{"id":166279,"date":"2018-02-24T07:53:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T07:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=166279"},"modified":"2018-02-28T05:43:45","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T05:43:45","slug":"demonizing-darwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=166279","title":{"rendered":"Demonizing Darwin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darkmoon — Feb 24, 2018<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Kevin MacDonald has been called a \u201ccoward\u201d and other insulting terms for refusing to debate Darwinism with a writer called Jonas Alexis. Why?<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

An Open Letter to Jonas Alexis,
\n<\/strong>Columnist on Veterans Today<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Kevin-MacDonald\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, I am not going to deal with someone who denies<\/strong>
\nthe scientific validity of Darwinism.\u201d <\/strong><\/strong>\u2014 Kevin MacDonald<\/em><\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. \n

    KEVIN MACDONALD ATTACKED FOR DEFENDING DARWIN<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    Dear Jonas Alexis,<\/h5>\n
    I have now had time to read and reflect on the anti-Darwin material you sent me in links last week. In an email to me, dated February 12, you appeared to seek my approval for an outspoken attack you had launched on Kevin MacDonald in November last year on the Veterans Today site.<\/h5>\n
    I refer, firstly, to your needlessly impolite article,\u00a0\u201cKevin MacDonald is intellectually dishonest\u201d. Here you made use of a header picture featuring Kevin MacDonald and David Duke. The picture carried a caption which plainly suggested that both MacDonald and Duke were \u201ccowards\u201d for refusing to enter into debate with you. \u201cCowards\u00a0die may times before their deaths,\u201d you quoted Shakespeare as saying, \u201cthe valiant never taste death but once.\u201d You were plainly applying the word \u201cCOWARDS\u201d to Kevin MacDonald and David Duke. It seemed to me that your assessment of their characters was unnecessarily harsh.<\/h5>\n

    DAVID DUKE\u00a0 and KEVIN MACDONALD<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \u201cCOWARDS\u00a0die may times before their deaths;\u00a0<\/strong>
    \nthe valiant never taste of death but once.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>
    \nJulius Caesar<\/em>, William Shakespeare<\/h3>\n
    I emphasze the word\u00a0\u201cCOWARDS<\/strong>\u201c, Jonas, by putting it in capital letters, because it would be clear to anyone with even a smidgen of intelligence what you are doing here. By juxtaposing the above picture with that nasty quote from Shakespeare you are suggesting in no uncertain terms that both men in the picture are \u201ccowards\u201d \u2014 for refusing to debate Darwin with you. If this is not a vicious personal attack, what is?<\/h5>\n
    (See the article here, with its picture and pointedly insulting caption<\/a><\/span>)<\/h5>\n
    This initial attack on Kevin MacDonald led to an even more hostile follow-up article in which you did your best to demonize Darwin and attack Kevin MacDonald for defending the great naturalist. Kevin declined to enter into dialogue with you, as was his right. For this imagined slight to your dignity, you renewed your attack on him with slightly more testosterone than was necessary. I refer now to Part 2 of your anti-MacDonald onslaught, your harshly entitled article \u201cKevin MacDonald\u2019s Abject Failure<\/a>.<\/span>\u201d<\/h5>\n
    Can you please tell me how Kevin MacDonald is a \u201ccoward\u201d\u2014as you slyly suggested in your quote from Shakespeare above\u2014for refusing to enter into dialogue with you? What emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology is willing to waste his time debating Darwin with an angry young man who has called him \u201can abject failure\u201d and accused him of being \u201cintellectually dishonest\u201d?<\/h5>\n
    Here is a typically abrasive statement of yours:<\/h5>\n
    \u201cDiscussing these issues with [David] Duke was almost like talking to an ATM machine. MacDonald knows better,\u00a0and I think the Alt-Right deserves a better class of intellectuals\u2026\u201d<\/h5>\n
    If I may say so without giving offense, I find it hard to understand how the author of The Culture of Critique<\/a><\/span> can be cast in the role of a pseudo-intellectual<\/em> by a columnist on Veterans Today!<\/h5>\n
