Nazi scientists analogized eliminating asocial individuals to removing cancerous tumors

Evidence

There is a certain similarity between the measures which need to be taken when we draw a broad biological analogy between bodies and malignant tumors, on the one hand, and a nation and individuals within it who have become asocial because of their defective constitution, on the other hand… Any attempt at reconstruction using elements which have lost their proper nature and characteristics is doomed to failure. Fortunately, the elimination of such elements is easier for the public health physician and less dangerous for the supraindividual organism, than such an operation by a surgeon would be for the individual organism. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 395

Categorization

• XREF: The tumor/body metaphor for social purification resembles the medicalized language Sontag describes in Illness as Metaphor; also echoes contemporary ‘cancerous cells’ rhetoric toward marginalized groups.
• SEED: Essay angle: how biological metaphors (‘tumor,’ ‘weed,’ ‘infection’) migrate from describing nature to justifying state violence — and which metaphors are doing similar work today against migrants or ‘antisocial’ populations.