Global Population Decline and Rebalance

The Anglosphere, especially right wing media and influencers, obsess about supposed immigrant-led population growth in the developed world, while claiming high fertility and exponential growth; not true it’s a reflection of better human health and increasing longevity.

However, these dynamics are still misrepresented or ignored in media, politics and public narratives based on the eugenics based ideology of Bob Malthus, Francis Galton, Madison Grant and John Tanton; the latter via ZPG Zero Population Growth supported by Rockefeller Bros. Fund.

There is an increasing body of research, knowledge and awareness of population and demography in nations and globally thanks to Jack Caldwell, Fred Pearce, Wolfgang Lutz, Hans Rosling, Sanjeev Sanyal, then recent years Bricker & Ibbitson (‘Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline’); outside of the UNPD, right wing and faux centrist media, think tanks, politics and influencers.

Following is the link to the online version, Beacon’s review and a Guardian review of the same.

Google Books: The Coming Population Crash and and Our Planet’s Surprising Future – Fred Pearce. Beacon Press 2010

Beacon Press

‘A leading environmental writer looks at the unexpected effects and possible benefits of a shrinking, graying population

Over the last century, the world’s population quadrupled and fears of overpopulation flared, with baby booms blamed for genocide and terrorism, and overpopulation singled out as the primary factor driving global warming. Yet, surprisingly, it appears that the population explosion is past its peak-by mid-century, the world’s population will be declining for the first time in over seven hundred years. In The Coming Population Crash, veteran environmental writer Fred Pearce reveals the dynamics behind this dramatic shift and describes the environmental, social, and economic effects of our surprising demographic future.’

Guardian Review

‘Peoplequake: Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash by Fred Pearce

Alok Jha on why Malthus was wrong to fear a population explosion

Alok Jha – Sat 27 Mar 2010 

Thomas Malthus has a lot to answer for. As the young cleric performed birth and death rites at the end of the 18th century, he began to notice that there were far more christenings than funerals. The insight led him to write his “Essay on the Principles of Population”, a dark warning against the perils of unchecked human reproduction. Overpopulation was a looming threat because the masses were on a treadmill of sex and procreation, he argued. Eventually, the world would run out of food. People would die of starvation. It was nature’s way of keeping populations in check.

This “dark and terrible genius” may have been right to pinpoint the idea that population was a potent economic force, says Fred Pearce, but he was wrong about almost everything else. And yet Malthus’s ideas persisted among the elites for hundreds of years, spreading a fear of population time bombs and seeding ideas for eugenics programmes up to the last half of the 20th century.

By the 1950s, “population controllers” were everywhere, wringing their hands in NGOs and United Nations agencies, worrying about the coming Malthusian population catastrophe, looking to the poorest parts of the world to curb the population growth. Mass US-funded family planning programmes were targeted at a number of countries, with foreign aid and even trade sometimes dependent on meeting western targets. In India, the government put pressure on citizens to get sterilised, while China’s one-child policy led to brutal forced abortions.

But the population-controllers’ predictions of world famine in the 1940s and the 1980s never came true. Why? As the numbers grew, so agricultural technology improved. Norman Borlaug won a Nobel prize for developing high-yielding varieties of dwarf wheat in the late 1960s which, if fed with water and fertiliser, would grow large heads without falling over. By the mid-1970s, wheat and maize yields had doubled in places such as India. Some environmentalists have questioned whether this green revolution was such a good thing, tying so many of the world’s peasant farmers to mechanised, energy-guzzling farming practices, and Pearce sees their point. “But would they prefer billions starving?” he asks. Even today, whenever famines occur, the problem is rarely an absolute shortage of food but an inability to buy it.

Yet warnings about overpopulation and impending famine persist. Pearce doesn’t buy it. The global population replacement level, the number of births required to keep population stable, is 2.3 babies per couple. But thanks to increased access to contraception and improving education for women, actual birth rates have been dropping around the world. In the 1950s, it was between five and six; by 2008 it was 2.6. At the current rate, the world’s fertility rate will be below replacement level soon after 2020. “Future historians are likely to record two great social trends in the last half of the 20th century,” writes Pearce. “The dramatic decline in fertility and the transformation of the role of women in society. These two events are clearly linked.”

Pearce does not gloss over the potential environmental problems that could occur if the world were overpopulated. But, though an environmentalist to the core, he puts people before planet, pointing out that the poorest three billion, around 45% of the total, are currently responsible for 7% of carbon dioxide emissions, while the richest 7%, around half a billion, are responsible for 50% of emissions. “A rural woman in Ethiopia can have ten children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Manchester or Munich.”

Overpopulation is not the problem, he argues, but over-consumption: more specifically, over-consumption in the west. Ever the optimist, Pearce thinks we can solve this crisis if we recognise its seriousness. Today’s technology could enable us to reduce our carbon footprints by 80% by 2050 (as the British government has committed us to do).