    Here you go again, Jonas, having a bash at Darwin and working yourself up into a frightful froth about nothing:<\/h5>\n
    Darwinism is morally incoherent, philosophically repugnant, and existentially worthless\u2026. MacDonald is not even prepared to deal with blatant contradictions in his own system. More importantly \u2026 MacDonald doesn\u2019t even make an attempt to address the fundamentally (sic)<\/em> problem\u00a0responsibly, which is intellectually embarrassing\u2026.<\/h5>\n
    A correspondent sent me an email earlier saying that he sent MacDonald my critique of his views to see his reaction. To the correspondent\u2019s dismay, MacDonald responded by saying: \u2018Sorry, I am not going to deal with someone who denies the scientific validity of Darwinism.\u2019 \u2026. MacDonald\u2019s followers will almost certainly find these statements outrageous. Great!<\/h5>\n
    \u2014 Jonas Alexis, here<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
    I\u2019m sorry, Jonas, but I simply cannot understand what has gotten into you. For a man so benign and friendly at the best of times, you are displaying here an alarming deficit of charm.\u00a0Attacking Darwin is fine. No problem. You are not the first person to attack Darwin. Join Bishop Wilberforce! What is totally inappropriate, however, is not so much your attack on Darwin as your ad hominem onslaught on Kevin MacDonald for declining to enter into a debate with you. Is Kevin really a \u201ccoward\u201d for preferring to keep quiet and leaving you to your own devices? If he happens to dislike your tone and is not overly impressed with your knowledge of Darwin, surely he has a right to tactful silence?<\/h5>\n
    You are an enormously talented and likable man, Jonas, and I hold you in the highest respect, so I\u2019m hoping you will appreciate that all I have said so far is sincerely meant and for your benefit.<\/h5>\n
      \n
    1. \n

      DEMONIZING DARWIN\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      Like Kevin MacDonald, I have no wish to enter into debate with you on the subject of Darwin. Instead, I will append a few notes here for the benefit of other readers. These scattered observations may help to convince a few anti-Darwinists that it is time to give Darwin the respect he deserves.<\/h5>\n
      The sad truth is, no one has been more misunderstood than Darwin. Paradoxically, the\u00a0Darwinism of Darwin bears no resemblance to the Darwinism of his more dangerous disciples. He would have rejected their interpretations of Darwinism as distasteful. Richard Dawkins would have been an unwelcome guest at Darwin\u2019s dinner table at Downe House in Kent. He would have had to watch his manners. The chances of Dawkins coming to blows with some of the other dinner guests, and of giving grave offense to Darwin\u2019s beloved wife Emma, a devout Unitarian Christian, would have been pretty substantial. So Dawkins would have had to be on his best behavior in Darwin\u2019s house.<\/h5>\n
      The same applies in spades, a fortiori, to some of the more disreputable Darwinists preaching natural selection, or the Survival of the Fittest, without checks or balances. Social Darwinists like the mysterious Ragnar Redbeard, author of Might is Right<\/a><\/span>, would have been given the boot almost at once if he had somehow managed to gatecrash one of Darwin\u2019s dinner parties. So it is a mistake, a monstrous ideological error, to conflate the moderate and delicately nuanced Darwinism of Charles Darwin with the harsh, dog-eat-dog Darwinism of his more extreme and, in some cases, mentally deranged disciples.<\/h5>\n
      Unfortunately, this is what many superficial thinkers do nowadays. They think there is only one kind of Darwinism: the dog-eat-dog Darwinism of Ragnar Redbeard and his grotesque \u201cMight is Right\u201d camp followers.<\/h5>\n
      Homo homini lupus <\/em>\u2014 \u2018Man is a wolf to man\u2019 \u2014 this is the motto of the Social Darwinists. To some Darwinists who could accurately be described as \u201cextremists\u201d, to uppity \u201cbulldogs\u201d like Thomas Huxley, men in a state of nature were often likened to \u201ctigers\u201d. To them, nature was always \u201cred in tooth and claw.\u201d This bore no resemblance to the far gentler Darwinism of Charles Darwin who wrote<\/a><\/span>:<\/h5>\n
