good post Scorpio and really interesting link - thanks for that
I think the conclusion there sums it up well if i could quote a bit for emphasis
Darwin also said;
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."
He also thought the likes us racially inferior to the english;
"Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand
Celts – and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would
be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the
intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In
the eternal “struggle for existence”, it would be the inferior and less
favoured race that had prevailed – and prevailed by virtue not of its
good qualities but of its faults."
EDIT: in fact in context, it seems to be irish rather than scottish celts he considers inferior;
"The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman, fed on potatoes, living in a pig-stye, doting on a superstition, multiplies like rabbits or ephemera; – the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him" - eugenics 101 that is. Also, ironically, a forecast in a way, of the fate of many of his ardent admirers in our own day and age.
the greeks meanwhile, have been racially degraded by, among other things, extreme sensuality, are now 'corrupt to the very core' and thus are not responsible for the 'superiority' of western european despite their contribution to the ancient world.
still, he was of his times; just like those who persecuted Galileo.
see chapter 5 of said tome for a general treatise on what has become known as social darwinism and also a rationale for eugenics.
As for the 'conclusion' you view favourably, it's far too reductionist.
Certainly historical anti-judaism in Christian and Pagan europe helped provide the context for the holocaust, but it's unique dynamic was supplied by the scientific racism and eugenics which had proceeded from darwin's insights to dominate liberal and socialist thinking until the nazi's mayhem discredited it.
It's only with scientific racism that you need to exterminate the filthy genes that contaminate your stock; this is why the nazi's extermination plan was unique; after millenia of hatred of the jews based on
religion, there's was a hatred of jews based on
biology. so to did these principles extend to purging other contaminants of the gene pool such as the disabled.
the latter principle is of course partially resurrected today, but done in utero to protect our sensibilities. Eugenics will be back big time this century.