There are a lot of statistics in this book, but Pearce’s narrative is rescued by his stories of people, whether groups of women in Bangladesh, families buying their first televisions in the slums of Mumbai, ghost towns in eastern Germany or an unexpected Somali community in Ohio. At one point he marvels at the crucibles of New York and London, these growing cosmopolitan hubs of the world, with people finding ways to live despite the obstacles thrown at them. If this is the future, says Pearce, bring it on.’

For more blogs and articles related to demography, immigration, political strategy, population growth, populist politics and Tanton Network click through:

Limits to Growth – Jorgen Randers – Club of Rome

Randers had been a proponent of the Club of Rome ideas including the promotion of the ‘limits to growth’ (debunked by University of Sussex research team in ‘Models of Doom’), resource depletion, climate and population.

However, by 2012 Randers had revised own his global population peak estimate down to 8 billion or so which concurs with more recent research of Bricker & Ibbitson presented in ‘Empty Planet’ and The Lancet peer reviewed research paper by Stein Emil Vollset et al. titled ‘The Lancet: World population likely to shrink after mid-century, forecasting major shifts in global population and economic power’ which states that fertility rates have declined much faster than expected.

Hans Rosling – GapMinder – Factfulness – Human Development – Adult Education

Time to revisit the late but great Professor Hans Rosling of Gapminder Foundation on the need to for improved skills of analysis and critical thinking, as reflected in commentary round population linkages with environment, poverty and lack of education in the less developed world, amongst educated western elites who remain ignorant of both the outside world and the developing world.

Although Rosling did not then challenge the UNPD high end of century population forecasts, they have been revised downwards due to more demographic research on the ground in developing nations. 

Population Growth or Decline?

Much about population growth and fertility in the Anglo world has negative connotations or perceptions from the mainstream due to inflated (forecast fertility rates) data from the UNPD Population Division, ZPG/Club of Rome, Population Matters, Sustainable Population Australia, nativist conservatives, eco-fascists and white nationalists spruiking at best supposed environmental degradation, at worst the ‘great replacement theory’ or ‘tipping point’.

In fact during the past ten years credible demographic research and/or writing from Rosling, Lutz, Pearce, Bricker & Ibbitson et al. has debunked the idea of exponential growth in population as it is based upon inflated UNPD fertility rates, and we are headed for a peak mid century followed by a (potentially precipitous) decline.

Population, Environment and White Nationalists in Australia – US Links

Article titled ‘Green Anti-Immigration Arguments Are A Cover For Right Wing Populism’ summarises ZPG Zero Population Growth in Australia, US white nationalist links, citing Paul Ehrlich and John Tanton. A symptom of US based radical right libertarianism and eugenics, presented as liberal, environmental and science based, but in fact supported by oligarchs.

The clearest signals emerged in the US in the ’70s when simultaneously fossil fuel companies became aware of global warming due to carbon emissions (and threatened by Nixon’s EPA), ZPG was established with Ehrlich, Tanton et al., supported by Rockefeller Bros. (Standard Oil then Exxon), Ford and Carnegie Foundations (according to the Washington Post), Club of Rome promoting Limits to Growth PR construct (including carrying capacity, Herman Daly’s steady-state economy suggesting protectionism to preclude global competition etc.) hosted on Rockefeller estate, sponsored by VW and Fiat, while James Buchanan and later Koch’s et al. started promoting libertarian economics (also Friedman, Hayek, Rand and Chicago School), nativism and developing think tanks for influence in politics, academia and media (according to MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’ and Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’), including ALEC, Heritage Foundation etc..

Mainstreaming of the Far Right

The far right did not emerge from a vacuum, but ignorance of the history of eugenics, authority, slavery, colonialism, Nazi Germany and post WWII, white nativists, especially in the US, and nowadays ageing democracies and right wing media which adopt the same.

Both Malthus and Galton are central to narratives around population control, identity and eugenics, with strong undercurrent of socio-Darwinism. By post WWI eugenics became a major area of research, not just in Germany via Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, but the US too with slavery, Madison Grant and AES American Eugenics Society.

Due to the holocaust and Nazis treatment of Jews, Gypsies and minorities, including the ‘left’ i.e. being exterminated, eugenics had to be rebranded post WWII as a quasi ‘environmental’ movement, with strong support of same fossil fuel Rockefellers (Standard Oil & Exxon) and auto oligarchs (Fiat & VW) via Club of Rome and ZPG Zero Population Growth. 

This movement morphed into what is now known as ‘Tanton Network’, provides the faux academic support for the ‘great replacement’ and ‘environmental constructs like ‘degrowth’ and ‘limits to growth’, advises GOP, Tories and all in Australia.

Fast forward to ‘90s and noughties when Tanton’s people started liaising with GOP Reps and Congressional committees related to promoting the issues of asylum seekers, immigration and borders, to then be used as a foil vs. calls for carbon emissions pricing, trading and robust environmental protections.

Their lobbying was sold on the basis of immigrant equals Democrat voter, but the Cafe con Leche Republicans warned of the nativist trap i.e. attacking potential future constituents and supporters; many as evidenced by Koch’s Heritage for Trump i.e. ‘Project 2025’, next opportunity GOP plans permanent power via SCOTUS, voter suppression, obedient employees etc.?