      \u201cWhen we reflect on this struggle [for existence], we can console ourselves with the full belief that the war in nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      Still less is the popular conception of Darwinism\u2014i.e., the feral \u201cred in tooth and claw\u201d Darwinism of Ragnar Redbeard and his ragbag of Might-is-Rightists\u2014anything like the religiously based, God-centered Darwinism of Asa Gray, the famous 19th-century botanist, Darwin\u2019s best friend in America. Nor is this distorted misconception of Darwinism in any way cognate to the mystical Darwinism of A.R. Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution. Wallace was even sunnier and more life-affirming in his tone than Darwin:<\/h5>\n
      The popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain on the animal world is\u00a0the very reverse of the truth. What it really brings about is the maximum of life and the enjoyment of life with the minimum of suffering and pain.\u00a0Given the necessity of death and reproduction,\u00a0it is difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of happiness could have been secured. (See here<\/a><\/span>)<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      There are more types of Darwinism than there are colors in the rainbow. Failure to understand this, that there is a broad spectrum of views on what Darwinism actually means, will lead invariably to strident denunciations of Darwinism. Understanding Darwin is not easy, because there were times when Darwin hardly understood himself. He was modest enough to admit it. Nuance<\/em>. That is the operative word here.<\/h5>\n
      Getting to grips with Darwin is like getting to grips with an eel.<\/h5>\n

      \u00a0\"Darwin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

      \u201cThe natural world has no moral validity or purpose.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
      You make use of this quote, Jonas, more than once \u2014 \u201cThe natural world has no moral validity or purpose\u201d\u2014 obviously outraged that Darwin should have uttered such a monstrous heresy. You quote\u00a0Janet Browne\u2019s magisterial\u00a0 1200-page biography of Darwin as your source for the quote. (Volume 2, p. 54). However, you give the entirely wrong impression that it was Darwin himself who said this. And Darwin said no such thing.<\/h5>\n
      This was only a viewpoint<\/em> ascribed to Darwin by his biographer Janet Browne, so the quote lacks canonical status. It was Janet Browne, in other words, not Darwin, who said these words: \u201cThe natural world has no moral validity, he [Darwin] argued<\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/h5>\n
      There\u2019s no need to go down the path of pessimism and assume the worst. For the truth is that the proposition\u00a0\u201cthe natural world has no moral validity or purpose\u201d is a\u00a0not something most Darwinists believe. Darwin himself certainly didn\u2019t believe that. Darwin, and certainly Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolutionism, were far more optimistic and bracing in their\u00a0world views than this miserable quote you have produced (not even\u2019s Darwin\u2019s own words) to make Darwin look like a\u00a0gloomy killjoy.<\/h5>\n
      Paradoxically, Darwin, whose revolutionary discoveries had dispensed with the need for God as a First Cause, had nevertheless invoked the idea of God as the primal force behind existence in the final sentence of\u00a0The Origin of Species<\/em>.\u00a0He did this by referring to \u201clife having been\u00a0originally breathed\u00a0by the Creator into a few forms or into one.\u201d Here he is in the\u00a0bravura finale of his magnum opus:<\/h5>\n
      There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed\u00a0BY THE CREATOR<\/a><\/span>\u00a0into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. <\/strong>(Emphasis added)<\/em><\/h5>\n
      That memorable sentence which forms the finale to Darwin\u2019s magnificent work of genius is infused with a moral grandeur unparalleled in the literature of science. \u201cEndless forms most beautiful and most wonderful\u2026\u201d That sentence sends a shiver down the spine. It has brought tears to countless eyes down the ages. You can see that the man who wrote it is moved to the depths. How long did Darwin take to write that sentence? Thirty seconds? No, it took him thirty years<\/em>.<\/h5>\n
      This noble and dazzlingly beautiful sentence makes complete nonsense of the statement: \u201cThe natural world has no moral validity or\u00a0purpose.\u201d<\/h5>\n
