Welcome to the terrifying world of eugenics… a shadowy belief that the world’s population needs to be culled and ‘undesirables’ should be STERILISED
For centuries twisted scientists have been trying to create a master race - and to make that a reality, they believed millions would have to die, or be prevented from contributing to the gene pool
WHAT does a perfect world look like to you? People of all races and backgrounds living and working together in harmony? Or a world where everyone is perfect... and looks just like you?
For centuries twisted scientists have been obsessed with ridding the world of people they believe to be 'undesirable'.
Whether it's be the belief that disabled people should be killed at birth, or that poor people should be sterilised, the controversial belief in eugenics comes in many different forms.
Just recently an old blog by Tory MP Ben Bradley revealed he once claimed that people on low income families should be sterilised to stop them milking the state.
The 28-year-old wrote: "It’s horrendous that there are families out there that can make vastly more than the average wage, (or in some cases more than a bloody good wage) just because they have 10 kids.
"Sorry but how many children you have is a choice; if you can’t afford them, stop having them! Vasectomies are free."
He has since apologised for the inflammatory comments.
However, such ideas are nothing new, and can be traced back to Victorian times.
Eugenics' origins lie in 1883, when the term was first used by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin.
While Darwin was famed for his 'Theory of Evolution', Galton was keen to bolster the human race by giving natural selection a helping hand - something that horrified his cousin.
Eugenics was his way of referring to creating a future human race who were 'well born'.
He believed that humanity could secure its future by selectively breeding individual people with "desired traits" to create a society of intelligent people.
Galton studied the British upper class and concluded that their superior genetic make up was the reason that they held such wealth and status - it was nothing to do with their education or living conditions.
The 'science' was soon regarded as an academic discipline, and it began being part of the curriculum at universities in Europe and in America.
There were international conferences, and national societies set up to promote Galton's ideas, and to promote 'human heredity'.
In 1906, the Heredity Commission was set up in the US to "investigate all proper means" to "better the race".
The team of scientists were charged with increasing "families of good blood" and discourage "vicious elements in the cross-bred American civilization".
Another area of their remit was to look in to if "a new species of human being could be consciously evolved".
While selective breeding never happened in Britain, in the US, 33 separate states passed legislation that allowed enforced sterilisation in a bid to stop "undesirable" traits - and people with disabilities, mental illness, or blindness were often stopped from having families, as were promiscuous women, alcoholics, and the poor.
A scandal that continues to affect America today is that many black women had their tubes tied in secret operations when they were admitted to hospital for other reasons.
The brakes were firmly put on the eugenics movement after Hitler's rise to power.
He had written about his desire to use its principles to sterilise "defectives" in his 1925 book Meine Kampf - and when he took charge of Germany he put his ideas in to action.
Nazi doctor Josef Mengele carried out sick experiments on twins who arrived at Auschwitz to be gassed, eager to unlock their genetic secrets so that they could be applied to creating a master Aryan race.
After the end of World War 2, "imposing measures intended to prevent births within [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group" was reclassified as genocide, with EU legislation also stating "the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons."
However, involuntary sterilisations still happen, with 2,000 recorded in Peru between 1990 and 2000, and Californian prisons sterilising 144 inmates - a third of which didn't consent.
The aftershocks of Hitler's interest in eugenics are still felt across the world today.
Many white nationalist groups passionately believe that they must create a 'pure master race' - and some going one step further to argue that whites should have their own country, and other races their own.
And while selective breeding seems like an impossible idea in today's cosmopolitan world, conspiracy theorists are still convinced that vaccines, chemicals sprayed in to the sky in the form of chemtrails, and fluoride added to our water supplies are systematically making vulnerable and poorer people sicker, weaker... and more infertile.
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