By the naughteens it was becoming clear, using Jane Mayers’ expression in ‘Dark Money’ explaining the political machinations and media, as the ‘architecture of influence’ with the far right central.  

The latter includes Putin’s Russia, US GOP for Trump, UK Tories for Brexit, Murdoch led right wing media channelling Tanton agitprop, which shares fossil fuel donors with the supposedly ‘libertarian’ ‘Koch Network’ and many high profile influencers. They are targeting ageing and regional electorates, via legacy and social media, with nativist talking points, before younger, more diverse, educated and centrist voters emerge to ‘replace’ ageing citizens.

The Conversation:

Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right

‘Javier Milei in Argentina. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. These are the two latest “populist shocks” – the tip of the “populist wave” that comes crashing against the weakened defences of liberal democracies.

At the same time, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage benefits from the same “funwashing” on I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here! as Pauline Hanson, leader of the most successful extreme right party in Australia in recent years, did when she was invited on Dancing with the Stars just a moment after her political career plummeted.

The contradiction in addressing the rise of far-right politics in public discourse could not be starker. And yet, it goes far deeper.

It should be obvious to anyone concerned about these politics and the threat they pose to democracy and certain communities, that humanising their leaders through fun reality TV shows or coverage of their hobbies rather than politics only serves to normalise them.

What is less obvious and yet just as damaging is the hyped coverage of the threat. Milei and Wilders are not “shocks”. The resurgence of reactionary politics is entirely predictable and has been traced for a long time. Yet every victory or rise is analysed as new and unexpected rather than part of a longer, wider process in which we are all implicated.

The same goes for “populism”. All serious research on the matter points to the populist nature of these parties being secondary at best, compared to their far-right qualities. Yet, whether in the media or academia, populism is generally used carelessly as a key defining feature.

Using “populist” instead of more accurate but also stigmatising terms such as “far-right” or “racist” acts as a key legitimiser of far-right politics. It lends these parties and politicians a veneer of democratic support through the etymological link to the people and erases their deeply elitist nature – what my co-author Aaron Winter and I have termed “reactionary democracy”.

What this points to is that the processes of mainstreaming and normalisation of far-right politics have much to do with the mainstream itself, if not more than with the far right. Indeed, there can be no mainstreaming without the mainstream accepting such ideas in its fold.

In this case, the mainstreaming process has involved platforming, hyping and legitimising far-right ideas while seemingly opposing them and denying responsibility in the process.

While it would be naive to believe that the mainstream media tell us what to think, it is equally naive to ignore that it plays a key role regarding what we think about. As I argued in a recent article on the issue of “immigration as a major concern”, this concern only exists when respondents think of their country as a whole. It disappears when they think about their own day-to-day lives.

This points to the mediated nature of our understanding of wider society which is essential if we are to think of the world beyond our immediate surrounding. Yet while essential, it relies on the need for trusted sources of information who decide what is worth priming and how to frame it.

It is this very responsibility that much of our media has currently given up on or pretend they do not hold, as if their editorial choices were random occurrences.

This could not have been clearer than when the Guardian launched a lengthy series on “the new populism” in 2018, headlining its opening editorial with: “Why is populism suddenly all the rage? In 1998, about 300 Guardian articles mentioned populism. In 2016, 2,000 did. What happened?”. At no point did any of the articles in the series reflect upon the simple fact that the decisions of Guardian editors may have played a role in the increased use of the term.

A top-down process

Meanwhile, blame is diverted onto conveniently “silent majorities” of “left-behind” or a fantasised “white working class”.

We too often view the far right as an outsider – something separate from ourselves and distinct from our norms and mainstream. This ignores deeply entrenched structural inequalities and forms of oppression core to our societies. This is something I noted in a recent article, that the absence of race and whiteness in academic discussion of such politics is striking.

My analysis of the titles and abstracts of over 2,500 academic articles in the field over the past five years showed that academics choose to frame their research away from such issues. Instead, we witness either a euphemisation or exceptionalisation of far-right politics, through a focus on topics such as elections and immigration rather than the wider structures at play.

This therefore leaves us with the need to reckon with the crucial role the mainstream plays in mainstreaming. Elite actors with privileged access to shaping public discourse through the media, politics and academia are not sitting within the ramparts of a mainstream fortress of good and justice besieged by growing waves of populism.

They are participating in an arena where power is deeply unevenly distributed, where the structural inequalities the far right wants to strengthen are also often core to our systems and where the rights of minoritised communities are precarious and unfulfilled. They have therefore a particular responsibility towards democracy and cannot blame the situation we all find ourselves in on others – whether it be the far right, fantasised silent majorities or minoritised communities.

Sitting on the fence is not an option for anyone who plays a role in shaping public discourse. This means self-reflection and self-criticism must be central to our ethos.

We cannot pretend to stand against the far right while referring to its politics as “legitimate concerns”. We must stand unequivocally by and be in service of every one of the communities at the sharp end of oppression.’

