Demographic panic fuses hereditary intelligence claims with fertility anxieties

Evidence

Sarrazin’s portrayal of the demographic threat, moreover, postulates different levels of hereditary intelligence between the German “native population” and Muslims, the latter being depicted as underachievers in schools. The higher birth rates of Muslims will therefore ultimately result in Germany “becoming dumber” (Sarrazin, Ulrich, & Topçu, 2010). — Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar, “They Love Death as We Love Life”, 232

Categorization

• CANDY: ‘Germany becoming dumber’ is a blunt, quotable distillation of a whole genre of demographic doom.
• SEED: Piece on how the ‘dumbing down’ trope revives early-twentieth-century eugenic demography in polite mainstream clothing.