Eugenics are back on the menu for the Tory’s: The Working class better start to organise.

Dominic Cummings called for “misfits and weirdos” to apply for jobs in Downing Street and the applicants certainly meet that criteria.

Andrew Sabisky, one of the hires, the 27-year-old researcher, who reportedly describes himself as a “super forecaster”, has been brought in to work as a contractor on Downing Street projects.

Sabisky has a history of horrific comments many in support of Eugenics, these comments which campaigners have said draw parallels to Nazi ideology, were uncovered over the weekend.

This includes a comment on Mr Cummings’s blog in 2014 in which Mr Sabisky said existing vaccination laws could pave the way for mandatory birth control.

In a comment on a 2014 blog post on Mr Cummings’ website, made by a user called “Andrew Sabisky” that used the same picture as his Twitter page, it is suggested that compulsory contraception could be used to stop a “permanent underclass”.

“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty,” says the post.

“Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”

Where did this ‘misfit’, this ‘weirdo’ get his perverted ideas from? Well, one thing for sure, he is no maverick or free thinker, neither some revolutionary of an Orwellian future. No he’s just a echo of a debunked cruel ideology.

Instead this resembles the marshalling of misunderstood or specious science into a political ideology. The history here is important, because this process is exactly what happened at the birth of scientific racism and the birth of eugenics. 12/n

— Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) February 17, 2020

The conservatives along with the Nazi’s have an history of Eugenics and wanting to sterilise anyone they deemed unfit

Historically, eugenics encouraged people of so-called healthy, superior stock to reproduce and discouraged reproduction of the mentally challenged or anyone who fell outside the social norm. Eugenics was popular in America during much of the first half of the twentieth century, yet it earned its negative association mainly from Adolf Hitler’s obsessive attempts to create a superior Aryan race.

Churchill when Home Secretary (February 1910-October 1911) was in favour of the confinement, segregation, and sterilisation of a class of persons contemporary described as the “feeble minded.”

Winston Churchill wrote to his cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. Churchill’s view was reinforced by his experiences as a young British officer serving, and fighting, in Arab and Muslim lands, and in South Africa. Like most of his contemporaries, family and friends, he regarded races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race. As a young politician in Britain entering Parliament in 1901, Churchill saw what were then known as the “feeble-minded” and the “insane” as a threat to the prosperity, vigour and virility of British society.

The phrase “feeble-minded” was to be defined as part of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, of which Churchill had been one of the early drafters. The Act defined four grades of “Mental Defective” who could be confined for life, whose symptoms had to be present “from birth or from an early age.” “Idiots” were defined as people “so deeply defective in mind as to be unable to guard against common physical dangers.” “Imbeciles” were not idiots, but were “incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so.” The “feeble-minded” were neither idiots nor imbeciles, but, if adults, their condition was “so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or the protection of others.” If children of school age, their condition was “so pronounced that they by reason of such defectiveness appear to be personally incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in ordinary schools.” “Moral defectives” were people who, from an early age, displayed “some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment had little or no effect.”

Churchill was crossing from the Conservative to the Liberal benches, A.J. Balfour’s Conservative government set up a Royal Commission “On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded.” When the commission reported in 1908 to the Liberal Government-which had come into office at the end of 1905, and of which Churchill was a Cabinet Minister-it recommended compulsory detention of the mentally “inadequate,” as well as sterilisation of the “unfit,” so that it would be impossible to have children and thus perpetuate what were then seen as inherited characteristics. Until that time only the criminally insane, whom the courts had judged to be a danger to themselves and others, were sent to mental asylums. Detention of the “feeble-minded”-for life-was considered by the Royal Commission to be vital to the health of the wider society.

Such detention, as well as sterilisation, were at that time the two main “cures” to “feeble-mindeness.” They were put forward by the eugenicists, those who believed in “the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).

As a supporter of eugenics, he participated in the drafting of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913; however, the Act, in the form eventually passed, rejected his preferred method of sterilisation of the feeble-minded in favour of their confinement in institutions.

Churchill wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, India that he must, “rely as much as possible on the martial races”. Churchill believed that the white race was superior to other races, and he was a supporter of the growing pseudo-science of eugenics and Social Darwinism.

The constitutional crises of 1910 and 1911 prevented Churchill introducing a bill and he moved on to the Admiralty. But by 1912 the clamour for legislation had revived and a Tory backbencher, Gershom Stewart, introduced his own private member’s bill. In 1912 the new home secretary, Reginald McKenna, reluctantly introduced the Mental Deficiency Bill. Although it was not prompted by eugenic concerns alone, and did not contain a compulsory sterilisation clause, this was the critical moment. The bill would restrict procreation by the feeble-minded and would punish those who married mental defectives. It was an open secret that it could be amended to allow compulsory sterilisation as soon as practicable.

Breed up the working class as though they were cattle

One man deserves to be singled out for mounting opposition to this bill: a radical libertarian MP with the famous-and relevant-name of Josiah Wedgwood. He was a naval architect by profession; scion of the famous industrial family which had repeatedly intermarried with the Darwin family (for several decades the two families were probably the richest in the West Midlands). Charles Darwin had a grandfather, a father-in-law and a brother-in-law (twice over) each called Josiah Wedgwood. But while some of the Darwins eagerly embraced eugenics-Charles Darwin’s son, Leonard, was president of the Eugenics Society-Josiah Wedgwood disliked it intensely. Elected to parliament in the Liberal landslide of 1906, he had later joined the Labour party and retired to the House of Lords in 1942.