For related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Demography, Eugenics, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and White Nationalism click through

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics. In recent years we have observed the reemergence of the British nineteenth century preacher Malthus and his ideas on population, via groups like Population Matters in the United Kingdom, with a focus upon negatives round the supposed direct relationship between increasing population (growth), economic growth or impairment, and environmental degradation.

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century. 

We have already looked at some other key players of the past related to eugenics, population via Malthus and liberal economics of Adam Smith, now we look at Galton, if not in detail, a broad sketch of his life and later impact on society, especially in the Anglosphere.

This has been exemplified by how eugenics theory never went away, even after the Nazis post WWII, but reemerged via the US using an environmental and climate prism, with a focus upon Malthusian population obsessions; supported by ZPG, UNPD data, Anglosphere media and think tanks to avoid regulation and business constraints, while encouraging xenophobia.

Smoking Gun Memo – Warning to US GOP Republicans on Eugenics Masquerading as Conservative Immigration and Environmental Policies. 

Almost a decade ago in 2013 the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ circulated a memo below to warn the GOP of the danger of being misled by ‘Tanton Network’, but it disappeared? Below outlines some of the lobbying for immigration restrictions, while in the background Tanton Network has a history of faux environmentalism, population control, fossil fuels oligarch support e.g. ZPG Zero Population Growth, white nationalism and right wing astroturfing.

While Tanton passed away several years ago his movement became central in the Trump administration, states too, promoted by Fox News, alt right, Steve Bannon, continues to stalk the GOP and inform policy. Also indirectly impacts the Anglosphere right wing parties and UK’s Brexit via antipathy encouraged towards the EU European Union and all things ‘immigrant’, reinforced over decades by compliant media, especially tabloid.

Coincidentally, in the UK the Tanton influenced Migration Watch shares a Tufton St. London address with fossil fueled ‘Koch Network’ libertarian think tanks?

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network. 

Excerpts from an article by Brooke Binkowski in Unicorn Riot outlining the history of the population control movement of Tanton Network which informs immigration in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe.

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy. 

‘As Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians’

We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic, but political strategists, ideologues and media have been gaming ageing electorates through platforming them and their concerns, then using PR techniques and messaging to reinforce and spread further via related negative proxy issues, for power. 

Environment – Fossil Fuels – Climate Science Denial – Populationism – Anti-Immigration – Far Right – Tanton Network. 

One would not bother using high level analysis to rebut low level faux science nativist agitprop inspired by former ZPG Zero Population Growth types, namely deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton whose colleague was Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, with support from the Rockefeller Bros., ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs promoted by Club of Rome and drawing on Malthus, Galton and Madison Grant.

However, it does show some of the influence that proponents aspire to, whether in media, NGOs, think tanks or politics, constantly reinforce old nativist and white Australia policy tropes masquerading as environmental science, greenwashing both fossil fuels or carbon emissions and eugenics; targets old white Australia sentiments and younger mistaking the movement and proponents as experts.

Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes – Scientific Eugenics of Race, Class and Population Control

We observe in modern politics, especially in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe, the reemergence of eugenics not just of race, but class by parties and media of the right exemplified by ‘the great replacement’.

Most associate eugenics with the Nazi German regime of pre World War II including sterilisation, euthanasia and later ‘active’ eugenics ie. extermination camps, while many miss the historical influence of English origins via Malthus on population and Galton on the ‘science’ of eugenics. 

Both pre and post WWII Germany had research programs via the then Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and then Max Planck Institutes post WWII; with support of US foundations including the Rockefeller Foundation and US based eugenics movement support for eugenics of Hitler’s Nazi regime pre WWII. This article will present significant factors around the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, based on credible historical sources, of which many have ‘disappeared’. 

Firstly there was the establishment pre WWI with Max Planck (later President) and founding director Eugen Fischer, with the approval of Hitler. 

Over time pre WWII there were links with the US and funding support revolving around the Rockefeller Foundation, with fossil fuel income from Standard Oil and the parallel emergence of Madison Grant, whose admirers included Hitler.

Thirdly eugenics was researched, studied and presented as empirical science from Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes with Fischer, Rudin and Mengele’s supervisor von Verschuer, who went on to lead post WWII Max Planck Institutes and attend conferences; all led to legitimising the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ as ‘science’.

Finally, post WWII there was much, one imagines panic, amongst former employees and scientists regarding the ‘final solution’ of Jews, till von Verschuer was rehabilitated and able to lead the Max Planck Institutes; followed later in the 20th century by a return of Malthusian population obsessions popularised by Paul Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ and the fossil fueled ZPG Zero Population Growth, with white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton.

