Thursday, May 12, 2005
Euthanasia Hall of Shame: Salvador Allende?
from The Telegraph.
Until recently, I might have been surprised to hear that one of the leading martyrs in the leftist canon was a supporter of mandatory sterilization programs and an anti-semite:
Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile who was killed during a CIA-backed coup in 1973, was an anti-Semite who held fascist ideas in his youth about race and crime, it is claimed in a book which has split Chile.
Salvador Allende [right] with General Augusto Pinochet
The book, Salvador Allende: Antisemitism and Euthanasia, will shock many who still revere him as a martyr who was deposed by the right-wing Gen Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of Washington and big business.
The disclosures come from Allende's 1933 doctoral dissertation which has been kept secret until now. In it he asserted that Jews had a disposition to crime and called for compulsory sterilisation of the mentally ill and alcoholics.
Despite the title, it seems Allende was discussing eugenics and not true euthanasia, at least based on the information in the article. Google didn't turn up much on this, but since author Victor Farias wrote extensively on euthanasia in a book on Martin Heidegger and the Nazis, I assume he should know the difference. I guess we'll have to wait for the book...
Until recently, I might have been surprised to hear that one of the leading martyrs in the leftist canon was a supporter of mandatory sterilization programs and an anti-semite:
Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile who was killed during a CIA-backed coup in 1973, was an anti-Semite who held fascist ideas in his youth about race and crime, it is claimed in a book which has split Chile.
Salvador Allende [right] with General Augusto Pinochet
The book, Salvador Allende: Antisemitism and Euthanasia, will shock many who still revere him as a martyr who was deposed by the right-wing Gen Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of Washington and big business.
The disclosures come from Allende's 1933 doctoral dissertation which has been kept secret until now. In it he asserted that Jews had a disposition to crime and called for compulsory sterilisation of the mentally ill and alcoholics.
Despite the title, it seems Allende was discussing eugenics and not true euthanasia, at least based on the information in the article. Google didn't turn up much on this, but since author Victor Farias wrote extensively on euthanasia in a book on Martin Heidegger and the Nazis, I assume he should know the difference. I guess we'll have to wait for the book...
papijoe 9:24 AM
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