European Parliament Elections 2014

[Sol Invictus]

Nazis hated all Slavs, and no, they didn't care whether it was Catholic Slavs or Orthodox Slavs involved.

Nazies hated (except Jews, Rroma and so on) the Soviet people(Russians& other Soviet nations).

And went against non-Soviet Poles? Besides for some time they actually cooperated with Soviets. It rather seems that they were not into Communism and considered Slavs, who are not Germanic people, a lower race unfit to take part in further evolution of Aryans

[Lietmotiv]

And went against non-Soviet Poles? Besides for some time they actually cooperated with Soviets. It rather seems that they were not into Communism and considered Slavs, who are not Germanic people, a lower race unfit to take part in further evolution of Aryans

Slavs are not a race itself, from the antropological point of view, but a language group. Genetically speaking, Finns are closer to Russians(who have a strong Finno-Ugric and Tartar influece), than Bulgarians or Slovene are. And there is a huge cultural gap between Catholic Slavic-speaking nations and Orthodox Slavic-speaking nations. So, Hitler was dumb, from my point of view.

[Saim]

The Nazi policy was not to exterminate all the Slavs. According to their weird theories there were "Slavic-speaking Germanics" (allegedly descendents of the Rus' and the Goths and so on) who would need to be re-Germanised, the rest being exterminated or enslaved.

[Lietmotiv]

I guess it's worthless to discuss about Nazi theories, since there's no common sense/logic in it.
My point was that Nazies were wrong even in terms of defining, what Slavs are, since Slavs are a language community, not an ethnic one(it can be ethnic if we take apart West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs, but the term "Slavs" itself became only a linguistic one, since there are big genetic difference between some Slavic-speaking nations).

[loqu]

Yes, I think it all boils down to that. In the beginning of the 20th century, it was fashionable to believe all that racist bullshit. Today we have the evidence that most (if not all) of it was wrong.

[Sol Invictus]

Actually, I checked, seems like the idea was that "Northern sub-branch of Aryan race is the purest, so let's get rid of foreign influences in other sub-branches", which makes Slavs lower sub-race of Aryans not a different race (though the sub- part likely was soon dropped). Eugenics are not unscientific, though, just immoral

[Saim]

I guess it's worthless to discuss about Nazi theories, since there's no common sense/logic in it.
My point was that Nazies were wrong even in terms of defining, what Slavs are, since Slavs are a language community, not an ethnic one(it can be ethnic if we take apart West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs, but the term "Slavs" itself became only a linguistic one, since there are big genetic difference between some Slavic-speaking nations).

"Aryans" were also just a language community (Indo-European language speakers), and even this they ignored for political expedience - eventually Finns, Hungarians and Japanese were given "honorary Aryan" status because they were allies in the German war effort.

I'd just like to point out that it's not just that the Nazis got the categories wrong, but that it's unhelpful and pseudoscientific to divide humans into rigid "races" at all. Even if we divide the Slavs into the main branches this is still at heart a linguistic classification and there is lots of variation within these groups.

Another thing that's good to keep in mind is that the idea of "ethnicity" in social science is a primarily cultural concept, not a genetic one although colloquially for many people it has become a more acceptable synonym of "race".

[Itikar]

Eugenics are not unscientific, though, just immoral

Eugenetic is completely unscientific because there is no way to determine a priori whether a said gene is better or worse than another.
The environment where a subject lives, and the interaction with other biological forms, determines it.

Hence a bearer of cystic fibrosis could be wrongly seen as genetically inferior to a non-bearer, until they get cholera or another similar disease.
The same with sickle cell anemia bearers and malaria.

So since we don't know what humans will face in the future it will always be possible that the bad gene of today will become the top gene of tomorrow.

[Marah]

But then again it's not a question of bad or good, it's just a question of adapted or not adapted.

[Itikar]

Yeah, I strongly believe that the ends do not justify the means. This is why I was suspicious of M5S from the start. Too vague, too populist, no clear political orientation... of course they'd side with UKIP, I shouldn't be surprised.

As any sincere supporter will tell you I am the first to see that the five star movement has many problems and flaws.

Even with these big flaws, however, we didn't have much of a choice in the vote.
Precisely:
1)The parties who ruined the country and are seriously involved with mafia and corruption.
2)Tsipras List that was pro-Europe.
3)M5S
4)Not voting.