Establishment 

The historical eugenics movement has had several proponents from 18th & 19th through 20th centuries including Malthus, Galton and Grant, while public awareness is focused upon WWII Nazi Germany and the holocaust, the German movement went back to pre WWI.  Central was Max Planck in the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes from 1911, although he allegedly did not support Hitler, a later third Institute in 1927 did, led by Eugen Fischer being complicit (Watson 2020 & Seidelman 2020).  According to many researchers, proponents and elites, eugenics or a heredity related focus was ‘scientific’ and used to inform socio-cultural policies, across Europe and the British Empire to justify colonisation, trade and the position of the ‘ruling classes’.  Curiously many of the key proponents and financial supporters were not German, but shared the ideology of eugenics, especially including the Rockefeller Foundation funded by Standard Oil (now Exxon/Chevron); start of a connection between fossil fuels, oligarchs and eugenics, extending into the future.

Support 

Many focus upon the Nazis as being responsible for eugenics, but there was a long history including being seeded in the United Kingdom, exported to the US, then arriving in Germany in the early 20th century via the Rockefeller Foundation; later infamous on population control. The Rockefeller Foundation was central in supporting Kaiser Wilhelm Institute researchers, both German and American, including Charles Davenport, James Watson and Harry Laughlin, while the Germans included Fritz Lenz, Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Otmar von Verschuer (Black 2003, Kuhse & Singer 2006, Samaan 2020, Seidelman 2020, Stern 2014 & Watson 2014).  

While Standard Oil, like Ford, GM and IBM, continued working with the Nazi regime during WWII, the Rockefeller Foundation post WWII became involved, under various guises, in population control measures linking back to Malthus via Paul Ehrlich of ‘Population Bomb’ fame, John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton and Paul ‘Sea Shepherd’ Watson at ZPG Zero Population Growth (Rockefeller Bros, Ford & Carnegie Foundations; all seemed to have moved on?).  These dynamics were also backgrounded by von Verschuer the supervisor of Mengele, surviving WWII to then eventually become the head of the now Max Planck Institute; in the US Rockefellers linked to the Population Council, Population Reference Bureau and Planned Parenthood (Stern 2014). There was multinational support from the UK, but especially the US and Germany between WWI and WWII, including financing of researchers by Rockefeller Foundation for more scientific investigation to make inroads into the modern environmental movements, but is it ‘science’? 

‘Science’ & Influence

The ideas of eugenics and heredity were and have been maintained by networks of influence including pseudo academic and science based events and institutions.  Evidence of the latter included events in the late ‘20s including Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics in Berlin, International Eugenics Congress in Rome, Rudin’s brain research and support for sterilisation in the ‘30s and University of Frankfurt’s Institute of Genetics and Racial Hygiene, including Verschuer who claimed ignorance of what happened at Auschwitz (Watson 2020, Seidelman 2020 & Kuhse & Singer 2006).  

The same elements were also related to Eugen Fischer’s colonial research interests in miscegenation of the races, later justifying the Nuremberg Laws (Baumel 2001), then also used to target immigrants and population growth (Stern 2014). There had been the introduction of pseudoscience, maintenance and reinforcement including through related factors or themes observed still till today including the public relations need for the protagonists’ reputation. The latter is achieved by avoiding public linkages between modern day population control and immigration restrictions with the darker activities of the eugenics movement pre WWII and informing Hitler’s holocaust.

Activities

The activities and outcomes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes are observed, still to this day whether von Verschuer eventually prevailing post WWII, documentaries about the Holocaust including Mengele’s experiments, faux Malthusian environmental movement based round population control for developing nations, while inspiring both white nativist and alt right influencers. While research, interests and expressions such as ‘Jewish problem’, ‘final solution’, similar were synthesised by outsiders Madison Grant and Hitler in Mein Kampf, post WWII files were removed (never to be found again), von Verschuer was rehabilitated by colleagues and led the Institutes again, now known as Max Planck Institute (Baumel 2001, Samaan 2022, Seideleman 2020 & Watson 2020).  

As interesting has been the strong post WWII influence of the Institutes in the Anglosphere, especially the USA, where it was rumoured that von Verschuer had liaised with US counterparts when he was also at University of Munster, while Mengele had escaped to Brazil (Baumel 2001 & Seidelman 2020).  Further, the basis of eugenics research has been used to support Malthusian population control efforts in the less developed world with a focus upon fertility, while in the western world, especially Anglsopphere, the focus became immigration and population (Stern 2014). The core and related activities of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, aside from their social programs, experiments and the Holocaust, included further promotion and reinforcement of eugenics, not just in Germany, but the Anglosphere too, then back in Europe.

Conclusion

Those claiming fertility, immigration and population growth as environmental issues of not just our time, but the past century, are promoting pseudoscience of eugenics whether Malthus, Galton or Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes.  Although senior researchers such as von Verschuer were at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, informing Hitler and his Holocaust, there were also US oligarchs who quietly supported this ideology and research. The influence of oligarchs and wealthy donors related to fossil fuels and industry, continued with the Club of Rome, ‘limits to growth’ and ZPG. Nowadays with proxies including alt or far right, GOP, FoxNews and much mainstream media, citing ‘the great replacement’, promoting immigration and population based agitprop as environmental issues, to deflect from global warming due to fossil fuels, and threats to future income streams and value.

Reference list

Baumel, J., 2001. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. Yale University Press, p.420.

