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Darwinian Racism

Richard Weikart and Hank Hanegraaff Talk Darwinian Racism

Series
ID the Future
Guest
Richard Weikart
Duration
00:30:25
Download
Audio File (16.6 mb)

On today’s ID the Future, radio host Hank Hanegraaff interviews historian and Center for Science and Culture senior fellow Richard Weikart about his book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. The two look at how Darwinism fueled scientific racism and an aggressive and frequently racist eugenics movement not just in Nazi Germany but, earlier, in the United States, where many leading, even mainstream voices, including Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, top business magnates, and some liberal Protestants enamored of evolutionary theory pushed compulsory sterilization laws, which were passed in Indiana, California, and other states. Weikart shows how these laws were fueled and informed by ideas laid out in Darwin’s The Descent of Man, ideas that also came to influence Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and contemporary white nationalists here in the United States. The conversation then turns to Karl Marx, Marx’s attack on religion, and how Marx’s environmental determinism differed from Hitler’s biological determinism. To delve deeper into these important chapters of modern history, material frequently ignored in surveys of nineteenth and twentieth-century US and European history, get your copy of Weikart’s new book, Darwinian Racism.

Richard Weikart

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Richard Weikart is Emeritus Professor of History, California State University, Stanislaus, and author of seven books, including From Darwin to Hitler, Hitler’s Ethic, The Death of Humanity, and Hitler’s Religion. His most recent book is Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism (2022). His PhD dissertation, Socialist Darwinism, earned the biennial prize of the Forum for History of Human Sciences as best dissertation in that field. He has lectured at many universities and other venues in the US and Europe. He also has been interviewed on dozens of radio shows, podcasts, and TV, and appeared in seven documentaries, including Expelled. Some of his lectures and interviews are available on YouTube.