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Notes -
Eugenics was popular much earlier than that, it was a popular ethos of secular progressives who were very much into Darwinism and espoused social Darwinism as a scientific way to rule nations. It was espoused by Sir Francis Galton, the pioneer of eugenics and Darwin's cousin. It is not dissimilar to current progressive or rationalist ethos: we progressives use science and rationality to improve humanity. Plebs and especially religious backward morons may see things like sterilization as morally abhorent, however they do not see the purity of our work which will diminish pain for all the future generations. The utility gains of our girm work has almost no bounds, we need to find our courage and moral firmness to go through this.
It is also unsurprising what happened after it all failed. Progressives as usual declared that eugenic progressives were not true progressives, and that in fact they were far right Nazis - the same as they washed their hands from support of Stalinism and many other crimes they came up with. But it is in fact in their DNA.
I agree but as far as I know it was after the catastrophe of WW1 that the project of eugenics assumed a sense of urgency in the minds of its proponents.
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