He charged that the Eugenics Society was trying “to breed up the working class as though they were cattle” and he asserted that the laws of heredity were “too undetermined for one to pin faith on any doctrine, much less to legislate according to it.” But his main objection was on the grounds of individual liberty. He was appalled by a bill which gave the state powers to take a child from its home by force, by clauses which granted policemen the duty to act on reports from members of the public that somebody was “feeble-minded” and by the creation of yet more state-empowered enforcers: “We shall soon all be wearing a uniform and receiving a salary, and there will be no one to pay the salary.” His motive was not social justice but individual liberty: he was joined by Tory libertarians such as Lord Robert Cecil. Their common cause was that of the individual against the state.

The clause which stuck in Wedgwood’s throat was that which stated it to be “desirable in the interests of the community that [the feeble-minded] should be deprived of the opportunity of procreating children.” This was, in Wedgwood’s words, “the most abominable thing ever suggested” and not “the care for the liberty of the subject and for the protection of the individual against the state that we have a right to expect from a Liberal administration.”

Wedgwood’s attack was so effective that the government withdrew the bill and presented it again the next year in much watered-down form. Crucially, it now omitted “any reference to what might be regarded as the eugenic idea,” and the offensive clauses regulating marriage and preventing procreation were dropped. Wedgwood still opposed the bill. For two whole nights, fuelled by bars of chocolate, he sustained his attack by tabling more than 200 amendments. But when his support had dwindled to four members, he gave up and the bill passed into law.

Andrew Sabisky history of comments all seem to suggest he is just another right-wing dinosaur

In a comment on another blog post on a different website in 2014, what appears to be the same user suggested black Americans had a lower average IQ than white Americans.

In a comment on a different blog that same year, a user with his name said: “There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly – even mostly – genetic in origin, though the degree is of course a very serious subject of scholarly debate.”

Mr Sabisky also suggested to Schools Week in July 2016 that the benefits of a purported cognitive enhancer, which can prove fatal, are “probably worth a dead kid once a year”.

“Eugenics are about selecting ‘for’ good things,” he said in the same interview. “Intelligence is largely inherited and it correlates with better outcomes: physical health, income, lower mental illness.

And in a Twitter post from 2019, he said: “I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”

National embarrassment

Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said: “It is disgusting that not only has Number 10 failed to condemn [these] appalling comments, but also seems to have endorsed the idea that white people are more intelligent than black people.

“Boris Johnson should have the backbone to make a statement in his own words on why he has made this appointment, whether he stands by it, and his own views on the subject of eugenics.”

Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said: “[Mr Sabisky] must of course be removed from this position immediately.”

His appointment has prompted a fierce backlash from Labour MPs and anti-racism campaigners.

It comes after The Times uncovered a 2016 interview for Schools Weekly, in which the new adviser advocated giving children a dose of modafinil, a cognitive-enhancing drug.

But speaking to the magazine, Mr Sabisky said: “From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worh a dead kid once a year.”

And in a series of now-deleted tweets seen by the paper, the researcher also described female Labour MPs Yvette Cooper, Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey as “dim”, while writing in another that: “I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”

According to the paper, Mr Sabisky has already attended several meetings in Number 10, where he reports directly to Mr Cummings.

In a review of the book for the Adam Smith Institute in 2016, Mr Sabisky wrote: “A large body of evidence, which [Dr] Perkins reviews, supports the intuitive idea that habitual welfare claimants tend to be less conscientious and agreeable than the average person.”

Summarising the work, he added: “Such habitual claimants also tend to produce at higher rates than the general population, a pattern found across nations and time periods.

“They also seem to adjust their fertility in response to change in the generosity of welfare provision, having fewer children in time of austerity and more when governments turn on the spigot marked ‘spending’.”

Meanwhile, Mr Sabisky also commended Dr Perkin’s “praiseworthy boldness” for arguing the Government should “try to adjust the generosity of welfare payments to the point where habitual claimants do not have greater fertility than those customarily employed”.

In addition, he said the author “should also have argued for measures to boost the fertility of those with pro-social personalities, such as deregulation of the childcare and housing markets to cut the costs of sustainable family formation”.

Following an outpouring of criticism from fellow academics about the claims made in the book, Mr Sabisky later added a note to his review claiming he had been “unaware of a number of surprisingly basic errors” in the research.

“Suffice it to say that had I been aware of these issues at the time of writing, the review below would probably have had a somewhat different tone,” he added.

It comes after a spokesperson for Mr Johnson repeatedly refused to criticise the Tory adviser for his previous comments on eugenics, saying: “The Prime Minister’s views on a range of subjects are well-publicised and well-documented.”

Genetic Engineering

Thanks to the unspeakable atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, eugenics lost momentum in after World War II, although forced sterilisations still happened. But as medical technology advanced, a new form of eugenics came on the scene.

Modern eugenics, better known as human genetic engineering, changes or removes genes to prevent disease, cure disease or improve your body in some significant way. The potential health benefits of human gene therapy are staggering since many devastating or life-threatening illnesses could be cured.

But modern genetic engineering also comes with a potential cost. As technology advances, people could routinely weed-out what they consider undesirable traits in their offspring. Genetic testing already allows parents to identify some diseases in their child in utero which may cause them to terminate the pregnancy.

This is controversial since what exactly constitutes “negative traits” is open to interpretation, and many people feel that all humans have the right to be born regardless of disease, or that the laws of nature shouldn’t be tampered with.

Update to this post: Andrew Sabisky Quits as a Tory party aid.

The 27-year-old was hired after Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings called for “misfits and weirdos” to apply to work with him, but faced a backlash over a series of posts.

In a tweet on Monday, he wrote: “The media hysteria about my old stuff online is mad but I wanted to help HMG not be a distraction. Accordingly I’ve decided to resign as a contractor. I hope no.10 hires more ppl w/ good geopolitical forecasting track records & that media learn to stop selective quoting.”— Andrew Sabisky (@AndrewSabisky) February 17, 2020