The Eugenics Crusade
- Episode aired Oct 16, 2018
- 1h 55m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
110
YOUR RATING
Tracing the movement to breed a "better" American race, which turned the science of heredity into an instrument of social control that led to forced sterilization campaigns.Tracing the movement to breed a "better" American race, which turned the science of heredity into an instrument of social control that led to forced sterilization campaigns.Tracing the movement to breed a "better" American race, which turned the science of heredity into an instrument of social control that led to forced sterilization campaigns.
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Decent anti-eugenics documentary
This is only about USA and how they saw eugenics. They go over how eugenics was just a movement without a political leaning. Used to protect USA overall from ill immigrants, criminals, and people with mental disorders. And used to spread reproductive rights too as it was the moral foundation for it.
They do say quite a lot of nonsense here as they get too biased at times. Like one pundit claiming that an IQ test thousands of people took was pseudoscience as you can't even define or measure intelligence as such. This claim is of course pseudoscience. While you can criticize IQ tests just dismissing them is foolish. And the documentary never corrects it. I think there are actually a ton of valid criticisms towards the WW1 IQ test given to potential recruits. And some are close to what the documentary gets into. But overall the critique is terrible here. The same pundit pulls out a single IQ item as an example of how bad the test was. And documentary points out another item. But they fully overlook that a main part of the test did actually measure intelligence. Sure some items were terrible, but you can pull out any modern test and find a few terrible items in that too. That's just how ANY test works. They are clearly trying to mislead viewers by not explaining that a main part of the test was valid and quite useful to predict performance in the military.
Later they fully join the nurture camp. So that suddenly genes matter none, and that everything is just created by culture. Crime? Explained by culture. Children inheriting personality traits from parents? Culture. And so on. There is no middle ground as the documentary just attacks everything about eugenics without thinking about where it ends up. The documentary kinda just jumps head first into this "new" idea that culture explains all and hence old White men supporting eugenics are just unscientific and outdated. Again, this was close to a valid point to a small degree. Some pundits did touch on valid counter-claims like saying that the eugenics movement was not founded on scientific principles, but kinda just used them over time. And that National Socialists didn't create the movement, but did fully bury it after it was already basically out of style in 1920's USA.
This furthermore makes it weird. As of course the documentary starts and ends with explaining how bad and awful Nazis were. Then you suppose it would explain further socialist eugenics movements in other cultures and nations. But nope, this is only USA and Nazi Germany nothing else. Which is a shame as that's the 2 movements most already know quite a bit about. All other socialist regimes have practised genocide and mass selection too to some degree.
Overall it's a decent documentary for the anti-eugenics point of view. But it leans so heavily into this point that it misses a ton of valid points and becomes unscientific at times. And furthermore one feels it's incomplete without another point of view. Either a more scientific one or maybe even a short documentary pro eugenics. I don't think this can stand by itself as by itself it is propaganda that will mislead you. Of course they may feel like this moral standpoint is warranted and that misleading viewers is fine if it's for a good cause. But one has to note that they are doing this and be extra critical when watching it. I would not recommend it to people who know nothing about the topic. But if you can remain critical and understand that about 20% of the documentary is directly wrong I think you may enjoy it.
They do say quite a lot of nonsense here as they get too biased at times. Like one pundit claiming that an IQ test thousands of people took was pseudoscience as you can't even define or measure intelligence as such. This claim is of course pseudoscience. While you can criticize IQ tests just dismissing them is foolish. And the documentary never corrects it. I think there are actually a ton of valid criticisms towards the WW1 IQ test given to potential recruits. And some are close to what the documentary gets into. But overall the critique is terrible here. The same pundit pulls out a single IQ item as an example of how bad the test was. And documentary points out another item. But they fully overlook that a main part of the test did actually measure intelligence. Sure some items were terrible, but you can pull out any modern test and find a few terrible items in that too. That's just how ANY test works. They are clearly trying to mislead viewers by not explaining that a main part of the test was valid and quite useful to predict performance in the military.
Later they fully join the nurture camp. So that suddenly genes matter none, and that everything is just created by culture. Crime? Explained by culture. Children inheriting personality traits from parents? Culture. And so on. There is no middle ground as the documentary just attacks everything about eugenics without thinking about where it ends up. The documentary kinda just jumps head first into this "new" idea that culture explains all and hence old White men supporting eugenics are just unscientific and outdated. Again, this was close to a valid point to a small degree. Some pundits did touch on valid counter-claims like saying that the eugenics movement was not founded on scientific principles, but kinda just used them over time. And that National Socialists didn't create the movement, but did fully bury it after it was already basically out of style in 1920's USA.
This furthermore makes it weird. As of course the documentary starts and ends with explaining how bad and awful Nazis were. Then you suppose it would explain further socialist eugenics movements in other cultures and nations. But nope, this is only USA and Nazi Germany nothing else. Which is a shame as that's the 2 movements most already know quite a bit about. All other socialist regimes have practised genocide and mass selection too to some degree.
Overall it's a decent documentary for the anti-eugenics point of view. But it leans so heavily into this point that it misses a ton of valid points and becomes unscientific at times. And furthermore one feels it's incomplete without another point of view. Either a more scientific one or maybe even a short documentary pro eugenics. I don't think this can stand by itself as by itself it is propaganda that will mislead you. Of course they may feel like this moral standpoint is warranted and that misleading viewers is fine if it's for a good cause. But one has to note that they are doing this and be extra critical when watching it. I would not recommend it to people who know nothing about the topic. But if you can remain critical and understand that about 20% of the documentary is directly wrong I think you may enjoy it.
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- JurijFedorov
- May 29, 2024
Details
- Runtime1 hour 55 minutes
- Color
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