Eugenicists rejected equality of ability as a political and educational sophistry

Evidence

That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality. The technique of the concentration camp is to make the prisoners like their guards, the murdered, murderers. The racial difference is raised to an absolute so that it can be abolished absolutely, if only in the sense that nothing that is different survives. An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences. Politics that are still seriously concerned with such a society ought not, therefore, propound the abstract equality of men even as an idea. Instead, they should point to the bad equality today, the identity of those with interests in films and in weapons, and conceive the better state as one in which people could be different without fear. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 117 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Eugenic ideology suppressed research into infectious causes of low IQ — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 916; Self-interest in preserving hierarchy drove belief in eugenics over evidence. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 793; Evolutionist doctrines fused heredity with individual merit to excuse political elites from responsibility — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 476 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The abstract ideal of human equality secretly serves totalitarian homogenization #complicates (0.76) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 117