Black, E., 2003. Eugenics and the Nazis — the California connection. [online] SF Gate. Available at: <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1&gt; [Accessed 19 September 2022].

Kuhse, H. and Singer, P., 2006. Bioethics. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., p.232.

Samaan, 2022. From a Race of Masters to a Master Race. [online] Google Books. Available at: <https://books.google.com/books?id=JkXJZtI9DQoC&dq=Foundations+of+Human+Hereditary+Teaching+and+ Racial+Hygiene&pg=PA539> [Accessed 19 September 2022].

Seidelman, W., 2000. Science and Inhumanity: The Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max Planck Society. [online] If Not Now. Available at: <http://www.baycrest.org/journal/ifnot01w.html&gt; [Accessed 18 February 2001].

Stern, A., 2014. Population control. [online] The Eugenics Archives. Available at: <http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535eed6a7095aa0000000249&gt; [Accessed 16 May 2022].

Watson, 2022. James Watson at the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute :: CSHL DNA Learning Center. [online] Dnalc.cshl.edu. Available at: <https://dnalc.cshl.edu/view/15766-James-Watson-at-the-former-Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute.html&gt; [Accessed 19 September 2022].

Links of interest

History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society

The Rockefeller Foundation & The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups & Right-wing Extremists

IQ, Bell Curve, Charles Murray, Libertarian Economics and Eugenics – Extremist Trajectory

Former UK PM Truss with Chancellor Kwarteng tried to introduce ‘Trussonomics’ as economic policy to a significant negative reaction from markets, but surely as we are told, this ‘free market’ ideology is what markets want?

Following are article excerpts from Nafeez Ahmed in ByLine Times looking at this economic ideology suggesting how it segues into ‘social Darwinism’ and ‘Apartheid’, then linking to the Nazis via Charles Murray, IQ and the ‘bell curve’; to be fair the Nazis did not invent eugenics although Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes did much research with their support from WWI to WWII, culminating in ‘active eugenics’.

Further, one needs to look at definitions, history, broader links and impacts that eugenics has with nations, government, politics, society and economics in the Anglosphere and beyond. 

First one needs to understand Thomas Malthus on population and Francis Galton on eugenics or ‘social Darwinism’ from centuries ago with their resurgence amongst environmentally minded nativists, following on from Madison Grant and white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton or ‘Tanton Network’, demanding immigration restrictions, hostile policies towards asylum seekers and population control.

Further, in addition to negative immigration policies, ‘Trussonomics’ is ‘Kochonomics’ or using Jane Mayer’s formulation ‘radical right libertarian’ economic ideology of the Koch’s muse ‘segregation economist’ James Buchanan, the latter was behind Hayek, Friedman, Rand et al. which Nancy MacLean has described also as ‘eugenics’ inspired.

Accordingly, Charles Murray is a fellow at the AEI American Enterprise Network in ‘Koch Network’ of think tanks supported by corporate and wealthy donors.  The Koch’s flagship Heritage Foundation where Truss has presented, whose former head Jason Richwine, according to Latino Rebels ‘Slate: Jason Richwine Resigns and Is “No Longer with The Heritage Foundation” due to a PhD. dissertation titled ‘IQ & Immigration Policy’, but then where did he go? 

Richwine has gone onto become ‘resident scholar’ at CIS Center for Immigration Studies in ‘Tanton Network’ which also advised Miller, Bannon, Fox News & media, the Trump White House and white nationalists; also has ‘NGO’s or charities in both Australia, and UK at Tufton Street with Koch Network think tanks.

The Dark Heart of Trussonomics – The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid

Nafeez Ahmed  10 October 2022

The legacy of the Nazi ideology of eugenics – popularised by Charles Murray’s controversial book The Bell Curve – goes some way to explaining Trussonomics, writes Nafeez Ahmed

Following the reaction to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s economic policies, ‘Trussonomics’ has been criticised as a case study in neoliberalism. Their financial shock therapy, the assumption goes, is aimed at making the rich richer, because they believe that this wealth will ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of society, driving economic growth.

But this misses a key ideological driving force: the reshaping of neoliberalism into an extreme nationalist economics rooted in a form of social Darwinism. Under this ideology, it is impossible to reduce inequality because characteristics such as race, gender and class that cause disparities are fixed.

In this sense, Trussonomics represents the continuation of an experiment that began with Trump and Brexit, both of which were seen as radical departures from the neoliberal consensus of the ‘golden age’ of globalisation.

Instead of tackling poverty and inequality, this social Darwinistic strain advocates that social divisions are destined to become wider because of fixed biological and cultural group properties. This, in turn, underpins an economic agenda of elevating and perpetuating the ‘fittest’ groups – while finding ways to manage, control and diminish the ‘underclass’.

This ideology has an astonishing reach – from the American Enterprise Institute, which has strong in-roads into the Republican Party; to UK pressure groups including the ‘Tufton Street’ think tanks that have helped shape Conservative Party policies.