      You appear to be under the misconception, Jonas, that Darwin was a heartless atheist and crude White Supremacist who had no compassion for\u00a0the old, the weak, and the sick. Nothing could be further from the truth. You conflate the gentle views of the amiable Darwin with the harsher views of Herbert Spencer and the far more\u00a0extreme views of Ragnar\u00a0Redbeard and his Social Darwinist philosophy as set out in his book, Might is Right<\/a><\/span>.<\/h5>\n
      It has often been said that the anonymously authored Ragnar Redbeard book was meant as a cruel parody of Darwinism. Indeed, as a satirical spoof. I can well believe it. The Marquis de Sade could have written it as a tongue-in-cheek literary exercise. Those who take this book seriously could be making a big mistake, unaware that their legs are being pulled. (See here<\/a><\/span>).<\/h5>\n
      Like all other bona fide movements, including Christianity, it is possible to turn Darwinism on its head by pushing it to its extremes and making a reductio ad absurdum out of it. Just as\u00a0Christianity can be held up to ridicule and contempt by suggesting that all Christians are hypocrites for not being perfect as Christ\u00a0enjoined \u2014\u00a0\u201cBe ye therefore perfect\u201d\u2014 and for failing to love their enemies and giving all their wealth away to feed the poor, Darwinism can be mocked and demonized by suggesting that there is nothing wrong with cannibalism and mass murder if they promote the survival of the fittest: if they help, in other words, the strong to survive and the weak to be\u00a0wiped out.<\/h5>\n
      And so we have the febrile slogans of Ragnar Redbeard, an anonymous Victorian gent snickering up his sleeve as he dishes up a farrago of fine phrases that\u00a0constitute a cruel parody of Darwinism.\u00a0Ragnar Redbeard is Nietzsche on steroids, doing his best to make Darwinism look like a hell pit of horrors.<\/h5>\n
      Here, listen to Ragnar rave:<\/h5>\n
      Napoleon was Darwin on horseback. Be thou a Napoleon\u2014do not be Christ!\u00a0\u2026\u00a0Christs may come and Christs may go but Caesar lives forever.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      He who saith \u201cthou shalt\u201d to me is my mortal foe.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      Behold the crucifix, what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a warrior;\u00a0the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, too tame. It is a circumcised world. Nay! \u2014 a castrated world! It must be made fiercer, before it can become grander and better and \u2014 more natural\u2026. When men cease to fight \u2014 they cease to be \u2014 Men.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      All men who would obtain freedom must obtain wealth \u2018by hook or by crook\u2019. There is a strong affinity between the criminal and the conqueror.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      Women shed tears; Men shed blood.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      If a man smites you on one cheek, smash him on the other.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      \u2014 Ragnar Redbeard, quotes<\/a><\/span> from Might is Right<\/em>.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
      All this is far cry from Darwinism. Anyone who believes that Darwin would have nodded enthusiastically over the above laughable sentiments has never studied Darwin or contemplated his heroic life struggle. Ragnar Redbeard sounds like an undergraduate in his cups who has just finished reading Nietzsche\u2019s Thus Spake Zarathustra<\/em> and has been knocked on the head with a blunt instrument.<\/h5>\n
        \n
      1. \n

        DARWIN\u2019S RELIGIOUS VIEWS<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        You seem to be totally unaware, Jonas, that\u00a0the word\u00a0\u201cCREATOR\u201d occurred in the final paragraph of Darwin\u2019s Origin of Species<\/em>. Though the all-important words\u00a0\u201cBY THE CREATOR\u201d had not\u00a0appeared in the 1st edition of\u00a0November\u00a01859, it\u00a0had been added to the text by Darwin himself in the\u00a0second\u00a0edition of 1860 and to\u00a0all\u00a0subsequent editions during Darwin\u2019s lifetime, right up to the sixth and final edition of 1872.\u00a0These critical words \u2014 \u201cBY THE CREATOR\u201d \u2014 clearly demonstrating Darwin\u2019s\u00a0theistic leanings, were later to be removed without proper explanation in subsequent editions of The Origin of Species<\/em>.<\/h5>\n
