As written in The Conversation by Robert Chernomas, Professor Of Economics and Ian Hudson, Professor, Department of Economics.
Political leaders like United States President Donald Trump and business oligarchs like Elon Musk have increasingly suggested that human behaviour and social outcomes are rooted in genetics.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that problematic behaviours are genetic and inherent, while Musk has advocated for “intelligent” people to have children. His Grokipedia even frames racist concepts like racial nationalism positively while drawing on eugenic ideas, claiming that preserving distinct racial genetic profiles “maximizes individuals’ inclusive fitness.”
These arguments are taking us back to one of the darkest periods in human intellectual history: when eugenics was alive and well. Eugenics is the mistaken belief that a society’s genetic pool can be “improved” by limiting the reproduction of those deemed inferior and encouraging the breeding of those deemed superior.
Eugenics is now regarded as “the most egregious example of the destructive misuse of science in all human history,” as evolutionary biologist Richard Prum put it.
Yet this pseudoscientific way of thinking has not disappeared. It has re-emerged in new forms, primarily among tech capitalists and conservative politicians advocating for policies like forced migration, fertility assistance and genetic engineering to create a “fitter” nation.
Read the full story at The Conversation.