The Pseudoscience of an ‘Underclass’

At the root of this thinking is a set of unstated assumptions that have become widely accepted across the conservative landscape – assumptions that have their origins in biological theories of human nature that have become increasingly mainstream across the right, even as they have been overwhelmingly discredited by the scientific community.

The ideology can be traced back to the extraordinary influence of American sociologist Charles Murray.

Murray is one of the world’s pioneers of scientific racism and biological theories of IQ and social stratification, and his related economic theories of the ‘underclass’ have influenced policy thinking on both sides of the Atlantic and the political spectrum.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre – the leading civil rights law firm that tracks extremist groups in America – Murray is a white nationalist extremist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor”.

His 1994 book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, co-authored with Richard Herrnstein, has been described by Scientific American magazine as “the flagship modern work reporting on racial differences in IQ score”. 

American Conservatism’s White Nationalist Star 

Charles Murray is F. A. Hayek Chair Emeritus in Cultural Studies at the American Enterprise Institute – a powerful neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C. with close ties to the Republican Party. He first joined the AEI in 1990 and has been in his current role since 2018.

In 2009, Murray received the AEI’s prestigious Irving Kristol Award. The AEI’s “highest honour”, it is given annually to an individual who has made “exceptional practical and intellectual contributions to improve government policy, social welfare, or political understanding”. Boris Johnson was honoured at a similar event by the AEI in 2018.

Charles Murray and the UK Right

Charles Murray’s entry into British politics began via The Sunday Times and Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which sponsored his writing and flew him to the UK several times. This was when Murray was still largely unknown in Britain, but he was sought after by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Government. 

By 1987, Murray had met representatives from her Policy Unit, the Department of Health and Social Security, and the Treasury Office. In 1989, Murray met Thatcher herself. 

A year later, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – founded in 1955, originally based in Westminster’s Tufton Street, a driving force of Thatcherism, and widely credited as a driving force for Trussonomics today – published Murray’s essay ‘The Emerging British Underclass’. It published a follow-up by Murray, ‘Underclass: The Crisis Deepens’, in 1994 – the same year he released The Bell Curve.

Over the next few years, the IEA’s fascination with Charles Murray would continue.

Reports and books repeatedly cited him. In 2012, the IEA’s head of political economy, Kristian Niemietz, published a book with the IEA, Redefining the Poverty Debate, citing Murray’s work on the underclass.

The Conservatives and Tufton Street

Liz Truss’ ties to the IEA demonstrate how the think tank is now influencing UK Government policy at the highest levels. 

The IEA co-hosted numerous events with Truss’ Free Enterprise group and Truss herself has spoken at the IEA more than any other politician over the past 12 years, according to Littlewood. He has been her friend since their student days.

Truss’ senior special advisor in Downing Street, Ruth Porter, is the IEA’s former communications director. During her leadership campaign, Truss cited IEA trustee Patrick Minford in defence of her tax cuts agenda.

A total of eight members of the current Cabinet belonged to the IEA Free Enterprise Group – now known as the Free Market Forum – including Kwasi Kwarteng, Brandon Lewis, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Therese Coffey, Nadhim Zahawi, Simon Clarke, Kemi Badenoch and Alistair Jack.

A Downing Street spokesperson did not clarify to Byline Times whether the Prime Minister and her Cabinet agreed or disagreed with Charles Murray’s views.

Truss’ reference to a new school curriculum by Civitas while she was Education and Childcare Minister came from then Education Secretary Michael Gove’s vision of education as ‘cultural literacy’ – the learning of hard facts rooted in the history of a country. This, in turn, comes from the work of English professor E. D. Hirsch, who has been vociferously promoted by Charles Murray.

In 2013, a 237-page private thesis by Dominic Cummings, Gove’s then special advisor, was leaked. The document, which cited Murray, revealed that Cummings believed a child’s educational performance has more to do with their genetic make-up rather than educational standards. The paper also cited scientists who have been affiliated with eugenics, including Stephen Hsu and Robert Plomin. As author of Human Genetic Engineering Pete Shanks observed, Cummings’ analysis promoted “the blatantly eugenic association of genes with intelligence, intelligence with worth, and worth with the right to rule”.

Such claims about the relationship between genes, race and cognitive ability have been repeatedly disproved. But the influence of these ideas in British conservatism appears to have persisted.

‘Social Apartheid’

The economic agenda spearheaded by Trussonomics cannot be simplistically equated with neoliberalism. Rather, it is a nationalist evolution of neoliberalism seeking to socially engineer market conditions that favour the so-called cognitive elite, while controlling an underclass considered parasitical to society. 

Charles Murray has played a critical role in bringing social Darwinistic thinking into centres of neoliberal thought.

In 2005, The Sunday Times commissioned him to write an article explaining what he called “social apartheid”. In it, Murray argued that, given Britain’s welfare policies, the only way to deal with the rising underclass was through its “social segregation” and “increased geographic segregation”, including mass incarceration. In the US, of course, black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than white people.

Marshalling as much as he could to prove that genes play a large role in determining cognitive ability, he later conceded in The Bell Curve that there is yet no clear evidence on whether genetics or environmental influences predominate in determining IQ. 

