’ve done more than anyone here to solve this problem, and daring us to share stories of what makes us worthy to compare ourselves to you?

    Please. I don’t know you, and based on this conversation I don’t want to. I sure as hell don’t see any reason trust you. I suspect you’re just a fool, but just maybe you’re a fool with a more than casual interest in this. In any case, nothing about you makes me feel like sharing.

    Kindly stick it in your ear.

  35. dhabecker says

    #44@KG

    You can fact check; there is a record. Might be some insensitive words; or even if there isn’t, I’m sure you would find offense. Word twisters are a common breed, oh shit, insensitive again?

  36. vucodlak says

    @ dhabecker, #47

    I’m not all that particular about which of your orifices you stick your demands into, if that’s your problem this time around. Any, all, or none; dealer’s choice. Ear was just a polite suggestion. More possibilities: you could also toss them down an abandoned mineshaft, tie weights to them and drop them off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, stuff them into a rocket and fire it into the sun. All fine ideas. Really.

    I think the rest of my comment was pretty clear.

  37. KG says

    You can fact check; there is a record.- dhabecker@48

    Where? If you mean your commenting record here, that would not tell me whether your boast @43 is true. Outside that, I have no idea who you are, and unless you are very prominent, there will be no accessible record of all the wonderful things you have done in the struggle for social justice for me to check.

    (I tried putting “D.H.A. Becker” into a well-known search engine, in case dhabecker is using their initials and surname, and is a famous activist under that name. The top result was “Omega 3 Fatty Acids Help Heal Many Pet Disorders”, by a Dr. Karen Becker. Most of the other results also concerned docosahexaenoic acid.)