        The result has been to give the entirely false impression of Darwin as an out-and-out atheist, even though he himself had repeatedly rejected the atheist label. \u201cI have never been an atheist in denying the existence of God,\u201d he was to state flatly in a letter to his friend John Fordyce in 1879, twenty years after the publication of\u00a0The Origin of Species\u00a0<\/em>and three years before his death. In his own words, he had \u201cnever entirely discounted the existence of God\u201d.\u00a0 In his\u00a0Autobiography, Darwin tells us that by the time he had written the\u00a0Origin\u00a0he was already a theist who had come to believe in an intelligent First Cause. \u201cIt seems to me absurd to doubt that a man might be\u00a0an ardent theist\u00a0and\u00a0an evolutionist<\/a><\/span>,\u201d he was to add significantly.<\/h5>\n
        The persistent misconception prevails that Darwin was an atheist, despite the fact that he repeatedly rejects that label and claims to be an agnostic<\/a><\/span> \u2014 an agnostic with theistic propensities.<\/h5>\n
        It must be understood clearly that Darwin believed in conventional Christianity for the first half of his life. He only stopped going to church in 1849, at the age of 40. \u201cI never gave up Christianity\u00a0until I was forty years of age<\/a><\/span>,\u201d he says. The more he thought about religion, the more confused he became, admitting to constant \u201cfluctuations<\/a><\/span>\u201d in viewpoint. In his own words, the subject was \u201ctoo profound for human intellect.\u201d Theology made his head spin, he confesses modestly. \u201cA dog,\u201d he tells his friend Asa Gray\u00a0ruefully<\/a><\/span>, \u201cmight as well speculate on the mind of Newton.\u201d<\/h5>\n
        Darwin\u2019s religious views need to be discussed in greater detail. We need to consider the case of Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk who not only managed to sing hymns to the Christian God several times a day but who was also the father of genetics, acting as the essential link between Darwin and Watson and Crick, the discoverers of DNA.<\/h5>\n
        While it is perfectly true that many prominent evolutionists have been incorrigible atheists\u2014Thomas Huxley (\u201cDarwin\u2019s bulldog<\/a><\/span>\u201d) and Richard Dawkins (\u201cDarwin\u2019s rottweiler<\/a><\/span>\u201d) are the most notable examples\u2014it is equally true that some exceptionally gifted evolutionists have been passionate believers in God. Two of the most eminent theistic evolutionists that spring to mind are\u00a0Asa Gray<\/a><\/span>, America\u2019s most renowned 19th-century botanist and a personal friend of Darwin\u2019s for decades, and\u00a0Alfred Russel Wallace<\/a><\/span>, the co-discoverer of the Theory of Evolution. Gray, a devout Unitarian Christian, was an ardent believer in intelligent design. Wallace, while not a Christian, was a religious mystic with a theosophical bent who not only believed in intelligent design but in a life after death in a purpose-driven (\u201cteleological\u201d) universe.<\/h5>\n
          \n
        1. \n

          SOCIAL DARWINISM<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          In attacking Kevin MacDonald, you state indignantly: \u201cSo whether Darwin and his intellectual children like it or not, Social Darwinism flows seamlessly from Darwin\u2019s own ideological foundation, and this wicked enterprise has wrought havoc both in Europe and America in the 1920s and 30s.\u201d<\/h5>\n
          No need to work yourself up into a state about this, Jonas. Darwin was not the mastermind behind the \u201cwicked enterprise\u201d you describe. Nor was Kevin MacDonald in any way to blame for the \u201chavoc both in Europe and America in the 1920s and 30s.\u201d<\/h5>\n
          Social Darwinism may be bad, but why blame Darwin for that? He rejected Social Darwinism and distanced himself from it. He was not the standard bearer for Social Darwinism.<\/h5>\n
          If Darwin were the crude Social Darwinist you assume him to be, he would have had no sympathy for the old, the poor, and the sick. He would have been against Victorian Poor Law and the humanitarianism of the numerous charitable foundations that were the bedrock of the early welfare state. Yes, Darwin knew only too well that natural selection\u2014the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest\u2014meant that there should be no provision for the old, the sick, and the weak in a state of nature. The Law of the Jungle, he knew, precludes a welfare state. But in actual fact, Darwin was like all other enlightened Victorians. He insisted that everything should be done to ameliorate the lot of the poor and downtrodden. He did not spit in the beggar\u2019s bowl. He would never have said to a drowning man, \u201cSink or swim!\u201d<\/h5>\n
