US President-elect Donald Trump has made his contempt for immigrants, particularly from nonwhite nations, explicit. His extreme nationalism provides a platform for the expression of anti-immigration sentiment in the most vulgar, ignorant terms. In October this year, prior to the US election, he recycled ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes. Claiming that migrants from Latin American countries possess ‘bad’ genes predisposing them to murderous criminality, Trump made clear his proto-fascistic ideas about race.

Back in 2016, Trump, who never ceases to remind his audiences about his intellectual greatness, attributed his superior intellect to his German background. Expressing his pride in his German blood, he placed himself in the same camp as those Germans who share similar pride in their allegedly superior bloodline.

Overt racism, a central pillar of Trump’s worldview, is odious. In fact, his ideas regarding the purported genetic inferiority of nonwhite immigrants frequently find expression from his political allies and campaign supporters. His claims about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes have their origins in eugenics, a large body of beliefs which basically holds that humanity can be improved by breeding out the less desirable traits, while promoting those traits which improve the human stock.

Trump has spoken of how immigrants from nonwhite nations are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. However, we should not be too hard on Trump. His ideas, while reprehensible and reminiscent of eugenics, are not outside the mainstream in the United States.

Indeed, his ignorant rantings about genes are not his fault. If that sounds like a defence of Trump, well, in a way, it is. The United States (and Britain) have a long and tortured history of promoting eugenics – the educated classes have been the worst offenders. Trump and his supporters are the products of an political establishment, buttressed by scientific leaders, that has promoted and popularised the dubious theories of eugenics and race science for decades.

Let’s pause the discussion about eugenics there for a moment, and make an observation about immigration. Sonali Kolhatkar, wrote an article responding to the many untruths circulated by Trump about immigration. She makes the point that yes, dumping newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers into small towns with no plan for resettlement creates resentment and anxiety among people already struggling with unemployment, poverty and lack of access to services.

Kolhatkar notes that this is precisely what current US President Joe Biden has done to migrants from the Caribbean, Latin American and Asian and African nations. That procedure left the door open for anti-immigrant politicians like Trump to walk through. There was one exception to that policy – the handling of Ukrainian refugees. White European migrants from Ukraine were not simply taken by bus and left in a town to fend for themselves.

The US government coordinated with local authorities, provided a pathway for absorption and resettlement, and were allowed to work immediately. This made the assimilation of Ukrainian refugees smooth; in contrast to the demonisation of Hispanic and African migrants, who were denied work permits and abandoned once they arrived.

It is remarkable that immigrants, much like Schrödinger’s famous cat, can occupy two states simultaneously; they take jobs from ‘real’ Americans, but also lazily parasitise the welfare system, collecting unemployment benefits.

Eugenics has a long history in the US and Britain. If you think that eugenicist beliefs are confined to the idiotic bigots like Trump, think again. Nikola Tesla, (1856-1943), the famed Serbian American engineer and inventor, was undoubtedly a genius. He was also an advocate of eugenics. By 2100, he believed, eugenics would be universally accepted, and the ‘feeble-minded’ sterilised, thus improving the quality of the human race by eliminating the undesirables.

Tesla was not alone this view; conservative US politicians, judges, police officials, science fiction writers Robert Henlein and H G Wells – eugenics cut across political lines and occupations. Julian Huxley (1885-1975), the noted evolutionary biologist and geneticist, was a firm advocate of eugenics. The first head of UNESCO, who pleaded for the inclusion of science in the remit of the fledgling UN agency, was known as a eugenicist.

The point of the above examples is not to provide a list of notorious villains to be condemned; not every eugenicist was a Nazi or a fascist. However, the main point to make is that eugenics was firmly baked into the scientific and philosophical outlook of Anglophone societies.

Were there scientists who opposed eugenics? Absolutely yes. The Russian scientists, such Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay (1846-88), coming from a society that had a collectivist philosophy, rejected the ultra competitive individualism inherent in eugenicist ideology.

You may read about the details of Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay in my prior article here.

Miklouho-Maclay rejected the race science of his European counterparts, in particular that of evolutionary biologist Ernest Haeckel (1834 – 1919). The Russian scientist had worked among indigenous people, and refuted the supposed genetic inferiority of what were termed ‘lesser races.’

The topic of eugenics and discredited field of race science is not just a matter of historical curiosity.

I wrote about the resurgence of race science in this article in 2020. Earlier this year, The Guardian in cooperation with the English organisation Hope Not Hate, published an exposé of an entire network of far right activists and intellectuals, funded by a tech billionaire, reviving eugenicist and racial science beliefs.

Calling themselves the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF), the group aims to resuscitate outdated and obsolete ideas regarding eugenics, and make palatable to the public. Rehabilitating the ideology of race science – the allegedly biologically inherent differences between races – has real world political implications.

When Trump speaks about good and bad genes, he is not regurgitating anything new or original. He is drawing from a longstanding reservoir of eugenics. His administration is sure to translate these ideas into official anti-immigration policies. Let’s be sure to know the nature of the enemy so we can confront it.