TIMEGHOST HIGHLIGHT:
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"Society allows the diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community, to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped, and inferior infants. If they live, a large proportion of these are doomed from their very physical inheritance to be at the best but partly self-supporting, and thus to drain the resources of those classes above them which have a sense of responsibility…if the good in our race is not to be swamped and destroyed by the debased as the fine tree by the parasite, this prolific depravity must be curbed.”
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These aren't the words of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, or Lord Voldemort, but of famed birth control activist and sexual crusader, Marie Stopes. For their time, however, they're not as controversial as you might think.
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Eugenics became a mainstream preoccupation – perhaps even part of the zeitgeist – of intellectual circles in the 1920’s, and the Great War was the catalyzer. What shocked many people about it was not just the quantity of lives lost, but also the quality. The finest men - the bravest, the fittest, the ‘most superior racial stock’ – had been slaughtered on the battlefields, apparently leaving behind the inferior, free to carry on their reckless breeding.
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This outlook was shared across the ideological spectrum, from utopian socialists like H.G. Wells to rational economists like John Maynard Keynes to young politicians like Neville Chamberlain. They had different ideas about what the future should look like, but all believed that biological improvement of the race was the only way to secure it.
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Marie Stopes saw birth control as the path to this future. As she wrote in 1921: "the campaign for Birth Control is...practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics…only by intelligent mastery of the procreative powers can the great mass of humanity be awakened to the great responsibility of parenthood.”
-
It sounds unbelievable and surreal, doesn’t it?
Watch our latest episode of Between 2 Wars: Zeitgeist! to learn more: https://youtu.be/JJkFrtqVWOA
TimeGhost History
TIMEGHOST HIGHLIGHT:
-
"Society allows the diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community, to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped, and inferior infants. If they live, a large proportion of these are doomed from their very physical inheritance to be at the best but partly self-supporting, and thus to drain the resources of those classes above them which have a sense of responsibility…if the good in our race is not to be swamped and destroyed by the debased as the fine tree by the parasite, this prolific depravity must be curbed.”
-
These aren't the words of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, or Lord Voldemort, but of famed birth control activist and sexual crusader, Marie Stopes. For their time, however, they're not as controversial as you might think.
-
Eugenics became a mainstream preoccupation – perhaps even part of the zeitgeist – of intellectual circles in the 1920’s, and the Great War was the catalyzer. What shocked many people about it was not just the quantity of lives lost, but also the quality. The finest men - the bravest, the fittest, the ‘most superior racial stock’ – had been slaughtered on the battlefields, apparently leaving behind the inferior, free to carry on their reckless breeding.
-
This outlook was shared across the ideological spectrum, from utopian socialists like H.G. Wells to rational economists like John Maynard Keynes to young politicians like Neville Chamberlain. They had different ideas about what the future should look like, but all believed that biological improvement of the race was the only way to secure it.
-
Marie Stopes saw birth control as the path to this future. As she wrote in 1921: "the campaign for Birth Control is...practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics…only by intelligent mastery of the procreative powers can the great mass of humanity be awakened to the great responsibility of parenthood.”
-
It sounds unbelievable and surreal, doesn’t it?
Watch our latest episode of Between 2 Wars: Zeitgeist! to learn more: https://youtu.be/JJkFrtqVWOA
4 years ago | [YT] | 424