Farage? He was the only one in the European Parliament who stood up and denounced when Italy was being screwed up with the coup of 2011.
What he shall do in the United Kingdom is a business of the British people, as much as what Renzi shall do to Italy is sadly ours.

[Sol Invictus]

Eugenics are not unscientific, though, just immoral

Eugenetic is completely unscientific because there is no way to determine a priori whether a said gene is better or worse than another.
The environment where a subject lives, and the interaction with other biological forms, determines it.

Hence a bearer of cystic fibrosis could be wrongly seen as genetically inferior to a non-bearer, until they get cholera or another similar disease.
The same with sickle cell anemia bearers and malaria.

So since we don't know what humans will face in the future it will always be possible that the bad gene of today will become the top gene of tomorrow.

That doesn't make it unscientific, just again goes to prove it is stupid. You can select two individuals with certain traits you desire, like blond hair, blue eyes and white skin, and expect their children to be more likely to inherit those traits than, if somebody with those traits had children with whomever they please - people have done it with other species for ages with obvious success

[vijayjohn]

I guess it's worthless to discuss about Nazi theories, since there's no common sense/logic in it.

I'd argue that it's important for posterity's sake, though. If you don't want something to happen again, it's good to understand what exactly caused that to happen.

[Itikar]

But then again it's not a question of bad or good, it's just a question of adapted or not adapted.

I'd say "fit" or "unfit", and fitness changes as soon as the environment changes.

There was an experiment with midges on a windswept reef where it was shown that the only midges who survived had atrophic wings, because those with normal wings were blown away and died as soon as they tried to fly up.
In their usual environment these midges with atrophic wings are usually not able reproduce, but on that reef they were the only one able to do so.

An eugenetic reasoning would have mandated the removal from the population of the genes that caused atrophic wings, thus determining its likely extinction on that reef.

That doesn't make it unscientific, just again goes to prove it is stupid. You can select two individuals with certain traits you desire, like blond hair, blue eyes and white skin, and expect their children to be more likely to inherit those traits than, if somebody with those traits had children with whomever they please - people have done it with other species for ages with obvious success

This is called artificial selection, not eugenics.
Artificial selection is a mere tool, not a theory.
You can select those genes you want but it is unscientific to say that they are better in absolute terms and thus the gene quality has improved because the "bad" genes have been removed.
A tomato plant is fit to make tomatoes, but not necessarily to survive in the wild.

[Sol Invictus]

Well, it is not scientific to believe that "pure Aryan people=good, everything else=bad", but you can't say that if they believed so and used artificial selection to develop those traits there is no scientific basis for them to have expected for this succeed, granted reducing gene pool can have unintended consequence, but white population is not so small as to seriously suffer from inbreeding. You can't just dismiss everything you dislike as BS, because it is important to see how people got that idea to avoid falling into same traps as they did

[Itikar]

you can't say that if they believed so and used artificial selection to develop those traits there is no scientific basis for them to have expected for this succeed,

In fact I don't, but the eugenic theory still remains completely, utterly, hopelessly unscientific.

If you can't know if a gene is better than another you can't improve the quality of the human species through any type of selection, be it artificial, natural or sexual.

You can't just dismiss everything you dislike as BS, because it is important to see how people got that idea to avoid falling into same traps as they did

A good start would be stopping to call scientific what is not scientific.

[Sol Invictus]

If you can't know if a gene is better than another you can't improve the quality of the human species through any type of selection, be it artificial, natural or sexual.

So all the people who are breeding animals for traits they consider good are engaging in quackery with no scientific basis?

You can't just dismiss everything you dislike as BS, because it is important to see how people got that idea to avoid falling into same traps as they did

A good start would be stopping to call scientific what is not scientific.

Sure, run around saying Nazis did it just for the evulz

[Itikar]

So all the people who are breeding animals for traits they consider good are engaging in quackery with no scientific basis?

In fact I don't

This is called artificial selection, not eugenics.
Artificial selection is a mere tool, not a theory.

It is unscientific to say that they have improved in absolute terms the quality of their genes.
They aren't, they can't and they won't. Ever.

They have selected the best traits to be exploited by humans, not the best traits in general.
In the wild these same traits would probably be a disadvantage rather than an asset.