5 Comments
Mar 20Liked by Brucha Weisberger

I'm just now reading this old Stack you wrote on eugenics. To add to your already fine presentation of history of the subject is this New York Times story from 1913. With many familiar names and characters from history, who's subsequent work in many fields, primarily medicine, banking, propaganda, industry, clergy, politics and academia are bound together by their underlying core belief in and support of eugenics.

Choosing Audience for Brieux Play

J. D. Rockefeller Suggests Those Who Have Aided White Slave Investigation

Social Workers Approve

The New York Times, page 13, February 23, 1913 https://www.newspapers.com/article/31090629/edward_l_bernays_medical_review_of/

It's a story about a play that develops notions of eugenics, social control by elites needing to protect their gene pools. It introduces germ theory as it was first coming into vogue It describes a play that was shown to the powerful and connected, "Damaged Goods."

Prominent attendees who also just so happened to be eugenicists. About men of high society who sleep around with prostitutes and lesser women, bringing back disease like syphilis to families, deforming children, etc. It uses the term "White Slavery" to describe the sex trade. It advances the idea of infectious disease as it was still a relatively novel understanding of them at the time.

The article describes attendees from the American Society of Medical Sociology, an organization and movement that you'll discover is in concert with "Marxist conflict theory," that medical sociologists adhere to which explains hows how the ruling classes can assert their power through medicine. I discovered that tidbit when looking up the term after I first learned of it in this NYT article.

The names listed as invitees and on the hosting committee are a veritable who's who of the early 20th century. Including:

- John D. Rockefeller, father of allopathic western medicine, based in petrochemicals, products of his Standard Oil.

- Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, advertising, marketing. And who popularized the term "quacks" to describe natural healers like homeopaths, while helping allopathic medicine educational and practice secure monopolies by outlawing and replacing natural healing, substituting petrochemical-based allopathy as the business model for health care.

- Simon and Abraham Flexner, who's Flexner Report was the notorious #FakeScience used to outlaw natural healers for Rockefeller's petrochemical business model of medicine.

- State Senator Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And a network of prominent socialists, communists with ties to Karl Marx, names like:

- William Jay Schleffilin, descendant of the first Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Jay, ran the largest pharmaceutical company giant and Big Pharma trade association head for decades

- Abraham Jacobl, the first leading pediatrician, president of the American Medical Association.

And a great many more names that when you search out you'll find were leaders across many industries and disciplines, all aligned with socialism/humanism values. And all eugenicists.

Most of the other names listed as invited are easily located in internet searches, no doubt they left their mark in the bigger picture you paint. And it also mentions how six unnamed students from the Yale University Civics Club would be attending. Note: Prescott Bush (patriarch to the Bush political dynasty and who went on to become known as "Hitler's Banker" while he did business with that regime for two years after the US entered WWII before the Trading With the Enemies Act shut him down) was a politically connected student at Yale in 1913. His family lineage and friends, the Walker's, Harriman's, Rockefeller's and Brown's. I don't have enough info to know if Prescott Bush was one of the six mentioned, but considering his support of Hitler, eugenics and his son's infamous "New World Order" speech that echos the Fascists and Marxists of the era, I wouldn't be surprised if he was there, too. He had been president of his high school Civics Club in his senior year, 1912. Though he was very active in clubs at Yale, there is no mention of it in his university extracurricular activities. But he did go on to become very close to Rockefeller himself, was how he got position in banking to become Hitler's banker. So there's that consideration to add to the importance of this historical record.

Expand full comment
Jul 24, 2022·edited Jul 24, 2022

I only scanned this quickly, but I immediately see some imprecise statements (although the general idea is certainly correct and scary.) First of all, Russell himself actually also provided a proof, similar to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, that mathematics could not be axiomized as Hilbert had desired. I don't know how this relates to his general philosophical ideas about Man or the world. In addition, Norbert Wiener is often quoted as having grave doubts about the "computer revolution" that he had helped create. The same is true of others mentioned here, such as John von Neumann.

Again, I will have to carefully read the original article, and there is certainly no doubt that there are some very evil characters at work today, but many of the "mad scientists" who have created the sci-fi world we live in are not necessarily the one-dimensional comic-book villains we might think that they are. And of course, the real key is that anyone who is an atheist-materialist (based on the utter nonsense popularized by Darwin) will end up being completely amoral and cruel, and that is the theme of this blog.

Expand full comment