Murray nevertheless concluded that the emergence of a self-perpetuating underclass of cognitively inferior people is inevitable due to “dysgenic pressures” – and that this is worsened by welfare policies incentivising the underclass to continue self-reproducing on the udder of the state.

Instead of the traditional trickle-down economics associated with neoliberalism – through which growth for the few is supposed to lift all boats – Murray’s ideology not only naturalises entrenched inequalities, but argues that there is no point in attempting to lift all boats at all.

He suggests that social policy should be designed not to improve the lives of the less fortunate, but to decrease their numbers. Murray therefore recommends the elimination of all welfare policies, hard limits on immigration, and strategies to lower birth rates among these groups through policy disincentives – while implementing ‘social apartheid’ to manage these inferior populations and contain their dangerous impacts on wider society.

An Extreme Trajectory

Charles Murray’s work has channelled the principles of Nazi eugenics into mainstream conservatism, while carefully excising its Nazi origins from visibility.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre points out that the 13 scholars on which The Bell Curve relies to substantiate its claims received funding from the Pioneer Fund – founded in 1937 by Nazi sympathisers to promote “racial betterment” via eugenics and the “repatriation” of black Americans to Africa. 

Throughout the 1930s, the Pioneer Fund’s first president, Harry Laughlin, published articles in Eugenical News promoting Nazism and approving of its antisemitic laws. In The Bell Curve, Murray praises Laughlin as “a biologist who was especially concerned about keeping up the American level of intelligence by suitable immigration policies”.

The Pioneer Fund maintained intimate contacts with Nazi scientists. One organisation it finances is the Ulster Institute for Social Research, the journal of which – Mankind Quarterly – was founded by Otmar von Verschuer, who taught and mentored Nazi SS officer Josef Mengele, renowned for his medical experiments at Auschwitz.

In his AEI award speech in 2009, Murray encapsulated some of the core ideas that have come to dominate conservative movements in the US and UK.

He articulated the key ingredients of what is now the ‘Great Replacement’ theory –  the baseless far-right belief that white populations in Europe are being replaced by foreign immigrants, largely from Muslim and African countries. “The European model can’t continue to work much longer,” Murray warned. “Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.”

Murray’s concern was that “every element of the Europe Syndrome is infiltrating American life as well” and he pointed to “America’s social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighbourhoods of our great cities” as its main carriers. The good news, he declared, was that science was about to prove the European model wrong to the entire world because “within a decade, no one will try to defend the equality premise”. 

“All sorts of groups will be known to differ in qualities that affect what professions they choose, how much money they make, and how they live their lives in all sorts of ways,” he said. “Gender differences will be first, because the growth in knowledge about the ways that men and women are different is growing by far the most rapidly… But groups of people will turn out to be different from each other, on average, and those differences will also produce group differences in outcomes in life, on average, that everyone knows are not the product of discrimination and inadequate government regulation.”

But the vehicle for this vision being executed, Murray said, would be the most powerful people in America, “the small minority of the population that has disproportionate influence over the culture, economy, and governance of the country” – the kind of people “in this room tonight”. He called for a “political great awakening” among these elites to consider “what they are willing to do to preserve” an exceptionalism defined by the right-wing libertarian philosophy of limited government, privatisation and deregulation blurred with social Darwinistic values of survival of the fittest.

These ideas – articulated more than a decade ago – have played a fundamental role in the transformation of Anglo-American political ideology.

Though largely unacknowledged, Charles Murray’s school of thought now permeates the background thinking of numerous politicians, conservative media pundits, thinkers and financiers. Although the specifics may not have been taken up, Murray’s work has set the mood music against which right-wing political and economic ideology is increasingly choreographed. Many who dance to its tune do not know the origins of the music and the beliefs of its composers.

Yet this goes some way to explaining the increasingly extreme trajectory of mainstream conservatism today: its intensifying race-baiting; its infiltration by Great Replacement theorists; and an obsession with an agenda containing social Darwinist strands of thought. It also helps to explain why Trussonomics has converged with the American brand of right-wing libertarianism in a doctrine that revels in inequality, and sees the poor and vulnerable as little more than ‘useless eaters’ who must bear the blame for their own circumstances. 

The quiet predominance of this ideology, however, bodes ill for the future of the West. Although the Third Reich was defeated in 1945, right-wing influencers and politicians have cherry-picked from the findings of modern biology to justify retaining its ideological remnants while denying their Nazi origins.

In a time of escalating crisis, the continued radicalisation of the right poses the biggest internal threat to the values defining Western civilisation since the Second World War.

For more related articles and blogs on Adult Learning, Eugenics, Immigration, Human Resource Management, Learning Theory, Libertarian Economics, Nativism, Qualitative Research and White Nationalism click through:

Anglosphere Nativist Libertarian Social Economic Policies or Return of Eugenics?

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

The Bell Curve – Eugenics – IQ – Libertarian Levelling Up of Minorities and Society?

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

Language Learning, English and White Nativism