#Eugenics

[anarchotahdigism]

it's just so great that the past 2-3 years has seen almost the entire US population openly embrace Naziism over COVID then completely refuse to listen to horrified disabled POC explaining this bc then they'd realize they were complicit & had done nothing, in fact, to stop Nazis but caused the situation to be catastrophically worse

[headspace-hotel]

really disheartening to see how much eco-fascist and eugenicist bullshit has embedded itself into writings about human relationship with nature. I was looking at a copy of a book in the library a while back called Humans Vs. Nature and found this (Discussing early human migrations in the Paleolithic)

To my great dismay, I did not record the source for this claim, But I found these pictures again, and of course I think...How do we know that?

How could we know that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers deliberately controlled their populations by periods of abstaining from sex? That would be incredibly hard to support using archaeological evidence. It seems easier to support infanticide using the archaeological record, so I was not initially troubled by that.

The author is also stating that Paleolithic humans killed their disabled. I have been searching high and low for evidence to support this claim and the closest I've come to any evidence regarding disability in the Paleolithic is this book chapter discussing whether or not it makes sense to assume compassion existed in pre-history. This book chapter gives the impression that the research has been...really dismal.

The two sides of the debate are essentially, "humans probably cared for their disabled in prehistory, because pathologies and injuries are common and they would have needed some kind of care" and "well maybe those people could survive just fine on their own and that's why they lived. We can't prove they were actually disabled."

Not an anthropologist, but I think it's pretty stupid to position a compassionless society as the "null hypothesis," especially based upon chimpanzees. Why would Paleolithic humans be more behaviorally similar to a relative separated by 5 to 13 million years of evolutionary divergence, than to their own descendants a mere few thousand years later????????

But the claim in Humans Vs. Nature isn't just that disabled people weren't cared for, it's that they were deliberately "eliminated," which is a statement with a much higher burden of proof. You would have to find the remains of disabled humans from that time period with clear evidence that they were killed because they were disabled, and you would have to observe this consistently in many sites, to come to the conclusion that it was a cultural norm.

We have many examples of elaborate, seemingly honorable burials for people that were apparently disabled and would have lived a long time with their disabilities. Nothing I've read has mentioned an archaeological record of killing people for being disabled, which would be a glaring oversight, unless it didn't exist, which I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

How did we get to the point where this kind of fucking bullshit sounds so plausible and correct that it makes it into a best selling book without anyone looking it up to see if it's true.

[riderofthemist]

Mx.Papaya : bit.ly/FreeResistArt

Instagram: @ AgitateAndEducate

Twitter: @ Bufanator

[where-your-eyes-dont-go]

It feels odd that while Lovecraft's racism is often the first thing the mind jumps to when discussing him, the same isn't really true for other prominent pulp authors. Especially considering Edgar Rice Burroughs whole oeuvre is a celebration of white supremacy and eugenics. Tarzan boasts that he's a "killer of beasts and many black men." Utopias that have bred out crime through execution or sterilization of criminals' families are a repeated staple of his fiction. It wasn't just his fiction either; the man wrote a newspaper column calling for the killing of "moral imbeciles" and their families [source].

Its not like they were writing in wildly different times; the first Tarzan book came out only seven years before Lovecraft's Dagon. And they both were incredibly influential and celebrated figures in specific genre niches that still command wide attention. But while his racism isn't unknown, it doesn't seem to be attached to Burrough's public character in the same way it is for Lovecraft. Why doesn't he have multiple generations of pulp fans coming to terms with how the author they idolize is awful? Are there just not enough people reading A Princess of Mars these days?

[transsexualfiend]

Cripplepunk, madpunk, and neuropunk aren't just "I'm disabled and also left-leaning". It's a specific realm of activism rooted in dismantling the systems that put disabled, mad, sick, etc folks at a disadvantage in society. This mean not only being against the very systems that harm us but also understanding their colonial origins and continued racist legacies. (Anti-ableism, anti-sanism, anti-psych, etc). This means not only just identifying and finding pride in your disability but also building and constantly evolving your understanding of disability and diversity and learning how you can change your worldview to accurately highlight the struggles of disabled people. (EVEN if it sometimes means you will be uncomfortable or unsure of unlearning some kinds of hate.)

[theculturedmarxist]

In 2020, Robert Kuciemba, a woodworker in San Francisco was infected with covid by a co-worker after his Nevada-based Victory Woodworks transferred a number of sick workers to the San Francisco site for a few months. 

Through the proceedings of the case it turns out that the employer knew some employees might be sick but they transferred them anyway and ignored a San Francisco ordinance in place at the time to quarantine suspected covid cases.

Kuciemba was subsequently infected and he then infected his wife, who ended up in ICU on a ventilator.