          If Darwin had been even half\u00a0the monster you have conjured up in your vivid imagination, he would have been in support of slavery. Natural selection, after all, decrees that if men becomes slaves, it\u2019s because they are too weak and stupid to be anything\u00a0but slaves. If they were stronger and fitter, after all, they would be slave owners, not slaves. Paradoxically, Darwin rejected natural selection, his own doctrine, in favor of a civilized altruism that sprang from moral convictions and from his early upbringing as a compassionate Christian.\u00a0As a consequence, Darwin was one of the most passionate advocates for the abolition of slavery<\/a><\/span>.<\/h5>\n
          What better proof do we need that Darwin took natural selection, the Survival of the Fittest, with a pinch of salt? Natural selection is fine in the jungle. It\u2019s fine in theory. But it\u2019s\u00a0not fine in practice, and it\u2019s unacceptable in a civilized society. You don\u2019t push the old and sick over the clifftop just to create more Lebensraum for the young and fit.<\/h5>\n
          As for Darwin being a White Supremacist with condescending contempt for the darker races, as you seem to believe, that, too, is a total misconception. Darwin had a far more\u00a0enlightened attitude toward the darker races than you give him credit for. If you doubt this, ask yourself: who taught Darwin taxidermy? It was a Caribbean ex-slave of African origin whom Darwin had befriended while he was still a medical student at Edinburgh University.<\/h5>\n
          Read\u00a0this<\/a> <\/span>\u2014 it may help you to undemonize Darwin:<\/h5>\n
          Darwin might have never proposed his revolutionary ideas if not for John Edmonstone. A freed Guyanese slave, Edmonstone taught Darwin taxidermy at Edinburgh University. During his voyage around the world on the\u00a0S.S. Beagle, Darwin collected and preserved the famed finches using the techniques Edmonstone taught him, allowing him to draw his pivotal conclusions.<\/h5>\n
          Edmonstone\u2019s vivid accounts of Guyanese rainforests might have also inspired Darwin to study natural history instead of medicine.<\/h5>\n
          In 1807, Edmonstone\u2019s master brought him to Edinburgh and freed him. Edmonstone settled in a house a few doors down from Darwin and his brother, Erasmus, earning his living stuffing birds at the Natural History Museum and teaching taxidermy to Edinburgh University students.<\/h5>\n
          You see? Darwin was the very opposite of the White Supremacist\u00a0\u201cracist\u201d you have conjured up in your fevered imagination! He got on famously with ex-slaves of African origin.<\/h5>\n
          \"Darwin<\/a>

          Darwin in 1826, age 18, with ex-slave John Edmonstone. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

            \n
          1. \n

            DARWIN\u2019S DANGEROUS DISCIPLES<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
            Darwinism was to have a profound influence on both Hitler and Stalin who adopted enthusiastically Darwin\u2019s \u201cSurvival of the Fittest\u201d doctrine and gave it a sinister twist that Darwin would certainly have deplored.<\/h5>\n
            In Hitler\u2019s case, Darwinism was to provide a rationale for experimental eugenics without ethical constraints, the conquest of\u00a0Lebensraum, and the aggrandizement of the Aryan Master Race at the expense of other races deemed to be inferior and expendable. (See\u00a0here<\/a><\/span>). So it is argued by most mainstream historians. We may not all accept this, but this is how most intelligent observers see the profound influence Darwin had on Nazi Germany.<\/h5>\n
            The point is, why blame Darwin for the excesses of the Nazis?<\/h5>\n
            In Stalin\u2019s case, Darwinism, or rather its misinterpretation and corruption, offered an excuse for the\u00a0messianic atheism\u00a0inseparable from Communism. This was to lead to the mass murder of at least 20 million innocents, mostly Christians. This is the mainstream figure, now widely seen as an underestimate. Solzhenitsyn and others put the figure much higher, at over 60 million<\/a><\/span>. These victims of Communism were essentially the peasant proletariat and the industrial working classes who opposed the grandiose \u201crepairing of the world\u201d \u2014 i.e.,\u00a0revolution without the consent of its victims \u2014 that was to end in the hideous dystopia dreamt up by Marx and his misguided followers. The descendants of these psychopaths are still, alas, very much with us today. The Stalin cult continues to flourish in contemporary Russia, mostly among atheists and secular humanists, given that Christianity and Stalinist Communism cannot possibly coexist and flourish side by side. (For corroborative details, see this informative article: Stalin\u2019s Brutal Faith<\/a><\/span>).<\/h5>\n
            It was Stalin who once said: \u201cYou know, they are fooling us, there is no God. All this talk about God is sheer nonsense.\u201d (Quoted by E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin<\/em>,\u00a0cited\u00a0here<\/a><\/span>). Under Stalin, over 45,000 Orthodox Christian churches were\u00a0destroyed in the Soviet Union<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and many monks, priests and nuns ruthlessly liquidated, often being tortured to death. Stalin\u2019s contempt for human life is best illustrated by his cynical comment: \u201cThe death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.\u201d<\/h5>\n
            It is undeniably disturbing to reflect that both Stalin and Hitler were devout disciples of Darwin, especially of Darwin\u2019s \u201cSurvival of the Fittest\u201d doctrine, which they used as a justification for ruthless totalitarianism.\u00a0But why blame Darwin for the excesses of Lenin, Trotsky, Lazar Kaganovich, Ilya Ehrenberg, and Stalin? Darwin, after all, was not responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution or for the millions killed by Mao Tse-Tung in Communist China.<\/h5>\n
            It is reported that Karl Marx once wrote a letter to Darwin, asking him for his permission to dedicate the first volume of Das Kapital<\/em> to him, and that Darwin refused to give his permission. Which amounted to a cruel snub for Marx, the bearded prophet of Communism. This story has now been dismissed as apocryphal, but many still believe it. Whether the story is true or not, one thing is certain: that Darwin declined to have anything to do with a similar Communist organization, at a later date, that purported to follow the teachings of Karl Marx to the letter. (See Francis Wheen, Karl Marx<\/em><\/a><\/span>, pp. 363-369). So even if Marx had not been trying to cuddle up to Darwin and obtain his imprimatur for world revolution and the dictatorship of the\u00a0proletariat, Darwin would have indubitably snubbed Marx in any case. Darwin was a moderate; at no time would he have wished to be associated with wild-eyed revolutionaries and gulag operators.<\/h5>\n
            Darwin knew only too well that these revolutionary fanatics would be only too happy to exploit the prestige of his name in order to use natural selection as an excuse for genocide \u2014 genocide on an unparalleled scale. The false idea under which you, Jonas, have apparently fallen, is the grotesque view that Darwin was ready and willing to underwrite genocide; and that \u201cnatural selection\u201d somehow gives everyone a right to trample on the poor and get rid of the old and sick when they become a burden. This is not the case. We are not all tigers, baring our fangs in the forests of the night. We are human beings, and some of us are vegans. Pushed to its reductio ad absurdum, natural selection, the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest, can provide a perfectly plausible excuse for cannibalism. After all, why not eat our neighbors if it helps us to survive?<\/h5>\n
            The sinking of the Titanic provides us with a striking example of how natural selection doesn\u2019t\u00a0work in civilized societies. The old and the sick, the women and children, were the ones who survived the iceberg. The men, the strongest and fittest and bravest, these were the ones who went down with the ship.<\/h5>\n

            Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Kevin MacDonald has been called a \u201ccoward\u201d and other insulting terms for refusing to debate Darwinism with a writer called Jonas Alexis. Why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166279"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166286,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166279\/revisions\/166286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}