The California Supreme Court just ruled against Kuciemba on the basis that a victory, while, in the court's words, "morally" the right thing to do, would create "dire financial consequences for employers" and cause a "dramatic expansion of liability" to stop the spread of covid.

There’s a few stunning details to note in this case. First, the court agreed that there is no doubt the company had ignored the San Francisco health ordinance. In other words, they accepted the company had broken the law. And then concluded “yeah, but, capitalism.”

Secondly, the case was so obviously important to the struggle between capitalism and mass infection that the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying organisation got involved and helped the company with its defence. Remember, this is a tiny company in a niche industry. The involvement of the biggest business lobbyists in the country tells us a lot about the importance of the principle they knew was at stake.

Thirdly, the defence of the company is very telling. They said “There is simply no limit to how wide the net will be cast: the wife who claims her husband caught COVID-19 from the supermarket checker, the husband who claims his wife caught it while visiting an elder care home." 

Well, exactly. Capitalism couldn’t survive if employers were liable for covid infections contracted in the workplace, and the ripple effect of those infections. And they know it. 

This case is something of a covid smoking gun, revealing what we always suspected but had never seen confirmed in so many words: the public health imperative of controlling a pandemic virus by making employers liable for some of that control is, and always must be, secondary to capitalist profit. 

This ruling is also saying out loud what has been obvious to anyone paying attention for the last two years: employers don’t have a responsibility to keep your family safe from covid. You have that responsibility. And if you give a family member covid that you caught at work and they get sick or die – even if it was a result of law-breaking by your employer – that’s on you buddy.

It is the same old capitalist story: the shunting of responsibility for ills that should be shared across society, including employers in that society, onto individuals.

This ruling essentially helps codify workplace mass infection and justifies it as necessary for the smooth functioning of capitalism.

This is not new. This is where the ‘just a cold’ and the ‘mild' narrative came from. It came from doctors and healthcare experts whose first loyalty was to capitalism. Not to public health. To money, not to lives. Abetted by media who uncritically platformed them.

While this ruling tells us little that we couldn’t already see from the public policy approach of the last two years, it is revealing (and to some extent validating) to see it confirmed by the highest law of the land in the United States. 

[nightmaretour]

The UK officially passed the "assisted dying" bill... and with a healthcare system that actively WANTS to get rid of you one way or another, to the point of being one of its main motivations in choice of treatments (alongside cost)...

Well, I think we've figured out what Kier Starmer is planning to do with all of the disabled people who he can't force to work.

[whereserpentswalk]

Gentle reminder that you can be 100% pro choice and still understand that aborting a fetus because it will be disabled as a human is a eugenicist idea that comes from absolutely horrifying ideas that have been placed in western culture as a result of more overt eugenics movements in our past.

[odinsblog]

Donald Trump's nephew recounts a conversation with then-president Trump after 2020 White House meeting with disability advocates. (source)

[blackbrownfamily]

[bugboy-behaviour]

EGYPT IS LEAVING A DISABLED MAN TO DIE IN GAZA, DESPITE HIM AND HIS FAMILY HAVING THE FUNDS TO ESCAPE

PLEASE, WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THIS!!!! SPREAD THIS WHEREVER YOU CAN!!!! PUT PRESSURE ON EGYPT TO PUT HIS NAME BACK ON THE LIST

[anarchotahdigism]

ahhh the yts are telling each other to prepare for violence under trump while conveniently ignoring the violence they do to everyone else if they're not speaking COVID in their antifascist resistance, they're just fascists under threat from other fascists! every single anti-masker has disabled and/or killed people & should be viewed as a mass murderer If you're organizing and expecting them to do anything other than violence towards the marginalized, you're very foolish community defense includes masking & covid safety, must center it, in fact. y'all have been killing 1,000 to 3,000 people a week, primarily people of color who are poor & disabled worry about that violence which is happening now rather than your fucking LARP

[thebibliosphere]

Fully aware I’m bringing the straw discourse back myself but it’s almost like this is a systemic problem with how we manufacturer everything, including “eco-friendly” options.

Anyway, wishing all the ecowarrior girlies who told me and countless other disabled folks to our faces that if our disabilities meant we couldn’t give up plastic straws for safety reasons we were a burden on the planet and should consider suicide the moral option a very “suck on your toxic bullshit.”

Literally.

[shamebats]

The very idea that humans can and should be "optimized" lends itself to a fascistic worldview—because if your food is extra-clean, it can easily mean other people's food is extra-dirty. If you are safe because your immune system is strong, it can flip to mean others are unsafe because they are weak. If you are optimized, others are, by definition, suboptimal. Defective. Next door to disposable.

Doppelganger (Naomi Klein)